UGA Key Moves Forward, Launches 2.0 with Syllabi and Speed

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 29, 2009

A side project that I love working on is the UGA Key, the the University of Georgia Online Course Review Book. UGA Key is an online grade database, containing the distribution for most courses’ grades over the past ten years.

Over three years ago, University of Georgia administrators decided that The Key (a long provided service to students) would no longer contain professor names, limiting its usefulness for UGA students.  Two friends and I resurrected The Key on a temporary website, maintaining the files that UGA previously published (one had been smart/enterprising enough to save all the previous data tables to a hard drive).  And then nearly two years ago, we opened a new website, UGAKey.com, to host a new version of The Key.  You can see the history of The Key here.

And today, we launched the second iteration of the UGA Key.

This second iteration, which I am calling UGA Key 2.0, was sorely needed.  The previous (first) version of UGA Key depended on a whole lot of javascript run inside the browser to function.  This provided some great functionality, but it took a long time to load and didn’t work on older or slower systems.  Another major problem was that the Key data was hosted on a different server than our own.  I don’t want to get into the details, but we were dependent on a separate web service keeping their API open and not having any downtime.  Plus, it was a pain to import new grades.  Not a great situation.

So I began working on a new version of The Key sometime in the past year (there have been a lot of starts and stops).  We put all the grade information in a database on our own server and began using an open source database front end to show that data.  We were even able to integrate a database of course syllabi that several groups at the University of Georgia had been working on.  We launched a beta of the new version in April.

And this past week I made a major breakthrough, fixing a sorting problem that was plaguing the grade data tables in the new version.  Incidentally, it also decreased the amount of time it takes a data table to show up in a web browser by about two-thirds (you have to remember to use the correct database structure and data formats- numerical versus variable characters in this case).

Over the weekend I worked on the design and style of the beta.  And last night (this morning, Eastern), I was comfortable enough to launch the new version and fulfill the promise I made on Twitter to launch this weekend.

This is really exciting event, and it’s also quite a relief.  But it isn’t the end by any means.  We still need to add as many course syllabi as we can find, and there are a few other tweaks that I would like to make.  I would also like to sell some advertising to Athens businesses and student groups, since the UGA Key is such an easy way to communicate with students (shameless plug – interested in reaching UGA students with your ads?).

Long live The Key!

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UGA Key Has New Data

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 24, 2009

Just a quick note.  We upgraded the database over at the beta version of the UGA Key.  The Key now includes ten years worth of grade data (Fall 1999 to Spring 2009).  We also did a little bit of database optimization to fix a bug, which had the side effect of dropping the page load time by about 2/3- that’s the kind of side effect I like.  UGA Key News has the rest of the details.

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How Founder of WordPress Works

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 23, 2009

If you regularly read this site, you know I love WordPress, the open source CMS software that powers this site.  I also love hearing about how other (more productive than me) people work, so it was interesting to read this article by the WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg on how he works.

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City of Bozeman Causes a Stir

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 19, 2009

*Update*

The City of Bozeman apologized and has said they will stop asking for social media passwords:

“We appreciate the concern many citizens have expressed regarding this practice and apologize for the negative impact this issue is having on the City of Bozeman,” City Manager Chris A. Kukulski said in a statement.

“This was an honest mistake,” he continued. “Human Resources, our Police and Fire Departments were doing something they believed was consistent with our core values. I take full responsibility for this decision and we will work hard to regain the trust and confidence of the City Commission and our community.”

*End Update*

The City of Bozeman, Montana, has caused a bit of a stir with a requirement in their job application.  Their job application requires potential hires to provide the City with usernames and passwords to any social networks they belong to:

Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc. [source: Background check waiver, pdf file]

They mention Google, but I wonder if that includes Google’s email service, Gmail.

The City doesn’t seem to be worried about the privacy implications of requiring applicants to give up their logins, because the city attorney had this to say to the local media:

“You know, I can understand that concern. One thing that’s important for folks to understand about what we look for is none of the things that the federal constitution lists as protected things, we don’t use those. We’re not putting out this broad brush stroke of trying to find out all kinds of information about the person that we’re not able to use or shouldn’t use in the hiring process,” Sullivan said. [emphasis added]

So trust us, we are only looking on your Facebook pages for things that aren’t covered under Freedom of Speech.

The local news station has a followup story here.

The City Manager provided the reasoning for the requirement for login information:

City Manager Chris Kukulski said the city checks the sites in order to ensure that employees who might be handling taxpayer money, working with children in recreation programs or entering residents’ homes as an emergency services worker are reputable and honest.

This might be true, but employers didn’t have access to this type of information prior to social networks, and still they made employment decisions.

