- Second Life? No – Get a Life!

Seattle's Space Needle in Second Life

Original post:   31 May 2008
The Governing Magazine “Managing Technology” conference just concluded here in Seattle today, May 29th, 2008.
Among many other topics, we discussed the phenomenon of “Second Life” and similar virtual reality web-based universes. I learned that some governments have established a presence in “Second Life”, including the State of Missouri, which uses their Second Life presence to recruit Information Technology professionals. It’s also been widely reported that the government of Sweden and the City of Boston have second life embassies or city halls.
My initial reaction to governments’ presence in “Second Life”. Let’s just say I’m … ah … not supportive. Those government officials messing around creating “Second Lives” on government time need to … ah … “get a life”. The folks from Missouri said their second life presence only cost $112, but that cannot count all the employee time and staff time spent to create the presence.
People demand a lot from their governments – parks, utilities, cops and firefighters to name a few. Real “boots on the ground” to address the real issues of medical emergencies, crime, clean streets (or even just “streets”), parks, water and electricity. Given all these demands – and public safety needs, frankly – for government in our First Lives, it seems quite absurd to spend any amount of taxpayer dollars on a virtual life. That’s my initial reaction.
But I do admit to being “fair and warmer” on the concept of Second Life in general.
My Mayor – Greg Nickels – has been a national and world leader combating Global Warming (no puns intended). In his speech at the Governing conference on Thursday, May 28th, he talked about excessive and conspicuous consumption, and such consumption’s insidious side effects.
This consumption ranges from buying plastic-bottled water to using plastic or paper bags to six block automobile trips to the grocery store to needless purchases of clothes, toys, and all variety of stuff – much of it made from plastic which, in turn, is made from precious oil.
My theory is that much of this consumption is impulse driven – we see a bottle of water at the 7-11 or we see an advertisement for a new “thing” in the newspaper or in a store check-out line and we impulsively buy it, whether we need it or not.
But, suppose we indulged our “conspicuous consumption” by buying stuff in Second Life and outfitting our virtual second lives with all those trappings of conspicuous consumption? We satisfy our impulse and craving to buy stuff.
Then we show our “stuff” off to our fellow second life avatars. And we live frugally and wisely in our First Lives. Seems like a great trade-off to me.
So, Second Life on the taxpayer dime for a government presence?  Naw, I don’t think so.
Second Life in your personal life to satisfy those consumptive urges?  Absolutely.

- Internet Pin-up Girls (and Guys)

Internet Filtering for Government - click for more

Original post: 31 May 2008
First, let me congratulate Mark Stencel, who will be filling at least a portion of Peter Harkness’ shoes as Peter retires from his position as Editor and Publisher of Governing Magazine.  Mark, long-time technology columnist for Governing and governing.com, is a terrific guy with great insight into the often uneasy marriage between government and technology.
In Mark’s recent column, “At Work on the Web” he argues for the reduction or removal of Internet filtering in government agencies. While his reasons are noble, with roots in trust of workers and the fundamental democracy of the web, the realities of working in government agencies give me a different view.
Let me first say that almost all the employees I know at the City of Seattle are ethical, diligent, and hard-working. I see that diligence, that dedication, every day.
But everyone (government employee or not) has their weakness. Some folks are addicted to alcohol, others to shopping, many to cigarettes/smoke breaks and many others to surfing the Internet or YouTube. They can’t help themselves from surfing or bidding on e-bay or browsing MySpace for their friends.
Pin-up girls. The very phrase evokes images from World War II barracks. In City of Seattle call centers in the 1970s, we had problems with pin-up girls decorating cubicles. Then it was pin-up guys. Naked pin-up guys. In guy’s cubicles. We ended up banning all such photos from the workplace and no one would think of allowing them back in today.
Yet I’ve had workers visiting dating sites, and leaving images of half-clothed people on the computer screen scandalizing a co-worker. I’ve seen workers leaving their City e-mail address for craigslist and e-bay sales. I know of employees surfing Internet sex sites. We “flatten” at least five computers (out of 10,000) a week.   (This is a process also known as “re-imaging” or wiping a desktop computer clean and re-installing all programs.)   Why?  Because they became infected with malware from visiting non-business websites.
In every single case cited above, the City employee was a good employee. Hard working and well-intentioned. Someone I’d be proud to call a friend. But they either didn’t know the rules or had to indulge a low-level addiction to the Internet.
One department director tells me how much he loves the “websense” (Internet filtering software) installation in his department because it reduces the number of loudermill hearings he conducts, disciplining workers for non-business use of City computers. Websense helps keep honest people honest.
And hard-working City employees chafe when they see co-workers wasting time “surfing”. My experience is that morale among the top-performing City workers improves when they see low-performing employees unable to indulge their Internet addictions and/or disciplined for it.
Most City government workers earn a living wage. They work 40 hours a week, and many get overtime for hours beyond that. They have both the ability to buy a personal computer for home and the time to indulge themselves in the cyberworld at home. Public employees are held to a higher standard than workers in any other industry. When there’s a disaster, private employers shut down and their employees go home. Public employees work 12 hour shifts for the duration of the emergency.
Those same higher standards apply to use of City equipment, and conduct at work day-to-day, and the Internet content filters remind all of us of our duty to meet that standard.
The Pin-up Girls are long gone from the workplace. Let’s not bring them back with the web and Internet.

Web 2.0 and Government 1.9

Government 1.9 - click for more

Original post:  8 May 2008
The Internet has been taken over by a new set of interactive, community-making technologies. This is really old news: blogs, RSS feeds, MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn, wiki’s have been around for a number of years. They’ve vastly increased use of the Internet by everyone. Yet governments have been slow to adapt them for public agency use. There are good reasons for this – I firmly believe governments should NOT be on the bleeding edge of adopting new technologies – since we use taxpayer funds, we need to be careful in how we experiment.
But Web 2.0 technologies are all about building online communities and increasing interaction between people. And these are exactly what governments are all about! We have a natural set of communities – the people living in and neighborhoods existing within our city limits or county lines. And we have elected officials who thrive on interaction with constituents. We need to adopt at least some of these Web 2.0 technologies to improve government. I’m convinced governments are now on the verge of an explosion in the use of these tools (hence “government 1.9″). I’ve written a longer essay about this here, and I’ve collected a few examples of the pioneer government Web 2.0 implementations here.

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.