It was a little sad to leave this afternoon. I’ve worked with my boss and coworkers for nearly a year, and made a certain bond with them. You know people are dedicated when they are sitting at a budget work session after midnight (here’s the tweet to prove it), after arriving at work at 8am that morning. A close bond forms at times like those.
I’ve also learned the Unified Government (and it’s funds and departments) inside and out. And I’ve met so many people that serve the citizens of Wyandotte County and Kansas City every day.
And I’ve bugged all of these wonderful public servants. From learning to do accounts payable and trying to understand the fund structure, to surveying busy people for school projects, I know a lot of people have helped me without complaint. Thank you all.
I have learned so much from my boss, my coworkers, and everyone else. It is my hope that I contributed just as much in my time with the Budget Office. I’m going to keep this post short, but I have many more thoughts about learning at the Unified Government and my experiences, most of which made it into a Moleskine or two.
Early on April 9th, the City of Morgan Hill (California) experienced a mass internet outage, started by a targeted infrastructure attack. Bruce Perens has a good outline of what happened, why, and the lessons to be learned. Especially important are the local services that went down:
That attack demonstrated a severe fault in American infrastructure: its centralization. The city of Morgan Hill and parts of three counties lost 911 service, cellular mobile telephone communications, land-line telephone, DSL internet and private networks, central station fire and burglar alarms, ATMs, credit card terminals, and monitoring of critical utilities. In addition, resources that should not have failed, like the local hospital’s internal computer network, proved to be dependent on external resources, leaving the hospital with a “paper system” for the day.
The City of Morgan Hill, prepared for natural disaster, reacted quickly and used local amateur (ham) radio operators to reroute emergency services and other essential communications. It is surprising (to me, at least) that the local community made it through this emergency with little harm. The warning, though, should be clear: our communities are becoming dependent upon internet access, and when access goes down, so do many of our everyday systems.
Update (4/23/09) – Scott at the CIO Weblog provides a calmer reaction to the situation in Morgan Hill, but he still sees room for improvement:
My own preference is not to avoid new technologies and outsourced services, but instead to focus on independent and redundant lines of communication with which to reach them. This approach is much less reactionary, is less costly overall, and pays much greater dividends in the event of trouble than does basing all services at your own site.
The problem with this thought is when there is only one fiber provider in town, you are stuck with the level of redundancy the telecom company builds into their infrastructure.
I look at quite a few government and related sites in the course of my day (for personal, work, and school related reasons). I take notice as to what content management system (CMS) is being used on the site, and it is generally easy to determine which sites use open source CMSes (here is a list open source CMSes). I recently started keeping a list of these sites, and I have decided to share this list.
I was trying to limit the list to only governments and agencies, but I have included some big names that use open source. If the list expands, I will likely remove those in the efforts to keep this list to merely the administrative branches of government.
Hopefully someone somewhere will find this useful, whether for work or scholarly research. I will continue to update this page on my own as I spot new government websites sporting open source. If you notice any or know of any, contact me or leave a comment and I will add them to the list.
For those students at the University of Georgia, myself and the other UGA Key developers are happy to announce a new “Beta Key.” We are attempting to move to this new version of The Key sometime soon, but we want to make sure it doesn’t crash our server or have any major problems.
The Beta Key includes several new features, including course syllabi and professor search across all departments and data. Course grades now include data from fall 2008, so the site contains grades since fall 1999 (that’s ten years of grades). This new frontend at the Beta Key should be more accessible than the current Key (we’ve had several issues of students not being able to see Key data pages). For more information, see the announcement post here.
The City of Duluth (in Gwinnett County, Georgia) is using a unique method to make appropriate budget cuts in these hard times: “The brainchild of City Administrator Phil McLemore, the citizens budget committee is made up of 35-plus ordinary folks tasked with offering suggestions for cutbacks and ideas for generating revenue.” I think increasing citizen involvement in any level of government is a positive accomplishment. Involving citizens in the administration side of government, especially budgeting, can only help local governments make the needed tough cuts in a manner acceptable to citizens and public leaders.
Our organizations will need to fundamentally adapt as these newcomers enter the workforce and take on positions of leadership. This point is magnified by data from ICMA, as 71% of city and county executives were under the age of 40 in 1971, while only 13% were under 40 in 2006.
That is an incredible statistic, and I think it shows the near-term challenge that local governments across the nation face. Even though this is a tough time for everyone, I couldn’t be more excited about starting my career in local government.
I have some exciting news, which I first noted on my Facebook wall a while ago: “Chris Lindsey will be heading to Colorado in June for a great work opportunity!”
I will be going to Denver in May for a new job. Well, not just me – Emily will be joining me! Emily and I will be moving out to somewhere in west Denver shortly after she graduates from UGA in May.
I’ve accepted a position with the government of Jefferson County, Colorado. I will be working a full-time internship to complete my the requirements for my degree from the University of Kansas.
I’m really excited about working for Jefferson County. They are very innovative and were featured last July in ICMA’s Public Management magazine for their method of prioritizing county services.
Three economic impact studies came out today, all from the Washington Economic Group (all reported on at Cup Scene Daily). They found that Nascar tracks continue to contribute significantly to national, state, and local economies. Martinsville Speedway (in Virginia) contributes $174 million in economic impact and 2,824 permanent jobs with two race weekends a year. Richmond International Raceway (Virginia) contributes $467 million in economic impact and 7,700 permanent jobs with two race weekends a year. Darlington Raceway (in South Carolina) contributes $54 million in economic impact and 874 jobs with one race weekend a year.
I know I’ve posted this video previously, but Twitter is exploding into mainstream. Several good friends of mine (and a former professor) have recently joined Twitter (within the past week). It is on all of the news shows, on Oprah, and all over the web. Everyday people are hearing about Twitter and they don’t know what it is. Even my parents asked me to explain Twitter. As such, I’m reposting this video from Common Craft, explaining Twitter in Plain English.
Today I completed an internship with the Budget Office of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas.
I have learned so much from my boss, my coworkers, and everyone else. It is my hope that I contributed just as much in my time with the Budget Office. I’m going to keep this post short, but I have many more thoughts about learning at the Unified Government and my experiences, most of which made it into a Moleskine or two.