Emergency reverse 911 systems are not working properly and residents are expected to evacuate before they get an alert.

So how are people getting information about this fire?

Folks are getting up to the minute information (and more information about localized evacuations) through Twitter and Facebook.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management maintains an excellent website with an updated Emergency Status page (and runs on Joomla!).  The Status page has been heavily updated throughout the day.

But the Boulder Office of Emergency Management also maintains a Twitter account and a Facebook page.  Both are continuously updated, and their updates are making the rounds on both social networks.

I’ve long said that small cities and counties can use social networking tools instead of licensing expensive texting software to notify citizens of emergencies (outside of reverse 911 systems, that is).  And even in this situation, when reverse 911 systems aren’t working, it is useful for all to have a backup that is easy to post to (text messages for Twitter and Facebook).

Cities exist to create citizens. Not to generate economic gains (they do, but as a byproduct), or provide a home to the arts, entertainment or learning (again, byproducts), and certainly not to support a government (it’s a means to an end). I would argue that the real purpose of cities is to create a group of people who will take responsibility for their community. And it’s this willingness to accept responsibility that is the difference between a resident and a citizen.

I think we in government (and our residents) forget the ultimate purpose of what we do, which (for me) is to solve common problems that a single individual cannot solve on his or her own.  Things like roads, libraries, building codes, and public safety.  To do these things, citizens (not residents) formed collectives.  We need to continue to reinvigorate our populations and create citizens who get back in the habit of looking out for the greater good and who help create a better place to live.

I don’t know if it is the responsibility of city managers or elected officials to create citizens.  But we all need to do more.

I’m adding ‘creating citizens’ to my own mission in local government.

Classes in local government were first offered at the University of Kansas in the late 1940s, when city management was becoming professionalized in reaction to corruption, says Marilu Goodyear, chairwoman of its department of public administration. Students today — including civil engineers, firefighters and police officers seeking to advance to leadership positions — are often interested in careers in city management or finance. Internships are part of most M.P.A. programs. Kansas’ are distinctive: students intern full time in city government their second year. With campuses near Fort Leavenworth, the university also attracts military personnel involved in nation building and reconciliation in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Maj. Robin W. Montgomery, aide to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, graduated last summer.)

Kansas tops the U.S. News & World Report rankings for city management and urban policy.

My friend and classmate Rob (Robin) got a huge mention!  Way to go, Rob!

Public administration is an incredible field, but it often gets confused.  You tell someone you work in government, and they assume you are a politician.  Public administration is typically about the professional government worker (nonpartisan during working hours and unbiased) implementing policies handed down from politicians.

I would recommend an MPA for anyone looking to start, or further, a career in professional government.  If you are starting out, I would recommend attending a program that has very good connections to internships.  Or, find a job in a government and later go back and get an MPA.  Either way, the important part of the degree is the application of real-life experience to MPA classes.

And with all this talk of MPA degrees, I have to brag about the one I just received!:

To make matters worse, seniority rules resulted in the layoffs of younger tech-savvy employees who were among the most skilled in resolving computer problems, the report said.

“Those folks who were sleeping on cots to fix this system are the ones who were shown the door,” said one former employee.

I’m working in the Budget &  Management Analysis Division of the Administrative Services Department.  And I have a new office and everything.

I’m very happy to continue on at Jefferson County, and Emily and I are rooting quite a bit deeper in the JeffCo community.

I’ve finished the Edwin O. Stene Master’s Program in Public Administration (MPA degree) at the University of Kansas, and I recently was hooded.

Here are a couple of pictures from the graduation banquet:

I started this program 2 years ago, having never been to campus before I accepted and having never lived outside of the State of Georgia.  I applied on the recommendation of a mentor and professor at the University of Georgia, and I was accepted to the program (just barely).

I’ve moved to Kansas, been to Richmond and Montreal for ICMA conferences, made many new friends (who I already miss), worked in new places (the Unified Government and Jefferson County), found a job in and moved to Colorado, and become engaged (and getting married in a month).  These have been a grueling, but refreshing, two years for this fresh-out-of-undergrad guy from Georgia.  And I can’t believe it is already over (but really, the journey has just begun).

It still seems like just yesterday when I was sitting in that classroom in Blake Hall, listening to Professor John Nalbandian (pictured above, hooding me) as the tornado sirens went off outside on that first day.  Wow.

Other updates will be forthcoming (I have a job!).

The articles are written by Ron Carlee, the former county manager for Arlington County, Virginia, and the Executive in Residence and Director for Domestic Strategic Initiatives for ICMA.  Ron’s first post on the Huffington Post explains what a city manager or county administrator is, why the council-manager form of local government came about, and about the profession in general.  Overall, it is an excellent introduction to the profession for anyone to read (especially family members who might not be able to explain what we do).

Ron’s second article responds to some criticism of his first article (it was really only two people who did the criticizing).

In the most recent post, Ron responds to questions about the ethics of writing on a liberal leaning website.  Ethics, and following the ICMA Code of Ethics, is the strongest tenet of ICMA membership, and I can see from the post that Ron and the ICMA are not taking this question lightly:

The Tenet and the Guidelines do not prohibit expression of opinions on issues, political ideas, or the association with people with political ideas. This I confirmed with the ICMA director of ethics. Publishing a non-partisan blog on this site it not a violation of Code of Ethics; however, not being a violation of the Code doesn’t make something a good idea.

I’m proud to see that ICMA has started a blog in a widely read website.

• First, simply putting information online for citizens.
• Second, online transactions (paying bills, reporting problems, applying for permits, etc.).
• Third, “expanding information to include this bulk download or easy, machine-readable, querying of data.”  (He also notes, “in this wave of innovation, government diverges significantly from the private sector. Few private businesses will want to place large amounts of data collected at their own expense in the public domain for anyone to see and use.”
• Fourth, sites where “constituents can not only report issues online (using a map-based interface in the case of see-click-fix) but also see what others have reported and even rank the importance of the issues which have been reported.”
• Fifth, allow citizens to track issues (and resolution of the issues) online.
• Sixth (and this is done by citizens and not government), citizens use government data sources to make applications (‘apps’) to inform policy-making.

Overall, this is a very good read from “the Chief Seattle Geek.”

Many aspects of the [city or county] manager’s job remain the same: keeping the council informed, providing continuity and stability, telling the council what it does not necessarily want to hear, and balancing short-run interests against a long-run, “greater good” perspective. The difference between now and ten years ago is in the emphasis on the facilitative role of the manager.

This is my chosen and learned profession, and I’m excited.

There has been quite a bit of coverage following the short announcement about the White House website.

techPresident has a bit more information on why the White House decided to use Drupal as its content management system.

Tim O’Reilly, of O’Reilly Media, posted some thoughts on the announcement.  He managed to track down some specifics on what systems the White House used to implement Drupal:

That Drupal implementation is in turn running on a Red Hat Linux system with Apache, MySQL and the rest of the LAMP stack. Apache Solr is the new White House search engine.

He also mentions the White House possibly contributing back some of the code they used to implement Drupal:

The source code for Drupal (and the rest of the LAMP stack) is indeed available, but the modifications that were made to meet government security, scalability, and hosting requirements have not yet been shared. In my conversations with the new media team at the White House, it is clear that they are exploring this option.

The ZDNet open source blog thinks that this will be a good test for Drupal (and, really, open source) security – I agree.

I can’t wait to hear more details.