- Great Recession? Opportunity!

Tech Trends on the Upswing

In my previous blog entry, I discussed some of the “downswing” trends in IT in local government. This column will be about trends on the upswing – gaining prominence and resources – in cities and counties. Most of this information came from discussions with CIOs of other large cities and counties around the country, held at the Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) conference in Albuquerque in September.

On the rise in local government are cloud computing or hosted services, public safety support, geo-location, award-winning websites, social media use (blogging, twitter, Facebook, YouTube), consolidation, hiring chills or freezes, the “greening” of IT and responding to climate change.

MIX members certainly are leaders in online services, as recognized in the Center for Digital Government’s annual best of the web awards. We are all driving more services online, but also struggling to make more data available for transparency and accountability. Those governments receiving awards are doing an exceptional job.

 ”Cloud computing” or hosted applications or software-as-a-service (SAAS) are finding fertile ground in government, although only the seeds have been planted – just a few applications are sprouting. Bill Greeves, CIO of Roanoke County, Virginia, has been a leader in this field in government, especially with his Muni Gov 2.0 initiative. Bill is also a fellow blogger here on Digital Communities.

As the budgets of IT departments are cut, they no longer have the staff or resources to support applications, sometimes even mission critical ones. Many of us are therefore hosting new applications such as job application or payroll systems in the cloud. The City of Seattle will probably implement both applicant tracking systems (although with budget constraints, jobs are few and far between!) and customer relationship management systems “in the cloud”. Besides ease of support, placing applications “in the cloud” also results in regular software upgrades and predictable costs.

Most MIX cities and counties are not cutting public safety or fire/emergency medical services departments. The City of Seattle, while cutting over 300 city employees in 2010, is preserving the number of firefighters and increasing the police department by 21 officers.

And support for public safety systems such as computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records management is growing. A side effect of this growth is geo-location or automated-vehicle-location (AVL). Many local governments have implemented it for fire departments and it is seeing increasing use in police, transportation and utilities. AVL allows dispatch of the closest unit to a request for service, shortening response times. During disasters or major incidents, the incident commander and emergency operations center can quickly see and coordinate the deployment of units from many different disciplines to the scene. As one example, the City of Seattle just implemented a new CAD for Police which includes a mapping component showing not just unit locations, but active calls, waiting calls and completed requests.

Social media are seeing an explosion of use (duh!). Social media include blogging, online video (e.g. YouTube), twitter, mashups (data display on a map), and “friend” sites such as Facebook. Every MIX member is trying to figure out how to use these new technologies but at the same time comply with the web (pun intended) of laws for local government, including records retention and public disclosure while somehow preventing degeneration of public comment into the gutter often found in comments on newspaper articles. The City of Seattle just implementedd a series of social media policies, and is robustly using blogs and Twitter, as well as video and Facebook.

Again, Bill Greeves and the Muni Gov 2.0 crew are actively holding meetings and discussions in Second Life, another use of social media.

Next, I’ll mention climate change. Some amount of debate continues to swirl around this topic – is global warming real or not? Is it caused by humans, or flatulating cows? This whole discussion is actually irrelevant. The fact is the public – and their elected officials – are demanding climate-friendly reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, which, by the way, also reduce our use of and dependence upon foreign oil. Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle just had the 1000th city (Mesa, Arizona) sign the Mayors’ climate protection agreement, an initiative he started in 2005. Bottom line: climate change is something IT departments need to address, too.

Then there is “green technology”. I’m a notable skeptic that technology can ever been “green” (see my blog entry on “gray technology”) although e-recycling programs like Total Reclaim in Seattle are recycling 99% of TVs and computer monitors. Every MIX member jurisdiction is working on green tech. Some of this is almost inadvertent, e.g. lengthening replacement cycles of desktop and server computers due to budget cuts. But other initiatives are quite proactive such as installing power-management software on desktop computers (e.g. from Verdiem), virtualization, and reducing the use of paper. In the future we will probably demand to know which manufacturers and vendors are kindest to the environment and use the lowest carbon emissions in production of their products.

As Rahm Emanuel has stated “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste“. Those of us who are CIOs in local government are trying to balance reduced budgets, make staffing cuts and yet meet the increasing demands for technology by line departments in our governments. And we’ll continue to share our good ideas through organizations such as MIX, publications like Government Technology and Public CIO magazine, and blogs such as these on Digital Communities.

We won’t waste this crisis!

- Budget Time for City Technology

Balanced Budgets in Seattle - click for more

Seattle – like most cities and counties – is now deep in the middle of its 2009 budget process. A looming recession, the housing crisis, decreasing revenues and increasing demands for City services are all colliding to strain a $878 million general fund budget. Faced with the need for “feet on the street” – cops, firefighters, clean parks, and human services – how will needs for maintaining and improving the City’s technology fare in this looming budget earthquake?

