Secretary of State Clinton Asked About Deploying Firefox

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Chris

A U.S. State Department employee recently asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at an employee forum about using Firefox at the work. It seems Mozilla Firefox, the popular open source web browser, is prohibited at the State Department. You can see a transcript of the questions and answer(s) here and a video here (watch at 26:30).

The employee that asked the question had previously worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a part of the U.S. intelligence community. He states that Firefox is approved for use within the intelligence community, which includes the CIA and NSA.

Clinton looks astonished by the question and the vocal support for Firefox, though she clearly doesn’t know what Firefox is. She refers the question to an undersecretary, who says that the problem is the cost of rolling out Firefox across all their networks (likely including embassies worldwide). He likely knows what Firefox is, but his reasoning lacks (although it sounds they have thought about rolling out Firefox at some previous time).

It is my hope that they talk to people familiar with Firefox when looking to deploy this secure browser.

The text of the exchange:

MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle:

Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.)

UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can –

QUESTION: It’s free. (Laughter.)

UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It’s a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we’re looking at. And thanks to the Secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that’s pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the Secretary’s continuing pushing, we’re hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it.

Yes, you’re correct; it’s free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you’re running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you’re caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can’t do everything at once.

SECRETARY CLINTON: So we will try to move toward that. When the White House was putting together the stimulus package, we were able to get money that would be spent in the United States, which was the priority, for IT and upgrading our system and expanding its reach. And this is a very high priority for me, and we will continue to push the envelope on it. I mean, Pat is right that everything does come with some cost, but we will be looking to try to see if we can extend it as quickly as possible.

It raises another issue with me. If we’re spending money on things that are not productive and useful, let us know, because there are tens of thousands of people who are using systems and office supplies and all the rest of it. The more money we can save on stuff that is not cutting edge, the more resources we’ll have to shift to do things that will give us more tools. I mean, it sounds simplistic, but one of the most common suggestions on the sounding board was having better systems to utilize supplies, paper supplies – I mean, office supplies – and be more conscious of their purchasing and their using.

And it reminded me of what I occasionally sometimes do, which I call shopping in my closet, which means opening doors and seeing what I actually already have, which I really suggest to everybody, because it’s quite enlightening. (Laughter.) And so when you go to the store and you buy, let’s say, peanut butter and you don’t realize you’ve got two jars already at the back of the shelf – I mean, that sounds simplistic, but help us save money on stuff that we shouldn’t be wasting money on, and give us the chance to manage our resources to do more things like Firefox, okay?

H/t Mozilla Links and Robert O’Callahan (I also want a Firefox shirt that says ‘Approved for the intelligence community’).

UGA Key Moves Forward, Launches 2.0 with Syllabi and Speed

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Chris

A side project that I love working on is the UGA Key, the the University of Georgia Online Course Review Book. UGA Key is an online grade database, containing the distribution for most courses’ grades over the past ten years.

Over three years ago, University of Georgia administrators decided that The Key (a long provided service to students) would no longer contain professor names, limiting its usefulness for UGA students. Two friends and I resurrected The Key on a temporary website, maintaining the files that UGA previously published (one had been smart/enterprising enough to save all the previous data tables to a hard drive). And then nearly two years ago, we opened a new website, UGAKey.com, to host a new version of The Key. You can see the history of The Key here.

And today, we launched the second iteration of the UGA Key.

This second iteration, which I am calling UGA Key 2.0, was sorely needed. The previous (first) version of UGA Key depended on a whole lot of javascript run inside the browser to function. This provided some great functionality, but it took a long time to load and didn’t work on older or slower systems. Another major problem was that the Key data was hosted on a different server than our own. I don’t want to get into the details, but we were dependent on a separate web service keeping their API open and not having any downtime. Plus, it was a pain to import new grades. Not a great situation.

So I began working on a new version of The Key sometime in the past year (there have been a lot of starts and stops). We put all the grade information in a database on our own server and began using an open source database front end to show that data. We were even able to integrate a database of course syllabi that several groups at the University of Georgia had been working on. We launched a beta of the new version in April.

And this past week I made a major breakthrough, fixing a sorting problem that was plaguing the grade data tables in the new version. Incidentally, it also decreased the amount of time it takes a data table to show up in a web browser by about two-thirds (you have to remember to use the correct database structure and data formats- numerical versus variable characters in this case).

Over the weekend I worked on the design and style of the beta. And last night (this morning, Eastern), I was comfortable enough to launch the new version and fulfill the promise I made on Twitter to launch this weekend.

This is really exciting event, and it’s also quite a relief. But it isn’t the end by any means. We still need to add as many course syllabi as we can find, and there are a few other tweaks that I would like to make. I would also like to sell some advertising to Athens businesses and student groups, since the UGA Key is such an easy way to communicate with students (shameless plug – interested in reaching UGA students with your ads?).

