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Govenments Seek to Evolve Emergency Broadcast Systems

Friday, December 04, 2009
Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology
With recent fears of a flu epidemic and the lingering danger of terrorist attacks, many cities have been taking a serious look at their emergency broadcast capabilities. In many cases, they’re finding that these systems are woefully inadequate for the modern age. Systems that rely on land line phone calls or TV broadcasts have been hampered by changing customer tastes. Land line systems, for instance, are not nearly as effective because many people are dropping their land lines in favor of cell phones. And while a sizeable portion of the nation still watches TV, many have shifted to computers and video game consoles as a primary form of entertainment. Add these two up and you have the potential for a lot of missed people when a emergency notification goes out. After an E coli. scare over Thanksgiving weekend, Portland, Ore. is looking at a new emergency broadcast system that will use mobile phones, Twitter, Facebook, and other technologies to effectively and quickly get the message out. Meanwhile, New York is looking into using video game consoles like the Xbox to stream emergency broadcasts. Its really great to see government embracing emerging technologies in order to update operations, many of which have remain unchanged for 50 years.

Government Data Breaches Skyrocket in 2009

Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Dave Mims, President
GovTech is reporting that electronic theft of government records has skyrocketed this year. In 2008, only(!) 3 million records were compromised but 2009 saw more than 79 million records in the hands of the bad guys. That’s a huge jump and it makes me wonder why. I’ll leave the statistics to the number crunchers but I’ve got to think that many of these records are do to poor data management policies for remote workers. In fact, the article points out that a sizeable portion of the records were lost because of stolen laptops, hard drives and other external storage devices. This highlights the need for a policy regarding the mobile workforce, one that can be easily enforced. As more offices move to a more remote set up, this problem is only going to increase. If you haven’t already grab your IT team or your favorite IT vendor and begin developing remote worker policies to protect sensitive information. No one wants to have to explain a huge data theft on their watch…

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The team at Sophicity wishes everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday, filled with food, drink and merriment all around!! (We sure could use a few days off as we've been real busy helping cities and municipal league prepare for 2010!)

Virginia's Continuing IT Woes

Monday, November 23, 2009
Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology
The State of Virginia has had a rough year. After having medical records held for ransom, and numerous other IT woes, comes its ongoing tense relationship with Northrup Grumman over the State's outsourced IT contract. This time, it appears that many critical network services were left without backup connections, meaning that if the internet connection went down, so did all the services attached to it. In this case, the DMV system went down repeatedly causing havoc in DMV offices across the state. When folks dug into the contract, it appeared that the reason the backups were not in place is because it was not specified in the contract and so NG didn't build it out. While folks continue to argue over what is or is not included in the contract, Va.'s system continue to operate at risk. This is further proof that when implementing any It project, whether it be in or out sourced, planning is absolutely essential to make sure all of the bases are covered.

Connencticut Cities Embrace Web-Based Permitting

Thursday, November 19, 2009
Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology
Connecticut is demonstrating some creative thinking with a new web-based permitting system that can be shared by the state’s municipalities. Essentially, this will allow the cities to handle the issuance of building permits and similar documents by providing citizens an easy way to request them online. The technology is nothing new, but what’s interesting here is that they are forming a sort of IT co-op so that smaller municipalities can afford a system that would normally be well out of their reach. This is the kind of thinking that will help cities make those much needed budget cuts.

NSA's Tips on Network Security

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Dave Mims, President
When the NSA talks about network security for governments, it’s probably a pretty good idea to listen. In a recent interview with GCN, the NSA’s information assurance director provided three best practices to thwarting attacks on your network. They are:
  • Implementing best security practices
  • Proper network configurations
  • Strong network monitoring
What are “best security practices” and "proper network configurations"? He doens't really get into that, but I happen to know a few people that can help you with that… ;)

GMA Launches 2010 Gubernatorial Media Site

Friday, November 13, 2009
Tim Verras, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience
The Georgia Municipal Association today launched its 2010 Connection website. It’s a pretty cool idea, as it links local Georgia cities with the candidates for the 2010 Gubernatorial Election via social media. There’s videos, profiles, Twitter feeds and a ton of other information. The best part: it’s hosted on top of our Tribune Content Management system (I know, I know, a shameless plug. But I am the marketing guy…) . If you’re a local city in Georgia, check it out and get in touch with the candidates!

Reducing the Municipal Carbon Footprint

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology
Scientific American is reporting on how cities are making efforts to reduce their carbon footprints through innovative plans like carbon taxes, municipal solar power, and other emerging green technologies. Once thing the article skips is that cities can reduce their carbon emissions by reducing their power consumption in the IT department. This is a topic we’ve written about before and its fitting here because before a city embarks on an expensive solar project, reduced carbon emissions could start at home for free by using smart energy management policies for their network. They could also start consolidating their network to drastically reduce energy needs (and thus carbon). This method costs a bit of money, but it’s still cheaper than most green technologies and the savings will quickly show on-going ROI.

Green Lighting Infrastructure Maintenance

Monday, November 09, 2009
Dave Mims, President
Washington Post discussed the DC traffic outages this week, highlighting the need for municipalities to have regular equipment checks and on-the-books lifecycle management. Traffic signals all over the DC area were knocked out after a 37-year old computer literally melted down. The lost business revenue from the crippling gridlock traffic is estimated to be in the millions, probably far more than it would have cost the city to replace the system. This is a good example of why regular maintenance and tracking the operational life of critical infrastructure is important. Unlike your dishwasher at home, you don’t want to just wait until brakes to get a new one.

Creating a Municipal Risk Management Plan

Friday, November 06, 2009
Dave Mims, President
GovTech continues its run of excellent articles with a piece on IT risk management for government agencies. While the article is focused more on the state and federal level, the five tips that are detailed still hold very true for cities. Risk management is arguably the most intensive and difficult problem facing any IT manager because it requires an understanding that goes far beyond technology, delving into how the business of running a city is affected by a loss of services. This is more than simply having a good data backup plan in place. A true risk management plan needs to address how critical city services will function in the wake of a disaster, an outage, or even a flu outbreak. As cities become more reliant on technology to run the operations, these sorts of risk plans become absolutely essential to mitigating risks. Check out the article for some great tips on starting a plan of your own.
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