Game changer: Open Government Directive puts new onus on agencies |
White House lays out new data transparancy mandates—with deadlines |
| The
Open Government Directive
that the Obama administration released today lays out several deadlines for agencies, all centered on making government data easy to access and use.
Within 45 days, agencies must make a minimum of three high-value data sets available to the public, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said today during a Web chat announcing the new directive. |
If the bill is drafted poorly it could leave room for abuse, unless the intent is clearly defined.
Telecom’s submission also seems to imply that because there is NO standard for surveillance, it will need to comply with adhoc requirements at the cost of $1.5 - $1.8m PER agency (and there are 20 agencies).
Is there the opportunity for a telcos/govt agencies clearing house and standards setting organisation, to reduce costs / improve performance? Telecom blows whistle on Search and Surveillance Bill |
Telco says search powers could amount to continuous surveillance |
| The company says in its submission that, as currently written, an order for a telecommunications operator to produce the “call-related information” of a particular customer, could effectively become a licence for continuous surrender of voice-call content information. |
Further, the technology necessary to provide such content would be “extremely costly”, Telecom says. It may be necessary to install a number of systems to satisfy the requirements of each
enforcement agency (and there are more than 20 agencies to which the legislation will apply). “Telecom estimates total cost to add a single law enforcement agency would be of the order of $1.5 million to $1.8 million per agency,” says the submission.Read more at computerworld.co.nz |
New Wi-Fi lets gadgets talk directly
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| Starting in mid-2010, new versions of gadgets like cameras, mobile phones and computers will be able to talk to each other using Wi-Fi without needing to connect to a wireless network first.
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The Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group, said Wednesday it is nearly finished putting together a Wi-Fi Direct specification, a set of technical “rules” that guide consumer electronics companies that plan to add the new capability. |
In creating the specification, the Alliance is moving into the territory of Bluetooth, a competing wireless technology that already handles direct gadget-to-gadget connections. Bluetooth uses less power but has much shorter range and a lower transfer speed. |
Despite thousands of data sources for geographic information systems, there’s no universal standard or widespread, non-proprietary way to federate that data. It doesn’t have to be this way. How To Fix The GIS Data Mess |
| Despite thousands of data sources for geographic information systems, there’s no universal standard or widespread, non-proprietary way to federate that data. It doesn’t have to be this way. |
Used to be that only local governments and shipping companies cared about geographic information systems. But now, the market is telling us that GIS is a “can’t live without” feature of not only place-based applications like Google Maps, but a mainstay of federal economic stimulus programs.
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There’s only one problem: GIS is fundamentally broken.
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That’s the situation with GIS. There are thousands of data sources for geographic information systems. Look no further than your local municipality or county. The problem is, there’s no universal standard, and even if there were, there’s no widespread, non-proprietary way to federate that data. Silo systems are an egregious 1980’s era enterprise architecture issue, and we’re all paying for it. Read more at intelligent-enterprise.informationweek.com |
Creating a unified model for enterprise mashups |
| Today marks the introduction of an effort by the new Open Mashup Alliance (OMA), a federation of interested parties in the mashup space that want to bring the benefits of standardization, consistency, interoperability, and a real marketplace to the world of enterprise mashups. The initial participants include a wide range of firms such as Adobe, CapGemini, HP, Intel, JackBe, Kapow, Programmable Web, Synteractive, and Xignite. |
| EMML exists fully today as one of the more mature enterprise mashup specifications available. It is robust, mature (it has been supporting production applications for several years), and now it is open for anyone to use via a Creative Commons license. Read more at blogs.zdnet.com |
Emerging standards for wireless charging of consumer personal devices. Wireless charging may have been a sci-fi dream for years but one new consortium is planning on making it a reality |
Wireless charging has been a sci-fi dream for several years without looking like making an impact on everyday life. But times are changing. The Wireless Power Consortium has just released version 0.95 of its standard spec for review, and it’s planning to host some interoperability testing at its next meeting in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, next month. |
And Qi’s prospects seem quite good. Consumers are certainly not in love with chargers for mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and similar gadgets. Almost all today’s devices seem to come with their own charger, and it almost never fits anything else. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
| The Health and Human Services Department is undertaking a balancing act as it crafts a nationwide structure for electronic exchanges of patient medical data |
| HHS needs to find the right combination of strong requirements tied to financial incentives that it can put in place while also leaving enough room for innovation |
To avoid harming innovation, the core requirements should be technology-neutral and architecture-neutral, the workgroup said. To reduce costs for providers, the federal government should certify the health information exchange components on these core requirements, the workgroup said. Read more at fcw.com |
Can the smart grid develop like the Internet? | Where the smart grid meets the Internet |
| Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist |
The term “smart grid” means many things to many people. At the most basic level, the smart grid is defining smarter ways to deliver and use energy — but did you know that the smart grid is also defining new ways to generate and exchange energy information? |
When people talk about networks for exchanging information — particularly among millions of end users — the first thing that often comes to mind is the Internet. So it makes sense to take the successful processes used to create Internet standards and apply them to this new energy information network. |
| The smart grid is essentially a nascent energy Internet. |
| Applying the same principles of openness to the development of standards for our nation’s electric grid would create a smarter platform for products and services, helping consumers conserve energy and save money.
Read more at googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com |
The Open Group is forming a new cloud computing committee to develop a common understanding about how cloud services should be deployed safely and effectively. Enterprise cloud use on agenda for new Open Group committee |
The Open Group is forming a new cloud computing committee to develop a common understanding about how cloud services should be deployed safely and effectively. |
The consortium’s Cloud Work Group includes vendors such as IBM and Sun, end-user organizations like Eli Lilly, financial services companies, and U.S. and U.K. government officials. |
With the Cloud Work Group, the organization is hoping vendors and users can collaborate to form a common set of beliefs about how cloud computing should be deployed, but isn’t looking to dictate a strict set of standards that every organization must follow. As of now, there are many different types of cloud models that enterprises are trying to make sense of, Lounsbury says. Read more at news.idg.no |
The debate over OOXML and ODF appears to be continuing, but with less visibility to most people. Should OOXML be a national standard? |
This is why I supported both the ODF and the OOXML technologies being written up as international standards. An international standard for IT is like a book in a library, to be selected and evaluated by users where appropriate. All care and no responsibility: you betcha…the standards committee is not in a position to dictate policy or regulation or to guess every possible application. |
But I do have some thoughts that generally bias me against national standardization of OOXML, or at least, against national standardization of OOXML’s Transitional dialect, in the absence of having heard any particular positive case. Read more at broadcast.oreilly.com |
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US Open Government Directive puts new onus on agencies
