March 01, 2004

Cut & Paste Revolution?

Great idea from the UK. Take the daily press briefings from No. 10 Downing Street and post them into a blog. Downing Street Says...

Think about your local government, state government and federal government and all of the news and information release every day. Much of it buried in some website or in some unfriendly manner not allowing for quick review. What if a citizen cut and paste one source of that information into a GovBlog and then publicized the feed generated from that Blog. It is public information, isn't it? That might push things along. Great idea. Here's hoping we see more of it soon.

Posted by Bill Gratsch in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 15, 2003

The E-Gov Year in Review

What was the highlight of the year in e-government? I gave my bid in my 2003 E-Gov Round-Up. I call 2003 the Year of Enterprise Architecture.

What will 2004 bring? My bid is digital identity management.

Posted by John Gotze in Enterprise Architecture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 05, 2003

Forman speaks out

InformationWeek

Ending a self-imposed seven-week silence since stepping down as the federal government's first E-administrator in mid-August, Forman says the government has not only met but in many instances has surpassed most businesses in developing an enterprise architecture aimed at simplifying computing in large organizations. "The federal government isn't two years behind business any more," says Forman, who has joined Cassatt Corp., an enterprise software startup, as executive VP of worldwide services.

I'm looking for best practice stories about EA in government. Suggestions?

Posted by John Gotze in Enterprise Architecture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 06, 2003

The eGov imperative

The OECD has published The E-Government Imperative. A central quote:

E-Government is more about government than about 'e'...

The term "e-government", as used by the OECD E-Government Project, applies to the use of ICT as a tool to achieve better government. E-government is not about business as usual, but has a focus on using ICT to transform the structures, operations, and, most importantly, the culture of government. Modernising government structures, governance frameworks and processes to meet the e-government imperative will have fundamental impacts on how services are delivered, how policies are developed and how public administrations operate. As the impacts of e-government becomes more profound, government will have to strike equilibrium between protecting citizens rights and better meeting their needs with more efficient, integrated services and policy engagement processes. What starts as a technical exercise aimed at developing more responsive programs and services becomes an exercise in governance.

Posted by John Gotze in Governance | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 04, 2003

In a crisis, interoperability is paramount

The homeland security task force of the Government Electronics and IT Association has published a study, which GCN reports says: In a crisis, interoperability is paramount.

From the study:
The Department of Homeland Security architecture should be interoperability driven versus technology driven. The Federal environment often is focused primarily on control and governance, not always about defining how the job really needs to get done.

Posted by John Gotze in Enterprise Architecture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 03, 2003

State of Arkansas offers RSS Feed

The State of Arkansas is now offering many of the news headlines from its official website, Access Arkansas as an RSS feed. It is great to see other States in the U.S. following Utah's lead in sharing news and information via RSS.

If you are interested in consuming Arkansas' feed, here it is: http://www.accessarkansas.org/rss/siterss.xml

Posted by Bill Gratsch | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

August 30, 2003

Open Source in eGov

To be honest and in the middle of writing a number of technology case studies which include urban governments in Europe, I can't see, with the exception of Germany, any real haste in adopting Open Source. Cost remains the driving force and if Microsoft is seen to be more expensive in the long-term than an Open Source alternative, then people are much more prepared to switch allegiance than ever before. However, this has to be balanced with what are perceived as the 'True' costs of change, which in many cases may appear unnattractive in the short term.

Posted by Simon Moores in Open Source | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)

August 28, 2003

Linux and Mac OS in the Federal Enterprise Architecture

It might be that open source faces barriers, but GCN reports that Linux, Mac OS added to Federal Enterprise Architecture platforms. The Office of Management and Budget has added Linux and Mac OS to the list of supporting platforms in the new version of the Technical Reference Model (PDF) of the Federal Enterprise Architecture.

Posted by John Gotze in Enterprise Architecture, Open Source | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Open Source faces barriers in various Governments

An article in Government Executive describes some of the issues being wrestled with both at the US Federal level and by many other national governments including Korea, South Africa and the EU. Although the title is more pessimistic, perhaps to attract reader attention, the article appears balanced. It breifly talks about some of the legal issues and political pressures that governments face as they move to open source.


I hope that's okay for a first post!

Posted by Rob in Open Source | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)

August 27, 2003

Registration problems?

It seems TypePad is having some problems with the guest author system :-(

If you got an invitation from me, it should take you to a form to register as a guest author. But during the process, some says, it "forgets" this and asks you to register for a "real" Typepad account, with own domain and stuff. Little will it help you becoming a guest author here. Please let me know how it works for you. I hope the Typepad team will solve this problem soon.

If you want to set up your own Typepad account, let me know -- I have 20% discount tickets.

Posted by John Gotze | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)