Government Technology - November 2008 - (Page 18)

Is the Best Portal no Portal at All? Imagine that the U.S. government didn’t have a Web site and that instead executive agencies uploaded raw data ﬁles to the Internet. Though that might seem ripe for chaos, some academics working at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy believe it would actually be an improvement. This assertion is printed in a paper, Government Data and the Invisible Hand, published in the fall 2008 issue of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. “Our argument is simply that the ﬁrst thing [government] should focus on is making sure that the data is available for people to reuse,” said one of the paper’s authors, center Associate Director David Robinson. “Then, if they want to also build a Web portal of their own that has branding on it — it kind of gives government a chance to tell people about what else they are doing and whatever else they might want to do — that’s absolutely ﬁne. But that really shouldn’t be the ﬁrst priority.” The academics’ thinking is that citizens can do a more efﬁcient job of serving their needs if they are allowed to build their own Web sites that serve end-users. Robinson said GovTrack, www.govtrack.us, which tracks the workings of Congress, is one example of a thirdparty Web unafﬁliated with the government in this category. “We would like to see a world where [governments] put all the data online and let anyone who wants to build a Web site to search it,” he said. “Not because we think every citizen will build a Web site — we don’t think every citizen wants to build a Web site — but we do think that there is a critical mass of people out there who want to.” GovTrack.us: Some scholars believe the next iteration of public-sector Web portals will be developed and operated entirely by third parties. One example is Govtrack, which tracks congressional bills, roll call votes and other activities. regional projects. In one example, the county helped design a “blogin’ café” during the 2008 Arts, Beats & Eats festival in Pontiac, Mich. Thousands of attendees blogged at the event on laptops, and the updates were posted on the Web site of the Detroit Free Press newspaper. In another example, Oakland County spearheaded a program in which the county maintains a crime watch database and publishes it for 61 local communities that build their own crime report maps and post them on their own portals. Forecasting I-Government The vendors that design and operate government portals also will have a say in the next-gen content. “I don’t think we have even come close to scratching the surface of what the next generation of Web technologies will be,” said Harry Herington, CEO of NIC Inc., which manages the Web portals of 21 states and makes profit through transaction fees completed via the portals. “[The current Web 2.0] generation is making people understand that when interacting with a particular entity, it doesn’t have to come from that particular entity — that’s the power of mash-ups.” states haven’t applied it in the obvious area, which is that RSS is great for publishing news information,” he said. Some states, he said, use RSS for notification of expiration of licenses — the kind of purposes RSS isn’t well suited for. Miri said many governors’ offices use RSS effectively, but coverage is redundant because traditional media outlets cover them heavily anyway. Trickle-up Innovation Count on seeing a give and take among local and state IT shops in defining the next batch of must-have features for next-gen Web portals. “There’s at least as much innovation at the city, county and school district level as there is at the state level,” Miri said. For example, Oakland County, Mich. — 2008 first-place finisher in the county portal category of the Best of the Web Awards — is experimenting with moderated blogs and mash-ups using GIS and three-dimensional orthophotography at www.oakgov.com. “What does Web 3.0 look like for us? We’ve started looking at, ‘What are the Generation Y people going to be looking for when they start consuming from us?’” said Phil Bertolini, Oakland County deputy executive and CIO. These needs might include mobile applications integrated within the Web portal, userNOV_08 generated content, expanded access to social networking and even virtual worlds such as Second Life. “I’ve been amazed with the whole phenomena of Second Life,” Bertolini said. “People are out there using that type of technology, creating these personas and moving around this virtual world. Now you find that there are companies out there starting to advertise for jobs. There are governments that are going to have to provide services in that world.” For now, it’s about small steps rather than avatars in Oakland County. Bertolini said he expects next-gen Web portals to be fertile ground for more collaborative and » www.oakgov.com 18 http://www.GovTrack.us http://www.govtrack.us http://www.oakgov.com http://www.oakgov.com http://www.Govtech.com

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

Government Technology - November 2008 Contents Point of View On the Scene Big Picture Four Questions for … Forward Thinkers Taking Tech Home Virtual Frontier Hidden Costs Uncovered Seeing Red For the Record In the Loop Benign Dictatorship Home-Field Advantage A Better Way to Park New Tools for Fighting Crime How It Works Spectrum Products Two Cents signal:noise

Government Technology - November 2008

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