The politics of data

We all do it. We edit the information that we reveal about ourselves to present our best features… to show ourselves in the best light. Prospective employees edit their resume and leave off the job where they were fired for poor performance. Hollywood stars edit their bio and don’t mention that they waited tables for 10 years before making it big with a movie role that made them famous. Models on the covers of magazine have their blemishes and wrinkles reduced or removed with photoshop. I firmly believe that i’m 23.4% better looking and more interesting in my online profiles than I am in real life.

So it should be no surprise when Federal Employees who have been given the public’s money, prepare reports that bury unflattering data in small type on a page deep in the back and put the data that makes them look the best in the front part where people casually perusing the report are more likely to see it. It’s human nature. What it doesn’t do is give objective standards of how a project, any project, is being shepherded and an overall view of the project’s health.

In previous years, The government agencies reported on Technology investments with a paper report to congress and OMB. There were minimal standards as to what those reports should contain or how the project’s progress should be explained, defined or quantified. It was easy to create a report that painted a better picture than what was actually the case with an investment project and many software projects languished in development for years with little or no measurable progress and no oversight on costs but were justified by the way the data was presented to the decision makers… “See the bars on this graph go up… that’s good, ergo, the project is doing well.“

A year or two ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) began a project called the “Technology Dashboard” to track spending on long-term technology investments across government agencies. This project was unique in that it established data standards for reporting on the projects the government began and measured all projects on a level playing field for the first time. It gave ratings to the project, Red, Green, Yellow. Projects that went “into the red” (not necessarily cost overruns, but a series of measures that were applied equally to all projects) those projects were put on a list to do what is called a “TechStat.” A status update to check progress and explain any irregularities with the project milestones and monies paid.

To say that this process was revolutionary, is an understatement. Many agencies prepared reports once a year. To shift them to quarterly reporting through an online app is like moving them from a horse and buggy to a Toyota Camry.

But what it brought (and continues to bring) was a revolution in the way software for the government was created. All the trends we’ve seen in software development over the last 10 years began to be reflected in government software projects. Project goals were shrunk into smaller, more obtainable milestones. Tools became more specific and task driven. There was an almost immediate trend away from large omnibus “one ring to rule them all” software projects and a focus on smaller, more behavior-driven tools to solve specific agency problems.

At this precise moment in our story, the front door swings open, lights swivel and in walks our star… Drupal. Drupal became and continues to become a very easy way to rapidly prototype a web app and get the application project into a working version quickly. It’s open source heritage keeps software costs down and it’s enormous development community ensures that most of what you do in drupal, has been done before. Need forums? There’s a module for that. Need a blog? There’s a module for that. Drupal’s a worldly gal and wherever you need to go, most of the time she’s been there and done that.

So very soon the company I work for, REI Systems, will celebrate the open-sourced release of the code behind the Technology Dashboard. The project is basically a Drupal distro with some business logic for analyzing project data and some visualization tools that takes Drupal data and makes it easier for decision makers to compare projects.

As an employee, i’m very proud of the job we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished in such a short time. I’m proud of the tools we’ve created that are, quite literally, changing our country for the better.

As OMB further clarifies data standards for reporting agency expenditures online, I would expect to see more tools like the Tech Dashboard coming from Vivek’s team at OMB. It will be interesting to see how the converging worlds of social media and web applications create tomorrow’s US government.

My Senator from Virginia talking about my website project at work

Bashana Haba’ah

I joined the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington (GMCW) and for our christmas program,we’re doing this song in hebrew. It’s incredibly beautiful. Here is the translation:

In the year that will come
We’ll sit on the porch and count migrating birds
Children on vacation
will play tag between the house and the fields

You will see, you will see how good it will be
in the year that will come

Red Grapes
will ripen till the evening and will be served chilled to the table
Languid winds
will carry the crossroads old newspapers and a cloud

A White Heron
Like a light will spread her wings and the sun will rise

You will see, you will see how good it will be
in the year that will come

Yom Kippur 2010 and the irrelevance of location

So I did a stupid thing. I moved my car insurance to Virginia and drug my feet moving my plates. In a cascade of ensuing events, Florida cancels both my license and my plates. This past week I get pulled over and my car is then impounded.

So here’s my takeaway: why should it matter where in the US I have my car registered? My plates in Florida don’t expire until December. Anyone in Virginia law enforcement should be able to get any details they need from the Florida law enforcement database. Why should it matter? Well, obviously it does. But the reason it does is more because of when the laws were written than anything else.

Most of the traditional laws pertaining to registration and licensing were written in the 1940′s and early 50′s. In those days records were paper and mainly just to collect taxes to help maintain the roads local to the registration.

Today, all of those records are electronic. They’re freely available to anyone with network access and most of the money to maintain roadways comes from the yearly federal highway bill.

In fact so much of the laws we’ve enshrined as Americans is based on location being the relevant factor.

So here’s the situation in which I now find myself:

1. Virginia has the car impounded. They will not release without valid Virginia registration

2. I can’t get a Virginia plate until the car passes Virginia Emissions. Obviously, I can’t get emissions until the car is available to me to take to an emissions center to get checked.

3. I can’t get the Florida plate reinstated because it’s illegal to issue a Florida insurance policy to a non-resident.

So i’m fucked.

Oh, and the impound fee is currently at $680.

Oh, and I can’t find my title.

