Executive Summary

Columbus Ohio is rated by Neilson Online as the 8^th highest user of social media applications and has been rated as a top technology city in the US. As the center of State government we have an opportunity to broaden the capability of our current human capital while becoming more attractive to a younger generation of public servants. This general familiarity with social media applications and technology means that the time is right for the State of Ohio to seize the moment.

Governor Strickland has appropriately suggested that our economic recover and the State of Ohio’s future must include investment in developing new technologies and better utilizing the technologies available today.

I believe we can begin implementing a 5 point program now which will save the State money, empower both State employees and the general public and create a technological culture that will stimulate growth in the State of Ohio.

• Utilize social applications and multi-media in a professional manor to maximize knowledge transfer, collaborative effort and transparency.
• Make use of linked data as a way to maximize enterprise information sharing.
• Create an Open Data Store for the State of Ohio that allows employees, citizens and organizations direct digital access to public information.
• Design future applications using Open Source standards and include Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow employees, citizens and organizations the ability to create useful mashups.
• Centralize all agency applications and data to a State of Ohio “Cloud” and develop desktop standards that reflect the lesser local system demand.

The key to success in this endeavor is to utilize resources that already exist such as GPL Open Source Software that many State employees already utilize in their personal lives. Another important component of success will be to clearly define the parameters of public data for the sake of protecting citizen and employee identities. Security should not be a barrier to moving in this direction; the data already exists on the network and we are already taxed with due diligence to protect it.

This set of ideas is not bleeding edge and is thus appropriate for consideration by a public entity such as the State of Ohio. In fact, some of these ideas may already be partially implemented and just need to be brought full circle.

A quick review of some of the most useful applications on the internet reveals the success of opening up your data and providing APIs to the general public. Without this we wouldn’t have ended up with resources such as Govloop.com, EveryBlock.com, The Commons, Google Transit Maps, Recovery.gov, etc. Clearly this is the time for the State of Ohio to embrace these ideas.

Point-by-Point

Utilize social applications and multi-media in a professional manor to maximize knowledge transfer, collaborative effort and transparency.

Social applications are loosely defined as applications that allow interaction and two way communications of ideas and thoughts. Some of the most popular social applications are iGoogle, Wikipedia, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

What makes these sites so popular and how can we leverage those ideas for doing business at the State of Ohio?

If we break down what each application actually does for us we can start to understand how the principles can apply to our various business models.

iGoogle: This juggernaut of a company provides extensive social applications but is primarily known for its search, email and news reader functions.

The search function allows for users to promote pages that more correctly match what they were searching for as well as remove results that were erroneous.

Often when searching for documentation of policy, procedure, law, etc. on the State of Ohio website the search results that are returned have little to do with what you hope to locate. This is primarily related to the searcher’s lack of knowledge about State terminology and acronyms. By giving the searcher the tools to teach the search engine their understanding, our search results can improve exponentially.

We currently utilize Google as the provider of our search services so implementation of this would be relatively easy.

I don’t believe that the case could, or should, be made to utilize Gmail however I believe that the iGoogle RSS news reader function is, at least functionally, something important to consider. Utilizing an RSS news reader allows for delivery of important information whether it is keeping up with the latest industry trends or using internal feeds for important stories about a department or agency. In our current environment there is a desire to standardize our email system with MS Outlook. If that direction is followed there are free, powerful add-ons such as Attensa which can provide this functionality inside our current email application.

RSS news readers are only as good as the feeds they deliver. This means that our networks will have to be open enough to navigate blogs and other social media sites that provide RSS subscription. Policy will need to be adjusted across the agencies to create the appropriate balance. Access and usage of the internet is related more to management of employees than it is to locking down network access.

Besides external RSS news feeds agencies should embrace the use of internal RSS feeds. Almost any finalized document can be setup to syndicate via RSS. This could allow management and clients (when appropriate) instant notification of published documents or other media. Digital notifications could go out this way instead of sending large emails, which reduces system resource strain.

Wikipedia: This application is best known for its role as a user generated encyclopedia but it is the foundation of the application that is most useful to the State. A Wiki is free software that allows multiple users to collaborate on document creation without the same sort of ownership issues caused by applications such as MS SharePoint. Wiki’s are developed around standards such as XML/RSS which allows for automatic notification of changes and completion of projects.

