As as opener, we talked about how a city near San Diego used a mass notification system similar to one we heard about from our first guest speaker in this class. A living example of how technology can provide better communications in the area of public safety.
We are past the halfway point of our journey, so just a reminder to work on your interview projects and group presentations. Everyone has been doing a great job keeping up on your weekly reflections. As the saying goes, "There is no learning without reflection". The object of reflections is to ponder the big takeaways from each class that have meaning in your work and career. The interview project is your opportunity to meet public sector professionals you'd like to know. Interested in being a city manager? The interview project is your opportunity to contact one (or two).
Our guest tonight was supposed to be a Geographic Information Systems professional from one of our local cities. This person, if they had appeared, would have told you how he had earned a certificate in GIS and was working in supporting GIS for a city. We encountered GIS systems in the Rudy Giuliani book "Leadership" with his Compstat system. Recall that people in New York were saying "the city is ungovernable" due to crime. Giuliani brought in Compstat to bring information and accountability to crime and law enforcement. With such data on exact precincts and who was responsible, they were able to focus on the problem of crime using data from the GIS system to pinpoint clusters of crime activity. We looked at GIS examples in the NASA investigation of the Columbia space shuttle disaster. As the shuttle broke up in the atmosphere, it scattered debris over hundreds of miles and several states. By using GIS to pinpoint what pieces were found and where they landed, NASA was able to reconstruct what happened and the sequence of events of the disaster. ESRI (http://www.esri.com) in Redlands is the world leader in GIS software.
Chapter 6 covered "Public Outreach and Responsiveness" in our Digital Government book. The chapter starts with the wonderful appeal that technology can provide in terms of making government more responsive to the public. However, we also saw how professional and organizational barriers have slowed the progress of digital government and responsiveness. Communications with the public help responsiveness, but what if you are a public official and you receive an e-mail a week from every one of your constituents? The short story is that a lack of political will and vision has been limiting the pace of change to improve the relationship between citizens and leaders. In any technological change, there are winners and there are losers. Those who would stand to lose with a technological change (e.g. someone's job is taken away, political power and influence is lost) is threatened. This opens the door to next weeks class where we will use the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) about creating productive working relationships to talk about Conflict...
Until then...
Thomas
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Class 5 - Public Safety and Technology
A bit tardy on the blog posting, sorry about that. Now to the summary of our Class 5 - Public Safety and Technology. The Chapter 5 from our Digital Government textbook looked specifically at the case of online tax filing. Just about the most paper and people intensive activity one can find in government, it would appear that having citizens file taxes online would we readily accepted. The chapter detailed how it was cheaper to process taxes online on a per page basis for the government. However, while technology is pervasive, it may not be wide spread enough technologically (e.g. does everyone have a computer in their home to file taxes easily?) or socially (e.g. is every taxpayer comfortable enough and trust the safety and security of the network enough to file taxes online?). These were some barriers to online taxes completely replacing paper tax filing. This may not be the first time that the benefits of technology have been overpromised but underdelivered. There was once a very large buzzword movement towards the "paperless office" in the late 1980s. As we sit here in the early 21st century, paper cans still be found in ample quantities in many offices. And as a type of technology, paper is cheap, easy to use, requires little training, and never crashes.
Our guest speakers for the class were from the growing City of Ontario. We were joined by Dale Wishner and Jimmy Chang from the City of Ontario Information Technology department. Dale and Jimmy shared their experiences and opinions on "municipal wi-fit" or citywide wireless. As much as it is touted, wireless is not secure or as fast as a wired connection. Wireless connections on the edge of the network eventually must connect to a wired network. This "backhaul" or connection of the wireless to the wired network is where the most concerns are in terms of network speed. AVL or automated vehicle location was a method of using wireless for real time reporting of the locations of city resources such as garbage trucks, fire and police vehicles, etc. A city technology department can also provide a competitive advantage for cities; cities with good technology infrastructure can attract businesses. One concern is the provision of high speed network access in older underserved parts of the city. The Georgraphic Information System (GIS) is a map that uses a database of information to manage information resources. For example, a GIS system with a database of the addresses of all the fire hydrants in the city can be useful to help firemen put out fires. For public safety, a police officer can check out if an address has any people with wants or warrants at that address. For our aspiring city managers, the areas of cost to pay attention to in technology deployments are: 1) initial capital investment, 2) recurring annual costs (e.g staff to support the system, training, support contracts), and 3) maintenance (e.g. repairs, replacement of equipment). Will wireless one day be an expected utility for cities, like water and electrical? Food for thought as we do long range planning for the future....
