5 Billion Wireless connections!!!

http://www.mobilefuture.org/blog/archives/global_wireless_subscriptions_surpass_5_billion/

5 billion wireless connections is a standards triumph - think about all those bits trying to move if they had not been somewhat standardized. There are some issues to be resolved with the different networks, and generational issues as the new starts to supercede the very usable basic stuff that will be around for a long time. The rate of addition seems a little high, but as things like IP6 and very inexpensive sensors start to take off, it may accelerate rather than plateau.

Who would have thunk it? DHS needs to share information

http://http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100716_2491.php?oref=rss?zone=NGtoday

DHS figured out it needs to share information and consolidate intelligence into one shareable portal. Wow.

innovation and interoperability

Mention standards, and many eyes glaze over - too hard, too long, not good. I'd ask you to rethink this.

It is important to understand that much of our rapid innovation has come from building on top of standard approaches! If you look at the applications on the Internet (Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and 1000 more), they all took advantage of TCP/IP, HTML and other standards that allowed for the amazing global growth of the internet.

So take a look at what you can adopt and adapt into your processes that might make for a giant leap forward - building on the shoulder of giants and rapidly emerging, new standard ways of doing things. A good example is QR codes - 2 dimensional bar codes that can hold much more information than a traditional bar code and be read by the newest generation of phones - Iphone, Android, and others.

If you are using interoperable data and standards as a footing, your speed willl pick up as well - others are doing the work for you and allowing more linkages, more outside applications, and better understanding.

Interoperable data and cost savings

I doubt that I need to outline the world economic downturn going on - but the latest thinking is that we're headed for a double dip recession, or a prolonged period of very slow growth with a high number of unemployed workers nationwide. Time to think about how to cut costs and enhance an organization's capabilities:

A strong interoperable data approach lays the groundwork for lower costs over the coming years:

1. Far less custom development needs to take place
2. Outside managed providers can be linked in easily, allowing pay as you go approaches
3. Tools to manage and maintain the data can be more standardized
4. Partner (known and unknown) interaction can happen faster, giving more flexibility
5. Reliance and costs for customer applications can be reduced

Much like the introduction of the shipping container, once the initial change resistance has been overcome, and once the vision becomes clear, the new process can accelerate rapidly and have many positive impacts not anticipated in the early project days.

Glimmers of progresss....

I just saw an article on Data.gov and the move to move many of the feeds there into a map based environment. Kudos for the administration toward moving that direction and also making the information available in feed format for use by other applications.

Another article this morning touted agencies use of sensors over the coming years - lower prices, better communications capability, smaller size and increased capabilities make this approach a winner. The data is all structured when it comes from sensors, and an increasing number of them are incorporating standard transaction formats so that they can be automatically linked into existing applications.

Talk is cheap on both accounts, but I'm encouraged to see movement, however small. Building an interopeable environment will allow all organizations to effectively share information better and more effectively. Building the data bridges that will allow sharing worldwide will pay some amazing benefits to every type of application.

When is interoperability a sham?

Dr David Boyd testified in front of Congress that equipment developed under the P25 moniker doesn't mean it is interoperable.


What?

http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/boyd-p25-doesnt-necessarily-mean-interoperable/2010-06-01

DHS (or their pre-cursors) has been working on this problem since people died on 9/11, and it seems we're n0 closer to a radio being able to interact seamlessly with others. Is radio truely more complicated than telephones or the IP networks that support the Internet? I don't think so.

Vendor self interest, good old boy networks, and a host of other reasons have continued to plague this whole area. When will it get fixed? Likely when a disaster happens, people die or property destroyed, and the public is shown by the news media that everything is pretty much incompatible and that we've spent billions as a country. There will be a hue and cry, a search for a scapegoat, immediate regulations proposed, lobbyists rushing to pour water on the flames, and little real change if history is our guide.

P25 has been around for 21 years an effort to standardize radios.

Disruptathon!

I attended a Disruptathon last night (May 26) at the British Embassy. Put together by Pete Ericson, and hosted in part by Cynergy, it was a great gathering of individuals that were looking at what they were innovating now, and where innovation could go in the future.

The topic was government 2.0 and mobile innovation. Lots of great ideas on how the governnment could use mobile to be more productive internally, and also use mobile applications and their existing data streams to leverage outside mobile application developers.

Interoperability was a key - and the fact that smartphones were still oriented toward a leading edge segment of the population. Many of the organizations working today are using least common denominator standards like SMS to insure that they can get the message across.

This is an area of explosive growth, and there are many different features like geolocation that are under utilized today in the mobile phone arena. As more applications become more capable of utilizing these inherent features, and as more of the advanced phones move toward some kind of unified development environment, the state of the art will advance more rapidly.

Kudos to the organizers of this event.