Government Technology - November 2008 - (Page 58)

signal: noise BY PAU L W. TAYLOR CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT index Agencies/Jurisdictions: j In the Presence of…Me ” y plans require time and distance.” That’s the quote carved in stone below a statue of Pacific Northwest pioneer Marcus Whitman inside the entrance to the Washington State Legislature. Of course, the commodity Internet has been collapsing time and distance for more than a decade. Still the technology juggernaut’s time efficiencies have been frustrated — by the deliberate process and pacing of legislatures at the institutional level, for example, and by you and me. There is a name for this neo-Luddism that lurks just below the surface of even the most enthusiastic technology booster: latency. We carbon-based life forms are the prime source of latency in semiautomated processes. Without us there would be no “semi” in semiautomated. (Read: We are the problem.) This isn’t a new problem. Latency has a language of its own in communications media — mail (Return to sender), broadcast (One moment please), over-the-counter (Back in five minutes), phone (Leave a message), e-mail (This is an auto reply) and mobile, instant messages and short message service (Subscriber could not be found. Message may not be delivered.) Unified communications (UC), the latest evolution in converged networking, promises to remove these excuses by making the underlying problem — humans — more available. Enter “presence” — described by its supporters as “the dial tone of the future” because it keeps real-time tabs on the availability, ability and preferred mode of communicating. Pres- M ence is also the component of UC that’s aimed at reducing or eliminating human latency; it’s also the key differentiator between UC and previous iterations of any-to-any networks that combine multimedia communications, such as voice, data and video; call control; instant messaging; conferencing like audio, video, tele, Web; and mobility. Are UCs a sleeper issue? Perhaps. In a recent survey of 82 self-selected public agencies conducted by the Center for Digital Government, 22 percent of respondents reported that presence was the highest funding priority in their communications strategy. That’s well behind voice (60 percent) and video (38 percent), in line with data (26 percent) and e-mail (26 percent), and ahead of instant messaging (16 percent) and mobility (11 percent). Presence is a compelling idea for institutional improvisation and productivity. But presence is also a very personal matter. It’s about my presence and yours — when and how to reach us, especially when we’re away. It reminds me of the first time I was issued a cell phone in 1988 — convenient yes, but maybe too convenient. Cell phones began to blur the lines between work hours and personal hours, professional spheres and personal space. Two decades later, we have become accustomed to how cell phones have reordered our lives — call it accidental technological determinism. Presence is smarter than cell phones by themselves — our planning for presence and response to it needs to be more deliberate because we could use a little time and distance. Alabama 32 Antarctica 10 Arizona 34 Brevard, Fla., County Schools 20 California Department of Transportation 46 California 52 Cary, N.C. 44 Colorado 34 Connecticut State Police 48 Denver 52 Flagler, Fla., County Schools 20 Florida Department of Children and Families 38 Georgia 14 Indiana 42 Missouri 8 New York 14 Oakland County, Mich. 8, 14 Oklahoma Department of Corrections 26 Portland, Ore. 34 Sacramento County, Calif 8 San Francisco 46 Seattle 34 Stanislaus County, Calif 32 Tampa, Fla., Police Department 48 Texas 14 Utah 12 Virginia 8, 14 Warsaw, Ind., Community Public Library 26 Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department 48 Woodbury, Minn. 26 Vendors: 3M 56 Anderson Software 48 BearingPoint 14 Computer Associates 26 Dell 26, 42 ESRI 44 FoxFury 54 GoLive Mobile 48 Logitech 54 Motorola 54 NIC Inc. 14 Nuance Communications 38 ParkingCarma 46 Pitney Bowes 44 Seiko Instruments USA 54 Streetline Networks 46 Userful 26 VMware 26, 42 Ziff Davis Enterprise 32 Advertisers Index Bearing Point 9 Bisk Education 23 CA, Inc 45 Canon 5 CDWG 30-31 Diskeeper 57 GovConnection 59 Ingram Micro 17 Microsoft 60 NIC 35 Northrup Grumman 7 Panasonic 2 Qwest 25 Sprint 53 Verizon Wireless 13 NOV_08 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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