Wiki software can allow various levels of collaboration including allowing the general public to provide comments during project development in the cases that this is appropriate. Not only would that provide the State with a diversity of input but it could also provide the State expertise that it otherwise wouldn’t have had access to. This is similar to President Obama’s current plan of allowing for public feedback on bills which are not considered emergency legislation.

Wiki software could also act as a repository for best practice information that currently exists only in the minds of employees or perhaps in emails or standalone documents. The linkable data within a Wiki would make this information significantly more accessible than in those other mediums.

WordPress: WordPress is one of the most popular blog platforms; it is Open Source and free to download. The blog application however is more important an idea than the specific WordPress product. Blogs offer a very simple interface for sharing information on any range of topics. The blog posts can instantly feed via RSS making them another good option for immediate reporting. Blogs are also a great way of creating linkable data.

Currently information which may be important to multiple individuals, such as lessons learned, project status or even weekly status reports are trapped in standalone systems or provided in a closed format.

Providing narrative type information via a blog post can create searchable, linkable information and history which becomes a resource for the whole organization. If an individual has downtime during a week they can spend that time learning more about best practices, etc. which they can then share on their blog status report. This offers the opportunity to provide knowledge to everyone subscribed to their RSS news feed.

Facebook: The actual Facebook application may be a source of outreach for certain State agencies or departments and that may include developing applications to further our understanding of citizens needs. More important than the Facebook brand however is the community and networking that comes from such an application.

Ning is a social networking platform similar to Facebook which can be built for any community of interest desired. Similar to Facebook, a Ning allows for RSS feeds to come into it so that you do not have to replicate work you have already done in say a Wiki or a blog. The power of these communities is the ability to see what a colleague is working on or questioning and then contributing to that effort in either a small or large way.

The nature of these community applications is growing your network by becoming a “Friend of a Friend”. In the business environment this would be an expansion of your professional network based on similar work roles, shared projects and other collaboration opportunities.

As your network grows you will find greater opportunity to serve the State in ways that would otherwise not have been considered due to the current status of silo type work environments.

Twitter: Twitter itself is a powerful micro-blogging community which allows for a great deal of knowledge transfer in short, easy to digest bursts. This micro-blogging type of application is available for internal only communications as well and it works with RSS to provide efficient communication across multiple social networks.

Consider using micro-blogging as a way of updating internal workgroups and clients about immediately useful information or as a way to poll others internally for ideas without needing to formally meet.

YouTube and Flickr: There are several other social media applications along these lines; not the least of which are Utterli (primarily an audio based application) and Slideshare (a slide presentation application) which can all be defined as multi-media based social networks. The opportunity for the State of Ohio in these types of applications are many fold but mostly center around training issues or delivery of ancillary data to the social media applications listed above.

Beyond the ease of outreach of social media the single biggest advantage is the ability to communicate the same message in any number of different mediums. Looking at how news media is adopting to the online environment you see traditional newspapers such as the NY Times providing an enormous amount of video, audio and slide-show content while television and radio broadcasters are providing transcripts along side their recorded media.

The State now has the opportunity to provide low-budget multi-media laced information to internal and external users who internalize information in different ways (i.e. Visual, Aural, and Spatial learners).

Make use of linked data as a way to maximize enterprise information sharing.

The idea of linked data is to use semantic tools to create a more useful set of search options for your data. Linked data includes the actual hyper-links that a user determines are appropriate to clarify or support a document but also information such as tags and other meta-data which makes a document, picture, video or other form of data more understandable to search engines and machines.

As I pointed out in my examples of social media applications above they can all link between each other, feed information via RSS, and most utilize a standard format such as XML. The power of providing linked data is expected to grow over the coming years as users become more adept at providing appropriate meta-data and machines become better at understanding users.

To maintain some sense of order to an otherwise chaotic world of data the adoption of policies which encourage the creation of meta-data are essential. The benefits of easily retrievable information makes this well worth the time investment on the front end.

Create an Open Data Store for the State of Ohio that allows employees, citizens and organizations direct access to public information.

Organizations that create massive amounts of data are creating data stores that allow others access to the data in a scrubbed, but otherwise raw format. The theory behind this is that if someone can have access to your data they can quickly and easily reuse that data to create a remix or mashup that is useful to them.

