« April 16, 2004 | Main | April 20, 2004 »
April 19, 2004
UtahPolitics.org in the News
The Deseret News had a piece on UtahPolitics.org today. UtahPolitics.org is a multi-author blog I started last November to offer a place for people to comment on Utah politics. The IRV strawpoll and the virtual debate among gubernatorial (I love that word) candidates have attracted quite a bit of interest.
08:52 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Trading Information and Good Web Site Design
Dave Pawloski and I were chatting about agent technology and he asked if I'd ever heard of a company called Agentis. I was interested enough to go to their Web site, but I still don't know very much about what they do. Here's why:
- First, their Web site is almost useless to anyone trying to figure out what they do and how their technology is different. As a free lance writer, I spend a lot of time on company Web sites and in this Agentis is in good company. Like most corporate Web sites, its full of marketing speak and takes 3 clicks to get to anything that looks remotely like an explanation.
- The more frustrating part, however was that anytime I got close to anything that looked like real information, they wanted me to put in my email address to continue. These guys are real bozos. They may know a lot about software agents, but they're Web savvy is abysmal.
I believe strongly that customers make rational decisions about parting with their private information and that they'll gladly give up personal data in exchange for something that they value or want. Web sites are all about these kinds of information transactions and good ones are designed with that in mind. In fact, I like to think of the privacy policy as a term sheet describing the terms of the information transactions occurring on the site.
The problem with the Agentis site is that they're asking me for something (my email address) in order to get something that I feel should be free. I'm sure Agentis salespeople would find the idea of asking a customer to pay for product information ludicrous, but that's just what they're doing when they ask for my email address so that I can read what are essentially sales and marketing materials.
A smart company gives out the sales and marketing materials freely. Asking for an email address goes against this. The problem is that Agentis wants to get my email address so they can follow up. That's OK, but they've got to offer me something of value in order to get that. One example: I'll give them my email address when I'm downloading a demo version of the software (although others might not). At that point I'm a more qualified customer anyway, which serves their purposes better. Experiences like this one just tell me we've still got a long way to go before companies get smart about using the Web to connect with customers.
09:00 AM | Recommend This | Print This
eGovernment from the Private Sector
I've written before about how sometimes eGovernment happens because of someone in the private sector decides that they'll do what they government doesn't seem to be able to accomplish. One example I noted was the Deseret News putting up an eGovernment site on gasoline pump inspections using data from Utah's Dept of Agriculture. Dan Gillmor, in his Sunday column digs into what is perhaps the most spectacular example of this phenomenon: Earth911.org:
Every Monday morning, volunteers from the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, collect water samples from San Mateo County's beaches and send them to a laboratory for testing. By Wednesday, Carolann Towe, a part-time county employee and foundation volunteer, has the results.
Towe then logs into a Web site called Earth 911 (www.earth911.com), where she updates the county's beach information, noting when bacteria counts have risen above or fallen below levels considered risky to swimmers and surfers. It takes her five or 10 minutes a week, she says.
What's the result of this effort? County residents or visitors can check the site and, using an interactive map and other tools, quickly check the status of the beaches.
Across the United States, government workers and volunteers are feeding all kinds of environment-related information into Earth 911, an environmental clearinghouse of unparalleled scope and value, serving both governments and communities.From Mercury News: Bay Area news, technology, jobs, cars & real estate
Referenced Mon Apr 19 2004 08:13:55 GMT-0600
I first met Chris Warner, the driving force behind Earth911 when I was CIO of Utah. Chris has an extraordinary vision for how ordinary citizens can play a role in the governance of our cities, counties, states, and country. His vision empowers citizens to create the kind of data that only government could previously aggregate. Moreover, he empowers government workers by giving them the IT tools they need to inform the public. A surprising number of government workers provide data to Chris' projects because they care about their jobs and Chris' systems are the best way for them to accomplish their goals.
One of the reasons I believe strongly in eGovernment is because of the ability it has to create transparency in government where that hasn't previously been possible. I have faith that when the public has the right data, the right things will happen. We often worry about what the government keeps secret, but there's a lot more data that isn't secret, but is effectively unknowable. eGovernment changes that. Chris Warner and Earth911 are a great example of how we don't have to wait for the government to give us eGovernment.