Stop Information Sharing? When did we start?

The Wikileaks debacle has many people calling for restrictions on information sharing - it must be all the innovation since 9/11 that is putting us at risk - right?

Wrong.  There has hardly been any innovation and widespread upgrades of information sharing technology - the systems that were compromised were likely designed in the 60's and 70's, deployed years later, and patched into the 21st century.

The fact that someone could download everything to a thumb drive undetected is crazy - and if detection was possible - who was asleep at the wheel?

Moving our inforamtion sharing capabilities to some new approaches will continue to be the answer - we're not going to make the proverbial sow's ear into a silk purse no matter how many defense contractors we put on the job.

It seems the world is moving too fast for the government to keep up, and that this is just another example.  There will be a hue and cry for more money to spend plugging the leaks (pun intended), but the reality is that the infrastructure is caving in from its own weight, and can't be fixed fast enough.  There are plenty of people willing to throw money at the problem, and an even greater throng willing to catch it and make promises of fixes to come.

Banks form Interoperable Data Center Alliance

banks consort on interoperable data centers

Great article - the banks are getting on the interoperability band wagon and looking at standardizing the cloud environment.  We might move out of the "Proprietary Age" of IT and into the standardized data world.  This seems like an enternity, but if you realize that electronic computer sytsems are less than 75 years old, it is amazing progresss.  The short term and long term gains of stndardardized data sets combined with cloud computing may make local server farms and proprietary approaches as quaint as an early factory running all of machines off belts from a centrally powered shaft!

Radio Interoperability - NOT!!!!

http://www.wkrg.com/caught_on_camera/article/accidentally-caught-on-camera-car-crash-not-part-of-movie/1078904/Oct-12-2010_10-26-am/


I thought the billions of dollars spent in the last 8 years since 9/11 on radio interoperability would have at least prevented this police care from crashing into a movie set - apparently being supported by a different set of police and different radios!!!!!

Interoperable data for turbulent times

The economy is certainly having some severe problems on many fronts, and many businesses are looking for ways to improve their long term viability and short term productivity.  Investing in interoperable data infrastructure is a very solid investment.

Like the adoption of the shipping container, the use of structured, interoperable data will have some immediate benefits in terms of easing sharing and accessing information.  The real payoffs will come as this creates a cumulative effect and begins to impact software design.  Software applications that plug together like Legos through defined data sets can be rapidly deployed and morphed as business requirements change; far better than legacy systems that need extensive, custom interfaces to be developed before any synergies can be obtained.

If you are a business owner, a CIO, deal with massive amounts of data, or an information architect, you need to be thinking about this as a critical element of your strategy over the next 5-10 years.

House, Senate agree on measure requiring standard format for spending data

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100908_9226.php?oref=rss?zone=NGtoday


Standard format for spending data - while this seems almost common sensical, it is a big step forward for the government. The idea of agencies doing things the same way is a major opportunity to eventually streamline government at the federal level, and eventually filter this down to the states and local level.

It also allows interface to business, making the entire process simplier, faster, more efficient and ultimately less expensive. There are millions if not billions of dollars spent on proprietary interfaces for data today. Kudos to the people thinking out of the box!

Alzheimers and info sharing...

New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss


A great story of why remembering to share information is so important!!!

European Cell Phone Standard!