US Business.gov launches small business community

The US business.gov website has launched an online community for small business owners, providing a place where they can discuss business-related issues across a range of topics.

While there is a slant towards topics related to business engagement with government - from registration processes through to how to successfully do business with government, the topics are far broader as US small businesses discuss the current business environment, their planning processes and procurement strategies.

I see this as a very valuable public good for a government to provide for small businesses. A government can provide a fair and effectively moderated environment, without commercial bias. This supports smaller businesses in expanding their network of contacts, building their knowledge and sharing experiences to reinforce the individual commitments of owners to success.

Besides the benefits in helping small business to grow, thereby employing more people and expanding the economic basis of a country, there are benefits to a government in having a close finger on the pulse of one of the largest contributors to national economic growth.

Rather than relying on business 'interest groups' and peak bodies, who may on occasion not fully represent the diverse interests of their members, a government can form a broader view of the outlook of businesses, gauging sentiment and identifying blockers to growth which could be addressed in legislation or policy.

It also provides access to a group able to critique proposed policies and initiatives, to help fine-tune them to deliver greater value - therefore greater return on investments from the public purse.

The benefits above to business (or communities) and to governments is not limited to this particular segment of the community.

Online communities form around interests - from child care to transport - and can be tapped into or facilitated by government to inform and support policy creation, service delivery, communications and consultations. Effectively they are 'aggregators' which can be used to both build discussion and to improve awareness of services.

They can also provide a 'blackberry' for politicians to keep touch with their constituents where otherwise they may become isolated from market concerns due to workload and minding.

Note that it is not easy to build a community from scratch and often government is best served in participating with existing communities rather than trying to create its own, however there are circumstances where government is best placed as the facilitator rather than simply as an involved party.

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Delivery of a website 'realignment'

Last year I posted about redesigning sites to put customers at the centre of the universe.

At the time we were reviewing my agency's primary site based on usability research and surveys. Through these our customers had indicated that the site was perceived as about us rather than about them (the tools and information they wanted to access quickly).

I'm pleased to say that, after working through a redesign process to align the site more closely with agency goals and styles and some tough decisions on specific content to feature, the new design is now live, largely reflecting the original wireframe concept.

I think we managed to meet the rules I set for my team,

• put customer needs first
  
• use less words
  
• minimise disruption
  
• lift the look
  

You can view the site at www.csa.gov.au.

Feedback is welcome.

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The power of raw government data

In the US President Obama's newly appointed (and first) Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra has committed to finding new ways to make government data open and accessible.

The Computer World article, First federal CIO wants to 'democratize' U.S. government data, discusses how,

In a conference call with reporters, Kundra said he plans to create a Web site called Data.gov that would "democratize" the federal government's vast information resources, making them accessible in open formats and in feeds for developers.

He also said he hopes to use emerging technologies like cloud computing to cut the need for expensive contractors who often end up "on the payroll indefinitely."

These are not idle words from a political appointee - Kundra, who I have mentioned previously, is well-known amongst egovernment practitioners around the world for his innovative work in pushing the boundaries of egovernment as the District of Columbia's CTO.

Politicians often have reservations about releasing raw data, despite being collected using public funds, due to perceived concerns that the data might be used to politically damage their reputations.

Similarly government departments often restrict the release of raw data due to concerns over how it may be reused or misused.

In Australia we even go to the extent of copyrighting government data. In the US most data, publications and other tools created by their Federal government are copyright free.

However with the US's moves the debate will soon shift to the disadvantages of not allowing free access to most raw government data.

As history has recorded, countries that remove barriers to the free flow of ideas and information develop faster, are economically more successful and their people enjoy higher standards of living.

Fostering innovation directly leads to national success.

So in a world where some countries make data freely available, how do other nations continue to compete?

To draw an analogy from the publishing world, Wikipedia disrupted the business model for Encyclopedia Britannica. By providing free 'crowd-sourced' information of greater depth and about the same accuracy as a highly expensive product, Britannica has been struggling to survive for years.