City website resources that Dale and Jimmy shared included:
http://www.misac.org
http://www.muniwireless.org
http://www.disasterportal.org/ontario
Notable quotables from Dale and Jimmy:
"Is it good for the citizens?"
"Will it serve the citizens?"
Thomas
Our guest speakers for the class were from the growing City of Ontario. We were joined by Dale Wishner and Jimmy Chang from the City of Ontario Information Technology department. Dale and Jimmy shared their experiences and opinions on "municipal wi-fit" or citywide wireless. As much as it is touted, wireless is not secure or as fast as a wired connection. Wireless connections on the edge of the network eventually must connect to a wired network. This "backhaul" or connection of the wireless to the wired network is where the most concerns are in terms of network speed. AVL or automated vehicle location was a method of using wireless for real time reporting of the locations of city resources such as garbage trucks, fire and police vehicles, etc. A city technology department can also provide a competitive advantage for cities; cities with good technology infrastructure can attract businesses. One concern is the provision of high speed network access in older underserved parts of the city. The Georgraphic Information System (GIS) is a map that uses a database of information to manage information resources. For example, a GIS system with a database of the addresses of all the fire hydrants in the city can be useful to help firemen put out fires. For public safety, a police officer can check out if an address has any people with wants or warrants at that address. For our aspiring city managers, the areas of cost to pay attention to in technology deployments are: 1) initial capital investment, 2) recurring annual costs (e.g staff to support the system, training, support contracts), and 3) maintenance (e.g. repairs, replacement of equipment). Will wireless one day be an expected utility for cities, like water and electrical? Food for thought as we do long range planning for the future....
City website resources that Dale and Jimmy shared included:
http://www.misac.org
http://www.muniwireless.org
http://www.disasterportal.org/ontario
Notable quotables from Dale and Jimmy:
"Is it good for the citizens?"
"Will it serve the citizens?"
Thomas
Friday, October 12, 2007
Class 4 - How Municipalities Use Technology
We primed the pump for learning with a recap of what we covered last week. Our special guest speaker for tonight was Dennis Vlasich, the Information Technology Director for the City of Fontana. Dennis has over 30 years of experience in the public sector and technology field. He is also a Principal/Senior Consultant with the Kerry Consulting Group (KCG). Operational realities of the work Dennis shared were: money, skillset, and time. The value of starting with a Strategic Goal (where you want to go) vs. a Tactical Goal (how you want to get there) was emphasized. Without these, technology for technology's sake situations can occur. What is the problem you want to solve with technology? What opportunity will technology provide? The thought process behind whether to Build a system or Buy a system was discussed. It depends on your situation. Dennis also shared his insights that a good city manager usually either knows how to work with the city council or work with the city issues. The ability to defuse interdepartment rivalries for resources and blur lines between departments so all work together for the good of the city was a valuable skill to have as a city manager.
In the area current events show and tell, we discussed the 10/11/07 presidential hopeful candidate Ron Paul and his effective use of the web to raise funds and organize supporters. This is an example of how network technology and communications can flatten social structures. Ron Paul is able to run a campaign outside of the structured political party heirarchy. Whether an entire election can be run and won on the Internet has yet to be seen.
