One part of government that is working....NIEM

You see a lot of gridlock in government today - health care, spending, partisan bickering, Not very conducive to making anything happen. I won't even start to talk about all the dumb projects that seem to consume dollars but produce no results...but here is a great example of something that is working very well:

I attended a National Information Exchange Model Town Hall last week and the theme was the desire to advance their cause and make the movement of data between governemnt agencies easy at the "plumbing" level. They wanted feedback so they could align their strategic planning session with what was needed by their supporters.

The event harnessed people from all corners - government, commercial, contractors, NGO and many others. There was some good information presented, but the overwhelming amount of time went toward gathering feedback on how NIEM could be more successful, address a greater audience, and gather information on when it is successful.

This has been an organization that has put some very good things in place that will work across government - and is a true collaboration of agencies - DHS and DOJ taking the lead, but many others particpating.

This effort has enormous impacts for saving lives and property, decreasing the friction between agencies when transfering data, and helping transparency efforts in terms of making the data usable once it is accessible.

There were certainly different points of view on what the mission should be, and how the mission should be explained to non-technical participants and would be supporters like Congress, but it was a high energy, well constructed 4 hours. Kudos.

Universal interoperability - one example

The world is a tough place filled with disconnected, non-interoperable elements.

One standard that works great everywhere I've been is "Thank you", part of XGL (XML Gratitude Language). When expressed sincerely in a bi-directional or even uni-directional manner, it inspires people, makes them glad you showed up, makes you glad you showed up, and generallly improves things greatly!

I'm leaving Australia after 3 intense, action packed work weeks and a little fun. A big "Thank You" to the whole country for a delightful experience.

Interoperable language.....

If you are reading this, you speak English, right?

What version of English, and is it interopeable.....having spent the last 2.5 weeks in Australia, you might be suprised how many different words there are that are different, or some of the same words that in fact mean different things.

"2/5 of bugger off" is my favorite so far - it translates to basically "nuttin" in Brooklyn, or "you're unlikely to realize any upside" in Silicon Valley.

Plenty of other examples that I'm compiling.....anyone else run into this problem in other English speaking countries?