TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has become the star of the Government 2.0 movement recently, as the agency has been wildly successful in deploying social media to raise awareness of recent public health crises, including the peanut butter/salmonella outbreak and the recent swine flu scare.

Now the agency has decided to let everyone just how well they've been doing by publishing the metrics for its various Web sites. And what do the numbers show? Surprisingly, the public is turning to CDC for a whole lot more than just information on the latest pandemic.

The most popular feature on the site after the homepage is actually CDC's Adult Body Mass Index calculator, which uses a person's height and weight to determine if they are overweight or obese. Also popular are pages on travelers' health and sexually transmitted diseases.

What these metrics show is that CDC has successfully positioned itself as one of the most trusted sources for health information on the Internet, which is exactly what the agency has been trying to do by reaching out via blogs, Twitter, Widgets and Second Life. By leveraging the public attention during the recent health scares, CDC has managed to penetrate its market and raise its online profile in a way that few if any other agencies have achieved.

To be fair, it has taken some rather unique circumstances for that to happen, in the form of two major public health crises. Furthermore, a huge part of CDC's mission is to keep the public informed and provide reliable health information, two areas where the Internet and social media can be extremely helpful. It is admittedly more difficult to get people to visit the Web site of an agency whose mission is more inwardly focused.

Or is it? CDC clearly understands something many agencies don't: that the public is actually interested in getting its information directly from the source, which in many cases is federal agencies. If the public is willing to follow CDC's Twitter account for information about swine flu, why wouldn't the same people be interested in following the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the latest on weather and climate change? Likewise, agencies like TSA and EPA have used blogs to open a dialog and increase public understanding of their policies. Why couldn't the Treasury Department or the Securities and Exchange Commission use a similar approach to help the public understand what they are doing to stabilize the financial markets?

These examples show the value of simply re-packaging information that agencies have always made available and using more user-friendly and innovative ways to distribute it. There is a wealth of information available on agency Web sites, but so much of it is difficult to access or time-consuming to wade through that the average citizen simply doesn't bother. If Obama Administration officials are serious about using technology to increase public engagement with the government, they would be wise to start building on the success that agencies like CDC are already experiencing.

While the fiscal 2010 budget plan for federal IT investments cites efforts to build Recovery.gov, a federal site for tracking stimulus spending, it is silent on the extent to which subcontractor funding and performance will be disclosed. Lawmakers and interest groups are seeking more specifics on such transactions.

The budget also proposes to overhaul USASpending.gov, a Web site that is supposed to disclose all federal loans and contracts. Before he was elected, then-Senator Obama co-sponsored legislation to create the searchable site, but lawmakers recently have criticized the site for lacking information on subcontracts.

Visitors to USASpending.gov will be able to download data "to combine into different data sets, conduct analysis and research, or power new information-based products and businesses," according to an analytical perspectives section of the budget that was issued this week.

In other words, citizens, nonprofits and the private sector would be able to layer the government data on top of other Web tools, or "mash-up" the data, to see links between lobbyists and contract awards, taxpayer dollars and return on investment, and other measures of accountability.

The budget reaffirms that work is underway on Data.gov, a downloadable, comprehensive repository of all government data that does not compromise security or privacy. But, again, details are scant.

The budget is clear on its endorsement of the use of social networking tool in agencies, referring to this as "Web 2.0 in Government."

Syndicated news feeds, "video-sharing" sites such as YouTube, podcasts, web page bookmarking, widgets, virtual worlds and "micro-blogs" such as Twitter, are among the interactive gadgets cited generically in the document.

"Existing government websites need to be revitalized with community-driven features and functionality," it states, adding that agencies should "push" opportunities for participating in policy making to site visitors.

For those of you who missed this, President Obama held his first online town hall meeting today and it was broadcast live on whitehouse.gov. According to the White House, almost 93,000 people submitted more than 104,000 questions, which the public voted on.

Given the limited advance notice and the estimated 67,000 people who tuned in, we would have to declare the event a success, with a few caveats.First, it's not quite clear that the questions asked were the ones that received the most votes, especially since at least two of the questions Obama answered came via Internet video. However, the questions that were asked stuck pretty closely to the topics that were most popular online: education, health care, outsourcing and legalizing marijuana.

In many ways the event unfolded like a traditional campaign stop, with the president responding to the public's questions at length and sticking to his talking points on the issues. Things improved a bit when Obama started taking questions from the audience, which forced him to answer their questions more directly. He told a Michigan native that he would be releasing an extensive plan to help the auto industry in coming days and revealed that he "really likes nurses." (No idea how audience members were chosen or whether he knew their questions in advance.)

Still, the fact Obama even addressed questions from online voters is a huge step forward in terms of granting access to regular citizens. While a cynic could argue that the online format is somewhat easier to navigate than a traditional press conference, with its absence of combative reporters and follow-up questions, just the image of Obama allowing regular people to question him on his policies makes him seem like he has less to hide than previous presidents. The fact the exchange was broadcast live for all to see only enhances that.

Hopefully today's event was only the first step in what will be a continuous engagement between the administration and citizens. Perhaps the White House should take a lesson from the more than 3.6 million votes cast and start allowing citizens to weigh in on legislation before Obama signs it, as promised during the campaign.