Most individuals and small organizations do not have the resources to build the kind of databases that large organizations have built. Similarly, large organizations often miss the opportunity to build small, niche query applications because it is not a part of their mission.

The social media application EveryBlock.com exploits data from thousands of resources to build hyper-local profiles useful to citizens. Without that data being made freely available this extremely useful remix and mashup would never exist.

Internal State staff as well as external individuals and organizations would be able to utilize data across all State resources to create new, meaningful applications and reports that otherwise would be impossible to deliver.

An Open Data Store would include access to finalized documents coming through the social media applications discussed above as well as data from legacy agency applications. This availability would significantly cut down on Freedom of Information Act requests as the requester would be able to simply search and link to the data themselves.

Design future applications using Open Source Software standards and include Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow employees, citizens and organizations the ability to create useful mashups.

Due to growing concerns about transparency organizations such as the State of Ohio have an opportunity to be proactive by creating software based on Open Source standards. The adoption of such standards under the broader goals of the Free Culture movement would then show a proactive stance in regards to how transparently government functions over all.

In general the primary cost benefit of developing applications under Open Source standards would be to provide greater competition between vendors for development, maintenance and upgrade work. When combined with providing APIs this greatly increases a user’s ability to enhance an application without directly impacting the core system.

Similar to opening up data stores, by providing APIs many users will be able to provide functionality useful to them that otherwise wouldn’t be affordable or may have not even been imagined. The additional functionality would then become useable by the State or any other entity.

As discussed above, by opening up data across the board, including access to process and procedure documentation, both internal and external clients can become more effective in how they utilize the resources and services the State provides.

Centralize all agency applications and data to a State of Ohio “Cloud” and develop desktop standards that reflect the lesser local system demand.

While a significant number of applications already exist at the SOCC most State agencies still host large client/server environments, silo email systems, expensive desktop machines and software, support staff across all layers of the agencies and the resulting diversity of procurements necessary to maintain everything.

By centralizing the applications and data significant cost savings could be realized through the support of fewer computing centers. Reducing the diversity of hardware and software on the server side would also provide greater uniformity to applications; making the creation of an Open Data Store and APIs easier.

Moving all applications and data to the cloud will provide the State with greater control over enterprise standards and procurements. This will allow for greater cost savings, particularly when purchasing IT commodities.

Following the lead of several foreign governments and international corporations the State of Ohio could shift desktop computing away from proprietary software and towards OSS. Linux and Open Office are both extremely user friendly, powerful and interoperate well with Microsoft products until a complete transition can occur. In the case of most State employees very inexpensive desktop computers could be utilized since much of the processing and all of the data would be dealt with by the cloud.

On lower-end hardware Linux based systems perform much better than Microsoft based systems due to lower processor and memory overhead.

There is immense savings to be found in centralization albeit at great political expense. Like a majority of other states, governments and private entities, the State of Ohio can and should elevate the Office of Information Technology to a prominent position giving them the political capital necessary to best serve the needs of State government and the taxpayers.

Conclusion

There will always be a pull over what are appropriate uses of technology in the work place. The argument is greatly rooted in the idea that managers must maintain rigid controls or else they will lose productivity. While this may be the case with certain individuals the reality is that efficiencies and cost savings never previously imaginable are attainable by properly utilizing the collaborative technology available and managing as is appropriate to the current technological environment. The State of Ohio has an enormous opportunity that should be taken advantage of.

Basic Principles

• Social Applications to interconnect groups across disciplines and agencies.
• Multi-media learning environments.
• Encourage use of social networking for professional growth.
• Make office perform more collaboratively.
• Flatten organizational hierarchy.
• Provide data in XML and other standard formats internally and externally.
• Common data repository for scrubbed (no address/SS#) data.
• Connect voicemail to text-mail (i.e. iPhone or Google vmail to text apps) which is more portable.
• Tag all documents as part of process to create “linked data”.
• Allow entry point for external users.
• Create internal cloud as shared service with all agency applications being web-available.
• Create all future applications as Open Source Software (OSS) for higher vendor competition.
• Follow GPL/OS standards to allow for better transparency.
• Utilize OSS desktop for cost savings.
• Provide API to allow for greater customization by users.