Rhode Island released a set of Web services providing state government data over the Internet.
I wrote about it on Govtech.
Phil Windley, on Between the Lines, said the following about how I wrote part of the article.
He says:
To show you how far we are from what Jim has done in Rhode Island being universally adopted by cities and states the second paragraph reads:
A Web service is a mechanism that allows separate software applications to share data over a network. The Internet is such a network. Web services can enable a high degree of interoperability. With Web services, different software applications can share data despite being on different operating systems, platform environments, and written in different programming languages.
When your audience is government technologists and you feel obligated to describe what a Web service is in 2005, you know you're in trouble.
Below is what I think and my opinion. Look at the content of www.govtech.net to decide for yourself.
While I think there is some validity to what he says here, I don't think Govtech's content is written so much for government technologists. It's largely written for government technology managers and people not necessarily very familiar with technology, but who have some weigh in on what goes on in IT in their areas.
Don't get me wrong, govtech is for government technologists, and I think it will be even more so in the future, but I think, at times, govtech and GT Mag are attempting to bring business and general understandings to technical things -- attempting to bridge a gap between business-oriented-and-non-technology and technology.
Govtech, GT Mag and other such resources align with a responsibility of a CIO to bring a greater understanding of and the need of technology in state and local government. CIOs can use these resources to better educate others as well as become more informed themselves.
Today, I believe it is true that any entity Web site on the Internet that wants to provide new information regularly, and actually wants a lot of people to see it, should be publishing the data through RSS feeds no matter how else they are providing the data -- this especially applies to any news or media area. Without such, it is a sign of being behind the times.
Many city, county and state Websites don't have RSS feeds available and I don't know of any other than RI to have any other kinds of Web services available. I know of 10 state Websites that have RSS feeds available to the public. So a lot of state and local governments don't know about RSS feeds or Web services, or why to use them, or are prevented somehow from using them.
Rhode Island's Web services are another step forward. The Rhode Island IT guys are opening the state up to open source development and collaboration. Imagine a bunch of developers not employed by the state writing applications or including features in existing applications that forward the mission of a state government to provide services to its citizens online. This could be really cost effective.
Govtracker