Chapter 4: Explaining E-Government Performance of the "Digital Government" book was a hard read. The data collection methodology and details about how data was collected obfuscated the valuable findings. Critical success factors were organizational, fiscal and political. Each was interrelated (think Leavitt Diamond). First and foremost was to keep citizen demands and wants in focus and what services the public values before deploying technology. Funding was determined to be the most important factor for technology development. However, political savvy, leadership and vision can change the equation. With proper alliances and coalitions, fiscal purse strings could be loosened. One hint was to be able to identify potential allies who had an interest in technology.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Class 3 - Privacy, Read ID and Identity
We kicked off the evening with a little warmup by looking at electronic government in India and a review of how Korea is approaching electronic government:
Mishandling of public data or data loss, even if accidental or by malicious outside hackers, damages public trust in the ability of government to manage personal data. Cases studies we looked at were the data breach at the University of California - San Diego: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/securitybreach.asp.
Can government be trusted with personal information? This was the question asked during the discussion of RealID, a controversy that is see in national ID card debates. In the following link, it was observed that in Asia and South America, such identification papers are required to be carried at all times. However, in New Zealand and Australia, such practices are shunned. http://www.news.com/National-ID-cards-on-the-way/2100-1028_3-5573414.html
So how much freedom and personal information should citizens be expected to give up?
From the book Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani, we read about the Compstat crime fighting system. This was not so much a technology as it was a process. The Leavitt Diamond framework from previous classes highlighted the interaction between the technology (in this case a Geographic Information System (GIS) which is a map attached to a database), people skills to use data and technology, organizational structure of how Compstat was accepted, and department structure such as the weekly "Crime Strategy Meetings". It is again important to note that 3 of the 4 elements of the Leavitt Diamond relate to people and how they interact or change.
This week we turned to Chapter 3 - Content of American Government Websites in our class text Digital Government. What web content does the public value? How do we measure successful performance and what works on public websites?
Building on the Personal Strengths Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) that we took to learn how to "build productive working relationships" (http://www.personalstrengths.com), we learned about our own Motivational Value System or "color". We broke into groups to learn how each color viewed the world. It was interesting to note how Mother Theresa was viewed as tough by our Red MVS group but as compassionate by our Blue MVS group, a living example of how our filters determine how we view the world. The class ended with a practice of "borrowing" or communicating in a way that resonates with the other person in a way they need to hear it.
http://egov-india.blogspot.com/2007/09/road-to-e-government-korean-way.html
In contrast, we also looked at You Tube video clips of the suppression of a democracy protest in Myanmar and discussed how not all parts of the world are accepting of Democracy. Our role as public servants and guardians of the public trust is made more challenging by the survey data that indicates that public is less trusting of government than previous generations.Mishandling of public data or data loss, even if accidental or by malicious outside hackers, damages public trust in the ability of government to manage personal data. Cases studies we looked at were the data breach at the University of California - San Diego: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/securitybreach.asp.
Can government be trusted with personal information? This was the question asked during the discussion of RealID, a controversy that is see in national ID card debates. In the following link, it was observed that in Asia and South America, such identification papers are required to be carried at all times. However, in New Zealand and Australia, such practices are shunned. http://www.news.com/National-ID-cards-on-the-way/2100-1028_3-5573414.html
So how much freedom and personal information should citizens be expected to give up?
From the book Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani, we read about the Compstat crime fighting system. This was not so much a technology as it was a process. The Leavitt Diamond framework from previous classes highlighted the interaction between the technology (in this case a Geographic Information System (GIS) which is a map attached to a database), people skills to use data and technology, organizational structure of how Compstat was accepted, and department structure such as the weekly "Crime Strategy Meetings". It is again important to note that 3 of the 4 elements of the Leavitt Diamond relate to people and how they interact or change.
This week we turned to Chapter 3 - Content of American Government Websites in our class text Digital Government. What web content does the public value? How do we measure successful performance and what works on public websites?
Building on the Personal Strengths Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) that we took to learn how to "build productive working relationships" (http://www.personalstrengths.com), we learned about our own Motivational Value System or "color". We broke into groups to learn how each color viewed the world. It was interesting to note how Mother Theresa was viewed as tough by our Red MVS group but as compassionate by our Blue MVS group, a living example of how our filters determine how we view the world. The class ended with a practice of "borrowing" or communicating in a way that resonates with the other person in a way they need to hear it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)