I find it hard to believe that someone would ask for your logins on an employment application, let alone a public organization.  A respect for social networking tools would allow the City of Bozeman to spread the work about their community, but instead they are getting flamed on Twitter and elsewhere.  I take special note of this comment on Slashdot:

This has certainly done a lot of damage to our credibility as a tech friendly city (there are strong optics and software/service companies already operating here).

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North Carolina Forces Amazon Associates to Leave

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 18, 2009

TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon Associates members in North Carolina are having their memberships discontinued because the state of North Carolina will be taxing Amazon Associates payouts.  Amazon Associates is a program that allows members to get referral fees for directing customers to Amazon.com.  I’m not a huge fan of internet-type taxes, but this law forces Amazon to collect sales taxes (I don’t quite know what on, because the Amazon Associates member isn’t purchasing anything) to raise minimal revenue (the source of which will dry up, since Amazon is dropping the program in North Carolina).  Apparently online music and e-book purchases (think iTunes or Amazon Kindle) will also be charged sales tax.

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On Furloughs

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 17, 2009

This week the New York Times had a great article about furloughs, the budget-saving device that’s been in the news quite a bit recently. The article recounts the stories of several employees forced or volunteered to take furloughs to save money. The problem with furloughs, though, is that the expectations are still there that the employee needs to complete the same amount of work. Many furloughed employees are coming to work or working from home on their furlough days.

As for the reasons employees continue to work on furlough days:

Some people take the time off but feel bad about doing so, out of loyalty to bosses and colleagues left to carry the workload. Others work quietly — and sometimes openly — through furloughs, because they fear for the long-term safety of their positions and hope their self-sacrifice impresses the management.

And some say the message from the management is unclear, leaving employees wondering: Is this real time off?

“I think it’s a joke,” said Roland Becht, who works at the California Department of Motor Vehicles in San Diego. (More than 200,000 state employees are supposed to have two furlough days each month.) “I’ve tried to schedule furlough time and was denied because we’re short-staffed.”

The kicker is that employers expect the same work done in less time:

And as more people are laid off or placed on unpaid leave, the burdens rise for those left at their desks.

Mr. Becht, who has managed to take two of his eight furlough days, said he was often overwhelmed on the front line dealing with customers at the motor vehicle office. He works about an hour of overtime a day to keep up with the crush of customers. Work is more stressful than ever, he said.

Pay is less, but the work is more stressful.

The NYTimes notes that many workers didn’t want their names printed for the record, for fear of retribution at work.

I also noticed some similar articles this week about British Airways asking staff to work for free.

A recent article in Governing magazine, brought to my attention by my boss, talks about a different approach to save money and increase efficiency (which began as lean manufacturing or just ‘Lean’):

They’re not examining the actual work being done — the operations are fundamentally the same. Instead, they’re left with tired, overworked employees trying to do the same operations with fewer resources.

This approach creates an illusion of efficiency. Real efficiency is about looking at the systems — the way work itself is designed — and finding ways to streamline the work so that we do our important tasks very well in less time and with less hassle. Systems are where the costs are incurred. Systems are where the customers show up. Systems are where the value of the agency is created. And systems appear to be the last thing anyone is focusing on.

Lots of governments and businesses are using furloughs now to save money, but I really think furloughs are a short-term solution (but solution isn’t a good term to use here).  Furloughs are a temporary money saving device, but you sacrifice production and employee morale in using furloughs.  Governments and businesses that want to survive need to start looking at all the services they provide and begin making the tough decisions about which services are necessary.

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Official Blog of U.S. Army on WordPress

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 12, 2009

I just added this to the list of Governments Using Open Source CMS (content management systems), but I wanted to hit a quick post because of the importance.  I recently started tracking the use of open source content management systems by governments.

Army Live, the Official Blog of the United States Army, launched in April and uses WordPress.  The site has actually been up since April 7th, 2009 – here is the welcome post from the Army’s Chief of Public Affairs.  The WordPress Publisher Blog has coverage here.

I think this is pretty neat, especially looking through the posts.  I think more and more, folks (and governments) are learning that WordPress (and other open source CMSes) are easy to use and cost little to deploy.

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Links: Complaints via Twitter, Smartphones, Eagle Scouts

By Chris M. Lindsey on June 11, 2009

To follow up on my last post, here are some more random links that have recently come across my radar.

First, I am writing this in version 2.8 of WordPress.  WordPress 2.8 is an incremental improvement on 2.7, but it really rocks.  Here is the post announcing WordPress 2.8 (check out the video for the highlights) and here are some tips and tricks for using WordPress 2.8.

And because of the new WordPress release, I have fixed up a few things around here.  I disabled WP-Super-Cache (this takes a bit of load off the server by generating static HTML pages instead of querying the database ever page load) because it was messing with the Twitter bar on the right (really old tweets were showing up).  I will likely reenable this is traffic every picks up, but for now the site doesn’t need any caching.

I have also changed the byline of this site (again).  It began as Life in Athens, GA, then switched to Life in Lawrence, KS (when I moved to start grad school), then to Life in Jefferson County, CO (again, when I moved to Colorado).  These were all adequate descriptions of the site, but it needed something more.  WordPress includes that byline in the page title, so it shows up when you search on Google.  So I decided to use a more applicable byline for what I’ve been writing about.  Now the page title (and Google) read Chris M. Lindsey: Technology and Social Media in Public Administration.  I’m not completely sure about this, but hopefully it will last for a while.

Now for the links:

  • This article from the New York Times introduces the country to a 31-year-old Brian Deese, who is a major player in the automotive industry recovery.  Great article, and great job for Brian.  I hope more young people can make it into positions of influence, because I know we can bring a lot to the table.
  • The City of San Francisco is accepting complaints from citizens via Twitter.  I think this is the biggest of all the links, because it shows a city trying to connect with their citizens in the ways they communicate.  And you know what, this probably didn’t take very long or cost much (if any) money to implement.  Here is the Twitter user that is accepting the complaints.  More governments need to be doing this.
  • The New York Times says that smartphones are a necessity.  Especially if you are out of a job (sarcasm).  Seriously, why do jobless people need to be spending the money for a smartphone?
  • Ars Technica reviews the Palm Pre smartphone.  What I find interesting here is the discussion on the second page about having better contact integration.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be syncing (because who wants to have all of their Facebook friends or Gmail contact listings on their cell phone address book), but you should be able to access the contacts on these services.  And search all of them from one place.
  • Time has a great article on whether computer nerds can save old-fashioned journalism.
  • Gina Trapani linked to this great article in the New York Times that profiles Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great.  If you’ve read the book, read this profile.
  • Last but not least, the Athens-Banner Herald covers an Eagle Scout project.  Paul (a fellow Eagle Scout) sent me this link.  Jamie Jackson of Athens went above and beyond the call of Scouting and created a fish habitat from discarded Christmas trees.  The fish habitat is quite needed at Lake Chapman (in Sandy Creek Park, Athens) because of the way the lake was constructed (pretty much all lakes in Georgia were man-made), it cuts down on natural fish habitats.  Way to go, Jamie Jackson!

That’s it for today.  I hope to be writing more as I get into a more regular schedule with work.

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Some Random Links

By Chris M. Lindsey on May 29, 2009

I’ve recently moved out to Colordado (for my job with Jefferson County). Lots of links piled up, and I wanted to share some.

The Wall Street Journal had a great story on how Google uses complex algorithms (imagine that) to project which employees are likely to quit.  Governments are beginning to need to project retirements (really, they have been trying to do this for a while), and a little Google help could go along way.  There are so many factors that go into employees leaving or retiring, some real science would be really helpful.  I’m optimistic.

This story broke while Emily and I were moving, when it was featured on Good Morning America.  Everyone was saying that the Ida fossil was the “missing link”.  I was skeptical after the GMA report and interview, because a long time ago, a good anthropology professor told my class that there is never a “missing link” find.  All finds look to be a missing link because they have never been seen before, but each only adds to our knowledge.  The theory of evolution almost details that there will never be one missing link, because changes are gradual over long periods of time and these are difficult to be found in one fossil.  And then Ars Technica followed up all the hype by detailing the media circus and the long-term damage done to science.

Lastly, ComputerWorld has an excellent article about the advancement in municipal technologies (dubbed “City 2.0″).  Besides the fact that I hate everyone using the 2.0 deal to classify anything as new, there is a lot of good stuff here.  The article talks about new electricity initiatives and technology, the use of social media and social networking in local governments, city-wide wireless internet possibilities, sustainable data centers, and use of the cloud.

This little bit, though, bugs me:

San Jose, Calif., is one of the most high-tech cities in the U.S. Over the next few years, the city will create a social network on Wikiplanning that helps citizens learn about the city, chat over instant messaging, complete surveys and download city podcasts.

What bugs me is that the technology exists to deploy this, for free (see WordPress, BuddyPress, Jabber, etc.), right now.  And it’s easy to do!  A city might need a Linux server, but this can be deployed very quickly.  So why is this going to take years???  You can use these technologies to increase the communication with your citizens and stakeholders right now!

Ok, enough for now, I have to get back to unpacking.

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Government Social Media Policy

By Chris M. Lindsey on May 5, 2009

Mashable has a post asking the question “Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?“. Mashable’s answer is a clear yes. This leaves me wondering, do governments have the same types of social media policies? And how do these types of policies not infringe upon employees freedom of speech? I wonder if Jefferson County has a social media policy (since I will be starting there soon).

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