Tech Notes
by Behzad Behtash
We're sure most IT pros will agree that the best thing about 2009 is that it's over. CIOs were forced to run much tighter ships, with capital expenditures postponed or put on hold. Forget introducing innovative storage technologies--or sometimes, even doing basic maintenance, despite the fact that many of our infrastructures are bursting at the seams
View Entire Article Here
http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600275&queryText=behzad%20behtash
by Sandra Gittlen
As the economy continues to put a stranglehold on state and local government budgets, officials seek to eke out the most from the infrastructure and personnel they have in place. Therefore, many have shifted mobile technology projects to the front burner to heighten efficiency and keep what limited resources they have in the field.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.statetechmag.com/issues/july-august-2009/5-technologies-for-field-workers.html
by Elizabeth Woyke
Raleigh is the kind of tech-forward city that, innovative as it is, often gets overlooked in favor of San Francisco, San Jose or Seattle. But this year the North Carolina capital passed its flashier rivals to grab the No. 1 spot on Forbes' Most Wired Cities list.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/broadband-wifi-telecom-technology-cio-network-wiredcities.html?boxes=techchannellighttop
by Joe McKendrick
Look at some recent examples of IT gone wrong. Toyota is dealing with the most massive recall in its history (for software controlling the pedal assembly). A recently merged bank locked customers out of their accounts for two weeks (as they attempting to merge two IT systems). A few weeks back, The New York Times ran an article on how a number of patients were overdosed with radiation with disastrous and tragic consequences.
View Entire Article Here
http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=4214&tag=wrapper;col1
by Beth Schultz
In Wisconsin, IT security administrators have focused on intrusion detection technology to keep intruders out of the state’s information systems. Across the mighty Mississippi, their peers in Minnesota have placed an emphasis on intrusion prevention. Now comes time for a meeting of the minds
View Entire Article Here
http://www.statetechmag.com/issues/december-2009-january-2010/banding-together.html
by Rob Gurwitt
The coming year will be excruciating for state budget-makers not just because revenues continue to decline and new rounds of budget cutting are necessary, but because the realization has started to dawn — and not just in the hardest-hit places — that fundamental assumptions about how state government operates need rewiring.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.governing.com/article/bleak-outlook-state-finances
by Julia King
The 2010 Premier 100 honorees pushed ahead with vital projects at a time when it was especially difficult to excel. They are innovators in the face of economic adversity. As Julia King notes in our cover story, the motto of many of the winners seems to be "Why waste a perfectly good economic crisis?" That's the attitude it takes to succeed in times like these.
Lawrence T. Di Gioia, City of Altamonte Springs
http://www.computerworld.com/spring/p100/detail/229
Phyllis J. Koch, City of Boynton Beach
http://www.computerworld.com/spring/p100/detail/253
View Entire Article Here
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/344381/IT_s_top_tier_Strong_and_steady_leadership
by Stacy Collett
It seems that IT leaders are warming up to cloud computing, with its promise of elasticity, utility-based billing, multiple storage locations, and the ability to pull data directly from storage devices. In fact, cloud computing ranked second (behind virtualization) as the technology most beta-tested in 2009, according to Computerworld's 2010 Forecast survey of more than 300 IT executives.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/345488/Cloud_computing_Love_it_or_hate_it_?taxonomyName=Cloud+Computing&taxonomyId=65
by Ellen Perlman
The Gaines County, Texas, Web site is not going to win design prizes anytime soon. The home page features a grainy photo of the county courthouse. The most current news item posted is from June—that is, June of 2008. And most of the links to county departments and offices lead to little more than an address, a phone number and hours of operation.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.governing.com/node/5205/
by David F. Carr
Your Web site is a crucial part of your business. How would you like it if it were to disappear overnight, with you having no quick way of getting it back?
View Entire Article Here
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/18/web-sites-godaddy-technology-business-intelligence-domains.html?boxes=techchannellighttop
by David Strom
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offers both big promises and big challenges for IT managers. On the plus side, the idea of running some of your desktops inside a secure data center has a lot of appeal, particularly to the generation that grew up during the mainframe computing era and wishes to return to those simpler days. Data and applications can be better protected; endpoints can be more easily patched, cloned and supported; and users can access their desktops from anywhere there is an Internet connection and a Web browser.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Virtualization/Getting-Started-With-VDI-810560/
by Shawn McCarthy
Here's a quick question for government systems managers: Do you know what the authority is for all the data you import? If not, do you have a way to establish that authority and maintain data integrity?
