Sunday, July 1, 2012
Interoperable Democracy: (#INDIVISIBLE)
I just read Howard Schultz' open letter in the New York Times July 1 edition. This blog is about interoperability, and when you think about democracy, it is the ultimate standard for oppportunity and freedom.
I applaud Howard's call for getting along, compromising, and getting this country back to a nation where all can work, and all can feel that the American Dream is still within the reach of those that do the work.
4th of July should give us all a few moments to figure out who in our political districts are pulling on the oars, who are sitting their doing nothing, and who are actively trying to disrupt progress. Demoncrat, Republican or Libertarian - we need to move anyone not working in our interests back into the private sector and out of being the people's representative.
I too have been blessed from a life that started with some poverty, trauma, and strife. There have been some bumps along the way way, but only in America do I feel that I have had the latitude to make my own decisions, execute my own path, and receive the market driven benefits from those efforts.
I'm sorry to see so many people not empbracing the work ethic required to make this happen, and I'm disappointed with the number of people that don't pay taxes. I'm aslo disappointed with the people at the top of the income ladder - they need to invest and lead versus take their winnnings off the table - both corporations and individuals are sitting on mountains of cash.
We need leadership in both business and government that we're not getting. I applaud Bill Gates for starting Microsoft from scratch and reaping the benefits. I abhor executive compensation where major shareholder losses still result in multi-million dollar bonuses.
If you need some great examples, look at our military and our olympic athletes - they epitomize striving without regard for the almighty dollar!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The importance of data standards in 2012
2012 promises to be a watershed of new technologies heading to maturity; particularly cloud computing. Larry Ellison was way of his time back in the late 90's in trumpeting the Web PC and the demise of the local PC with all of its associated issues and costs.
Like almost all revolutions, the cloud will be additive and help make all the rest work better, faster and longer. PCs will interact with phones and tablets, and an increasing number of automated sensors will be feeding cloud based applications across a wide range of functions.
Standardizing the data "bullets" will make the issue of whose platform and technology largely moot, and allow greater interoperability across partners, government, vendors, competitors and internationally. There are plenty of issues - security, scalability, resiliancy and total cost of ownership are going to be with us for a long time to come.
You've gotten a taste of how this can work with Twitter - for people to people transactions, keeping it to 140 charachters (though with links, people reference huge data sets including the library of congress) makes brevity a necessity.
Google has embraced CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) for their newly launched Public Alerting System - allowing for a wide range of alerts to be consolidated into one map. For the private sector security market, Pinkerton/Securitas has launched a product called Vigilance that is heavily embracing CAP as a means of integrating public, private, premium, open source, sensor, and internal data all into one interface.
It will take time, but this is a growing trend! Big data with no structure is tough to utilize. Big data with structure is far more searchable by mere mortals.
Like almost all revolutions, the cloud will be additive and help make all the rest work better, faster and longer. PCs will interact with phones and tablets, and an increasing number of automated sensors will be feeding cloud based applications across a wide range of functions.
Standardizing the data "bullets" will make the issue of whose platform and technology largely moot, and allow greater interoperability across partners, government, vendors, competitors and internationally. There are plenty of issues - security, scalability, resiliancy and total cost of ownership are going to be with us for a long time to come.
You've gotten a taste of how this can work with Twitter - for people to people transactions, keeping it to 140 charachters (though with links, people reference huge data sets including the library of congress) makes brevity a necessity.
Google has embraced CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) for their newly launched Public Alerting System - allowing for a wide range of alerts to be consolidated into one map. For the private sector security market, Pinkerton/Securitas has launched a product called Vigilance that is heavily embracing CAP as a means of integrating public, private, premium, open source, sensor, and internal data all into one interface.
It will take time, but this is a growing trend! Big data with no structure is tough to utilize. Big data with structure is far more searchable by mere mortals.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Interoperability and 2012
Lots of activity going on in the interoperability world:
OASIS and SITREP: I saw an amazing set of demonstration dashboards that showed the new Situation Report standard from OASIS Emergency Management Committee. Amazingly deep, the idea of multiple organizations being able to share detailed incident information transparently is a great vision.
NOAA nextgen: I don't know a lot about it, but I know NOAA always leads the field in terms of innovation in the federal government. Weather information very valuable to all.
CAP: Montreal summit on CAP, and a lot of work on future CAP concepts. Global adoption continues, and FEMA is rolling out IPAWS and CMAS systems finally.
HTML5: Promises major interoperability of web pages on all sorts of devices.
More to follow - the world is becoming a more standardized place!
OASIS and SITREP: I saw an amazing set of demonstration dashboards that showed the new Situation Report standard from OASIS Emergency Management Committee. Amazingly deep, the idea of multiple organizations being able to share detailed incident information transparently is a great vision.
