FEMA once again blew it in Texas. Try Web 2.0-based process..

By WDavidStephenson | December 3, 2008

AP reports that there’s still a 30-mile long “scar of debris” along the Texas coast that “..stands as a festering testament to what state and local officials say is FEMA’s sluggish response to the 2008 hurricane season.”

According to state and local officials, it’s FEMA red tape that’s holding things up.

That reminds me of an interview for my book that I did yesterday with one of my personal heroes, Phil Windley, the former Utah CIO. He mentioned the 1-stop, integrated new-biz incorporation site Utah developed 6 years ago or so.

I can’t understand why FEMA can’t emulate them, with a totally Web 2.0-based, totally-transparent response approach including:

BTW: the homepage for Hurricane Ike still has picture of Chertoff and talks about recovery beginning: the current DHS simply doesn’t get it about The Internet Tubes, does it? They think of it as a place for brochureware, which someone updates when they feel like it, rather than as THE central repository for real-time information. I think the 1-sentence summary of my forthcoming Democratizing Data book is relevant — and totally over their heads:

“Democratizing data, making it available through real-time structured data feeds plus visualization tools or applications powered by it, gives employees vital information when and where they need it most to manage their work effectively & collaborate, encourages organizational transparency, and allows voters or customers to participate in decision-making and idea creation.”

Indeed!

Obi-Wan Napolitano, you’re our only hope…

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Spy makes it easy for authorities to monitor social media in disasters

By WDavidStephenson | November 30, 2008

Spy is yet another app in the ever-expanding ecosystem spawned by Twitter (and to think that critics such as I used to pooh-pooh 140-character messages as of little importance… mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), and it makes it possible for authorities in crises such as the Mumbai attacks to monitor social media including Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, blog comments (from BackType), Yahoo News, blogs, and Google Reader.

As I’ve said countless times before (and this situation underscored), in natural disasters and terrorist attacks, people can and will use the Web 2.0 apps. and sophisticated mobile devices that they use every day, so it’s incumbent on authorities to:

  1. instruct us on how to use these devices (especially camera and videophones) to provide invaluable situational awareness to them (LET ME KNOW IF YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITIES HAVE GIVEN YOU ANY GUIDANCE ON THIS ISSUE. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME: I’M NOT HOLDING MY BREATH WAITING FOR EXAMPLES…)
  2. monitor the social media for said situational awareness.

Ben Hedrington (thanks Ben!) has taken care of the mechanics of #2 by creating Spy. So what’s your excuse, government agencies, for not taking action on this vital concern?

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US officials must monitor, learn from use of Web 2.0 in Mumbai

By WDavidStephenson | November 26, 2008

Once again, the first news of the Mumbai attacks came not through the media, but through Twitter. India is extremely sophisticated in use of mobile devices, probably more so than is the case in the US, and many Indians are active users of Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and other mobile social networks. It’s imperative that US officials closely track how Indians are using these services during the continuing attacks, and try to glean ideas on how they could be adapted to the US.

I can’t stress enough: people can and will use these devices and apps in a terrorist attack, so it is imperative that officials start telling us what kind of information would be relevant from Twitter, Flickr, etc. (and, BTW, what shouldn’t be spread: one Twitter user in Mumbai tweeted me that people were sending the exact location of people still in the hotels, and could tip off the terrorists) and that they begin to monitor these networks in disasters, terrorist attacks, etc.

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Peachy. I’ve got fans among the wacko-fringe

By WDavidStephenson | November 17, 2008

Noticed a lot of hits from some wacko group called the “North Carolina Citizen Militia” (no, I won’t include a link: don’t want to encourage this crap) who are interested in my ad hoc communication network approaches. Does anyone have large quantities of bleach I can use to purify my blog?

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Sorry to leak the news, but big winner in Apps for Democracy contest is..

By WDavidStephenson | November 13, 2008

… us — all of us.

If you haven’t been following it, the District of Columbia’s Apps for Democracy competition was created by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer to solicit open source apps to capitalize on the ever-growing range of structured data feeds that DC issues through its Citywide Data Warehouse, many of them released on a real-time basis.

The judging is going on as I write (you can, and should, vote right now for the “people’s choice” award), and the ceremony will be held tonight (definitely an example of “Internet Time” — everything about this competition is at warp speed).

