A Nation of the People and IP Addresses

Minnesota: electronic health transactions the law

Government Technology: Beginning in 2009, Minnesota will equire electronic submission of health transactions. "The new requirements, signed into law by Governor Tim Pawlenty as part of the 2007 Omnibus Health and Human Services funding bill, apply to all health care providers and affects virtually anyone who bills for or buys health care services on behalf of a group of people," including "auto insurers, chiropractors, dentists, pharmacists, workers compensation insurers and others."

Estonia weathers digital siege

I don't normally publish international news, but the New York Times has published a story about large scale cyber attacks targeting Estonia's infrastructure. Some are calling it the first cyber war. 

Computer security experts from NATO, the European Union, the United States and Israel have since converged on Tallinn to offer help and to learn what they can about cyberwar in the digital age.

'This may well turn out to be a watershed in terms of widespread awareness of the vulnerability of modern society,' said Linton Wells II, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration at the Pentagon. 'It has gotten the attention of a lot of people.'

Free registration is required to read the Times piece.

Whose portal is it anyway?

Via NASCIO's Enterprise Architecture Newsbriefs, here is a nice piece describing two views of Web governance: Whose government portal is it anyway?

CIO.com: consumer-led IT a "shadow IT department"

Ben Worthen at CIO.com has published more on the consumer-led IT phenomenon, suggesting that anywhere, anytime computing has created a shadow IT department:

The emergence of this second IT department—call it 'the shadow IT department'—is a natural product of the disconnect that has always existed between those who provide IT and those who use it.

And that disconnect is fundamental. Users want IT to be responsive to their individual needs and to make them more productive. CIOs want IT to be reliable, secure, scalable and compliant with an ever increasing number of government regulations. Consequently, when corporate IT designs and provides an IT system, manageability usually comes first, the user’s experience second. But the shadow IT department doesn’t give a hoot about manageability and provides its users with ways to end-run corporate IT when the interests of the two groups do not coincide.

"IT Doesn't Matter," blogged

In order to meet a deadline for new book he's authoring, Nicholas Carr is serializing his famous Harvard Business Review article, "IT Doesn't Matter," on Rough Type. I'm not sure where the series will end, but part four is here. There are internal links on his web log so that readers can navigate from beginning to end.

NASCIO: deploying relationship services

According to Government Technology, NASCIO has released a new issue brief, Staying Connected to Your Customers: Strategies and Tactics to Grow Enterprise IT Services. The new report is on the use of customer relationship strategies for building relationships with agencies.

"State of the states" on IT spending, trends

GovernmentVAR, a web site devoted to technology integrators and value-added providers, recently published some spending and trends information that I found interesting. Its State of the States article also quotes a number of state government CIOs in an effort to provide a heads up on the opportunities available to the private sector.

The spending forecast looks good for telecommunications and public safety, two areas where NASTD members are active:

Research firm Input predicts that IT spending in state and local government will reach more than $60 billion in 2008 and about $73 billion in 2011. Of that, $50 billion will be contracted to the private sector in 2008, $62 billion in 2011.

Two areas that will carry significant opportunity for the channel are public safety, which Input predicts will grow 12 percent to $3.4 billion in the next five years, and health care, which is expected to grow 10 percent in that same time frame, from $7.6 billion to $12.2 billion.

The most significant sector growth will happen in telecommunications (from 19 percent of the budget in 2006 to 23 percent in 2011) and services (from 23 percent in 2006 to 30 percent in 2011). Software products will stay at about 9 percent of the total IT budget, while computer hardware is expected to drop from 16 percent to 14 percent.

The trends, as broken down by GovernmentVAR:

• "More with Less" - Mentioning the Michigan email and Texas data center consolidation projects specifically, the article suggests centralization will continue apace.
• "Moving beyond Homegrown" - moving beyond legacy homegrown solutions created and nurtured by IT professionals who are beginning to retire.
• "Mass Appeal" - the continued development of the Web interface with the citizenry, and the ability to capture cost savings from those initiatives.
• "Juggling Expectations" - meeting the expectations of the federal government
• Consolidating opportunities, or "strategic sourcing"

Thanks to NASCIO's Enterprise Architecture Newsbriefs for providing the link.

While you're at GovernmentVAR, check out the audio from an interview with NASCIO's executive director Doug Robinson on the challenges for state government IT.

CIO Insight predicts top '07 IT trends

CIO Insight publishes its top trends for 2007, broken into four areas - strategy, management, security and technology.

Topping the management list was the belief that lines between business and IT will continue to blur. As for security, the experts saw no decline in the number of threats facing the information technology enterprise.

Business process improvement and service oriented architectures were the top trends on the strategy and technology lists, respectively.

The web site publishes some push back here, including agreement that one crucial trend was overlooked: how to find and keep good IT employees.

Gartner to IT: Give up some control

According to Government Technology, Gartner is calling on IT departments to give up some control:

Speaking at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo in Cannes, Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research at Gartner explained that while many of IT's responsibilities are still mission critical, IT organizations need to bend to the realities of and opportunities associated with consumer, Internet and fast-emerging technologies if their businesses are to prosper.

'Without a doubt, consumerization is the single most significant trend impacting IT in the next ten years,' said Sondergaard. 'However, it is not really about new technologies -- virtually all of them are available today. It is about attitudes towards and usage of technology. There is a societal shift taking place which, when combined with access to and acceptance of newly affordable technology, is driving change in usage and the business model. Companies will have to come to terms with a fundamental change in traditional business models and drivers.'

Will Microsoft adapt to the messy environment?

CIO.com has posted an article, Beyond Vista, in which Microsoft executives acknowledge that the future lies in software-as-service, not a homogeneous working environment where one operating system, carefully provisioned and managed, is the norm.

Vista isn't a part of the software-as-a-service trend, and all the pomp and circumstance around its release mask a growing concern inside the company, one that comes through in executives' demeanor, internal communications and candid conversations about what the IT world will look like five years from now: Software as a service is a threat unlike any the company has faced before....

These web applications will need to work well with current and legacy applications, ranging from customer management and billing software to network administration. So the key question is: can the company succeed by embracing a mixed environment?

Microsoft's CIO, Ron Markezich, says it will be up to Microsoft to learn to work and play nicely with other systems.

The last section in the article, "Can They Pull it Off?" asks a number of questions about the company's ability to adapt to a heterogeneous environment given its size, history and culture. I found the article intriguing.

In related news, Microsoft has announced that Vista and Office 2007 will be available to businesses beginning November 30.