A solicitation from a Defense Department research group has caught the attention of the blogosphere. Defense's Small Business Innovation Research, which gives money to small tech companies to develop early-stage research and development projects, asked companies to submit ideas for a computer program that mimics a conversation between a child and his or her deployed parent. According to the solicitation, the application should provide through video footage or a high-resolution 3-D rendering of the parent, "simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics. For instance, a child may get a response from saying 'I love you', or 'I miss you', or 'Good night mommy/daddy.'"

We have heard consistently that an Obama administration will most likely embrace information technology ore than any previous one -- and by the looks of it, could be much more techie.

President-elect Barack Obama picked two academics to co-chair his transition team for the Federal Communications Commission. While the professors -- Kevin Werbach, who teaches business, policy, and social implications of emerging Internet and communications technologies at the Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania, and Susan Crawford, who teaches communications and Internet law at the University of Michigan -- are immersed in technology policy, Werbach, it turns out, enjoys online gaming. Rather, he plays the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORG, in the vernacular) World of Warcraft, according to an article posted by Gigaom.com.

It has been a rewarding experience, going far beyond the entertainment value.

Now, I'm not kidding myself. I play Warcraft because it's fun. It's taking time away from watching TV, reading books, and other entertainment pursuits. But I'm also playing because I believe MMOGs will be one of the primary forms of social software for the next decade. Defined broadly, they may become the dominant form of social software. And you can't understand games without experiencing them first-hand.

But don't think Werbach is all about gaming. He used to edit Release 1.0, a publication "that provides leading-edge analysis of key technology trends for senior executives," according to his bio page on his blog, and he has worked with "technology industry guru Esther Dyson," and he is familiar with the FCC, having served as counsel for new technology policy.

We've asked Tech Insider blogger Anne Laurent, who writes here and on her The Agile Mind blog about how online gaming may soon influence policy making, to weigh in. Stay tuned.

From last month’s pronouncement by Commandant Thad Allen, Coast Guard, that Coasties need to get with it and embrace Facebook, YouTube and other social networking tools, to this week’s discussion at the Executive Leadership Conference, Web 2.0 is here and now, front and center - an important set of tools to move forward to encourage and enhance and discussion with the public. I say go for it – the IT workforce should be a catalyst and assistant in getting agencies started.

On a personal note, I realized that I need to get with the program and set up a Facebook account myself. I turned to my twenty-something son and daughter to assist me in setting up an account, and I was met with extreme resistance. They feel my "boomer" generation is encroaching upon their generation’s territory. They explained the site was set up for college connections - not for business purposes. But I patiently explain to them that their generation is so incredibly prescient and smart to set up this site, they should be willing to share since it is such a great tool for communication. Do you agree?

I’ve written before (and here) about the value of Second Life and other virtual applications including simulation training, asking whether it improves outcomes – or in other words, results in better decisions and results. Well, my Tech Insider colleague wrote on Wednesday in her blog, The Agile Mind, about some emerging research showing that it just may.

She mentions a blog item by Erica Driver, a former researcher at Forrester Research, citing a "new study suggesting that work-related teaching and learning, collaboration and meetings all can be done effectively in Second Life." Also, as mentioned before, Laurent cites the Stanford Medical School example, in which “researchers have found that ‘virtual [emergency department] environments fulfill their promise of providing repeated practice opportunities in dispersed locations with uncommon, life-threatening trauma cases in a safe, reproducible, flexible setting.’”

Still not all that convinced. But . . .

An article in The New York Times today outlines how the FAA is relying on simulators to train the next generation of air traffic controllers. The agency needs to train thousands of controllers before nearly two-thirds of the 15,000 air traffic controllers leave work by 2017 because they will have reached the mandatory retirement age of 56. The young controllers are placed in a realistic simulation of an airport tower. According to the article:

Aircraft first appear as tiny dots against blue sky, clouds or stars. On the ground, drivers of maintenance trucks ask permission to cross a runway so they can fix a lighted sign. A click of the instructor's mouse can shift the time of day, and change the weather -- from rain to hail or cloudy to clear. To make the simulations as unpredictable as in the real world, some pilots ignore instructions.

FAA officials hope that that "the simulators will cut training time 20 percent to 60 percent," according to the article. With average cost for training an air traffic controller at $74,000, that could save tens of millions of dollars - maybe hundreds of million - over the next ten years. That certainly is a good return on investment, but what about improved or at least comparable performance of the air traffic controllers? Hopefully, there is some metric that shows simulator training is at least as good as the traditional training controllers received. It would be tragic if it turned out to be less effective.

Missouri's chief information officer recently hired a tiny cat with a red bow tie.

Well, OK, not really. He really hired a recent computer engineering grad for the Department of Natural Resources, according to Government Technology News. But the guy first inquired about the position at the state's job fair in the virtual world Second Life. And his 3D representation in that world, or avatar, is a tiny cat in a tie.

Missouri CIO Dan Ross likely will lose more than 10 percent of his tech corps to retirement in the next decade, so he's recruiting aggressively in the real world too. But he figures his synthetic world ROI is pretty good. "Last year I was reporting about $100 spent. This year we've doubled that to $214. So the ROI is pretty quick," he says.

It was just a matter of time.

I knew someone in the federal market would cop my tag line, “virtual government,” and I knew somebody would start using virtual conference platforms. I just didn’t know the same player would do both at the same time!

On Oct. 15, IBM’s Cognos is holding a “Virtual Government Forum” using InXpo, a virtual events producer.