Coding HTML By Hand in Government

Gwynne Kostin has written about how efforts like the Online Presidential Town Hall can reveal larger problems. In her article, she mentions that world-class government web sites, like the Centers for Disease Control, hand-code web pages.

Most large-scale web sites use some sort of content management system (CMS) to publish and organize their web sites. Even small-scale web sites (like this one) use a CMS for their work. This site runs on WordPress, for example. I don’t need to know code to update my site; I just have to type into a box on a web page. Continue reading “Coding HTML By Hand in Government”

Murder in Ocean Hall – Almost Done!

I’m in the final stages of my book, Murder in Ocean Hall. I’ve spent a lot of time at Caribou to get this far. Right now, I’m busy proofing the book. I’m done writing it, have edited a couple times already, and am going through the book once more. I’ve printed all 235 pages and and am closely reading the book to catch any mistakes.

Am I really done with the book? Hmm. I could probably spend the rest of my life tweaking it but eventually you have to send it off into the world. “Real artists ship,” to quote Steve Jobs.

Am I happy with the book? Yes. It’s got a beginning, middle and end, interesting characters, some good info on ocean exploration and urban life in DC, and a couple of plot twists. It might meander at times, a bit.

Is it perfect? No. Nothing is as perfect as it is in your head. By putting your idea to paper, you take it out of the ideal world and put it into the real one. This fear of sullying your own creation is a cause of writer’s block. It causes many people not to write anything because they know it won’t be perfect.

What’s next for my book?

Plan A – The Traditional Route.  Look for an agent, try to sell the book to a publisher, and then wait for it to appear in bookstores.

Plan B – The Nontraditional Route. Self-publish it using Lulu or Blurb. Sell it online using one of these print on demand services.

The first path is more prestigious and accepted but the print publishing world is in really bad shape these days. The second road is much easier – I could have a paperback version of the book next week- but it’s more of a DIY project.

Why Doesn't Government Use the Web to Organize Its Work?

I’ve been reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. It’s a brilliant book on the information revolution that we’re going through. He believes that this revolution is as momentous as the development of the printing press, which triggered the Reformation and religious wars. The rise of amateurs and the expansion of consumer choice has meant the end of seemingly unassailable institutions like newspapers.

Seeing how the world is rushing to adapt to the web, I had a practical question. Why doesn’t the government use the web to more efficiently accomplish its work? For example: Continue reading “Why Doesn't Government Use the Web to Organize Its Work?”

The Four Stages of Job Markets

A Guide to the Recovering Job Market

I’ve had the experience of looking for work during the worst economic periods of the last twenty years.  As a recent college graduate, I passed out resumes during the post-Cold War sag of the early 1990s.  I was an unemployed web editor following the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2002. 

And I’m looking for work now.  My timing has been impeccable; I’ve left jobs at precisely the worst times.

In Washington, we’re better off than the rest of the country but not immune to down times.  Slowly, however, things are getting better.  My experience has been that job market goes through four distinct stages. Continue reading “The Four Stages of Job Markets”

Clay Shirky on the End of Newspapers

Like it or not, newspapers are going away. Printing day-old news on dead trees and then shipping the results to subscribers by gas-burning trucks seems antiquated and inefficient, a process that has become obsolete in our lifetimes.

I love newspapers. One of things I like about living in DC is the heft of the Washington Post. Weight seems to connotate authority, a “real” newspaper for a real city, so different from the flimsy papers of smaller towns. However, that distinction is changing as the Post eliminates sections and physically shrinks while raising the newsstand price. Continue reading “Clay Shirky on the End of Newspapers”

Vivek Kundra at FOSE on Transforming Government

Vivek Kundra is the newly appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the federal government. He is the first federal CIO ever and previously served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District of Columbia. He spoke this morning at FOSE, the major government technology tradeshow in Washington, DC.

I wanted to write up my notes before they got overtaken by events. Kundra spoke briefly, a little more than a half-hour and, to me, at least, he seemed distracted. I’d never heard him speak before but he seemed to be rushing through his presentation, almost by rote. His main points were:

  1. The IT Revolution is on a scale comparable to the Industrial Revolution. It will expand opportunities for mankind.
  2. The federal government can lead in technology. After all, the government sent a man to the moon, created the Internet and unlocked the human genome. Government needs to embrace a different self-image. It can be innovative and creative.
  3. If you want to know where he wants to take government, check out recovery.gov It is a model for the type of transparency and citizen participation that he would like to see emulated across government. Another model is the Human Genome Project, how they made data available to the public. He wants to do the same on data.gov and wants to bring these principles of openness down to the agency level.
  4. Government will embrace consumer technology. Why should government pay more for big enterprise-level solutions when off the shelf products are cheaper and more flexible? He also wants .gov to be more involved in cloud computing.
  5. The processes of government must be rethought. It’s silly to replicate some 19th Century procedure using 21st Century technology. He’s not interested in process, he’s concerned about outcomes – as are citizens. 
  6. Government employees and citizens must be freed from bureaucracy. He’s met countless smart feds interested in Web 2.0 who are stymied by outdated regulations. This must change. Also, data should be made open to the public. We must tap into their ingenuity.

