Nick Mudge’s Technology and Government Weblog

Ramon Padilla wrote an interesting piece called Open source=political suicide?

4:56pm | government resources - egovernment - enterprise architecture | no comments

In my opinion Govtech.net had one of its best months ever in September in terms of a lot of good content.

Here are the articles and news I found notable:

GT Mag Stories:

GT Online Features:

Digital Communities Website

News:

10:33pm | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment - xml - identity - SOA - enterprise architecture - wireless - best practices - open source - open standards - open government - security - workforce | no comments

This month's cover story of Government Technology magazine is about workforce issues in state government IT. It is a really interesting article all the way around.

One of the things that interested me was the talk about the content on government websites in relation to younger generations. From a section of the article entitled The Right Medium:

Oregon's Scott Smith thought Oregon.gov, the state's new portal, would pass the critique of even the toughest audience -- his 16-year-old son. Smith is director of operations of Oregon's Information Resources Management Division (IRMD), and is also manager of the state's E-Government Program.

One night at home, he said, he showed the portal to his son and got a little surprise.

"I took him to the Oregon.gov portal and navigated through a lot of the different layers and different agencies," Smith recalled. "I told him we have 95,000 pages of information out there, and he just wasn't impressed. I was dumbfounded, and told him, 'This is a big deal. This is a lot of information. We've never had this before.'

"His comment was, 'Yeah, but you can't connect to it,'" Smith said.

12:59pm | govtech web site - egovernment - enterprise architecture - best practices - open government - workforce | no comments

Enterprise IT governance: by none, by one, by committee, by the most talented or governance by the worst, the menu of administrative paradigms benumbs the imagination by its sheer size and breadth of philosophy. For example, one Internet site lists 166 discrete forms of government. Pity those who are charged with managing IT across a multiorganizational enterprise. They must establish a unifying vision that will be shared by all, and guide a process that is inherently fractious given the competing agendas and diverse constituencies. Often these intrepid souls must accomplish architectural miracles and create order in an environment steeped in technological heterogeneity and disequilibrium. Moreover, enterprise governance must overcome the weight of legacy cultures and superannuated business processes as it lurches forward to a targeted future-state of agility and coherency. During the passage, naysayers and disbelievers abound. Many ardent supporters do so largely as an article of faith in leadership rather than a mutual understanding of technology issues.

The first paragraph from IT Governance: The NYS Approach. Quite an introduction.

9:59pm | government resources - technology governance - egovernment - enterprise architecture | no comments

The eHealth Initiative Foundation recently released a study giving a broad overview of health information exchange throughout the country. Per the study, the implementation of electronic exchange of health information is actually happening.

From the study:

Results from this year’s survey demonstrate that communities are no longer talking about doing it -- they are doing it. While last year’s results focused on plans for implementation, this year’s results demonstrate major achievements in organization and functionality. Sixty-five organizations, or 60 percent of all respondents, identified themselves as “advanced" or well underway with implementation, and in many cases, fully operational. While many of the early stage initiatives are still getting started, it is clear that they are learning from their more advanced counterparts and demonstrating knowledge of emerging common principles related to the organizational, legal, financial and technical aspects of health information exchange.

The study and the story on govtech bring up good reasons why this subject should be blogged about -- the same reasons for the existence of the study.

Overhage said the study's findings will help health information exchange initiatives take a bearing on their levels of readiness and progress and create a clearer picture of the work from other regions and communities conducting similar initiatives. "It creates the impetus and opportunity for networking and accelerated learning," he said.

"The survey results are valuable to those of us on the ground as we work through issues and track our progress. Community to community we share a commitment to work with other markets to advance knowledge of application and use of HIT in the development of a more efficient and responsive health care system -- tracking our progress is important."

How better to track progress than to blog about it?

10:08pm | technology governance - egovernment - blogs - health IT - enterprise architecture | no comments

In a memo dated July 12 2005, Clark Kelso, the CIO of California says:

We are working on an approach and plan to take the State’s web pages to the next level of services, functionality and sophistication.

I hope that the upgrade includes RSS feeds. Kelso?

In the memo, he outlines many other things the state IT guys are working on and some recent major IT developments in California.

Clark Kelso Memo

2:15pm | egovernment - enterprise architecture | no comments

Last month California released a framework for building its enterprise architecture.

California Enterprise Architecture Framework - Release 2.0 Draft

From the document:

This document provides a framework for California to initiate, develop, use, and maintain the enterprise architecture. This framework offers an end-to-end process to initiate, implement, and sustain an enterprise architecture program, and describes the necessary roles and associated responsibilities.

1:52pm | government resources - enterprise architecture | no comments