Long live The Key!

Links: Complaints via Twitter, Smartphones, Eagle Scouts

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Chris

To follow up on my last post, here are some more random links that have recently come across my radar.

First, I am writing this in version 2.8 of WordPress. WordPress 2.8 is an incremental improvement on 2.7, but it really rocks. Here is the post announcing WordPress 2.8 (check out the video for the highlights) and here are some tips and tricks for using WordPress 2.8.

And because of the new WordPress release, I have fixed up a few things around here. I disabled WP-Super-Cache (this takes a bit of load off the server by generating static HTML pages instead of querying the database ever page load) because it was messing with the Twitter bar on the right (really old tweets were showing up). I will likely reenable this is traffic every picks up, but for now the site doesn’t need any caching.

I have also changed the byline of this site (again). It began as Life in Athens, GA, then switched to Life in Lawrence, KS (when I moved to start grad school), then to Life in Jefferson County, CO (again, when I moved to Colorado). These were all adequate descriptions of the site, but it needed something more. WordPress includes that byline in the page title, so it shows up when you search on Google. So I decided to use a more applicable byline for what I’ve been writing about. Now the page title (and Google) read Chris M. Lindsey: Technology and Social Media in Public Administration. I’m not completely sure about this, but hopefully it will last for a while.

Now for the links:

This article from the New York Times introduces the country to a 31-year-old Brian Deese, who is a major player in the automotive industry recovery. Great article, and great job for Brian. I hope more young people can make it into positions of influence, because I know we can bring a lot to the table.
The City of San Francisco is accepting complaints from citizens via Twitter. I think this is the biggest of all the links, because it shows a city trying to connect with their citizens in the ways they communicate. And you know what, this probably didn’t take very long or cost much (if any) money to implement. Here is the Twitter user that is accepting the complaints. More governments need to be doing this.
The New York Times says that smartphones are a necessity. Especially if you are out of a job (sarcasm). Seriously, why do jobless people need to be spending the money for a smartphone?
Ars Technica reviews the Palm Pre smartphone. What I find interesting here is the discussion on the second page about having better contact integration. It doesn’t necessarily need to be syncing (because who wants to have all of their Facebook friends or Gmail contact listings on their cell phone address book), but you should be able to access the contacts on these services. And search all of them from one place.
Time has a great article on whether computer nerds can save old-fashioned journalism.
Gina Trapani linked to this great article in the New York Times that profiles Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great. If you’ve read the book, read this profile.
Last but not least, the Athens-Banner Herald covers an Eagle Scout project. Paul (a fellow Eagle Scout) sent me this link. Jamie Jackson of Athens went above and beyond the call of Scouting and created a fish habitat from discarded Christmas trees. The fish habitat is quite needed at Lake Chapman (in Sandy Creek Park, Athens) because of the way the lake was constructed (pretty much all lakes in Georgia were man-made), it cuts down on natural fish habitats. Way to go, Jamie Jackson!

That’s it for today. I hope to be writing more as I get into a more regular schedule with work.

Some Random Links

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Chris

I’ve recently moved out to Colordado (for my job with Jefferson County). Lots of links piled up, and I wanted to share some.

The Wall Street Journal had a great story on how Google uses complex algorithms (imagine that) to project which employees are likely to quit. Governments are beginning to need to project retirements (really, they have been trying to do this for a while), and a little Google help could go along way. There are so many factors that go into employees leaving or retiring, some real science would be really helpful. I’m optimistic.

This story broke while Emily and I were moving, when it was featured on Good Morning America. Everyone was saying that the Ida fossil was the “missing link”. I was skeptical after the GMA report and interview, because a long time ago, a good anthropology professor told my class that there is never a “missing link” find. All finds look to be a missing link because they have never been seen before, but each only adds to our knowledge. The theory of evolution almost details that there will never be one missing link, because changes are gradual over long periods of time and these are difficult to be found in one fossil. And then Ars Technica followed up all the hype by detailing the media circus and the long-term damage done to science.

Lastly, ComputerWorld has an excellent article about the advancement in municipal technologies (dubbed “City 2.0″). Besides the fact that I hate everyone using the 2.0 deal to classify anything as new, there is a lot of good stuff here. The article talks about new electricity initiatives and technology, the use of social media and social networking in local governments, city-wide wireless internet possibilities, sustainable data centers, and use of the cloud.

This little bit, though, bugs me:

San Jose, Calif., is one of the most high-tech cities in the U.S. Over the next few years, the city will create a social network on Wikiplanning that helps citizens learn about the city, chat over instant messaging, complete surveys and download city podcasts.

