In the Trenches

As I have mentioned in previous entries I am responsible in my organization for following the Broadband Stimulus funding part of the ARRA.  The latest expectation is that the requirements for grant funds will be published in July.  As part of the process I have been reading the many articles and blogs on this topic along with the endless white papers and studies that are being published.  The more I listen and the more I read, the more I am reminded of the movie Field of Dreams and the tag line "If you build it he will come".  But in the broadband field of dreams will he come?

 

The Broadband Stimulus funding is approximately 7.2 billion dollars.  While some have described this as a down payment on broadband investment, I am becoming fearful that much of this funding will go towards projects that will build many broadband "bridges to nowhere".  Some questions that I continue to ask that no one has any real answers for:

 

• Is the issue being addressed availability of broadband or affordability?  Has the analysis   been done to document the need or are we in our haste trusting perception?

 

• Once built, how will the systems be sustained?  Maintained?  Upgraded?  Where will the funding come from for the basic O & M costs and what will the plan be for insuring that 5 years from now the infrastructure built can grow to meet the demands of its users? 

 

• Will projects that get funded build out to areas that lack any sort of infrastructure or will they continue to add to urban areas that already have capacity?  A recent audit report by the Office of the Inspector General on the Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service Broadband Loan Guarantee Program does not paint an encouraging picture of how broadband stimulus projects might get funded to address availability issues.

 

The analogy has been made that the nation's broadband infrastructure is comparable in importance to the interstate highway system.  I could not agree more with this analogy and am very supportive of building this infrastructure in support of our security, economic, and educational needs going forward.  However I fear that in the case of the ARRA funding we might be putting the cart before the horse.  What is our national broadband strategy?  How will the projects that are funded as part of the ARRA fit in with and support a national strategy? I believe that we will all be better served in the long run if we take a little time to first define our strategy.  There was a plan in place for the interstate system so why can't we have a broadband strategy in place before we fund broadband projects to ensure the goals of the strategy are being met by these projects? 

 

To quote Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."   

 

Note:  Over the next couple of posts I will try to focus on how my organization and others are looking at or planning to utilize some of the emerging technologies.  

In a post earlier this year, I made the statement that there is opportunity in crisis.  That the current economic conditions could be the catalyst that will enable sharing of resources amongst agencies that would result in improved service delivery and reduced costs.  My belief is that this will provide public entities with the capabilities to provide a higher level of service and overall will provide the best return on tax payer dollars.  I still believe that this is an important strategy looking forward, but such a quantum leap, as logical as it might sound, will require a tremendous amount of political will.  While this should be part of a longer range strategy for many, there are some short term gains along these lines that organizations can start to adopt that could provide some relief.  Cloud computing is one such strategy.

Cloud computing encompasses any one or combination of services delivered from the "cloud" software, hardware, or infrastructure.  This technology trend is one that I believe can not only free up resources, but might also change the way small and medium organizations approach IT.  As an example in my organization, almost 100% of the available time of our analysts are dedicated to maintenance tasks and system support.  This resource is fully utilized for these tasks because:

1. we are understaffed and can not hire new resources due to budget constraints,
2. we have some older technology that requires a high level of attention for its care and feeding.  While the desire to move away from this technology is present, and the risks of not doing so are understood, there is no capital to initiate a project to replace
3. we do not have any budget to hire help such as consultant, etc.

As a result of our current budget dilemma we have looked at any and all trends and technologies that could save time and money.  Cloud computing is one of those technologies that is promising.  There are reliability and security issues that must be addressed as part of any contract negotiations (and of course legal must be involved to work through transparency issues and ownership of data), but the list of available applications and services continue to grow as does the customer base.  Without increasing our budget or staffing levels it appears that - if we went the cloud route - we could start to free up personnel and fiscal resources that could then be applied to projects that could potentially save us more money and provide a higher level of service to our users.  

This is not for everyone and a careful understanding of the risks are necessary before embarking on such a journey, but I believe that cloud computing will be an important technology strategy (in some form) for most IT organizations.  I am interested to hear if anyone has taken or is planning on the cloud plunge.  Please share you thoughts.

So we sit on the brink of yet another malicious attack - the Conficker Worm - and wait patiently to see what evil it will unleash.  Most of the online and print media have been sounding the alarm for at least the past week.  Most have been reporting the facts as they are known, while others are sensationalizing the event in much the same way the Michelangelo virus was (for those that can remember back that far).  While I do not mean to trivialize the potential impact of this malicious code, I never cease to be amazed at how attacks such as this still manage to negatively impact business and government systems in this day and age.

The Conflicker Worm is avoidable by insuring that Microsoft patch MS08-067 is installed (MS08-067 was part of Security Update KB958644, which was published by Microsoft in October 2008), and that anti virus signatures are current.  While I certainly hope that I am wrong, I expect that we will read of organizations that will incur significant loses due to the effects of this virus.  Implementation of some basic best practices such as automatic virus scans on a regular basis, keeping current on OS security patches and virus definitions, and not allowing any external device (such as USB memory) to be used in a machine without first scanning the files will prevent a good majority of the problems that these viruses can cause.  In organizations such as mine it allows our security administrators to focus their attention fighting the never ending battle against those from around the world who try desperately to infiltrate our network in the hopes that we have some sort of window into some of the prized federal systems.  

There is nothing more important in any computing environment than having good security plans and practices that are followed diligently.  Any IT organization that is adversely impacted by a minor event such as this (and again I hope that this is nothing more than minor in its impact and effect) should seriously consider the value that it provides and whether its users would be better served by another provider.

The master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock knew that suspense is generated when the audience can see danger that the characters on screen are not aware of. He said, "There's no terror in the bang of the gun, only the anticipation of it."

There has been much anticipation over the last few months on when the "gun" that is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 would be "fired" or passed by congress and signed by the President, and what funding would be included.  Included in the Act is $7.2 Billion dollars for Broadband investment referred to as the "Broadband Technology Opportunities Program" or "BTOPs".  These funds will be distributed through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) within the Department of Commerce and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) within the United States Department of Agriculture.  

There are still many unknowns regarding who is eligible for these funds.  For example the key terms "unserved" and "underserved" must be defined in order to establish eligibility, and although it appears that local governments, schools, etc. are the main focus of these funds, states and big incumbents could end up having a large role and say in how these funds are used.  Some of what of the knowns are that these grants will require a match of some sort (in most cases), and O & M costs for out years will need to be budgeted and funded.  

So where to from here?  Based upon some presentations I have participated in and reading on this matter, the following are all recommended:

Ensure that all proposed projects meet the criteria outlined in the BTOPS.  The broadband bill can be read here
Be proactive in partnering with state and private entities if necessary.  
Enlist the support of all levels of elected officials.  
Be proactive in helping NTIA and RUS define the terms of the program.  On March 2nd the NTIA started meeting with interested parties and on March 10th there will be a public joint meeting with the NTIA, RUS, and FCC on the broadband initiative of the stimulus.  This meeting will be web cast live - go here for more details.

Although the gun has been fired there is still the suspense of another yet to be fired.

"Its not easy being green.  Spending each day the color of the leaves"  - Kermit the Frog

I am sure that the economy has stalled Green IT efforts in most organizations as is the case with us.  Historically, in lean times such as these, our budget situation will not improve for anywhere from 12-24 months after the economy starts to recover.  For us this means that our major Green efforts will not begin again any time in the forseeable future. By major I am refering to those projects that require a capital investment such as new equipment purchases for server consolodation, virtual desktops etc.  Our plan has changed to move forward with efforts that do not require a large upfront investment but that will still reduce our overall energy use and limit electronic waste in our landfills.

Some of the simple things or low hanging fruit we are picking are:

• maximizing our investments in server virtualization - we are looking to replace as many single servers as we can and move the applications and databases onto existing virtual environments thus eliminating racks of servers
  

• using existing desktop management tools to force logoff and powering down of desktop machines after business hours

• working with local non profits and K-12 to reuse desktops.  Linux runs well on older processors and the number of open source applications has increased tremendously in the last few years to make this a very viable combination for education and business

• looking for ways to increase telecommuting.  My city has had a policy in place for a number for years and we are starting to see more interest in telecommuting to save on office space use, etc.
  

• Replacing any CRT monitors with LCD displays

I know there are other things being done to continue to realize power savings etc. I am interested in hearing what others are doing during these challenging times to continue to move their Green efforts forward.

Happy New Year to all.

As we begin the new calendar year, our budgets are still a mess, all new initiatives are on hold, and we continue to find ourselves in "maintenance" mode.  There are a number of technologies that would benefit our organization and the provision of service delivery to our community, however the capital needed to invest in these technologies does not exist.  With some down time over the holidays I started to ponder the potential impact of the recession if it does last long into 2009 and into 2010, and what the implications are for local government IT.  

Most of use have already explored having our applications hosted or the SaaS model, but what about taking the service model a step further and applying it in some fashion to data centers and networks for example.  Generally speaking IT spending in local government is not on par with the private sector.  In my case the City IT budget is  approximately 2.5% of the total general fund budget.  Tax dollars are used by the City, County, K-12, Community College, and surrounding towns to build, maintain, and support separate data centers, networks, IT departments, and licensing of applications.  Wouldn't IT dollars be better spent on building one network infrastructure for all of these entities? Couldn't one ERP application be licensed and used for all of these agencies?   

I think that you get where I am going with this.  By pooling resources and eliminating redundancy of effort economies of scale can be realized and each governmental agency would be better positioned to use technology as a means of reducing costs and providing a higher level of service to internal and external customers.  Yes there are tremendous political hurdles to clear, but given the fact that budget and revenue shortfalls will be the norm for the foreseeable future, the political will might be building for moving towards such a solution.  In my simple mind, as an IT professional, tax payer, and civil servant this makes sense on so many levels.

I know that indeed there is some consolidation of this type happening around the country. I would be interested to hear from anyone with a success story or lessons learned from such an effort.  I believe that this service model is the future of public sector IT and that the current economic conditions could be the catalyst to make this happen sooner.

Desperate times call for drastic measures - well maybe.  I prefer to believe that every crisis provides an opportunity.  In this case it is an opportunity to do the right thing.

