Government Technology - November 2007 - (Page 50)

signal: noise BY PAU L W. TAYLOR CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT index Jurisdictions/Agencies: j Wiki by Wiki Two years ago, I mused about wikiGovernment as a quick way for a subjectmatter expert within government to tell the world, “What I know is.” There was no way to know how much wikis would wind their way into the relationship between the public and public servants. Enter 24-year-old California Institute of Technology graduate student and self-described disruptive technologist Virgil Griffith, and his WikiScanner — a data mining tool that traces Internet protocol (IP) addresses of those who make Wikipedia changes. Griffith conceived the idea when he heard about, “Congressmen getting caught for white-washing their Wikipedia pages,” and wondered whether it could be done on a massive scale and indexed. NASA tops the list with 6,846 edits, but four states and three local governments ranked among the top 30 Wikipedia editors: • California (ca.gov): 4,148 edits • New York City (nyc.gov): 2,404 edits • Connecticut (ct.gov): 2,398 edits • North Dakota (nd.gov): 2,140 edits • Virginia (virginia.gov): 1,047 edits • Philadelphia (phila.gov): 871 edits • King County, Wash. (metrokc.org): 783 edits Wikipedia changes originating from public agencies’ IP ranges are eclectic. Edits from the New York Police Department delete information about the department’s infiltration of peace groups and question assertions about falling crime. Edits from a Detroit city IP defend the city’s mayor amid mentions of controversies California 18 California Department of Transportation 44 California Environmental Protection Agency 38 Cape Canaveral, Fla. 28 Carnegie Mellon University 14 Collaborative of High Performance Schools 40 Federal Emergency Management Agency 18 Indiana Health Information Exchange 18 London 14 Los Angeles Sheriffs Department 30 Manor, Texas 42 NASA 10, 28 National Association of State Chief Information Officers 8, 16 North Carolina Office of IT Services 34 Rome 28 Roslin Institute, Scotland 10 Sacramento, Calif., Police Department 30 Seattle 28 Silicon Valley 28 South Korea 28 Texas 18 Venice 28 Vendors: Alienware 48 Amazon 10 AMREL 49 AOL 12 BioCrossroads 18 Chang Industries 30 eBay 10 Google Earth 42 H-E-B Groceries 18 Home Depot 18 IBM 10 IHL Consulting Group 14 JWT 14 LapWorks 49 Microsoft Live Labs 28 MySpace 8 Neopost 49 Netscape 10 PayPal 10 Planar 49 Shell Oil 18 Sun Microsystems 10 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Telework Exchange 14 Wal-Mart 18 Wikipedia 50 Windows Vista 38 Yahoo 14 State and local governments accounted for 37 percent of the active governments responsible for one-quarter of Wikipedia edits. The result was a database of 34.4 million edits made to the English version of Wikipedia between February 2002 and August 2007, and the 187,529 organizations that made them. Within those totals were 206 organizations using the dot-gov domain to make 74,131 edits in Wikipedia. Put another way, governments account for one-tenth of 1 percent of the organizations and two-tenths of 1 percent of the total edits during that time. State and local governments accounted for 37 percent of the active governments responsible for one-quarter of Wikipedia edits — the lion’s share is attributed to federal agencies. Griffith concedes that there’s no way to know whether agents of these organizations made the changes, but, “We do know that edit came from someone with access to their network.” that swirl around his office. Edits by someone using network access through the Washington State Department of Information Services attempted to tie the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal to a West Coast law firm. That’s much tamer than some of the salacious highlights of federal agency edits, which reflect a mix of national security concerns, conspiracy theories and petty vandalism. Beyond the headline grabbers are 74,000 other edits, which appear to be routine and often arcane clarifications of articles on everything from aging in place to water fluoridation. Public employees have begun to help make sure the information on this growingly important reference is accurate and complete. Some ethics officials have already signed off on this activity — a tacit recognition that this is part of what the future of work looks like. Advertisers Index AT&T 5 Accenture 23 Alcatel 11, 46, 47 Brother 13 CDW-G 26, 27 Gateway 2, 3 GTSI 7 HP Blades 52 HP Low End 9 HP FL 42 Nextel 34 NIC 36, 37 Northrop Gruman 15 Seiko 21 Symantec 25 Symantec 19 Symantec Briefcase 24 Tessco 51 NOV_07 http://ca.gov http://nyc.gov http://ct.gov http://nd.gov http://virginia.gov http://phila.gov http://metrokc.org http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - November 2007

Government Technology - November 2007 Contents Point of View Way Back Machine The Last Mile GT Spectrum Big Picture Building Better Government Up Close Inspector Gadget By the Numbers Money Talking No Greenwashing Pinching Pennies Bay Bridge Bustle Two Cents Products Signal: Noise

Government Technology - November 2007

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