Luckily, Mayor Nickels, Dwight Dively (the City’s CFO) and their senior staff understand the need for investment in technology to support the “feet on the street”. Oh, you won’t hear a single reference to technology in the Mayor’s budget speech on Monday, September 29th (if you missed it, view it here). The Mayor talked about issues such as public safety – continuing to add police officers to bring the department from 1,241 sworn officers in 2003 to 1,360 in 2010. He discussed significant increases in emergency shelter, food and library collections. In 2009, Seattle will spend more money to create affordable housing than every other City in the State, combined. There’s $9 million to combat youth and gang violence.

While there was not a word about technology in the budget speech, there is a lot of action for technology in the budget itself. Seattle’s elected officials know their “on the street” budget priorities will require technology to be successful, and here are a few examples.

It’s one thing to add more cops, but each cop will require voice radios, laptop computers and digital video systems in cars, and this budget provides for those.

Seattle has one of the highest bond ratings of any City in the nation, but that requires a smooth-functioning financial management system. This budget provides for new high-speed computer server and high-end data storage system to run that financial management system and hold data for it and for other priority functions such as customer service and utility billing.

Customer service is a top priority for the Mayor – making sure Seattle’s people receive good service and fast response to requests and complaints. Mayor Nickels has recently implemented a customer service “Bill of Rights“. This budget supports these initiatives by providing for Constituent Relationship Management system software (CRM). We also will implement a modern electronic mail system (Exchange/Outlook) and other technology which will speed service requests and problem reports from customers to City employees who can rapidly respond.

As in most budgets and most companies, the bulk of the budget is not for new projects and initiatives, but rather for carrying on the normal business of City government. So my department’s $58.6 million budget provides $2 million to support the City website www.seattle.gov which won the “Best Municipal Web Portal” award from the Center for Digital Government in 2001 and 2006, $2.4 million to support a public safety radio network of over 5,000 radios which is up 99.999% of the time, and $3.4 million to support the top municipal TV channel in the nation, the Seattle Channel.  There is money for more commonplace functions like $1.4 million for a help desk, $10 million for an extensive telephone network, and even $700,000 for the technology leadership office (that’s the Chief Technology Officer – me – and my leadership team!).

There are a few hidden gems in this budget too – like connecting every elementary school in the City with high speed fiber optic cable (the school system pays for it but my department does the work). With some luck, I’ll be able to blog about these “run-of-the-mill” projects over the next year.

The City’s proposed budget is on the web here, and you can find the central information technology budget on page 543 here.

Is it a lot of money?  Yes.

Does it help make the City of Seattle efficient, effective and safe?  Damned right it does.

- A National CTO?

Which is the National CTO?

Barack Obama states he will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) . And, indeed, his own campaign even has (had?) its own CTO (see CIO-dot-com).  Blogger Robert Scoble recently listed (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) the “A list” of names for the National CTO job.

Vint Cerf (as quoted by Ed Cone in his blog on CIO Insight) worries about “centralizing” technology or technology policy in the Federal government. He correctly points out that a “technology czar” would have about the same level of success as previous administration’s “energy” and “drug” and “fill-in-the-blank” czars.

But what would a “national CTO” actually DO?

Obama’s campaign website lists a potential set of duties. These include:

• More transparency in government – presumably this means the federal government. Chief Geek comment: Yes!
• Development of an interoperable wireless network for first responders. Chief Geek comment: Oh Gawd no. There are so many different groups and bureaucracies trying to do this now, vying for attention and dollars, that we’ve created a mini-first-responder-industrial complex.
• Sharing of best technology practices between government agencies. Chief Geek comment: Well, maybe. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the Bush Adminstration is already and consistently scoring agencies on their management, and specifically the use of electronic government (see the latest scorecard here )

As CTO (aka Chief Geek) for the City of Seattle, I do have an opinion about this (surprise!) .

The City of Seattle does not have a CIO.  To some extent, the title “CTO” instead of CIO is an historical anomaly dating from the time the position was created by the Seattle City Council in the mid-1990s. But I also head a department (Information Technology or DoIT) which largely manages infrastructure. Applications are supported by the individual departments who conduct the business of City government (providing water, electricity, transportation, policing, parks, fire and emergency medical service, etc.).  As CTO, my office provides oversight and standards for the use of technology in City government, but I only directly manage about 215 of the 600 or so IT employees in the government.

In the Fedgov, not even the technology infrastructure of the government can be centralized under a CTO. The Fedgov is just too large and diverse.

I’ve previously written that government generally should not be on the bleeding edge of technology – we should take technologies pioneered and honed by the private sector, and apply them to the business of governing. In the Fedgov this is also true, with the exception of the military and homeland security, who have unique duties which will stretch the envelope of technology in new and different ways from the private sector.