What bugs me is that the technology exists to deploy this, for free (see WordPress, BuddyPress, Jabber, etc.), right now. And it’s easy to do! A city might need a Linux server, but this can be deployed very quickly. So why is this going to take years??? You can use these technologies to increase the communication with your citizens and stakeholders right now!

Ok, enough for now, I have to get back to unpacking.

When The Internet Goes Out

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Chris

Early on April 9th, the City of Morgan Hill (California) experienced a mass internet outage, started by a targeted infrastructure attack. Bruce Perens has a good outline of what happened, why, and the lessons to be learned. Especially important are the local services that went down:

That attack demonstrated a severe fault in American infrastructure: its centralization. The city of Morgan Hill and parts of three counties lost 911 service, cellular mobile telephone communications, land-line telephone, DSL internet and private networks, central station fire and burglar alarms, ATMs, credit card terminals, and monitoring of critical utilities. In addition, resources that should not have failed, like the local hospital’s internal computer network, proved to be dependent on external resources, leaving the hospital with a “paper system” for the day.

The City of Morgan Hill, prepared for natural disaster, reacted quickly and used local amateur (ham) radio operators to reroute emergency services and other essential communications. It is surprising (to me, at least) that the local community made it through this emergency with little harm. The warning, though, should be clear: our communities are becoming dependent upon internet access, and when access goes down, so do many of our everyday systems.

Update (4/23/09) – Scott at the CIO Weblog provides a calmer reaction to the situation in Morgan Hill, but he still sees room for improvement:

My own preference is not to avoid new technologies and outsourced services, but instead to focus on independent and redundant lines of communication with which to reach them. This approach is much less reactionary, is less costly overall, and pays much greater dividends in the event of trouble than does basing all services at your own site.

The problem with this thought is when there is only one fiber provider in town, you are stuck with the level of redundancy the telecom company builds into their infrastructure.

Tracking Governments Use of Open Source CMS

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Chris

I’ve created a new page on this site to list governments that use open source content management systems.

I look at quite a few government and related sites in the course of my day (for personal, work, and school related reasons). I take notice as to what content management system (CMS) is being used on the site, and it is generally easy to determine which sites use open source CMSes (here is a list open source CMSes). I recently started keeping a list of these sites, and I have decided to share this list.

I was trying to limit the list to only governments and agencies, but I have included some big names that use open source. If the list expands, I will likely remove those in the efforts to keep this list to merely the administrative branches of government.

Hopefully someone somewhere will find this useful, whether for work or scholarly research. I will continue to update this page on my own as I spot new government websites sporting open source. If you notice any or know of any, contact me or leave a comment and I will add them to the list.

Beta Test The New Version of UGA Key

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Chris

For those students at the University of Georgia, myself and the other UGA Key developers are happy to announce a new “Beta Key.” We are attempting to move to this new version of The Key sometime soon, but we want to make sure it doesn’t crash our server or have any major problems.

The Beta Key includes several new features, including course syllabi and professor search across all departments and data. Course grades now include data from fall 2008, so the site contains grades since fall 1999 (that’s ten years of grades). This new frontend at the Beta Key should be more accessible than the current Key (we’ve had several issues of students not being able to see Key data pages). For more information, see the announcement post here.

Students can try out the Beta Key at http://beta.ugakey.com.

French Gendarmes Save with Linux

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Chris

Is your government or business looking to save on technology? You might want to read this article from Ars Technica about France’s Gendarmerie Nationale, the country’s national police force. They’ve been moving to open source software recently and estimate that switching to Ubuntu (a Linux distribution) and OpenOffice (from Windows and Microsoft Office) has “reduced its annual IT budget by 70 percent without having to reduce its capabilities.” And my favorite quote:

‘Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users,’ said Lt. Col. Guimard. ‘Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority.’

Granted, moving to Linux and open source won’t be quick or easy. The Gendarmerie Nationale won’t be migrated over completely until 2015 (see the article for details). But, they did the move the right way, starting small. They moved to Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice from Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Office.

They also have more motives than just money:

Support for open standards is a key part of the Gendarmerie’s emerging IT policy. Standards-based technologies give it more freedom to choose which vendors it adopts and also makes it easier for the Gendarmerie to interoperate with other government networks. It has found that open source software is better at handling open standards. Linux has also simplified remote maintenance tasks.

Let’s count the advantages they’ve witnessed with open source: money (70% of annual IT budget or 50 million euros since 2004) from licenses and maintenance, interoperability (open standards and open data formats), and ease of maintenance. Sounds good to me.

Chris M. Lindsey

Public Administrator, Web Developer

Category Archives: Open Source