After trialing a number of different protective business models to sustain its existence, but protect its data, Encyclopedia Britannica has finally adopted one that might work - it has opened its articles up to 'crowd-sourcing', accepting suggestions which are then reviewed and acted on by its professional editors - a step towards openness. Visit the Britannica blog to learn how to suggest changes to the encyclopedia.

In other words, you cannot beat openness with secrecy - the only way to remain successful is to step towards openness yourself.

This really isn't news. Many have talked about the need for greater openness of government data before. I've even mentioned it myself once or twice.

To finish, I thought I'd flag this recent talk given by Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the world wide web) at TED on the need for open data. It has some points worth reflecting on.

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eGovernment interoperability is a cultural, not a technical issue

This post from Oliver Bell's OSRIN blog, eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks, time for a rethink?, served to crystalise thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for awhile.

Oliver contends that most of the technical standards for interoperability via the internet have been resolved, with commercial and citizen usage of the internet built on these standards over the last ten years or more.

He argues that the primary issues remaining are around the cultural willingness for different parts of government and different governments to work together and with the commercial sector to deliver interoperable services online.

While I am not an IT architect by training (in fact I come from a business stream), my formal education and twenty years of working experience have taught me a fair amount about how to connect systems together to achieve outcomes (not always IT systems).

In my experience there are no insurmountable engineering issues - you can always find a way to exchange data in a meaningful way using the right translators and formats.

However sometimes the engineering issues appear to be insurmountable because of entrenched interests and policies - human rather than technical issues.

These often arise, in both commercial and public sectors, out of procedure-driven cultures, political struggles, poor communication, lack of knowledge, pride or prejudice.

Solve these cultural and human issues, allocate some funds and the engineering issues around interoperability largely go away.

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The Google in Government Symposium - notes from the day

On Wednesday 18 March I attended the Google in Government Symposium, hosted by Hedloc.

I had planned to liveblog the day, as I liveblogged the recent Politics and Technology forum, however due to a lack of available wi-fi (the National Convention Centre still charges $40 for six hours access - which I was not personally willing to pay), I resorted to taking notes on PC, which I've provided below in an edited form.

I also twittered the event as a personal stream-of-consciousness record and thanks to the dozen or so people who asked questions of the presenters through me or discussed the event with me on Twitter.

The record of the Twitter conversation can be found here, or under the hashtag #cggov - note that the records are in reverse chronological order, so go to the last result to start at the start of the day.

The text below is an edited version of my personal notes from the day. It does not represent the views of any other individual or organisation. Any errors or omissions are mine.

Google in Government notes transcript

Google Enterprise Overview
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google

• Google is the world's largest search engine – 63% market share
• It has 21,000 staff 50% technical/engineering
• Its 2008 revenue was $21B and profit was $5B (that's $1M revenue per staff member)
• Has more than 90 offices globally
• Products available in 117 interface languages across 157 international domains

Google Enterprise

• 40% of world's information is behind firewalls
• 10 of 15 US cabinet agency websites use Google search as their search tool
• Washington DC is rolling Google search out to 86 agencies

Google Search Appliance

• Plugs into most data storage

Google Maps/Earth

• APIs for showing your data on Google's maps on your website
• Premier level provides Enterprise support, features, no ads
  

Google Apps

• Messaging, collaboration, security, compliance
• Totally run from the web, no IT install hassles (just firewall access)
• No delay in spam/virus filtering, run from cloud
• 10 million active users, including some large enterprises
• Security and ownership of information is an interesting area
• Claims that Google is one of the most secure environments on the planet – what happens to access to data if a foreign power cuts international data links or legislates that they have the right to view all data?
  

Destination Innovation
Presenter: Alan Noble - Engineering Director, Australia & New Zealand, Google

• Internet has transformed in last ten years from static print world imitation to dynamic, complex, application-rich environment
• Openness meant we could innovate unimpeded
  

His view of the two major trends for innovation

• Open Source
• Open Data

Google is a big supporter of open standards, Open Social Alliance and Open Handset Alliance

Google is very interested in having governments make public data available online on same basis to all organisations and citizens - and has made submission in this vein in the current consultation process.

