Monthly Archives: November 2013

Seattle Needs More Video Surveillance

Seattle Video CameraViolent crime statistics tell us that Seattle is safer now than it was 10 or 12 years ago; that violent crime – even in the last year – has decreased. But statistics are cold comfort to downtown shoppers in light of the September stabbing death of a Shoreline Community College professor after a Sounders’ game, drive-by shootings like the one at the Othello Street light rail station last month and the attack on a Metro bus driver downtown earlier this year.

Both Mayor Michael McGinn and Mayor-elect Ed Murray have proposed adding additional police officers — perhaps 15 to 25 more — to the Seattle Police Department. But those numbers are tiny: Putting an officer on the street costs $100,000 a year and, in order to make sure there’s one additional officer on the street at any given time, you’d have to add five officers to the department.

Clearly the city cannot afford to buy its way to improved public safety this way.

Luckily, technology provides a cheaper option: surveillance cameras.

Read the rest of this article on Crosscut here

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Filed under Law Enforcement, Seattle Police, wi-fi

Lee Harvey Oswald and 9/11

lho_lee_harvey_oswald_as_boy

Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald robbed my parents of their youth.

In a similar way, 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Centers may have robbed the rest of us (even those of us now in our 60s) of our youth.

When Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, he also killed – or at least damaged – the “youthful outlook” of the “Greatest Generation” – those who had survived the Great Depression and put their “youth” on hold to fight World War II.   That generation – which included my parents – came back to peacetime, after WWII, and immediately married, had kids (lots of kids – the Baby Boomers) and got engaged in work and business.   This generation saw Kennedy as a hero.   He was, indeed, a bonafide war hero from PT-109.  But he also had an eloquence and a youthful outlook on the world symbolized by his goal to put a man on the moon and his speeches including “ask not what you can do for your country …” and “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans”.

Oswald killed all that.

And afterward, of course, my own generation would not “trust anyone over 30”;  the nation became bogged down in the Vietnam War;  and my parents became “old fogies”.  Bill Flanagan on CBS Sunday Morning eloquently described the disillusionment which followed November 22, 1963.

Something similar occurred, I fear, after September 11, 2013.    For over 230 years, the United States survived on isolationism.  We were separated from Europe and Asia by vast oceans as well as centuries in time.  The United States was the “young democracy” on the globe.  Sure, we lived in fear of nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War.   But “bombs dropping invisibly from the sky” is an abstract concept.  And, of course, that nuclear war never happened.

September 11, 2001, changed all that.

The war came to our shores.

Americans died – by the thousands – in Manhattan.

And, I think, to a great extent, the “youthful outlook” of the generations who remember 9/11 died also.

Now we have a National Security Agency which tracks our phone calls and our social media and probably tracks our email and web browsing.   We’ve built a giant security apparatus worthy of George Orwell’s 1984.  Our drones strike at people around the world.   We fear the Chinese have completely cyber-infiltrated our government systems and private businesses.  Every time we go through a TSA line at an airport we are personally reminded that terrorists live among us.   We’ve wasted trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives (including the lives of the dismembered) on foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.   Every month another mass-shooting born of mental illness and despair seems to occur. And we are constantly reminded that our passwords are not secure, our financial information is not secure, and our very identities may be stolen.

I have great cause for hope, as well.  There’s a whole generation growing up now who do NOT remember 9/11.  The wars are winding down (although the debt they left us has not).  We’ve got a vigorous non-profit sector of hackers (in the good sense of the term) who are building applications from open source and demanding open government data.   A whole set of technologies is sprouting which will enrich our lives:   network-connected glasses, autonomous vehicles, tablet and smartphone computers, and other wonders yet to be unveiled.

Lee Harvey Oswald robbed a generation of its youth.  9/11 robbed more generations of our youth.  Can our next generation perhaps live out its dreams?

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Filed under homecity security, Sept. 11th

FirstNet Business Plan: Mission Impossible?

firstnet-logoHow can FirstNet possibly pay for its initial construction, subsequent network enhancements and long-term operations? While extremely challenging, there is a way.

The Spectrum Act of 2012, which created the First Responder Network Authority, specifically requires that the nationwide public-safety broadband communications network that FirstNet is building pays for its own long-term operational costs. It also requires that any income derived from the network is used to fund improvements and operations.

This is going to be extremely difficult to accomplish, and some may think it to be impossible.

But there is a way …

(read the rest of this blog post at Urgent Communications here)

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Filed under Fedgov, FirstNet, homecity security, wireless

A 10 point Tech Plan for Mayors of Large Cities

Ed-Murray-Dively-Choe

Ed Murray (center), with transition team leaders Dwight Dively and Martha Choe

(On November 5, 2013, State Senator Ed Murray was elected Mayor of Seattle.  Seattle voters have thrown out all thre of their incumbent Mayors who held office in the 21st Century.  Here are my suggestions for what Mayor-elect Murray – but, really, any Mayor in any large City – can do immediately to use technology to enhance City services and improve efficiency of operations.)

Washington state has an extraordinarily robust tech community, anchored not only by big companies like Microsoft and Amazon, but by the University of Washington and an active start-up scene. Yet our city’s engagement with that tech community – and the technology used by government itself – are inadequate and falling behind other major worldwide centers of technology.

Here’s how mayor-elect Ed Murray can create a government that uses technology to facilitate citizen involvement and provide efficient effective services …

(Read the remainder of the article on Crosscut here.)

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Filed under 311, broadband, CIOs, eCityGov, egovernment, elections, fiber, government, management of technology

If I were a Mayor, what 3 tech things would I do first?

King of the Forest

Mayor and King of the Forest

If I were Mayor of Seattle, what three actions would I take immediately to improve City government and improve quality of life for the people living and working in Seattle?

First, I’d appoint a Chief Innovation Officer (CInO) to reach out to the technology and start-up communities in Seattle, harnessing their ideas and technologies for use in City government. The outreach opportunities here are endless, from huge companies like Microsoft which has a wide variety of innovative software solutions, to smaller companies like Cozi (an app and website that helps organize family life) andProsodic (smarter use of social media). Taking advantage of these technologies will help to build the city’s economy and promote locally developed products. The CInO would also find innovative ways to cut through the bureaucracy entrenched in City departments, and help them find new ways to deliver better, cheaper, faster service.

The second thing I’d do as mayor is hire …

(Read the complete article on Crosscut here.)

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Filed under CIOs, elections, government, management of technology

Healthcare.gov: Why Washington State eclipsed Washington DC

eclipsedLike the Mariners’ string of depressing seasons and lost opportunities, this month’s botched rollout of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) healthcare.gov website represents a huge lost opportunity for the federal government. And some of the root causes of these two fiascos are amazingly similar.

Washington state’s own, separate, health benefit exchange registered phenomenal success, enrolling over 35,000 people in three weeks.

How can one state succeed where the federal government, with all its resources, cannot?

Read the rest of the article on Crosscut here, including 34 comments.

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Filed under Fedgov, management of technology, project management