Government

The United States federal government finally appoints the country's first Chief Information Officer.  For a bureaucracy that is having a difficult time handling a President that wants a computer in the Oval Office and a Blackberry in his hand, I'd say the new CIO has his work cut out for him.

The U.S. government's first CIO, Vivek Kundra, introduced himself today as someone who will act aggressively to change the federal government's use of IT by adopting consumer technology and ensuring that government data is open and accessible.

This is a really cool story on how local governments can improve their presence on the Internet and save money using open source software.  The City of Albert Lea needed to improve their website but the small Minnesota city was facing project costs of $10,000 to $30,000.  In walks Wordpress being utilized as a full content management system.  As reported by the Albert Lea Tribune:

Some cities pay a consultant $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 for a Web-based content-management site that looks professional and is consistent through and through. Fairbault is one instance.

Albert Lea, however, paid $720 to local resident Jeshua Erickson last December, she said. Kauffmann was in charge of the site’s revision, and last October she put together a committee of city
officials to advise her.

She said the committee decided to shoot for a site using a content management system — or CMS — but it was outside of her Internet skills. The city began seeking estimates from Web design companies. When the estimates returned, they realized the city couldn’t afford it.

“We just didn’t feel we could justify spending $20,000-plus on a Web site,” Kauffmann said. “I happened to run into Jeshua Erickson on the Pelican Breeze one day, and we talked about Web sites and how he was developing them using WordPress.”

I'll have to say that even though Wordpress is open source and "free", this city got a steal with getting a website for under $1000.  While Albert Lea is a small city, developing government sites can become big projects with lots of complications.  Either the city was kind to the developer and his hours or he felt some civil duty to give the city's taxpayers a good deal.  An example of this developer doing such a good job, Albert Lea's website is currently running Wordpress 2.7 which is the latest available version of Wordpress.  Very well done Mr. Erickson.

I'm always interested in stories of how content management systems are being used in government.  Government Technology has a lengthy article on how government portals are evolving into Web 2.0 sites.  They put special focus on sites hosted by state governments.

Robert Accettura, a Mozzila contributer and web developer, has placed a follow-up to his original "Secrets in Websites" post, appropriately titled, Secrets In Websites II. When reading this type of posts on the Web it truly puts people like you and me into geek paradise.

This post is a follow up to the first Secrets In Websites. For those who don’t remember the first time, I point out odd, interesting, funny things in other websites code. Yes it takes some time to put a post like this together, that’s why it’s just about a year since the last time. Enough with the intro, read on for the code.

One thing you may miss in this post though is Page 2, be sure not to skip it. On the second page he has a section called Presidential Campaign Analysis. As I commented on Accettura's blog, I began a number of times doing a similar analysis focusing on the U.S. presidential campaigns, but I never quite got around to completing the task. I'm so glad that someone has done this. In the post, where applicable, Accettura also tries to identify what type of CMS the presidential candidates are using. So far he's identified Drupal, Wordpress, Archos, and Typepad.

Hopefully Accettura is open to corrections and perhaps we can help him identify better which CMS are being used? I already see one commenter identifying what may have been Drupal is actually a Wordpress site ("Chris Dodd’s site uses Drupal while Bill Richardson’s does not"). Either way, isn't this great stuff from Accettura?

I just can't believe the year Drupal is having.  There has been an explosion of Drupal sites almost everywhere you turn.  Drupal is very popular with the masses in 2007.  So popular in fact, that I wonder as with all things popular if we'll be seeing 2008 as the backlash year against Drupal as it has quickly evolves as a litmus test for open source CMS (one of my predictions for 2008).

The latest Drupal-based site to flash on the screen of my browser is the portal (currently in beta) for the European Commission sponsored Science, Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF ) project.  The site aims to be a community-driven platform for the production and distribution of educational materials. Its sustainability depends on the building of a strong community of users and participants of the platform.  The site may actually be live by the time you read this post.

The site, eWeek, posted a little slide show in honor of Presidents Day. The slide show lists "10 U.S. presidents who held patents, thought globally and believed in the power of the press—and macaroni". To the best of my knowledge, none of the presidents have actually managed their own Web site. What a shame for a US President to not experience the true joys of being a geek.

This fork of Joomla to improve accessibility interested me

Accessible (a8e) Joomla! is a Joomla! fork that conforms to accessibility guidelines and web standards. A8e Joomla! will follow regular Joomla! releases. The project should implode when regular Joomla! finally conforms to the standards.

Accessibility of Internet sites is very huge within the federal government and addressed by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, 1998.

A few weeks ago, Federal Computer Week, had an article about the role Web 2.0 may have in the federal government. Is there a place for wikis and other tool now included in most modern content management systems in the federal government?

The article hints that Web 2.0 may have place more behind the scenes then in public view.

Computerworld and the National Policy Research Council (NPRC) recently completed a study ranking the Websites of state, county, and local governments on usability and other criteria. In the study, Michigan's site earned top marks.

According to the article, the "the e-government report card is based on an extensive examination of 11,227 official government Web sites." Sites were judged on 25 criteria, including "whether people could use them to pay taxes, bid for contracts, find government jobs and complain to local officials about concerns such as potholes." Also included in the article was a report card summarizing other top e-government performers among city, state, and local sites.

What separated the winners from the losers?

Most of us in IT are aware of the recent data thefts of personal information within the United States government. Over the past couple weeks the VA admitted that files containing personal data for more than 50,000 active duty and more than 26 million veterans was stolen. In related news it was also reported that the "Energy Department disclosed to Congress on Friday that it suffered a security breach from a hacker in September that compromised 1,500 personnel records".

With the above stories fresh in our minds, we have chosen an opinion piece by Frank Hayes as this week's IT Quote of the Week: