Who Should Use This Site?

This site is for open discussion, as well as to submit ideas and suggestions, CIO/OFT employees can submit ideas and suggestions on CIO/OFT's comparable internal suggestion platform.

About "Empire 2.0", Our State Social Networking Initiative

On June 5th, the New York State Office of the Chief Information Officer announced a new technology initiative themed "Empire 2.0" which targets social networking, participation and collaboration as part of an overall theme of transparency and open government. This initiative is modeled after and in support of President Obama's strategy on Open Government which he outlined in his "Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government" issued January 21st. The New York State Office of the Chief Information Officer has created this online brainstorming session to hear from the community, your most important ideas relating to technology in New York State government.

What is This Site?

This platform allows you to submit ideas, discuss and refine others' ideas, and vote the best ones to the top. We are seeking innovative approaches to policy, specific technology or project suggestions, state-wide or agency-specific feedback, and any relevant examples and stories relating to technology and technology policy.

Some questions to consider in formulating ideas include:

  • How might the operations of government be made more transparent and accountable through the use of new technology?
  • What strategies might be employed to adopt greater use of Web 2.0 in agencies?
  • What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?
  • What is the best way to change the culture of government to embrace collaboration?
  • What changes in training or hiring of personnel would enhance innovation?
  • What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of utilizing new technology and new tools in government?
Share Your Ideas!

 
All the New York State Website need to be in complance with Section 508 (accessibility for person with disability)
Open Public Meeting Law said that all information should be avalable to all. With so much of the information being posted on State, County, and Local Goverments this is now a mandate to make sure the websites are accessible to all!!!
The state can look to Federal Website for complance with Web stanards for person wtih a disability at Section508.gov
Thanks
Hope that you will make the over 3.6 million person with disability in this state have access to the New York State Website.
 
All senior City decision-makers should be required to publish online the date and duration of all meetings with external parties. They should be allowed not to publish this information where there is a justification for not doing so, but on a regular basis each decision-maker should have to publish the number of meetings whose details he has not made public in the usual way.
 
I think policies should be linked to the building block of the IT city plan. Just like, city planner enforces certain polices and standards for a particular area (e.g. residential complex, manufacturing complex etc) , similarily , we need to enforce policies at the building blocks/ cluster level. Let me give you an example, if I have to setup some policies for the ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system, then I will have different policies for "creating contents" vs "publishing contents". Different capabilities are needed for "creating contents" vs "publishing contents" and hence different policies. You will also need different set of standards for "creating contents" vs "publishing contents".. you may would like to use FileNet for creating contents but probably would like to use Adobe or MIcorosft Word/Outlook for publishing contents.

Cheers!
Syed Suhail Ahmad
 
Very good topic to discuss in this economy. However, its not an easy task to develop a plan to systematically reduce the cost of IT.

I think cost should be linked to the architecture elements. In mapping costs to architectural elements and then aggregating them in various combinations (i.e. business process, capability etc) that are relevant to the business, IT can achieve a clear understanding of the costs. These architecture elements are the components that support a business capability.. you will then know how much is the operating cost to support a capability. Now, business can see the operating costs of a business capability/competency and can reduce the cost by focuing in those areas which need attention, ie, the area where business needs to close the performnace gap.

 
Hello,

Enjoyed reading the Enterprise IT Stratgey Plan 2009-2012. I like the idea of clustering the businesses of states into meaningful categories. On a high level, it make very much sense and this is what we do when we do business tranformation/enterprise architecture.

My question is that , do we have any tactical plan also, for example, how would you break dowsn the business clusters (see page 23 on http://www.cio.ny.gov/assets/documents/ITStrategicPlan072909.pdf )into meaningful sub categories, what methodology/framework would you use, how would you define the competencies into related areas?

Probably, we should learn from a city planner who plan a city.. residential areas are seperate from commercial or industrial areas.. we may have to adopt the same technique and same thinking, thoughts?

Can I really revise this post??
 
In listening to Melodie Mayberry-Stewart talk about the Twitter account that posts updates about Niagara Bridges, the question came up about the risk involved in encouraging drivers to read twitter feeds as they drive across the Niagara bridges. One thinks they may be looking at these BEFORE leaving, but then some may not.

My idea is to also have the electronic road signs subscribe to these feeds thereby providing a "heads-up" display of this information to discourage users from looking at the small screen of their mobile phone.

--Scott Lawson, QAD, Inc.
 
As social networking continues to gain in importance as a tool for employees to connect and collaborate, there appears to be a clear divide developing between those who are permitted access to these tools by their agency and those who aren't. I attended a recent meeting of a number of agencies, and through a show of hands there was a roughly 50-50 split between those permitted access and those denied. As the State continues to bring in young minds who are used to relying on these tools every day, which agencies do you think will be in a better position to attract and retain these valuable people?

Agency CIO's should get together to weigh the value these tools provide against what they see as potential losses in productivity, and develop a more consistent policy and plan for permitting access.
 
The Workforce One community is run by the federal government, but I wonder if NY State ouldn't have a workforce development presence of it's own that someone works with or integrates to Workforce One? (www.workforce3one.org)
 
CIO/OFT could provide Cloud computing services by deploying high speed links to Cloud vendors such as Google, Amazon, 3Tera, GoGrid, etc. from CIO/OFT Data Centers. This could be an additional service at lower cost and reduced service levels than CIO/OFT Hosted Servers for customers whose program needs are satisfied by this delivery model. This may allow NYENET customers to access virtual Data Center Services using CIO/OFT Technical expertise and support models.
 
Meetings in Virtual Worlds are amazingly like working side by side with people. it would be interesting if we could use this medium to get governments working cross-jurisdictionally.
 
One problem I face on a local level is the availability of Facebook on the county network. Many times govt. IT departments will not allow access to social networking sites due to the potential for abuse, i.e. time wasting.

"Linked In" seems to be an exception due to it's business like status. (Don't tell the network admins. that's it's really a social network, please...)

Twitter still works, perhaps because of the short message limitation

Are you working in other parts of the new media also?

Have you considered the "NING" community? It seems to be another alternative for specific groups or communities.
 
Given the simultaneous issuance of the cancellation of the CIO/OFT All-Employee Meeting, and the Empire 2.0 memo, might we consider tying the two together? Post a Facebook video link to an All-Employee meeting? Use Twitter to ask questions? Etc.
 
Policymakers at all levels of government, and the public at large, as well as local and regional offices of state agencies, like to have locality-specific information. Often, aggregated stats about statewide programs or policies will be less interesting to those seeking to use data than "how it effects my County/City/Town."

Appending a georeference data field to publicly-available records as a convention would allow for using a map interface to display data. Map interfaces are engaging, and offer visual analytic capacity that allows users to gain understanding from underlying statistics without having to look at a lot of numbers.
 
With a constant diminishing of the workforce, a constant expansion of services, a constant enforcement of regulatory requirements, and a constant addition of mandatory training, it is amazing that we ever accomplish anything in the State, but somehow we do. I think the agency needs to take a hard look at what we do. Are there services that should be eliminated? Are there processes that can be streamlined? It is better to do a few things well as opposed to many things haphazardly.

CIO/OFT has some of the hardest and smartest workers I've met in my 31 years of employment. The agency needs to pull together as a team to figure this all out.
 
I think the new datacenter should be built using an aggressive strategy for going green. It should consider alternate energy sources, smartgrid computing, metering, highest level of energy efficient equipment.
 
What if we could utilize stimulus dollars to light fiber along the NYS Thruway. Imagine the increased economic development opportunities by expanding high speed access to the towns along the thruway.