NIST Takes On Cloud Security

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released two draft documents on cloud computing, and is taking comments by e-mail through the end of this month.

The documents include a definition of cloud, which NIST researchers say has five core features: on-demand self-service; broad network access; resource pooling; rapid elasticity; and measured service. NIST classified three types of cloud: infrastructure as a service; platform as a service; and software as a service, and four models: public, private, hybrid and community.

NIST’s guidelines on public cloud security and privacy are meaty and well-researched, presenting many of the challenges of public cloud for government agencies as well as planning mitigations.

The Subtle Art of Hashtagging

One of the more difficult things to learn on Twitter is effective use of hashtags (check out this ReadWriteWeb article on the birth of the Twitter hashtag). Hashtags on Twitter today create hyperlinks for searches of tagged term, such as #sf, #sfgov, and #opensf. Clicking the tagged tweet leads to searches for #sf, #sfgov, and #opensf, while people searching for SF, sfgov and opensf will find the tagged terms and those same terms without tags.

Hashtags are frequently overused, used needlessly, and added to all proper nouns in a Twitter message, rendering them nearly unreadable. Conversely, they are often not used when they would be helpful for expanding the reach of a tweet or adding additional context.

The important thing to consider is using tags is the search result desired. In the picture above, a search for “OpenSF” turns up three successive posts, two to a blog link from OpenSF, another a tweet I sent using the hashtagged “#opensf.” A search for “#opensf” would turn up the tagged tweet alone. Because the tweets to the blog post include the name of the blog, there is no need to use the tag #opensf in the tweet. However, adding #opengov and #gov20 at the end of the tweet means it now ends up in searches for “opengov” or “gov20“ and in the results when people click those tags in others’ tweets. 

In the same way, I often use the #gov20 tag at the end of a tweet that includes “Gov 2.0,” so that the post comes up in searches for both “gov20″ and “Gov 2.0″.

In posts from the San Francisco City Attorney Twitter account, I often tag tweets with #sf at the end, so that even if I’ve included “San Francisco” or “S.F.” in the tweet, they turn up in searches for “SF.” However, there is little reason to tag SF within a sentence, as it turns up in “SF” searches without a tag. In fact, by tagging a noun in the middle of a sentence, I undermine the tweet’s message, either by making it more difficult to read, or by giving my reader a hyperlink to click that takes them away from my message before finishing it. If I want the tweet to turn up in searches for “SF” and when people click the “#sf” in others’ tweets, I’ll add the tag to the end of the tweet.

Another important consideration in using hashtags to customize a search for an event or issue advocacy (such as our use of #opensf to share news relevant to this blog’s community) is to ensure that the tag is not already in use. Avoid tags that are already in wide and consistent use for other topics.

If you’re looking to integrate your tweet into searches for a broad topic, research which tags are most popular and where you would get the most impact. This is why I use #SF and not #sfo for City Attorney tweets. While some regions use airport codes as unifying tags, here, SF is the dominant term, while “#SFO” is mostly automated job postings and airport check-ins from Foursquare.

Finally, consider that when you tag a tweet, you’re piping it into search, and if you’re repeating a tweet, you might not need to tag it. The #gov20 and #opengov tags are pretty popular these days, some I often omit the tags in RTs to keep the search stream from getting more cluttered.

Any questions or comments about using hashtags? Have additional hashtag resources or tips and tricks that would be helpful to the OpenSF community? Let us know!

Can BetterMeans Mean Better Government?

Working in the public sector can be challenging, especially during those times when the strict hierarchy of government dictates priorities, timelines and tasks. Unfortunately, without rejiggering the machinations of government, this top down approach will not change anytime soon. Of course, that hasn’t stopped all of us in the Government 2.0 movement from hoping and dreaming that we can begin to change the lumbering institutions at the local level all the way up to the federal. As this blog can attest, that change has begun, but incrementally. So maybe we do need to think beyond web technologies and open data to question the social structures which make change in government so difficult.

Look no further than BetterMeans, a radical open enterprise governance model masquerading as a slick new project management tool.

Citing Web 2.0 examples of collaborative decision making such as Wikipedia and open source software, BetterMeans, itself an “Open Enterprise” project, aims to let other organizations “use the same decision-making rules, and self-organizing principles behind open source to run your project.” Make no mistake, this software aims to fundamentally change how we work in groups and, in the process, so much more:

To change our world, we need a new agreement of how we work together. How we make decisions. How we decide on who gets to work on what. And who gets paid what.

Now that’s change we can believe in.

The software itself is a neat mix of project management and social capital platform that opens up the doors to the decision-making process for a given project or set of projects. Users contribute ideas to the projects which hold their interest in an open and transparent way. Users themselves are ranked by others that have worked with them on previous projects so that everyone is kept accountable. This collaborative approach then helps the group rank options for how to proceed based on the experience and insight of the entire group instead of relying solely on direction from management. Definitely check out the video above, you’ll see how well thought out this platform really is.