Some examples of openness

• Make public transportation much more accessible to masses via Google transit (as Adelaide and Perth have done)
• Victoria fires google map, indicating extent and severity of fires, using a real-time fire feed. This reduced load (and cost) for Government servers by shifting it to Google's map servers.

Two technologies changing the face of the web

• APIs (Google maps originally launched with no API and was reverse engineered by clever programmers – Google hired them)
• Gadgets/widgets – over 100,000 websites now syndicating gadgets, billions of pageviews per week – no one organisation could do this.

Four trends on the web

• Open social – about knowledge sharing via collaboration applications, not simply for social engagement
• Geospatial
• Openly available digital information – greater information sharing, environmental benefits, shipping bits not products
• The cloud – software as a service meets utility software – scalable and elastic – will finally make the computer invisible

Destination Search
Presenter: Richard Suhr - Head of Google Enterprise, ANZ & South East Asia, Google

Search challenges for Gov Agencies

• Search is the starting point to the world's information.
• Too much information, hard to organise
• Google has unique position – spent ten years figuring out how to make search work for consumers
• Why is it so much harder to find information in enterprises, than in private life?
  

New US president has made search front-and-centre

Singaporean government came to Google and said they wanted a better search system across all of their government departments. Google took one search appliance – runs all search for all of government. Operates 4 million pages, 300 different search experiences (in agencies)

Quick stats from Google

• When navigation fails, 50% of users turn to search
• 71% use keyword searches to find products and services
• 90% of consumers said they used site search to access self-service content
• 85% of site searches don't return what the user sought
• 80% of visitors abandon a site if search functionality is poor
• 22% of site searches return no results
  
  
• 29% of CEOs/CIOs said it is difficult to find information to make company-wide decisions, 40% of senior managers reported the same
• Knowledge workers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information to do their jobs – and when they find it it is often wrong
  
  
• As much as 10% of a company's salary costs are wasted on unproductive searches
  

Customer (and staff) view

• Speed - If it's not fast, I won't use it
• Relevance - If I don't find it first time, I will go elsewhere

Google's trends...

• Focus on 'answers' not 'results'
• Building connectors (native support for over 100 connections)
• Multimedia search done right
• Compliance and archiving search
• Federated search (hook search together across different systems)

Technical Overview and Case Studies
ATO website – people can now find information on the website, users gravitating to search as the first path for navigation, rather than menus – huge increase in search.

Presenter: Aaren Tebbutt - Account Manager, HEDLOC

• Can integrate search across platforms, delivering a search across websites, file servers and databases.
• Supports unlimited collections across subsets of content
• Can suggest best bets and search narrowing terms
• Secure results are not presented to unauthenticated users

DEEWR

• Wanted faster and more relevant result for their document management repository
• Integrated security – presented results that were 'search only' – could not see a snippet or have a link
• Can use metadata to refine search – and display metadata in results

Extras

• OneBox module – can get results from applications and database systems, sent back as XML and integrated into search results. Used to integrate contacts information into a single set of search results. Also works for maps and other content.
• Search as you type function – suggest results as people type

Destination Geospatial
Presenter: Mickey Kataria - Google maps Product Manager, Google

Mission: 'Organise the world's geographical information and make it universally accessible and useful'

• Google maps is no. 1 most trafficked mapping website (including in Australia, US, UK, NZ)
• Acquired Maps from an Australian product in 2004, integrated with 'Keyhole' for Google Earth – another company acquired by Google.
• Google Maps APO – embed a fully customisable, interactive (or static) map into any webpage
  

Features

• Street View
• Driving Directions
• Geocoding
• Static Maps
• Javascript or Flash versions of interactive maps

Maps API - Premier version

• Contract/SLA
• Support
• Opt-in options for ads
• HTTPS support
• Advanced geocoding
• Larger static maps
• Usable internally (within a firewall)

Maplets

• Share your data back into google maps, for example,
  Australian Electorate map for Federal election
  UK Metropolitan police crime map – http://maps.met.police.uk