Our municipality, just like other cities, counties and states across our nation, is dealing with some serious budget shortfalls.  I have been told that our situation isn't as bad as the estimated shortfall in other communities, but that isn't making it any easier to "find" the 50 million dollars that it is currently anticipated we will need to balance our budget at the end of our fiscal year.

We have been through the drill twice already.  You know the one where every department must cut their budgets by some arbitrary percentage and freeze all hiring.  All of our projects have come to a halt, our budget has been slashed to the point where all we can do is meet our basic contractual obligations, and we are expecting to hear of another  round of cuts after the start of the calendar year.

While our current budget shortfall has left us with our heads barely above water, I really believe that our city is missing an opportunity (I hesitate to say yet that the opportunity has already passed us).  I believe that during times such as these investment should be made in technology to increase and improve the services we provide and to do so for less than it currently costs.  An initiative such as this will take analysis of current processes and improvement of or elimination of many of these processes.   (Yes, I know what you are saying, we should have been evaluating and improving our processes all along, but truthfully how many of  your organizations follow this business best practice?  As long as times are good there is no motivation or the leadership to do so ).

How are you handling your budget crisis?  How has it affected your operations, projects, and plans?  What lessons learned can be shared to maybe ease some pain?  

As in the spaghetti westerns - where is our man with no name who will come riding into our town to save us from our budget woes - for a fistful of dollars.

One of the projects that we have been working on over the past 2 years is the migration of our myriad voice systems to a VOIP implementation.  As I have mentioned in a past post we have a very extensive city owned fiber network that of course we are using as a transport for our voice communications.  To date we have replaced over 70 of our 130 phone switches ( yes I know that we needed to go to a central system some time ago - just never the money or there were other more pressing priorities) and we have migrated some 3000 users to the VOIP system.  I have been amazed at how smooth this has gone to date and I am pleased with the cooperation and enthusiasm shown by our users.

As with every project there have been some issues that have been raised that we did not plan for.  We planned work arounds for the fact that some of our facilities do not have cat 5 cabling.  We planned for some facilities and locations that would have to remain on leased circuits because we do not have the ability to make connections any other way.  The thing that has really bitten us on this project are the upgrades that have been required to some of the communication rooms. 

The project has required the upgrade of core layer and distribution layer network equipment.  While this was planned for, it is also where our problems started.  IT is not responsible for the power, cooling, ups or generators that feed our communication rooms.  When we started to plan the deployment of equipment we were informed that a number of facilities would also require one or multiples of the following:  More electrical power, more cooling capacity, larger ups's or larger generators.  It was eye opening to me that we (as an organization) do not plan appropriatly for these rooms and that in some cases backup battery systems and generators were undersized to power the equipment that was already installed!

As a result we have learned a very valuable lesson and we are now working more closly with the people who are responsible for the care and feeding of rooms like this in all our facilities.  I am determined to ensure that this is not an issue in future projects, and that we, at a minimum, review the capacity and loading requirements for these rooms and that we budget appropriatly (either in our O & M budget or in future project budgets) so that we do not neglect this part of our infrastructure again.  

With only a few hours until Election Day, I was pondering what the impact would be of a McCain presidency or of an Obama presidency as it relates to technology issues. Yes, both have stated their positions on Net Neutrality, but beyond that what policies would be instituted that might address other technology issues.

On other technology issues neither has really offered anything substantive as best I can discern.  Both say that we need to have a National Broadband Policy in place that provides ubiquitous access, but while this certainly sounds good how will this look and how might it benefit each community?   Certainly every urban and rural locality has different challenges.  Some will require infrastructure development while some might require more competition for affordability etc.  We are seeing government control of ISPs such as in Australia where the Australian Communications and Media Authority has been testing and will be implementing mandatory network filtering.  Is this something that either candidate supports and at what level?  Where does each stand on the 700MHz spectrum auction and the availability of sufficient public safety and first responder bandwidth for interoperable communications?   

I am generally a very optimistic person, but I do not see with either candidate that there will be much change in these overarching policies.  I hope that I am wrong and that significant strides can be made, but with all of the other issues that the next president will need to address I once again see technology issues getting some lip service, but not much more.  

Photo by Chesi - Fotos CC. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

For the past 3 days I have been attending a ITIL v3 Foundations in Service Management class.  What is ITIL v3?  The ITIL website offers the following overview: "The IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL) is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. ITIL is a cohesive best practice framework, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally. It describes the organization of IT resources to deliver business value, and documents processes, functions and roles in IT Service Management (ITSM)".

Our IT department is embracing the ITIL framework and best practices.  We believe that ITIL processes and best practices will ensure that we are continuing to provide value to our customers, even as our budgets are cut and our open positions are frozen.  I will periodically provide updates in this blog regarding our ITIL journey; the challenges that we encounter and the impact of changes to our proceses.

I am interested to know how many other agencies and jurisdictions have embraced ITIL.  What obsticles; technical, cultural, etc. have been encountered? 

For those wanting further information on ITIL the following site is a good starting point -  www.ogc.gov.uk/itil - or post your question and I will be happy to find the answer.