View Entire Article Here
http://gcn.com/Articles/2009/12/14/Internaut-Tagged-Data-Authority-Engines.aspx
by Jonathan Feldman
Business executives are reading about cloud computing and asking when their companies are going to get on board. CIOs must do three things to respond to those requests and to help business units take advantage of cloud computing without putting them at undue risk.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/hosted_apps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222900088&queryText=7%20questions%20key%20to%20social%20networking
by Stacy Collett
Are you turning over every stone to find hidden savings? The Procter & Gamble Co. is, and it found millions of dollars -- all hidden under thousands of printers and copiers
View Entire Article Here
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/346246/Taming_the_Printer_Chaos
by Mark H. Wittow and Jessica C. Pearlman
Open-source software is an increasingly popular software development and distribution model that may spread further in the face of financial constraints in our current economy. With publicly available source code generally offered without charge, it is tempting to look to open source for potentially significant cost savings in this time of need.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.cio.com/article/511115/How_Using_Open_Source_Software_Can_Affect_Your_Company_s_Value
by Tina Trenkner
Jeffrey Horne wasn't new to social media. He liked using Facebook and Twitter to keep up with friends and had dabbled some in blogging. Early last year, when he was the city administrator of Mitchellville, Iowa, he got to thinking that Facebook could be a good thing for civic engagement, too. Horne created a Facebook "fan page" for Mitchellville. He knew that not everyone in the town of 2,300 was on Facebook. But he figured that those who were might enjoy using the popular Web site to communicate with their local government.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.governing.com/article/social-media-friend-or-foe-government
by Steve Towns
Los Angeles became a cloud-computing pioneer in late October 2009 when the City Council unanimously approved a five-year deal with Google to use the company's Internet-based e-mail and productivity tools. The city is thought to be the largest government entity that decided to move its entire e-mail system — used by 30,000 municipal employees — to Google's Gmail service.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.governing.com/column/los-angeles-embraces-googles-gmail
by Andy Opsahl
Stimulus applications from vendors, in this scenario, would face lower priority. The awardees were publicized, and all middle-mile and last-mile grants went to small telecommunications companies. This gave private vendors roughly a $173 million share of the money. Compare that to the $9.7 million governments got for public computing center expansions and broadband adoption programs. Large vendors didn't apply because they found the eligibility requirements too onerous.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.govtech.com/gt/746565
by Ellen Perlman
You’ve heard the stories about teens who post Facebook pictures of themselves getting smashed at parties or who “sext” compromising messages via cell phone. What are they thinking? Certainly not about how a future Google search could hurt their employment chances.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.governing.com/node/5214/
by Diane Sears
Instead of paying $113 for each e-mail account with Microsoft, the city now pays Google $45 a year for each user — saving the city $204,000 annually.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=52512
by Sandra Gittlen
As virtualization stretches deeper into the enterprise to include mission-critical and resource-intensive applications, IT executives are learning that double-digit physical-to-virtual server ratios are things of the past.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/346395/Virtualization_Beware_of_Server_Overload?taxonomyName=Servers+and+Data+Center&taxonomyId=154
by Reha Cimen
Created by the state of Texas in 1937, the San Antonio River Authority serves Bexar, Goliad, Karnes and Wilson counties. The organization strives to protect and preserve our water resources, and much of the work we do is project-driven. Projects constitute the majority of our operations and include engineering, utilities, environmental studies, digital mapping and IT initiatives.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.statetechmag.com/issues/july-august-2009/project-prowess.html
by Vanessa Jo Roberts
“If it looks like rain, it’s going to flood,” says Patty Mains of the Department of Emergency Services, only half jokingly. Now, when flash floods threaten, the department taps an alert service and immediately pushes a warning to citizens in the affected area.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.statetechmag.com/issues/december-2009-january-2010/the-sky-s-the-limit.html
by Michele Hope
Storage administrators know the drill: Someone in the organization needs extra capacity allocated to a new application. How much is enough? Most end up overallocating to cover both current and estimated future needs, resulting in wasted capacity that’s seldom used.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.statetechmag.com/issues/october-november-2008/the-storage-diet-2.html
by Joe Weinman
This is the question that any business-focused CIO must ask. After all, CIO's have a small number of projects that they can really focus on in any given year, and major initiatives must have a compelling rationale or won't get supported by senior leadership, including the board. The technology will only be important if the business value is clear and compelling.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=223101216§ion=news
by Steve Towns
State and local agencies may be embracing Web 2.0 to interact with citizens and constituents, but they're struggling with social-network use among their own employees. In too many instances, the first inclination of public-agency managers still is to restrict access to popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube for rank-and-file employees.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.governing.com/column/tweeting-public-good
by Paul W. Taylor
The column's name -- signal:noise -- set a high bar for these essays. It sought to differentiate the quality information from the irrelevant or incorrect information.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.govtech.com/gt/743883
by Michael Biddick
Business technology leaders find themselves in something of a cloud computing deluge, showered by vendor marketing, new services, and even CEO questions about their "cloud strategy." Much of the exuberance centers on the kind of computing-by-the-hour service that Amazon.com and others sell but most enterprises are only starting to ponder.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/saas/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222301006&queryText=michael%20biddick
by Paul McDougall
"We see continuing momentum in Windows 7 to date," said Microsoft CFO Peter Klein, who spoke Tuesday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference in San Francisco.
View Entire Article Here
http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=223101367§ion=news