Mobile

• Maps on phone, static maps API, Javascript maps API
• Map Kit – native API for iPhone

User-generated content

• MyMaps – create your own map (plotting points, sharing, collaboratively editing)
• MapMaker – create maps where they don't exist
• Editing listings – add a business, move a location

Google Earth
Presenter: Brian Atwood - Google Earth Enterprise Product Manager

• More robust and full-featured than maps
• Government a major GID user, Google earth provides a single interface to aggregate all this data
• Two components,
  1. All data goes into Google Earth Fusion Software – processes and blends it together
  2. Processed data goes to Google Earth Server which allows viewing of data in a 3D or 2D format
• Visual clearing house for data, viewable by those who are given access
• Fast, easy-to-use and low cost
• Works with and is complementary to existing GIS systems
  

Examples:

• DC GIS – crime and other data
• New York Dept of Transport – travel, accident and crisis info
• Department of Homeland Security Earth – iCAV – crisis info, hurricanes, floods, etc
• US Forest Service – GPS tracking of planes in real-time
  

Case study - Virtual Alabama

• Needed an 'affordable, scalable, maintainable' system to visualise state asset imagery and infrastructure data

• Initiative started by Governor in 2005
  
  
• Video – Virtual Alabama 'common operating picture for state of Alabama', full case study is on Youtube (will add link later)

Goals

• Common operating picture and situational awareness (everyone sees same data)
• Right people have right data at right time
• Increase efficiencies in data usage, reduce costs
• Very easy to use
• Able to handle terabytes of data quickly

Implementation

• Began project in June 2006, Initial release in August 2006, all 67 counties by Nov 2007
• 550 Agencies now using it
• 2,100 total users + growing

Case study - Energy Australia
Presenter: Lawrence Bolton, Manager Community Liaison and Infrastructure

In his area

• 4,500 substations
• 5,000 distribution centres
• 11,000 distributors
• Need load monitoring to prevent substations getting overloaded
• Huge infrastructure program over next 5 years $8B to replace aging equipment
  

Wanted a way to 'see' or 'visualise' data

Google Earth is being rolled out in pilot as the visualisation platform for their GIS data, using layers and rich information.


Case Study - Australian Federal Police
Presenter: James Harris - Team Leader Geospatial services, Information Services Australian Federal Police

• Over 50 GIS Apps
• Most in specialist hands
• Silos of data and solutions
• Little or no succession plan
• It was a 'cottage industry'
  

Audited systems:

• Found 30 GE Pro Installations
• 300+ GE installations - potential licensing issues, Google gave them an amnesty to fix
• Dec 08, over 1,000,000 hits on maps.google.com.au per month – increasing 400% or 800% per year
  

Selected Google Earth via a tender process, and are implementing an internal version so no-one external is aware of when the Federal Police have interest in a location. Initially using 8 terabytes of storage – with multiple globes.

Initial role out in April to testers, full rollout in June.

Looking to roll out maps, live feeds, custom build tools, link into corporate databases in future.


Case Study - NT Land Information Systems
Presenter: Phillip Rudd - Director NT Land Information Systems

Geospatial useful for key questions

• Where did it happen?
• What else is around there?
• Is there a pattern over time/space?

Uses Google Earth alongside other tools (complex system - but it works well).

Department was gathering lots of map data, but could not effectively do much with it.

Originally deployed solution in production in 2006.

Emergency Management – 239 registered users
Land Information – open to all users (potentially 9,500 desktops) actual 1,619 logins

'We all think in pictures, not in words'

Uses:

• Counter terrorism and Emergency management
• Spatial Searching
• Automated mapping

Destination Apps and Security
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google

Why are users unhappy?

• better tools at home than at work

Stats on current IT management

• IT organisations spend 80% of their budget on Maintenance
• 68% of organisations experience 6+ data leaks every year
• 60% of the average agency's Intellectual Property is trapped in email
  

Forrester report Jan 2009 – should your email live in the cloud?

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