NOAA nextgen: I don't know a lot about it, but I know NOAA always leads the field in terms of innovation in the federal government. Weather information very valuable to all.
CAP: Montreal summit on CAP, and a lot of work on future CAP concepts. Global adoption continues, and FEMA is rolling out IPAWS and CMAS systems finally.
HTML5: Promises major interoperability of web pages on all sorts of devices.
More to follow - the world is becoming a more standardized place!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The world of systems is changing for the better....
Say hello to cloud computing, it is something you will get to know well over the next 5-10 years as most information technology moves to centralized servers instead of inside the corporation data centers.
When energy was first produced by harnessing the wind or putting a paddle wheel on a river, it was all created and used locally. Few economies of scale, lots of maintenance issues, and generally a hard way to do things.
Corporations have built vast empires of servers and staff to service their IT needs over the last 60 years. What has resulted has limited economies of scale, lots of maintenance issues, and a generally hard way to operate. Corporations that hired great IT people did well, others not so well. Even world renowned companies like Sony had their systems broken into, with only the internal people to hold accountable.
The cloud helps these problems in several ways. Security can be watched more tightly (Fort Knox versus a bunch of local branch banks), economies of scale can apply, and the Cloud providers provide a level of liability protection that internal IS people have not since they are part of the host corporation.
Will there be problems? Of course. Disasters and embarrassments? Inevitably. Is this progress or the "next wave" of computing? Yes it is.
Interoperable data will allow rapid collaboration between the cloud applications, stepping up the pace of innovation and cooperation.
Will this affect everyone? It already has as major businesses like EBAY and Amazon and SalesForce.com all have conducted business from a web hosted environment. It has worked very well, and the cloud is the next step toward making this model pervasive.
Will this move 100% of everything? Nope. There are some sensitive applications that will defy the trend, and there will always be the need for some local data (spreadsheets, word docs, etc) for convenience.
Times are changing. Don't get left behind.
When energy was first produced by harnessing the wind or putting a paddle wheel on a river, it was all created and used locally. Few economies of scale, lots of maintenance issues, and generally a hard way to do things.
Corporations have built vast empires of servers and staff to service their IT needs over the last 60 years. What has resulted has limited economies of scale, lots of maintenance issues, and a generally hard way to operate. Corporations that hired great IT people did well, others not so well. Even world renowned companies like Sony had their systems broken into, with only the internal people to hold accountable.
The cloud helps these problems in several ways. Security can be watched more tightly (Fort Knox versus a bunch of local branch banks), economies of scale can apply, and the Cloud providers provide a level of liability protection that internal IS people have not since they are part of the host corporation.
Will there be problems? Of course. Disasters and embarrassments? Inevitably. Is this progress or the "next wave" of computing? Yes it is.
Interoperable data will allow rapid collaboration between the cloud applications, stepping up the pace of innovation and cooperation.
Will this affect everyone? It already has as major businesses like EBAY and Amazon and SalesForce.com all have conducted business from a web hosted environment. It has worked very well, and the cloud is the next step toward making this model pervasive.
Will this move 100% of everything? Nope. There are some sensitive applications that will defy the trend, and there will always be the need for some local data (spreadsheets, word docs, etc) for convenience.
Times are changing. Don't get left behind.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Standards and the Broken Government
The government of the United States is broken - at the Federal, State, and local levels - 1 completely redundand federal govt, 50 states, territories, over 3,000 cities and thousands of overlapping city and town governments.
This made a lot of sense when you had large distances between populations, and slow transportation (pre 1930). It makes no sense today to allow for thousands of different approaches.
If you talk to people in these various entities you find out that redundancy, duplication and any lack of a standardized approach is mostly absent. Insurance is regulated by the states, and there are 51 separate methods of being an insurance agent? Why?
Corporations like WalMart and Home Depot have shown how standards drive success and efficiencies. If a WalMart exec suddenly decided he was going to something majorly differnt, he or she would quickly be shown the door.
Do we really need Fish and Game at both the federal level and all the states? As much as I love fishing, it makes no sense in our current financial straits. Are all the government agencies necessary? Why do the overap so much.
Imagine the blowback if someone suggested getting rid of states in favor of regions, or consolidating all the counties in one set of state provided services.
We have to change with the world if we're going to lead.
This made a lot of sense when you had large distances between populations, and slow transportation (pre 1930). It makes no sense today to allow for thousands of different approaches.
If you talk to people in these various entities you find out that redundancy, duplication and any lack of a standardized approach is mostly absent. Insurance is regulated by the states, and there are 51 separate methods of being an insurance agent? Why?