So, getting back to government. What is our tolerance for really incorporating the ideas of every member of a team? What would happen if our departments were more democratic in sourcing ideas and setting priorities? Or what if our elected officials were required to balance their agendas alongside those of rank and file public employees, or the general public at large? It might be pie in the sky, but I’m guessing that we’d garner more than a few great ideas, while engaging and inspiring a whole swath of disinterested civil servants. Just a thought.

OpenSF Relaunch; ‘Third Thursdays SF’

We’re excited about a fresh new look for OpenSF, a team blog dedicated to innovation, collaboration and transparency in San Francisco government. OpenSF was originally launched by Jay Nath, director of innovation in the City’s Department of Technology, and his team members were the primary contributors. For about a year, I’ve been writing regularly for OpenSF, highlighting social media projects by the City Attorney’s Office and sharing news from the San Francisco Gov 2.0 community and from other City departments.

Today, we’re got a great new look thanks to the volunteer efforts of GovFresh founder Luke Fretwell, we’ve got an OpenSF Twitter account, and were adding new contributers from the City family. OpenSF is an informal place to share about our projects and thoughts and to dialog with San Francisco residents and the global Gov 2.0, Open Government and Open Data communities.

We’re also excited to announce a new monthly networking event for anyone interested in topics of tech and good governance. Called ‘Third Thursdays,’ the meetup is also supported by CityCampSF, Gov 2.0 Radio and GovFresh. You can join Third Thursdays on Facebook here, and find out about the latest events. Also, click here to hear Jay and I discuss OpenSF, Third Thursday and more on Gov 2.0 Radio.

Thanks for reading, and welcome to the new OpenSF!

Photo: Brett Husbands of Firmstep at Daly’s Dive (Buck Tavern), the venue for Third Thursdays SF.

Open Gov Summit Planning in SF

I headed over to Granicus’ SoMa offices last night to join in a local planning meeting for an SF Bay Area open government summit. Eight of us discussed a local event as part of a U.S.-wide series of municipal-level summits to organize around and promote themes of transparency, participation and collaboration in government.

In the spirited discussion, organizers discussed aims for the May event, such as:

• Telling stories of why transparency, participation and collaboration matter for local government and community;
• Highlight best practices from local governments;
• Create greater awareness of the open government principles;
• Foster better inter-governmental cooperation.

Based on the discussion around this summit, I suspect that CityCampSF, a loosely organized group that put on an unconference last October, will sharpen its focus to promote informal meetups around civic innovation and organization of volunteers and stakeholders around technical solutions for improving government engagement and efficiency.

One of the goals of OpenSF is to encourage more city workers to engage around Gov 2.0 principles of working directly with volunteers and community stakeholders to create agile solutions, and to increase two-way communication through social media.

Find our more about how to get involved in planning the opengov summit in the Bay Area, or in your community, at the OpenGov Playbook wiki.

Also, learn more about Gov 2.0 and the modern definition of Open Government on this collaborative Google document.

- Adriel Hampton

Code for America Open House

After work today, I ducked into Code for America’s open house in SoMa, joining a vibrant tech crowd including CfA founder Jennifer Pahlka, Craig Newmark, SF Environment’s Lawrence Grodeska, Tim O’Reilly and many more. CfA is a non-profit organization that pairs teams of civic hackers with host cities to match Web 2.0 solutions with community challenges.

Four teams leave Saturday for a month with their host cities of DC, Boston, Seattle and Philadelphia, and the CfA fellows took time to answer questions about their mission.

Learn more about Code for America on its site. Check out more Code for America photos here.

- Adriel Hampton

SFPUC and SF Environment Extend ‘Drink Tap’ Initiative to SFO

San Francisco has some of the best tap water in the world, fresh from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park. To reduce plastic waste, the Department of the Environment and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission have been extending water bottle refill stations throughout high-traffic areas of the city.

Today, the program reached the San Francisco airport. Read more about Drink Tap! here.

- Adriel Hampton

Open Source App Links Volunteers, Heart Attack Victims

Fire Department App – PSA from Fire Department on Vimeo.

Imagine, you’re in the middle of a weekly team meeting when your iPhone vibrates. You stand up and calmly tell your coworkers, “There’s been a heart attack in the first floor gym. I’m CPR trained. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Similar scenarios may soon by playing out all over the country thanks to groundbreaking use of the location-aware features of modern smartphones and access to emergency dispatch information from local fire departments. In the San Francisco East Bay, it could be happening in a matter of days, as the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District rolls out its new ‘Fire Department’ app for iPhone, which launches publicly today.

I felt the world change
A couple weeks back, I found myself in Chief Richard Price’s office with my friend Joe Hackman, eyes glistening with tears as we watched a PSA video for the application (read Joe’s thoughts on what the new app means to our SF East Bay community). In the video, a 72-year-old man collapses at the lumber store; across the parking lot, a young man in an electronics store gets an alert “CPR needed” – his phone gives him an address and map of where to go, and shares the location of the nearest automated external defibrillator. Sitting in that office, seeing an app that puts real life-saving information at the fingertips of any willing and trained volunteer, I felt the world change.