Kundra took a couple questions from the audience (about IT security; he thinks it can coexist with innovation) before departing.

He might have been distracted by the FBI raid on the DC CTO’s office. This is really unfortunate.  Those in government who oppose transparency, consumer tech and citizen involvement will all use this as reason to delay and fight his efforts. They’ll say, “This is why we shouldn’t loosen regulations. Experimentation inevitably leads to malfeasance.”

I think malfeasance exists no matter what system is in place; people are way more creative than government rules. Additionally, by making government more transparent, more open to public review, we lessen the prospect of such fraud. If every government employee knew that they were doing their work in public, and subject to public accountability, I think there would be less fraud, waste and abuse.

Chris Anderson on "Delivering on the Promise of Gov 2.0"

Chris Anderson, of Wired magazine and “The Long Tail” fame, was the keynote speaker at FOSE this morning. He spoke on “For the People and By the People: Delivering on the Promise of Gov 2.0”.

Anderson started off with an interesting example – the infamous Twitter fail whale. Countless users have bemoaned the unreliability of Twitter, though in fact, the service has been down only occasionally and it’s gotten dramatically better of late. He contrasted this with a couple of stories about government sites. In the first, he had to pay taxes in Delaware for his corporation but their web site was down for the entire weekend before his taxes were due. In another example, he wanted to pay a traffic ticket he received in Truckee, CA, but the town did not take credit cards online, something a teenager could’ve set up. These are much more critical tasks than updating your Twitter feed.

Four Web Rules of the Google Generation

In Anderson’s view, the Google Generation (those who grew up with the Internet) expects government sites to work as well as commercial sites. But I think any regular user of the web thinks this way, no matter the age. He listed four rules of the Google Generation. This is what they expect:

  1. Everything should work all the time. 
  2. If you can’t find it on Google, it doesn’t exist. 
  3. Meet us where we live (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter).
  4. We want to interact with your content.

Unfortunately, as Anderson listed in his Delaware example, not everything works all the time on .gov sites. Also, while optimizing your content for Google is a great idea, not all .gov sites do this and some government content is hidden in databases which Google has a hard time searching. There are just a few examples of government in Facebook or Flickr though this is a common practice in the .com and .org worlds. And the idea of people discussing, rating, ranking and remixing government content on a .gov site is something I’ve never seen before (but would love to). Continue reading “Chris Anderson on "Delivering on the Promise of Gov 2.0"”

Friday's Links

Here’s what’s interested me this week:

Government 2.0: The Midlife Crisis
Hard truths about the difficulties of implementing Web 2.0 in government. 

It’s Time for Governance
Even more hard truths, this time about professionalizing web site management in government. 

Wil Wheaton Interview on Lulu
Interesting article on why a blogger went the self-publishing route. 

Apple Store Coming to DC
Finally! 

DCist Exposed
One more day to see this photo show at Flashpoint.

More Thoughts on Transparency Camp 09

Some more random thoughts about Transparency Camp 09. Here are my big take-aways from the conference.

Excitement: There’s a tremendous amount of enthusiasm among enlightened advocates of government transparency, fueled by the election of Obama and the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 tools like blogging. There’s a real can-do spirit, which is in marked contrast to continuing bad news about the economy. 

The Importance of Free Beer: How do you get people to hang out after the formal sessions of a conference, for a further exchange of ideas? You offer them free beer, of course (courtesy of Peter Corbett). I saw this at SXSW too. The convivial sharing of booze leads people to make connections they never would’ve made.

Twitter is Useful: This micro-blogging service was a great utility during the conference. Attendees tagged their tweets with #tcamp09, which enabled anyone (even people not at the conference) to see what attendees were saying about the sessions.

Macs are Everywhere: I was pleased to see so many Macs at the conference. The facility at GW had outlets at every table and wifi was available as well, which led to a proliferation of laptops, the majority of which were Macs.

Education is Needed: Advocates of open and accessible government need to learn more about the near infinite complexities of government policies and procedures. A host of rules limit what government can do online. Also, there’s not “one government” as Jeff Levy from EPA repeated over and over. Different government agencies have different IT policies and requirements. Pity the poor developer who wants to create a web application for all of government. 

As someone with a background in government and nonprofit web sites, I got a tremendous amount out of this conference. Attending events like this, you come away with renewed excitement about the possibilities of the web and a host of new ideas to explore.