Corporations like WalMart and Home Depot have shown how standards drive success and efficiencies. If a WalMart exec suddenly decided he was going to something majorly differnt, he or she would quickly be shown the door.
Do we really need Fish and Game at both the federal level and all the states? As much as I love fishing, it makes no sense in our current financial straits. Are all the government agencies necessary? Why do the overap so much.
Imagine the blowback if someone suggested getting rid of states in favor of regions, or consolidating all the counties in one set of state provided services.
We have to change with the world if we're going to lead.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
OASIS - Structured Emergency Management Data
OASIS (www.oasis-open) is laying the groundwork for a sea change in how emergency management is handled. Elysa Jones heads up their technical committe and has been a tireless contributor for years (pro-bono).
Common Alerting Protocol, conceived in the late 90s/early 2000 is now becoming a world standard and saving countless lives with severe weather warnings (NOAA), Earthquake reporting (USGS), Tsunami Warning, and a host of other time senstive threats. CAP is easy to use, interoperabe so that you don't have to buy certain software, multi-lingual and other key constructs. There is nothing competitive to it that can handle the general nature of emergency alerts. FEMA has chosen CAP for their years after Katrina Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS).
EDXL-DE (a stndardized delivery package that can address both explicit and functional addressees) and a host of other standards are either released or in development:
1. Resource Messaging: instead of random phone calls and the good old boy method of borrowing needed resources - EDXL RM brings a scalable, complete method for acquiring people, equipment, and other key resources using XML transactions.
2. HAVE: Don't you think hospitals should be able to report status (beds, doctors, and other vital information) automatically to the 9-1-1 centers so they are informed when it comes to a life or death decision of what hospital to route an accident patient to? Its all manual, but the Hospital Availability Standard makes this achieveable without massive cost.
3. Tracking of Emergency Patients
4. SITREPS: you would think that one standardized set of info that could e shared would make sense. It would. Everyone does it differently, including every federal agency, state, and local group. EDXL SITREP will change this.
And there is more......they won't throw in Ginzu knives, but this non-profit, tireless organization is working to fix the huge problems that exist today in the Emergency Management world. Kudos, kudos, kudos.
Common Alerting Protocol, conceived in the late 90s/early 2000 is now becoming a world standard and saving countless lives with severe weather warnings (NOAA), Earthquake reporting (USGS), Tsunami Warning, and a host of other time senstive threats. CAP is easy to use, interoperabe so that you don't have to buy certain software, multi-lingual and other key constructs. There is nothing competitive to it that can handle the general nature of emergency alerts. FEMA has chosen CAP for their years after Katrina Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS).
EDXL-DE (a stndardized delivery package that can address both explicit and functional addressees) and a host of other standards are either released or in development:
1. Resource Messaging: instead of random phone calls and the good old boy method of borrowing needed resources - EDXL RM brings a scalable, complete method for acquiring people, equipment, and other key resources using XML transactions.
2. HAVE: Don't you think hospitals should be able to report status (beds, doctors, and other vital information) automatically to the 9-1-1 centers so they are informed when it comes to a life or death decision of what hospital to route an accident patient to? Its all manual, but the Hospital Availability Standard makes this achieveable without massive cost.
3. Tracking of Emergency Patients
4. SITREPS: you would think that one standardized set of info that could e shared would make sense. It would. Everyone does it differently, including every federal agency, state, and local group. EDXL SITREP will change this.
And there is more......they won't throw in Ginzu knives, but this non-profit, tireless organization is working to fix the huge problems that exist today in the Emergency Management world. Kudos, kudos, kudos.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
NGOs - saving the world, but could be much better organized...
If you have ever seen the cartoon of the king brushing off a machine gun salesman to go fight his war with a sword, that is an apt description of IT in many NGOs.
CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) and other standards are easily adopted and implemented, adn would save NGOs millions of dollars, reduce their dependance on the IT group (usually 10 years behind), allow sharing of resources, and save lives through much better situational awareness.
Why aren't they doing it? See para 1. There are a million excuses, but no good answers except for the lack of long term vision when you are crisis driven. I expect the ituation to change over the next year as cloud based tools become easier to use, more widely available, and utilized by budget and speed conscious leaders.
CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) and other standards are easily adopted and implemented, adn would save NGOs millions of dollars, reduce their dependance on the IT group (usually 10 years behind), allow sharing of resources, and save lives through much better situational awareness.
Why aren't they doing it? See para 1. There are a million excuses, but no good answers except for the lack of long term vision when you are crisis driven. I expect the ituation to change over the next year as cloud based tools become easier to use, more widely available, and utilized by budget and speed conscious leaders.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