The creators of this application have moved beyond the real‐time Web to the right time Web. – Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media

Chief Price and his staff first conceived of this application more than a year ago, after an incident in which they were having lunch and learned on their radios that a man was having a heart attack just steps away. Heart attack-induced brain death begins in just minutes, and fire department staff simply cannot arrive fast enough to save most people – but any army of CPR-trained volunteers can. And while they have had to be in exactly the right place to respond, the new app will dramatically extend the ability of everyday citizens to save lives.

Price told me that he has just 43 firefighters on duty during the day, but in his suburban district of 170,000 people, 10 percent have CPR training. “You can see the significance,” he said. Area residents will see the app PSA in local movie theaters beginning this weekend.

Price and his staff developed the iPhone application in partnership with the Center for Applied Informatics at Northern Kentucky University. Over the coming weeks and months, he will work with the International Association of Fire Chiefs and developers at Workday to bring the free application to Android and other mobile platforms, and to spur widescale adoption.

“The value of this application is far too important to society to not ambitiously share it with other communities around the globe,” Price said.

In the San Ramon Valley alone, community members who download the new app could help respond to as many as 100 calls a year. Across the U.S., nearly 300,000 people die each year of cardiac arrest.

“I think in the big picture, what we recognize is that of the people who have sudden cardiac arrest, less than one in three get CPR,” said heart surgeon Junaid Khan, president of the American Heart Association’s East Bay board. “Without CPR, a person really has very little chance of survival. For the first time, a smart phone application can actually help save a life.”

‘You can get there faster’
Dr. Khan and Chief Price also talked about the added benefit of creating more responders. Historically, even CPR-trained individuals sometimes balk in the face of crisis, but now self-identified volunteers within 500 yards of a heart attack in a public place will receive push notifications, increasing the likelihood of two or more responders, who can encourage one another and even take turns administering CPR.

“I think this is really a perfect marriage of technology with a government service and volunteers who want to participate,” said Kahn. “Every minute lost dramatically decreases your chance of survival. Literally every minute counts.”

I asked Kahn about the medical savings associated with early response in terms of less long-term damage. He said more data is needed for such an epidemiological study. “If you get the patient to the hospital before significant damage, the chance that they would successfully recover obviously increases. This app would let you know. You can more likely get there faster than the fire department.”

To learn about CPR and AED training in your area, visit the AHA’s website.

For more information on the new application and an electronic press kit, visit the SRFPD’s website.

To download the SRVFPD’s app now, visit ‘Fire Department’ in the iTunes store.

Chief Price will be a guest on Gov 2.0 Radio on the evening of February 6, 2011, to discuss this new technology.

- Adriel Hampton

Civic Hackers Invade San Francisco

On the way in to Civic Center this morning, I stopped by the new SoMa offices of Code for America, a non-profit startup that deploys top web professionals in one-year fellowships building Web 2.0 applications for cities across the U.S. The fellows, recruited from around the country, are here for January before heading off for a month of hands-on research at their host cities.

Code for America is hosting an open house on Wednesday night, and also ‘Labs Fridays,’ in SF and host cities, where coders will work to resolve smaller municipal tech and operational challenges on the spot.

Very cool to have this action-oriented program in San Francisco!

- Adriel Hampton

SF Film Commission Opens Data Trove to App Developers

San Francisco’s always been a special place for movie buffs. And now the City’s Film Commission is opening up its treasure trove of historical information to application developers.

As part of the City’s signature “open data” initiative, the commission this week posted information on more than 800 San Francisco locations used in movie shoots from 1915 to the present.

This latest release from the Film Commission is already one of the most popular datasets on the front page of DataSF, and the commission is hoping that innovative developers will create fun apps based on the data. The possibilities seem nearly limitless, from audio- and video-enhanced movie tours of San Francisco with a smart phone, to GPS check-in tours following in the steps of some of the City’s most familiar actors. The dataset includes movie titles, release dates, specific locations, historic notes, director, and up to three starring actors.

From Lauren Bacal to Goldie Hawn, Clint Eastwood to Robin Williams, Sean Penn and Jet Li, the dataset presents a fun walk through San Francisco film history even in raw spreadsheet form. James Bond was here, in “View to a Kill,” and along with legendary films such as “Vertigo,” “Bullitt,” and the “Dirty Harry” series, San Francisco and its beautiful neighborhoods and landscapes have also played in “Forrest Gump,” “Herbie Rides Again,” “So I Married an Axe Murderer,” “The Candidate,” “The Princess Diaries” and hundreds more films.

The City’s open data hub, OpenSF.org, hosts government data in machine-readable format, and was enshrined in law this fall. The Department of Technology and innovations manager Jay Nath administer the site, and applications developers have built dozens of civic apps based on the data. City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s Office also plays a role, with departmental counsel vetting data sets for private citizen information before release. Applications built on City data are featured in the City’s App Showcase – and hopefully we’ll be seeing new additions for movie fans there in the near future.

- Adriel Hampton