Empire 2.0 Tech Talk Ideas

Policymakers at all levels of government, and the public at large, as well as local and regional offices of state agencies, like to have locality-specific information. Often, aggregated stats about statewide programs or policies will be less interesting to those seeking to use data than "how it effects my County/City/Town." Appending a georeference data field to publicly-available records as a convention would allow ...more »

Use OFT as a technology "re-seller" to achieve cost savings across the board for agencies. For example web conferencing solutions — Purchase all web conferencing through a single contract at OFT and allow other state agencies to buy into that license. The state will receive substantial discounts due to volume licensing and agencies then realize significant savings by only purchasing the services they will actually utilize. ...more »

I think agencys should let people communicate through IM or e-mail on their computers ,working parents can have peace of mind at work and will get more work done and less absenteesim.

I think policies should be linked to the building block of the IT city plan. Just like, city planner enforces certain polices and standards for a particular area (e.g. residential complex, manufacturing complex etc) , similarily , we need to enforce policies at the building blocks/ cluster level. Let me give you an example, if I have to setup some policies for the ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system, then I will ...more »

One problem I face on a local level is the availability of Facebook on the county network. Many times govt. IT departments will not allow access to social networking sites due to the potential for abuse, i.e. time wasting. "Linked In" seems to be an exception due to it's business like status. (Don't tell the network admins. that's it's really a social network, please...) Twitter still works, perhaps because of the ...more »

All senior City decision-makers should be required to publish online the date and duration of all meetings with external parties. They should be allowed not to publish this information where there is a justification for not doing so, but on a regular basis each decision-maker should have to publish the number of meetings whose details he has not made public in the usual way.

As social networking continues to gain in importance as a tool for employees to connect and collaborate, there appears to be a clear divide developing between those who are permitted access to these tools by their agency and those who aren't. I attended a recent meeting of a number of agencies, and through a show of hands there was a roughly 50-50 split between those permitted access and those denied. As the State continues ...more »

In listening to Melodie Mayberry-Stewart talk about the Twitter account that posts updates about Niagara Bridges, the question came up about the risk involved in encouraging drivers to read twitter feeds as they drive across the Niagara bridges. One thinks they may be looking at these BEFORE leaving, but then some may not. My idea is to also have the electronic road signs subscribe to these feeds thereby providing a ...more »

Very good topic to discuss in this economy. However, its not an easy task to develop a plan to systematically reduce the cost of IT. I think cost should be linked to the architecture elements. In mapping costs to architectural elements and then aggregating them in various combinations (i.e. business process, capability etc) that are relevant to the business, IT can achieve a clear understanding of the costs. These ...more »

Which application or data characteristics help lead to a decision to host an application in a public cloud or within private cloud?

With a constant diminishing of the workforce, a constant expansion of services, a constant enforcement of regulatory requirements, and a constant addition of mandatory training, it is amazing that we ever accomplish anything in the State, but somehow we do. I think the agency needs to take a hard look at what we do. Are there services that should be eliminated? Are there processes that can be streamlined? It is better ...more »

New services should be rolled out in a coordinated fashion. The affected business units should be aware and trained, a rate should be established, CR should be educated, an order process should be established, and a support plan should be in place. Then the service can be advertised to appropriate customers.

In the future, SEFA may be able to partner more with their state affiliations. Emails and online documentation could be proliferated to cut costs of getting the word out. One distributed notification of SEFA providing 100% of donations to charities, would greatly increase participation. If this could be realized, it could make the difference in one hungry child. I would be willing to donate my time on nights or weekends ...more »

CIO/OFT could provide Cloud computing services by deploying high speed links to Cloud vendors such as Google, Amazon, 3Tera, GoGrid, etc. from CIO/OFT Data Centers. This could be an additional service at lower cost and reduced service levels than CIO/OFT Hosted Servers for customers whose program needs are satisfied by this delivery model. This may allow NYENET customers to access virtual Data Center Services using ...more »

The Workforce One community is run by the federal government, but I wonder if NY State ouldn't have a workforce development presence of it's own that someone works with or integrates to Workforce One? (www.workforce3one.org)

All the New York State Website need to be in complance with Section 508 (accessibility for person with disability) Open Public Meeting Law said that all information should be avalable to all. With so much of the information being posted on State, County, and Local Goverments this is now a mandate to make sure the websites are accessible to all!!! The state can look to Federal Website for complance with Web stanards for ...more »

As an offshoot of my comment against using public cloud services such as Amazon, I believe that actually maintaining a cloud internally using open source tools would be of big benefit to different agencies. From a recent email I sent in response to the request for comments for the NYS Cloud Computing conference: ----- Gary A. Mort 121 Cedar Street Kingston, NY 12401 Web Engineer/Architect Gotham Informatics, http://www.gothaminformatics.com/ ...more »

To date, has the telecommuting pilot (that started over 2 years ago) been publicly announced and/or launched? By allowing qualifying individuals (those meeting the criteria set forth in the policy) to begin the successful implementation of the CIO/OFT Telecommuting program - this would save CIO/OFT admistrative and related expenses (in turn, New York State), as well as the employee saving on gas, reducing polution, and ...more »

The W3C (http://www.w3.org/) defines the Semantic Web as an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content. Tim Berners-Lee("Inventor of the web") coined the term Semantic Web back in 1999. Today it is frequently referred to as Linked ...more »

Every unit should have a shared mailbox for employee use. In some cases, it may be appropriate for customer use as well. For example, I need to submit a PR. The PR form, instructions, and the BU write up on inSIDE should tell me where I have to submit the PR.

Currently IE is the only approved web browser in CIO/OFT. It is against CIO/OFT policy to install different software such as Firefox unless one goes through a cumbersome policy exception application. In my experience Firefox (with its added extensions) allows more granular control over websites. The types of technologies that facilitate Web 2.0 (Flash; Javascript and other active content) are also used maliciously ...more »

We use Ilinc remote classroom training and we're saving a lot of money compared to the cost of sending trainers to counties and New York City. One distinct advantage of this approach is that it enables us to train one or two people from a district while training others from other districts simultaneously. Page-specific help should be a standard for all New York State agency applications. It augments (and in some cases ...more »

A general periodic (monthly)status of the CIO/OFT Project Management Portfolio should be made available via the Intranet.

CIO/OFT is implementing steps to reducing spending on paper, print supplies, maintenance and purchases of printing equipment. These steps include configuring all network printers to default to duplex printing, electronic transmission of documents to the maximum extent possible, minimizing the provision of printed material at meetings, presentations, etc. We are soliciting employee ideas to further reduce costs associated ...more »

The CIO/OFT web filter often prevents access to websites needed for me to do my job, either because of false positives or false assumptions. This usually hits at the worst time-pressed times, so the current process for asking for an exception is too cumbersome. Specific examples of a: - False positive: Assigned task, research security issue. A website that mentions the word "hacking" is misinterpreted as a prohibited ...more »