Government IT
March 31, 2006
Tom Adelstein and Government IT
This brings back some very unpleasant memories:
I would characterize the people involved in these type of organizations as nasty bureaucrats. I have never met one of them who cared about the people they serve. The ones I have met only care about their careers. They would cut the heart out of the person in the next office in a minute.From LXer: Why I Stopped Promoting Linux in Government
Referenced Fri Mar 31 2006 19:56:26 GMT-0700 (MST)
Read the whole thing, especially the comments. He talks about the only way to survive in government IT being to lower your expectations. Wow.
Update: As I’ve reflected on Tom’s powerful article over the past day, I have had a few thoughts. First, I’m not as pessimistic as Tom seems to be about government infotech. I do agree with him that there are people who will do anything to keep or advance their career at the expense of anyone or anything—this attitude is very prevalent. They can be very nasty about it and management seems to be powerless to rein them in. There is also another, larger group that simply give up and try to survive. There are, however, a few people who seem to be able to accomplish great things. I have great admiration for them. I frankly don’t know how they put up with the crap, but they do and they know the secrets of making progress in government infotech.
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October 17, 2005
Means, Motive, and Opportunity
I just finished a post at Between the Lines on the importance of the Massachusetts vs. Microsoft battle over whether Office is included in the Massachusetts enterprise architecture. Bottom line: government CIOs have had the means and motive to make such a move. Massachusetts’ actions have given them the opportunity to make the same move.
On the same subject, David Berlind’s comprehensive report on the process Massachusetts followed in the ETRM process should be a must read for any government CIO or IT manager.
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September 15, 2005
First Responder Interoperability
I wrote an article about some lessons from Utah’s experience building an interoperable 800MHz voice network for public safety before the Olympics at ZDNet’s Government IT blog:
One of the problems that Katrina has put into bold relief is the cascading effect of communication snafus on quickly responding to disasters. First responder communications were hampered by systems that were down and systems that couldn’t talk to each other. I heard one story of a radio repairman sent into fix some of the police radios who wasn’t let through the roadblock because the State troopers couldn’t get on the radio to verify his identity.
Congress is now calling for upgrading first responder communications. This isn’t a new problem. When I was Utah CIO we dealt with these issues all the time. Because of the Salt Lake Olympics, Utah was blessed with Federal money to upgrade some of its public safety radio systems. The new system ran on the 800MHz, one of the bands the FCC has set aside for new public safety networks. Still there were problems beyond the financial ones…From First reponder interoperability | ZDNet Government Blog | ZDNet.com
Referenced Thu Sep 15 2005 15:00:46 GMT-0600 (MDT)
In the end, this problem comes down to governance and governance requires the willpower to force people to cooperate. The Olympics was the event that pushed Utah over the hump. I imagine Lousiana and Mississippi will find it easier to do now. Who knows what it will take in other places.
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July 13, 2005
Giving Out Cows
Scott Blackmer, speaking at Catalyst, just referred to something he saw on the Net about how it’s amazing that we can track the calves of a cow born in Canada right to their pens in Washington state, but we can’t track 11 million illegal aliens. The suggestion is that we give each illegal alien a cow.
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Big Government IT Projects
This sort of thing is very scary: Oregon Awards $73 Million Medicaid IT Contract