Government Technology - December 2007 - (Page 28)

20 YEARS IN REVIEW ONE OF THE GREAT TECHNOLOGY ACHIEVEMENTS of the early 2000s — and perhaps of all time — was Web-based tax filing. In 2000, seven states already had online electronic filing available for taxpayers. Interestingly smaller states were pioneering this wonderful new development. Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and South Carolina had left the big boys in their rearview mirror. However, that’s not to say the big states weren’t working on it. California had its online filing initiative stalled by, what else, a lawsuit. Eventually, though, everyone came around, including the IRS. The amount of paper and number of man-hours saved by this innovation is likely so large as to be unknowable. The early years of the new millennium witnessed the arrival of other groundbreaking technologies. While they didn’t immediately seem as important, new capabilities like instant messaging and the growth of blogs contributed significantly to the Information Age. Instant messaging, as it is known today, began in 1996 with the launch of ICQ. Other instant messaging applications did exist, but ICQ was the first to work regardless of hardware across the entirety of the Web. Meanwhile, blogs (short for Web logs), were in many ways the precursors to the coming trend of social networking. Sites like MySpace and Facebook are little more than a collection of mostly hideous blogs. But with the rise of blogs and instant messaging came new questions about how we communicate, what forms of communication are private and which are public records. Increasingly instant messaging is becoming the dominant way for employees to communicate in the office. In the public sector, instant messaging has come under scrutiny as the industry tries to determine 2002 Microsoft settles DOS suit WorldCom files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the largest such filing in U.S. history j j DEC_07 whether this sort of communication is, in fact, public record or little more than an electronic version of the sticky note. Blogs also pose a problem. Recent accounts of employees being terminated because of something they posted on their blog have shed light on the growing concern — and confusion — surrounding this issue. Intel releases Intel Pentium 4 processor 2003 802.11g standard developed — 54 Mbps now possible Launched in 2003, MySpace was originally intended for unsigned bands to share their music. However, MySpace was adopted by the growing legions of people involved in social networking. MySpace, along with Friendster, made it easy for users to build customized home pages decked out with photos, video and music. HP merges with Compaq The California Department of Information Technology shuts down following a high-profile contracting scandal Space Shuttle Columbia explodes on re-entry Software as a service (SaaS), the successor to ASP started getting attention , a few years after the dot-com implosion as a low-cost way to take advantage of highend applications. For government, SaaS means smaller agencies with limited resources can play on the same field as the big cities and states. In the early 2000s, tiny memory cards suddenly became extremely popular, thanks to the vast number of devices being created that used them. In 2003, the miniSD card offered storage capacity up to 256 MB. Ever since, improved cards have been continually released, each boasting more capacity than the last. 28 http://www.govtech.com

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

Government Technology - December 2007 Contents Point of View Big Picture Profile The Last Mile GT Spectrum Well...How Did We Get Here? Dark Spaces A Paler Shade of Green? Decertification Dilemma Game On Two Cents Products Signal:Noise

Government Technology - December 2007

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