Posts
According to the NextGov article Air Force opens bidding for virtual air base, the US Air Force is preparing to launch a virtual air base where airmen will attend courses in a 3D virtual world.
Simulators have long been used in training pilots and astronauts, due to the fatal consequences of mistakes by novices. This air base takes it a step further, with the Air Force looking to support up to 75 simultaneous users in a geospatially accurate real-time training environment.
As described in the NextGov article,The service initially hopes to create two furnished virtual classrooms that can stream audio and video, and to allow users to design their own avatars in uniform with a variety of physical attributes and appropriate rank. The synthetic base also must include buildings, vegetation, signage, roads, security, a flight line with planes and the ability to exchange documents, photographs and video. Once it buys the software and training, the Air Force expects delivery within two weeks.
The system, termed MyBase, is seen as a key component in the Air Force's future training programs. Here's a video from them explaining more...
This type of learning environment is adaptable to many different functions - including virtual seminars and roadshows, collaborative meetings, presentations, media events, group-based activities and real-time or time-delayed course training. Several universities in the US have already made courses available via 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life.
In Australia we've seen some exploration of these technologies by the Victorian state government in its Melbourne Laneways project for public consumption.
My view is that some of the more immediate benefits for the public sector are in internal use of such environments by geographically diverse agencies to create learning and collaborative environments.
In fact the ATO has demonstrated such an environment already in its ATO Showcase as one of the innovations they are exploring for future roll-out.
For public use of these environments today by government the equity issue needs to be well considered.
Personally I've always felt that gradual degradation is an appropriate approach, providing a virtual 3D environment for broadband users, degrading to voice and powerpoint for 'thin' broadband and dial-up users, down to distributed multimedia for computer users without internet connections and to hardcopy or physical meetings for those without computers.
The other consideration is the proportion of the audience falling into each of these groups, and if this has not been established I'd be very cautious about providing more advanced options.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
US Air Force planning to create its first virtual air base | Tweet |
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
When too much public information is public | Tweet |
Related to my previous post, AZcentral reports that, Death notices removed from county Web site.
Privacy concerns and identity-theft fears prompted Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell to halt public viewing of death certificates on the agency's Web site.
"There is so much personal information on them: a mother's maiden name, what they died from," Purcell said, adding that her office has been fielding complaints for years about the office's practice of posting death-certificate images. The office quietly took them down last month.
These are legitimate concerns - there are situations when exposing publicly collected and held information in a more easy to access and harder to control manner is not to the public's benefit.
The question government continues to grapple with is where to draw this line.
How public is public information? | Tweet |
Over in California a controversy over the level of public access to public information flared up where the The Bee newspaper in Sacremento published a searchable online database of public sector officials and their salaries.
The newspaper simply pulled publicly available information together into a single source - no information was assumed or obtained illegally.
This has led to storm of protest which the newspaper responded to in a From the Editor Special: Response to questions about state employee pay database.
Over time we're also likely to see more Australian public information also being matched in this way - the tools to do so are readily available today.
For instance, it would require minimal effort for a media outlet or individual to mash together and republish information from GOLD (Government On-Line Directory) with APS salary ranges drawn from agency careers pages - providing a fairly accurate picture of the salaries of senior public sector officials in Australia.
Pulling together names of public servants listed in Hansard reports, media releases, websites and from published event attendence lists or meeting minutes, could also be combined with White Pages details, salary figures and office locations to identify and locate many public workers. Add a Google search and you can discover sporting affiliations, past roles, comments made online and further information about individuals - particularly those with distinctive or unique names (such as myself).
Each of the pieces of information by itself doesn't breach privacy - so can matching them together create a breach?
If so, how do you prevent information matching - shut down the internet and close the public libraries?
I'll leave the last word to an article from Government Technology, Web 2.0 Challenges Notions of Public and Private Information;
...everything we know about records management is wrong. Sure, that's hyperbole, but Barton [Founder of Glassdoor, now publishing salary information on the web] isn't exaggerating when he claims, "People's appetite for this information ... is effectively infinite." Once again, the Internet will show us what happens when public records are actually public.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The growth of e-health in Australia | Tweet |
Futuregov has an excellent article, An Australia quest for e-health discussing progress in the Australian e-health scene.
It is good to see that there is a clear understanding of the need for a national approach - tying states into one consistent system, rather than individually building separate systems in each state at additional cost.
In the geospatial area, WA and QLD have launched state-centric systems, with other states considering their own systems. This has taken place while AGIMO plans a national geospatial system within the AGOSP program. They share the same standards, however I'm not clear on whether they have shared technologies and costs.
Tools for user experience design - card sorting | Tweet |
In the last few years I've witnessed the rise and rise of design and particularly usability/user experience design as a professional area.
In the mid-90s, when I was conducting wireframe-based user testing, observing user behaviour in applications and asking users which functionality was most important to them before building websites, there was low awareness in Australia of the value of usability and correspondingly few people working specifically in the area.
Today, alongside the increase in the number of usability consultants we've seen the arrival of online tools that assist web teams in conducting their own testing.
I'm going to do a series of posts on different topics in the area over the next few weeks.
For now, here's information on card sorting that your web team might find useful.
Card sorting
Card sorting
What is it
Card sorting is an approach that assists web professionals and information architects understand how their audiences group concepts, topics or items - people's 'mental model' of information.
This helps them build a structures that assist their audiences in finding what they are looking for when navigating information, websites and applications.
It also identifies complex areas needing more work. This includes where there are significant differences in understanding terms or in the relationship between items.
It is one of the easiest and cheapest design processes to use, can provide or validate key insights early in projects (before design work takes place) and can be quite fun for participants.
How is it used
Traditionally card sorts are conducted using cards (or sticky notes) in a physical space.
Tools and resources
Card sorting is well documented online.
- The card sorting topic at the Society for Technical Communication's website is one of the best central resources for card sorting information
- Card sorting: a definitive guide is also a fantastic resource from Donna Maurer and Todd Warfel.
- The Eurostar Card sorting Case Study (also by Donna Maurer) is a fantastic example of a card sorting process
There are now ways to conduct card sorting online, through tools such as:
- Websort - www.websort.net
- Optimalsort - www.optimalsort.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