Separately, but equal in suckage, I had fraudulent charges on my credit card. Bank of America called me about the charges and I agreed they were not mine. They canceled my debit card. So thursday evening it was pouring rain the DC Metro. I’m stuck on the toll road with no way home, car impounded. No credit card to get a cab and on top of that, my recruiter didn’t pay me my regular paycheck on time and a big chunk of my account is “unavailable” due to fraudulent charges.

That is how Yom Kippur 2010 began.

I’m not Jewish, but I would like to atone for everything i’ve done wrong. I repent in sack cloth and ashes.

Speed Test

Apple iPhone on ATT's 3G network in Washington DC Speed Test

Road Runner Business Class Cable Modem, Tampa FL

Sprint Overdrive 4g Service in Washington DC

How soon is now?

Fast forward almost 3 weeks later and i’m in a new apartment in DC and off to a great start at the new job. Lots of change in a very little time, Yea, I know.

Before I left I bought a Sprint 3G/4G Overdrive hub. DC is one of the cities where sprint has 4G coverage and I gotta tell you, the service is spectacular. The Sierra Wireless hardware, not so much, but the signal is great. The only place you really notice it’s not cable is on download speeds. Everything else seems pretty zippy and I’ve had no issues whatsoever doing web dev on the road with it. It’s serving as my primary internet access until I can get cable installed… and get a TV… sigh… first paycheck is due any day. Can’t come soon enough.

Picked up a Flu bug somewhere in my traveling and i’ve been sick as a dog for the past week or so. Second flu/cold/croup of the last 6 months. Really sux. Can’t stop coughing.

I’ll talk more about the projects i’m working on in a later post, but suffice to say most of them are government projects and the projects are primarily Drupal-based. Yea, I know drupal sucks, but I hope to convince them of how great eZPublish is after I win their trust theming Drupal sites.

Found a great apartment in a high-rise in Crystal City… The Bennington. Wanted a 1BR, but all they had was a studio. Hope to move up to a 1BR after 90 days, but the studio is fine now, considering all my stuff is still back in Florida.

It’s a six month contract-to-perm, but I hope to convince them they can’t live without me and go perm before the contract ends.

The firm has some really great people working there. So far none of them hate me, but it’s early in the relationship .

One of the bars has a “bear happy hour” on Fridays. Fantastic meet & greet. I’ll definitely be going back.

DWTG (Dancing with the gods)

I’m waiting for it.The offer should be here any time.

After a year out on my own, i’m waiting right now for an offer for a job that should come this morning.

Out of the blue I got a call 2 weeks ago about an offer in DC. And 2 weeks later i’m pondering packing up my life and starting over in a new city.  This is how it works for me. Change always comes quickly, out of the blue and it’s always simultaneously destructive and creative.

The Hindus have a holy trinity similar to Christianity. Shiva is the Destroyer, Brahma is the Creator and Vishnu is the Preserver. Shiva is usually pictures doing a dance, dancing on the demon of ignorance and fear and bringing rebirth to the Universe.

Wonder if he’d do ‘Dancing with the Stars’?  That would be EPIC.

Food revolution

So I don’t know if you’ve caught Jamie Oliver’s new show, but it’s on hulu and abc.com if you missed it. It’s called ‘food revolution’ and the premise is he’s a renown British chef and he goes to most unhealthy city in the most unhealthy state in america… Huntington, WV. He then tries to change the school lunch menu.

The thing that makes this show so fascinating is the human drama. Everyone he meets makes every argument not to change, not on the basis that he’s wrong… but that the status quo is easier/cheaper/more acceptable in some way. It’s such a microcosm of what is going on in our nation’s politics.

In this country, there is such an emotional investment in the status quo in the face of dramatic and dire evidence that it’s not working. It’s interesting to watch this national problem play out with an inocous thing like eating habits in a public school.

How much investment do I have in the status quo despite all evidence that’s its time to change. What do I defend staunchly for no good reason other than that’s the way It’s always been done.

Mahatma Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If I want to see change in this great country of ours, I have to be willing not to defend the status quo and to let go of ideas, things, and passions that lead to defense of the status quo.

The New Pride Site, Part 2

So I presented the design for the new pride site last night. There was a lot of good feedback.

Everyone agreed that the sponsor logos were too small. I think I was fooling myself into thinking I could make them that small and get away with it. I’ve given in. They will be larger.

Also met some other designer-y creative types in the attendance. I hope I can bring them in on some of the pride projects. I really don’t want to go through another year doing all the marketing support myself.

Still hoping for a Feb 1 rollout. Cheers for now.

the new pride website, part 1

I got laid off in February. Shortly thereafter I met a developer who was doing destination travel sites for a marketing company that catered primarily to the hospitality industry. We’ve since done sites for hotels around the world.

I’ve been webmaster for St. Pete Pride for several years now and this work that i’ve done has colored much of the work on the new 2010 St. Pete pride website. I began to think of Pride as a destination travel event. Remember that 90% of the people that view your site have no connection to pride other than the possibility that they might come to the event.

I started looking at the travel sites we’ve done over the past year… some 30+ of then and began to codify the things that they have in common. I found I agreed with my previous efforts on the pride site and completely disagreed with others.

I started with what I believe to be the primary goal of any pride website: Get people to the event. It seems silly to say it this way, but your pride website should make people want to come to the event. Many sites, in an effort to provide information, ONLY provide information. People will look at your website and decide in less than 10 seconds whether or not they want to come to the event. Make them want to come.

I hope to get the new pride website up by Feb 1. I’ll try to get in several posts before then.

More soon.