So what would a national CTO actually DO? I suggest:

• Make that blob of the Fedgov more transparent. Absolutely.
• Find technologies and best practices for using technologies pioneered in the private sector and imfuse them into Federal agencies. I’ve previously listed a number of ideas about the use of Web 2.0 tech, for a specific set of examples, in government.
• Push the OMB Scorecard further and deeper with aspects of technology other than “e-gov”. The best way to push agencies to cooperate and interoperate is to score their performance. We do that with project management at the City of Seattle, and it works wonders.
• Where possible, demand, direct and lead Federal agencies to cooperate and consolidate – share web services, share infrastructure, consolidate data centers and so forth.

In terms of national (non-federal-government) leadership by this Federal CTO position, I’m a little more cautious and skeptical. I like Vint Cerf’s idea about an information technology advisory committee (PITAC). But, in general, I’d say the robust set of private technology companies (led by Seattle’s own Microsoft), the University community and the open source Internet community are doing just fine in national and worldwide technology leadership. 

We do have a number of Federal agencies which appropriately regulate or support technology, for example the FCC, the Federal Trade Commission, National Science Foundation and, of course (famously) DARPA.  Most of these agencies could be improved in an administration more technologically enlightened than the present one.

But we don’t really need a federal technology “czar” to “help”.

Earthlost in Philadelphia

William Penn, about as alive and kicking as Wireless Philadelphia

Original post:   15 May 2008.
One of the big pieces of news this week is the final implosion of “Wireless Philadelphia“, the hapless attempt by Earthlink to provide free citywide wi-fi in Philadelphia. Earthlink is walking away and abandoning the network. (Oh, you’ll hear various efforts to try and keep it alive, but they are like connecting electrical cables to a cadaver.) The administration of former Mayor John Street eagerly pursued this initiative, hoping, among other things, to “bridge the digital divide” bringing the Internet to people in Philadelphia who did not have or were unable to afford access. Why didn’t it work?
•   “Free”. Wi-Fi ain’t free. It requires radios on streetlights, wires to at least some of those radios connecting them together and to the Internet, paying for Internet access, someone to operate and fix it and help folks use it. So who pays for all this? BTSOM (beats the stuffing out of me). I’ve looked at this again and again in Seattle with a variety of possible partners. There never was a business model for the combination of “free” and “wi-fi” and “citywide”.
•   Coverage. Gee, radio waves don’t always go through walls, as anyone with a cell phone knows. Especially when those walls are brick (and there is a bit of brick in Philly). In fact, when spring comes and leaves sprout on trees, signals often don’t even go through the new foliage very well. Yet this network was expected to reach everyone living in Philly. Amazing how the laws of physics work, despite the best efforts of tech executives and politicians.
•   Citywide. Wi-Fi might make sense in certain neighborhoods, especially business districts where chambers of commerce or neighborhood businesses might pay for it for their own use or to bring customers to the area. But Citywide?
•   Bridging the digital divide. If you can’t afford Internet access, how are you going to afford a computer or a wi-fi card to use the Internet? Or if someone gets you all of the above, how do you learn to use it or who do you call when something breaks? Community technology centers and libraries are much better models for providing access.
On the other hand, at least Philly City government didn’t put a lot of their own skin (i.e. taxpayer dollars) into this game, and Mayor Nutter’s administration can rightfully drop the blame for the implosion on his predecessor. But certainly there was a lot of wasted employee time, weeping and gnashing of teeth as this drama unfolded and then … ah … “folded”.
So, does this (along with other failures or pending failures in Houston New Orleans, Portland and so forth) mark the ultimate death of municipal wi-fi? Probably not. There may be models which work. Corpus Christi appears to have found one. And I’ll be chairing a panel on municipal wireless at Governing Magazine’s “Managing Technology” conference here in Seattle on May 29th. Folks from Tucson and Minneapolis will be sharing their success stories and I’ll try to add those stories to this blog in late May.

Tech Elections Terror

Internet Voting Terror

Original post:   1 May 2008

Conducting elections on the Internet terrifies me.
You might expect a Chief Geek to embrace putting technology everywhere – in every nook and cranny of government.  Not me.   Certainly there is a lot of the work of government which can be more efficient and effective through the use of technology.  But use of the Internet for elections is not one of those functions.   First, I have to admit I get a thrill walking into Admiral Congregational Church on election Tuesdays, walking past he American flag and the church women selling cookies, and then saying hello to Jackie and Nancy and Susan and the other poll workers.   I feel so much more a part of my community and doing my civic duty.   Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mid blackening the little bubbles on the ballot.   I don’t mind the automated counting machine and I don’t even mind people using mail-in or absentee ballots.
But it gives me a lot of comfort to know that my vote is on a piece of paper which can be felt and held and stored.   That no Internet hackster is messing with the numbers – or, if they do, a legion of real humans can hand count those ballots and verify the results.  
Personal ballot places, real pollworkers, paper ballots.   Pretty similar to the workings of Democracy in the 1700’s, and a reliable election process for this geek.