Five ways that Apps.gov is a trendsetter |
I’m one of many who believe this week’s announcement of Apps.gov–a portal targeted at reducing the cost and effort for public agencies to acquire cloud services–is forcing all of IT to face the economics of cloud computing.
|
Apps.gov, a federal government initiative out of the General Services Administration, demonstrates several concepts that have been the dream of many private enterprise IT departments for some time, but have been successfully executed by very few. Here are the five trends that I think Apps.gov demonstrates, and why you should pay attention: |
| this is a rare opportunity for the federal government to set an example for private industry in no uncertain terms–an example that may go a long way to ensuring the United States sets an example for the rest of the world.Read more at news.cnet.com |
Draft Open Access and Licensing Framework released |
Today the State Services Commission is releasing the draft New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL). This document provides guidance for State Services agencies on:
- open access to non-copyright information; and
- open licensing of copyright works,
in both cases with a view to allowing their re-use by others. (It does not apply to information or works containing personal or other sensitive information.) |
The draft NZGOAL sets out a series of policy principles which embrace, among other things, the notions of open access, open licensing, creativity, authenticity, non-discrimination and open formats. It describes the drivers behind this work, the departmental consultation process that has taken place, the Creative Commons New Zealand law licences and sets out a review and release process which agencies can use to determine the basis on which information and copyright works may be released. |
So far as copyright works are concerned, NZGOAL proposes that agencies apply the most liberal of the New Zealand Creative Commons law licences to those of their copyright works that are appropriate for release, unless there is a restriction which would prevent this. The most liberal Creative Commons licence is the Attribution (BY) licence. So far as non-copyright information is concerned, NZGOAL recommends the use of clear “no-known rights” statements, to provide certainty for people wishing to re-use that information. Read more at blog.e.govt.nz |
Australia and New Zealand governments agree to standardise the definitions of information that businesses report to them. “This new agreement builds on successful cooperation between Australia and New Zealand as we forge closer trade and economic links and continue work towards a Single Economic Market.” |
The MOU SBR will, among other things, standardise the definitions of the information businesses report to government, including standardising the terminology used in forms to pre-fill reports with data from businesses accounting systems and providing a single secure sign-on for businesses to submit forms electronically to the right government agencies using their accounting system software. |
“In Australia alone, reducing this burden is expected to save business some $800 million a year when the program is fully implemented.” |
The new Washington DC CTO explains how the district is saving millions of dollars. Cloud Computing Is First Option for New Apps in Washington, D.C. |
Less than a year after its high-profile adoption of Google’s hosted e-mail and productivity tools, cloud computing has become Washington ,D.C.’s first option for deploying new applications, according to Chris Willey, the district’s chief technology officer (CTO). |
Willey, in a recent interview with Government Technology, said Google Apps and other cloud-based services have saved the district millions of dollars and generated scores of useful new tools. |
“We built 85 applications over the course of about 10 months, and it only cost us a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Willey said. “If we were trying to do the same thing using traditional tools, it would have taken years and it would have cost several million dollars.” Read more at www.govtech.com |
Web inventor to help Downing Street open up government data |
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, will help the British government to make its data more easily available online, Gordon Brown said today. |
Sir Tim has been an eager proponent of better access to all forms of government and other data. In a talk to the TED conference in March, shown below, he said: “What you find if you deal with people in government departments is that they hug their database, hold it really close, so that they can build a beautiful website to present it. |
“I would like to suggest: sure, make a beautiful website, but first, give us – all of us – the unadulterated data. We have to ask for raw data now.” Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
The US government outlines its requirements for cloud computing - this will probably be used as the starting point for many other governments around the world. The requirement to host within own country means that US will have a competitive advantage compared to other smaller countries.
GSA Outlines U.S. Government’s Cloud Computing Requirements
|
A newly issued RFQ details what’s expected from cloud computing vendors in terms of security, SLAs, geographic location, and data ownership.
|
The RFQ includes ground rules for being a cloud service provider to the U.S. government. Federal agencies will retain ownership of data and applications hosted online, and they can request full copies of data or apps at any time. In addition, cloud services are to be multi-tenant in architecture, be able to be provisioned securely and remotely, scale elastically, reside within the continental United States, and provide visibility into resource usage.
Read more at www.informationweek.com |
UK government putting pressure on communications industry to bear the cost of storing all phonecalls, emails, texts and internet communications - they should do a deal with Google. The communications industry has condemned government plans to force them to monitor your calls, emails and internet usage |
Government plans to outsource official spying, forcing communication service providers like BT to retain personal communications data – records of all phonecalls, emails, texts and internet connections – have been severely criticised by the industry expected to do ministers dirty work for them. |
But the cost is not really the issue. The policy is one of the foundation stones of the surveillance state – a society in which data from people’s movement, travel abroad, spending habits and communications are retained by government and its agencies – and is an indicator of the profound contempt and mistrust this government has for the public. It represents as great an intrusion as the national identity register, the central database planned with the ID card. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 1: Linked Data |
| RWW: In a recent Design Issues note, you urge governments to put their data online as Linked Data (although you’d also be happy for governments to just make available the raw data - presumably so that others can then structure it). What do you realistically expect, for example, the U.S. or U.K. governments to do over the next year? And in the near future, do you foresee different governments interconnecting their Linked Data sets? |
The way to go is for government departments to go the extra step and convert [their data] into Linked Data. One of the nice things about Linked Data, when they have a pile of it, is that they could run a SPARQL server on it. SPARQL servers are a commodity product, a solution for all of the people who say ‘but actually I wanted to have XML.’ A SPARQL server will generate an XML file [and] allow somebody to write out, effectively, a URL for the XML file. |
So the message [for government] is to use RDF. Linked Data is the backplane, it’s the thing that you connect to in both directions. As a [web] producer your job is to make sure that you produce Linked Data one way or another. And as a consumer, there are lots of ways to consume that data once it’s out there as Linked Data. Read more at www.readwriteweb.com |
Govt lags private sector SaaS adoption in Asia |
While Asia Pacific’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market is expected to reach a high of US$298 million in 2009, little of this growth is expected to come from the government sector.
|
|
Five ways that Apps.gov is a trendsetter
