Recently (April 20211), a worldwide CAP conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland. People representing over 30 countries attended, and it was hosted by the World Meteorlogical Organization and had representatives from OASIS and ITU there as well.
Great presentations, and an overall sense that CAP is becoming THE world standard for alerting/warning. The standard is great in its current form, and actively being developed for version 2.0 and 3.0.
Kudos to all those making this happen, and all the countries that are adopting. I'd encourage all software developers to incorporate the ability to both import and export CAP feeds into their solutions.
Mobile phones will allow people to submit alerts faster and in greater volume. Sensors, dropping in price, and increasing in functionality, can also automatically send CAP alerts on a wide array of issues.
Go CAP!
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Too much of a good thing!
At least on the creation side, government has gotten some momentum going on setting standards for information sharing! Great deal - it will save lives, money, time and pave the way for more collaborative efforts between business and government and international....IF...
....the various agencies and groups cooperate and don't reinvent their wheel or make their efforts incompatable with others. This is classic government craziness, understandable in a time before the internet and the web lets everyone know what everyone is doing, but certainly a waste of effort now.
A great example is Common Alerting Protocol by OASIS. It has become used by many groups around the world - FEMA, DHS, private entities, Australia, Canada, software companies, and more. It is a very good, lightweight, easy to understand and utilize standard. However, there are many alerting areas that still need to be incorporated (food, financial, and more) - but it makes no sense to utilize some other standard or create a new, proprietary method. THE WAY IS ALREADY PAVED!!!!
One of hte biggest possible losses is having the 9-1-1 capability in the US go some other direction - 112 in Sweden (and 112 is a EU standard) has already piloted CAP for emergency calls.
This same issue applies for more standards that are starting to develop - smart grid, health, and many others - they need to examine the existing standards and work to move them forward versus creating parallell efforts. Building on the shoulders of already existing efforts will make a major difference.
Pete
....the various agencies and groups cooperate and don't reinvent their wheel or make their efforts incompatable with others. This is classic government craziness, understandable in a time before the internet and the web lets everyone know what everyone is doing, but certainly a waste of effort now.
A great example is Common Alerting Protocol by OASIS. It has become used by many groups around the world - FEMA, DHS, private entities, Australia, Canada, software companies, and more. It is a very good, lightweight, easy to understand and utilize standard. However, there are many alerting areas that still need to be incorporated (food, financial, and more) - but it makes no sense to utilize some other standard or create a new, proprietary method. THE WAY IS ALREADY PAVED!!!!
One of hte biggest possible losses is having the 9-1-1 capability in the US go some other direction - 112 in Sweden (and 112 is a EU standard) has already piloted CAP for emergency calls.
This same issue applies for more standards that are starting to develop - smart grid, health, and many others - they need to examine the existing standards and work to move them forward versus creating parallell efforts. Building on the shoulders of already existing efforts will make a major difference.
Pete
Thursday, January 27, 2011
State of the Union and a standardized approach
In the SOTU, President Obama outlined that government was totally disorganized (who knew?), citing that salmon in salt water was a different agency from salmon in fresh water.
The last reorg of government was a long time ago - lets think even bigger toward a standardized approach - reorg the federal government and then also reorg the states into 6 economic groupings! This would eliminate 44 disparate goverments, lay the groundwork for further reorganizing the county, parish, rural and urban landscapes into a 21st century structure - leveraging off each other instead of having a byzantine set of laws, processes, redundant positions, radios and systems that don't communicate and more.
It would be a major shift, but one that would stimulate the thinking of the entire country in how to accomplish it. We already have the Northwest, the Northeast and other "zones" identified, take the best of the governments that exist and move it forward.
The last reorg of government was a long time ago - lets think even bigger toward a standardized approach - reorg the federal government and then also reorg the states into 6 economic groupings! This would eliminate 44 disparate goverments, lay the groundwork for further reorganizing the county, parish, rural and urban landscapes into a 21st century structure - leveraging off each other instead of having a byzantine set of laws, processes, redundant positions, radios and systems that don't communicate and more.
It would be a major shift, but one that would stimulate the thinking of the entire country in how to accomplish it. We already have the Northwest, the Northeast and other "zones" identified, take the best of the governments that exist and move it forward.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, November 5, 2010
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
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!!!!!
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.
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.
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