I have updated my write-up of the lessons I took from my time from 2006-9 as the US Department of Transportation CIO. This was published earlier this week in FedScoop, http://fedscoop.com/lessons-from-a-political-cio-2/.
I repeat the update here.
Earlier this week I was interviewed by Chris Dorobek about process issues associated with the currently in-process Presidential transition. The interview was published at: http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/former-cio-of-dot-speaks-on-the-transition which includes a link to the audio of the interview… Some Comments On Presidential Transitions – govloop
There were two big differences between Sandy for us and many past storms.
First, we did not lose power (yet) which is a real plus. Second, since we continued to have Internet access it was remarkable the active interaction with friends and near-friends who were close and geographically far away.
Our Sandy experience started in Williamsburg, WV, where Ellen and I had gone early to attend the ACT-IAC Executive Leadership Conference (ELC). My brilliant idea was to stay at a B&B rather than the conference hotels since we really like B&B’s and this allowed Ellen to feel like it was a bit more of a vacation from home since she gets to wander around Williamsburg while I go to the meetings.Sandy and Social Networking
Every now and again, I get invited to appear on the Federal Countdown, hosted by Francis Rose, Friday afternoons from 3pm to 4pm on WFED radio.
The focus of the show is to have two guests select their three most important stories about the Federal Government. The third most important article is discussed by each guest individually. Then both comment on the two selected second-most and first-most (first-most or just most?) important stories of the week.
Yesterday John Salamone, who is a managing consultant at Federal Management Partners, were the guests. I thought I would provide a brief summary of the three articles I brought in this entry.
The audio for the session is posted on the WFED web-site at:
Last week I read about a research team at Harvard lead by George Church that encoded Church’s next book in DNA. As the write-up in the Harvard Medical School web page, http://hms.harvard.edu/content/writing-book-dna, said:
“Although George Church’s next book doesn’t hit the shelves until Oct. 2, it has already passed an enviable benchmark: 70 billion copies—roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time.”
A Wall Street Journal write-up by Robert Lee Hotz, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444233104577593291643488120.html?mod=e2tw, quoted Church as pointing out that:
“A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet”
The articles go on to talk about the issues involved with the achievement, for example currently it is only possible to read the information sequentially and both reading and writing is slow, all of which in the end are engineering issues which will be solved over time.
The interesting issue to me is how it is increasingly useful to use biological metaphors to drive thinking about systems design and architecture and in more recent times of course using actual biology itself. And while we use the words, I am not convinced we have thought through all of the implications.
Using Biological Constructs As Metaphors For Developing System Architecture
For the last two year’s I have written, or largely written, the Powertek Corporation, www.powertekcorporation.com, response to a SmartCEO, http://www.smartceo.com/, set of questions associated with where Powertek is positioned technically and what that means to the company. While preparing this year’s, I looked at what I had written in 2011 and by golly, much of what I wrote is still pretty good, so thought I would post it here and then follow up a while later with our new, improved thinking.
While working on lesson plans for some of the classes I teach, I came across the summary and lessons learned I wrote up after we finished the move of the US Department’s of Transportation headquarters from L’Enfant Plaza to the Navy Yard. It original appeared in Federal Times, I thought some of it might be applicable to other large IT projects and have reprinted it here:
The Department of Transportation Moves to a New Headquarters
Daniel G. Mintz, Chief Information Officer
Department of Transportation
“We’ve done the impossible and that makes us mighty.”
– Mal, Serenity Captain, Firefly TV Series
The weekend of June 22, the last employee was moved out of the old Department of Transportation headquarters building at L’Enfant Plaza and moved into the new building on the Southeast Federal Center. That weekend the entire Office of the Secretary, including all of the communications associated with relocating a Cabinet Level Secretary were also moved.
With the Washington Capitals having made the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Phrase “Off Center” means something a bit different than it might have a week ago. Regardless I had a great time recording Mark Amtower’s… Broadcast of My Interview w/Mark Amtower – Amtower Off Center
I teach a class at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) about the future of Information Technology.
One of the great things about doing this is how much I learn each semester, I find I always gain much, much more than I bring to the class (pointed out to me by the observant students …).
In a recent discussion thread one of the students had some interesting things to say about telecommuting which I thought deserved a wider audience. So with a tip of the hat to Neelima Jampani …Thoughts On Teleworking
I find myself these days on a regular basis having discussions, for one reason or another, about the impact of Information Technology and inevitably the Internet on organizations, life, society, culture, and in general, the individuals having the conversation.
About a decade ago, the first time I remember having this discussion with a friend of mine, he remarked that he felt his parents had experienced greater dislocation due to technological change than he had. His parents had lived through the growth of radio, the invention of television, the ubiquitous growth of telephones, and the creation and expansion of commercial air travel.
All he and I could come up with, at the time, were faxes, cell phones, and perhaps email; which while significant seemed less amazing than the list he had for his parents. That was a sobering conversation since the common wisdom was that everything was changing so radically. Having said that, I suspect that if I repeated that conversation today we would both come to a different conclusion.Why Is A Raven Like A Writing Desk or How I Literally Married the Internet