Government Technology - August 2008 - (Page 36)

unless we know when we should go back to that and use it, it’s just so much paper sitting in a warehouse. GT: The current presidential race seems to be capturing more interest from young voters. Are you using technology to engage those voters? Bowen: The candidates this year are doing a greater job of raising the interest in voting than any secretary of state could do. I do have a Facebook page and have worked to look for new means of engaging younger voters. I have an advisory group — we call them the “edgy group.” They’re looking at what the future will be, not just of voting, but of engagement and how young people will get information about candidates and how they will get active. Facebook is one way that they do that with the groups and events. I think the generation that spends all of its time texting each other will likely take on the challenge of finding a more convenient way to vote. It will be a challenge because you The Proﬁle in Courage have the problem of verifying Award is a who’s actually voting. In most sterling silver of the technology that we have ship lantern right now that allows someone that symbolizes to vote remotely, they’re given humanity and an access code, which could pays homage to easily be sold. So that’s not a John F. Kennedy’s technological problem, but it naval career. is an issue. The other problem is suitability because the vote, unlike any other transaction on a normal basis, has to be private. So the minute we sign a voter in, from there on we can’t know anything about what it is they have done. That’s what makes auditing from a system perspective so challenging. GT: Ten years ago you said it was unlikely that people would be voting over the Internet. A lot has changed since then, but you still can’t foresee the day people will vote on cell phones or online? AUG_08 Maintaining a Facebook page is one way California Secretary of State Debra Bowen stays connected with young voters. Among other things, the site lists Bowen’s favorite movies, books and music — revealing that Bowen “couldn’t live without Motown and the Philly sound.” Bowen: I can’t foresee it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Right now the challenges of identifying who is actually voting and making sure that there hasn’t been a compromise in the system is too great. I think most people think, “I’d love to be able to vote from my home computer.” But then they think about all the spam they get, and then they think about their antivirus software and how hard they have to work to keep something nasty from coming in. So I think we’re just not there at this point. GT: Internet voting is happening in some countries. How do they handle it? Bowen: The number is fairly small. I do know that in Switzerland, which has Internet voting, the vote is not private. So if you aren’t voting privately, you eliminate a lot of concerns because you personally can check if your vote is recorded correctly, but so can your neighbor, boss, spouse or grandma. We in this country have valued our ability to walk into the voting booth and not have anyone know how we voted. GT: Government IT professionals complain that many legislators don’t understand technology issues. As a former state lawmaker, what’s your opinion? Bowen: I’m probably not the right person to ask that question because I’ve spent so much time on the inside of the technology questions. The difficulty is that you really need a fair amount of technical background to understand project architecture and the basic kinds of things CIOs deal with. It’s not a sexy subject-matter area for a legislator. Your constituents don’t say, “I’m so glad you spent all of those hours making sure the Department of Corrections health-care automation system is on track.” GT: What’s the biggest technology issue you’re dealing with now? Bowen: In the Secretary of State’s Office, we have a lot of basics to do still. Most of the business filing system is still done on paper. I was fairly horrified after I took office to learn that my public access counter consisted of six microfilm readers — there’s almost nothing I can provide to people remotely. That will change over the next few years. We just went through a major challenge with the Uniform Commercial Code [UCC] filing system where we learned again, to our dismay, we had Social Security numbers on about a third of the UCC filings. We had to pull the Web site down and provide access manually for a while. We just completed the redaction; I don’t believe we have any Social Security numbers [online]. We probably still have one or two someplace creative, but I think going forward people’s expectations about privacy and what’s on public documents are also changing. 36 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - August 2008

Government Technology - August 2008 Contents Point of View The Last Mile Big Picture On the Scene Four Questions for... Net Gains A Government Technology® Industry Profile: CA CA Contents IT Network Management: State and Local Governments Face New Challenges MyFloridaNet Arkansas Department of Information Systems Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Government Tightens Its Belt Rocking the Vote High-Speed Portal Project On Track Wi-Fi on a Shoestring From Paintball to Video Virtually Vulnerable How It Works Products signal:noise

Government Technology - August 2008

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