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August 11, 2003
Leavitt to Head EPA
The Whitehouse will announce soon that Governor Mike Leavitt has been picked to replace Christie Todd Whitman as the head of the EPA. Leavitt's moderate brand of environmentalism, known as Enlibra has made both sides of the issue nervous in Utah. I suspect it will do the same nationally. His approach is a practical, middle ground kind of environmentalism the eschews the extremism of both sides of the environmental battles that erupt with some frequency. Now he gets a chance to push this process at the national level. This is a lightening rod job that won't be a walk in the park. Still, I'm happy for him. I've said before that I believe that Mike Leavitt is one of the most capable public sector executives in the country. I'm anxious to see him take on a new set of challenges.
Coverage:
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Event-based eGovernment: One Stop Goes Live
While I was gone last week, Utah's One Stop Business Registration service went live. This was one of the projects started last summer as part of the Governor's IT plan. The idea is simple: rather than go to seven different state agencies, the IRS, and a city to start a business, create a single place where people can fill out one set of forms, pay one fee, and take care of it all at once. This kind of service integration is one of the great possibilities of eGovernment. There are dozens of these kind of "life event" services that could be developed. Some examples: "I'm moving to Utah," "My child is starting school," "I've been arrested," "I'm getting married," "I'm getting divorced," and so on. I'm glad to see one off the blocks.
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Novell and Open Source
While I was out last week, Novell announced it was buying Ximian. I'm always skeptical when big companies start buying companies based on an open source philosophy like Ximian. Mostly I worry about the innovative products that these companies are working on getting quashed. In this related article, Chris Stone, Vice Chair at Novell, talks about this deal and the SCO lawsuit. Chris says all the right things and I'm sure his heart's in the right place, but other forces will come into play and affect whatever strategy Novell has now. In another article, my friend Mall Asay, Novell's chief OSS strategist, writes about how OSS ideas leak into companies regardless of their persuasion. One interesting quote from Matt:
Open source has given Novell a way to build upon its past, without relinquishing it. NetWare remains, but becomes even better, offering customers more choice.
Of course, in the case of SCO, an open source company bought a closed source company (Caldera bought SCO) and the ideas seem to have leaked the other direction. What kills me about SCO is when I talk to the people who work there they have all these great ideas that I think OS companies ought to be talking about. I'm afraid, that their legal strategy is going to drown out any other conversation SCO will want to have.
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More on CIO Certification
I wrote earlier about some Federal CIO certification programs. Today I found out about the Federal CIO Council's CIO University program which includes a consoritum of several universities that are offering a wide variety of coursework in this area. These are all concentrated in the DC area.
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Temporary Flight Restrictions
From time to time, the government issues temporary flight restrictions, or TFRs, which pilots are responsible for knowing and following. In the west we get a lot of them in the summer months because of firefighting operations. When a tanker is coming in to drop fire retardant, they don't really want to worry about what other planes in the area might be doing. Other TFRs deal with sensitive national security areas, stadiums during games, and even the President's ranch. In the past when you wanted to know what current TFRs were in effect, you had to call the regional flight service center (run by the FAA) and get a briefing. Needless to say, that often doesn't get done.
Now, the BLM has a web site that lists TFRs by state and provides maps. This is a huge improvement and makes it much easier to visualize where not to fly. I wish it were designed a little differently to encourage use of the data by other programs and not just people. There are numerous web sites that pilots use to gather information and it would make things safer if all of the relevant data could be more closely integrated. Making data easy to use in multiple formats isn't much more costly than creating single-use data sources. Government's have a duty to make data as widely available as possible. I wish more eGovernment applications took that responsibility seriously.