Whomever receives the actual cash awards, you and I are already winners, because many of these apps are already available for you to use, whether you’re a DC resident or visitor, and they are sure to spawn innovative new variations and/or copies for use in other areas (oh dear: a variation won’t work in your community because it doesn’t release the data streams necessary to power the apps? don’t you think you should make a call to city hall today to demand that they do so? That’s right).

So check out the Apps for Democracy, download the ones you like (especially the iPhone ones: man, am I counting the days until Feb. 18, when I can get one under my AT & T contract!), and pressure your local pols  to follow DC’s lead.

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VITAL: IF BIN LADEN PLANS “THE BIG ONE” YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON THIS!

By WDavidStephenson | November 11, 2008

Get your attention with that subtle headline?

Apologies in advance for “shouting.” It’s just because OUR LIVES MAY DEPEND ON WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY. Also apologies in advance for the snippy tone of some of this: I’m just fed up with official stupidity and myopia about the issues that I’ve devoted my life to for the past seven years — stupidity and myopia that puts all of us at increased risk and denies them the eyes and ears of concerned and empowered individuals.

OK, folks, I know that I haven’t been seen in these parts much in recent months: between my work on transparency and my near-total switch to micro-blogging on Twitter, you’ve seen little from me on homeland security and emergency planning.

In part, frankly, it’s due to the near total distain within the Bush DHS (with a few noteworthy exceptions: you guys know who you are, and I’m eternally grateful for your support..) for empowering the general public to play a critical role via Web 2.0 apps and, more important, the Web 2.0 ethos of collaboration (if you’re interested, here’s my theoretical summa on the issue). All you have to do is look at Ready.gov, which has certainly improved over the years but remains clueless about Web 2.0 (oh yeah, DHS may not get it about Web 2.0, but the bad guys do: the Army fears that al Qaeda may use our beloved Twitter to communicate about attacks).

For all our sakes, let’s hope the Obama Administration gets with the program: its general technological sophistication certainly gives one hope that will be the case.

Meanwhile, back to the urgency of this post.

It hasn’t gotten the media play it deserves, but bin Laden is reportedly planning an attack on the US that would “far outdo” 9/11!

“…a former senior Yemeni al-Qaeda operative said, the terrorist organisation has entered a ‘positive phase’, reinforcing specific training camps around the world that will lead the next ‘wave of action’ against the West.

The warning, on the front page of an Arabic newspaper published in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi - and reported widely in the major Italian papers - quotes a person described as being ‘very close to al-Qaeda’ in Yemen.

The paper is edited by Abdel al-Bari Atwan, who is said to have been the last journalist to interview bin Laden, in 1996.

Bin Laden is himself closely following preparations for an attack against the US and aims to ‘change the face of world politics and economics’, (my emphasis) the report says.”

Put aside for a minute the utter insanity and tone-deafness bin Laden is showing by contemplating a huge attack in wake of election of The Most Popular Person in the Entire World (I’d imagine it would take President Obama about 10 minutes to put together a Coalition of the Eager that would roughly contain the entire UN membership to obliterate bin Laden once and for all!!!).

If he does launch such an attack, this would be the ultimate test of what I’ve been preaching since 9/11: that the advent of increasingly sophisticated networked portable personal communication devices and Web 2.0 apps to capitalize on them mean that you and I will play a major role in preparation and response for an attack, WHETHER OR NOT OFFICIALS WANT US TO (and, as I’ve chronicled since then, that’s just what has happened during Katrina, the San Diego wildfires, and this year’s hurricanes).

Here’s what you need to do (what I need to do is a quick update on new apps and devices that give even more options for ad hoc emergency communications, so mail to tag: e-mail me your suggestions on additions, and check back frequently!):

One final request: three years ago I created a highly-praised series of data bases for smartphones and PDAs, which allowed you to find detailed info. about what to do after a disaster in only 3 clicks. That way, if you lost all communications ability, as long as one person in a group had the application on their smartphone or PDA, s/he would be able to help others respond, and thereby lessen the burden on first responders.

In all modesty, it was a fantastic service, and I always hope that some agency or foundation would pay me to expand and maintain it and to make it available for free to everyone (that would certainly be an indication that government got it about Web 2.0, eh?). However, no one did, and the modest sales of the subscription version didn’t warrant me maintaining it on your own.

If I had a contract in the next week, I could bring it up to date within a month, and, I hope, also port it to iPhones. Given how pervasive smartphones and iPhones are today, an updated, free to download “Terrorism Survival Planner” could and should be a critical part of a comprehensive terrorism and disaster preparation and response program.

Please contact anyone you know who could pony the modest amount of money it would take to make it worth my while (despite what my wife thinks, I’m not a 501c3…)  and I’ll spring into action.

PS. Please pass this on: we’re all in this together!:

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What I said about transparency on Federal News Radio

By WDavidStephenson | November 11, 2008

In case you weren’t able to tune in, this is what I said yesterday on Federal News Radio about transparency and the potential benefits to the Obama Administration.

IMHO, the critical thing is to not view transparency as an add-on program that people might fear would increase costs at a time of record deficits, but as part of a carefully-integrated program, modeled on what DC is doing, that would also provide real-time structured data behind the firewall.

It would give federal workers, for the first time, access to real-time data (the same data that would be available to watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation and entrepreneurs who could use it to create new services) that they desperately need to do their jobs more effectively in hard times. It will help them break down arbitrary boundaries between agencies and programs, find synergies and redundancies, and encourage collaboration and emergence of wisdom of the crowds. We can’t afford not to launch these programs.

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I’ll be on Federal News Radio Monday on how Obama could use data

By WDavidStephenson | November 9, 2008

Hi. Back after a prolonged absence (frankly, blogging seems so 2006: in the past year I’ve done nearly 4,000 tweet on Twitter, compared to an ever-declining number of blog posts). We’ll see if I can do both..

At any rate, wanted to give you a heads up that on Monday I’ll be on Federal News Radio, AM 1500 in the DC area, and online to talk with host Chris Dorobek about how, given the historic low levels of trust in government and record high deficits Obama will inherit, one of the best strategies he can try will be to dramatically expand the number of structured data feeds the federal government releases, both externally and internally.

Why? Because internally, feeds in formats such as RSS and KML will give (for the first time) many federal employees the real-time information they need to do their jobs more efficiently, as well as breaking down “silos” within and between agencies, so they can collaborate more effectively, uncover costly redundancies, etc., allowing government to get more with less.

Meanwhile, by releasing the data externally, and providing data visualization tools similar to those available from Swivel and Many Eyes, the Obama Administration will be able to directly involve the general public in policy debates and even soliciting bright ideas (as the UK Government has done with the Show Us a Better Way competition and the District of Columbia, with its Apps for Democracy one!). I’m encouraged that his white paper on technology and transparency during the campaign specifically mentioned data feeds, and now I’ll prod him to follow through!

Hope you can listen in on the radio or on the web.

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The national interest requires GOP sages to remove Palin

By WDavidStephenson | September 30, 2008

It’s no longer funny.
It’s no longer tolerable that McCain can be allowed to try to avoid the consequences of his hasty judgment.
The national interest demands that a person who can’t even name a single newspaper or magazine she reads regularly (and, as usual, talks 10th-grader-who-didn’t-do-her-homework ragtime instead of giving a straight answer) can be a heart-beat away from the presidency.
Even if she lucks out and isn’t nailed to the wall during the debate, it is simply unconscionable that one person — McCain — could be able to foist someone on us who is so dangerously incurious. No amount of debate camp could possibly transform someone who has never shown the least amount of interest in public affairs and real knowledge (remember: 6 tries before someone finally tossed her a degree!) into a person who would consistently immerse herself in policy issues and analysis. As a result, as president, she’d have no context for decision making.Forget the crap (and I don’t talk that way) about specious comparisons to past veeps or presidents with limited experience: none of them have been, how shall we say it politely, idiots. No matter what excuse it takes to get her to step aside, people such as Colin Powell or Bush the Elder who love their nation must intervene in the national interest.

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Please sign petition to require next bill be posted for 72 hours

By WDavidStephenson | September 30, 2008

If you believe that transparency is a critical component in rebuilding public confidence in government, and that there’s at least a glimmer of a chance that you or I might actually have valuable insights to craft a better economic recovery act, I urge you to sign the Sunlight Foundation’s online petition. It tells Congress:

“Seven hundred billion dollars is a lot of money. We, the undersigned, urge Congress to wait at least 72 hours after the publication of the next version of this bill, before moving to a vote. We believe all legislation should be posted online for at least 72 hours before a vote to give lawmakers and citizens sufficient time to review and debate it, and this bill is no exception.”

Please sign, and ask your friends and relatives to do the same!

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