North Coast Connections

Sometimes a concept like wireless Internet connectivity seems so logical, yet few public or private organizations seem to find the focus or inclination to get it up and running. Then something weird and totally unrelated happens that makes it imperative to move ahead. In this case it was parking meters that finally convinced the cities of Houston, Corpus Christi, Winnipeg and even Cocoa Beach (Florida) to install Wi-Fi networks. Who knew?

The font of much of my North Coast Tech blog material, Government Technology Magazine, had an article recently on Wi-Fi parking meters that points out the laws of unintended consequences, which in this case worked out to the benefit of all. The article describes the need to upgrade parking meters in Houston, Texas that eventually led to the creation of a citywide wireless network to take advantage of the advanced features of the equipment. When the issue was considered along with other citywide needs, it became an imperative to move ahead with plans to implement Wi-Fi to improve traffic, infrastructure maintenance, field inspections and water management.

HI TECH PARKING METERS
The first stop in this Kafka-esque tale is the state of the art in parking meter technology. Few appreciate that management of a parking empire in a major city is a major undertaking. For sure, there is the enforcement side of the operation that used to rely on the keen eyes and ears of enforcement officers. These new wireless meters now send a signal to rat out the offenders, thereby increasing the ticket-writing quotient of staff. But what about equipment maintenance? Staff used to wait until a meter was reported to be broken before repairing it. Now the sick meter "phones home" with internal diagnostics ... the time and effort to reverse errant tickets and lost revenue from a broken machine are problems of the past. And in the past, parking meter coin retrievers had to check every machine ... now they only empty the ones that indicate they are full.

PAYMENT OPTIONS
Part of the reason that old parking meters couldn't take credit cards, "smart cards," or even cell phone-enabled payments (see my 5/22/06 blog) is that each parking meter would be required to have self-contained processors and communication devices to handle the transactions. When the new-age meters are Wi-Fi-connected, they can easily handle these chores and even verify availability of funds.

CITY-RUN OR PRIVATE NETWORKS?
The cities moving ahead with these smart parking meters at first thought they would have to build, operate and maintain the Wi-Fi networks themselves in order to support the new equipment. After seeing the benefits of allowing private industry assume this role as they did in Portland OR, Philadelphia PA and San Francisco, most are opting to let the private sector drive the Wi-Fi bus in order to save time and money.

SO WHAT'S THE BAD PART?
Sure it's a pain if parking enforcement officers are more likely to find your expired meter and give you a ticket, but the trade off in payment options is good, right? HAH! These new-fangled parking meters can be set to erase unused time when someone drives away so the next car has to start from scratch and can't use the extra meter time. Now THAT is chicken poop (a technical term).

The bottom line is that we all benefit from wireless networks in our community. It means better quality tourism, increased commerce, better education, improved healthcare, enhanced access to government services and a spike in our quality of life. Just how we get there is a soft process that may very well depend upon something out of left field like parking meters. I'm enough of a pragmatist to not care which horse I have to saddle up and ride to get to my destination.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lawyers, like many professionals, live and die by the written word. That means they use word processing software a lot in their day-to-day work lives. Due to the sheer volume of words they produce, many lawyers (especially those in larger firms) employ teams in this endeavor that include legal secretaries, paralegals and law clerks. Even so, the general trend in the professional field is to employ fewer "typists" and require more hands-on keyboard chores, or at least increased use of voice recognition. The legal profession is also affected by this trend. But whether they "type their own" or use staff, there are big word processing problems lawyers encounter that are not readily apparent in most other professions.

First, lawyers often must collaborate with others to prepare legal documents and court filings. While they could simply circulate an electronic version and use the "track changes" feature of most word processing software packages, keeping track of versions and changes requires better technology designed to enhance collaboration.

Second, since many legal documents undergo edits and changes before they are finalized, most word processing software implants metadata into a document that can reveal previous versions, who made the changes and when the changes were made. Therefore, if a lawyer attaches an electronic version of a letter or legal brief to an email to send to someone, the recipient could dissect the document and find lots of additional information that could be used to undermine the lawyer's case.

Third, courts are increasingly coming of tech-age and allowing electronic filing (called E-filing) of court processes. However, in order to avoid the problem of lawyers and litigants filing easily editable word processing files, many (if not most) courts only allow the filing of PDF versions of documents that require lawyers and litigants to convert word processing documents into another format.

Enter the need for enhanced software packages that do more than just process words. There is an increasing number of software programs that easily track versions of documents to make collaboration easy, erase metadata in final versions so that past changes are not detectable, and allow conversion of word processing electronic documents into PDF files suitable for E-filing in court.

The PDF debate, by the way, is one that does not stand close scrutiny. The decision by courts to require PDF files for court filings is borne from the belief that PDF files are "immutable" and cannot be altered. Anyone who possesses the full (and expensive) version of Adobe Acrobat (and not just the free version of Acrobat reader) knows that PDF files are easily alterable, and even contain metadata. In my opinion, no one is taking the courts to task on the issue because technically the paper versions of files and briefs are similarly capable of forgery and alteration, though the likelihood is low and subject to challenge.

One popular product, Workshare Professional (v 4.5) works seamlessly with Microsoft Word. Although, surprising as it may be to most people, the legal profession is still a major user of Corel's Word Perfect for core word processing needs.

Go figure!

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (57)

Portland, Oregon mayor Tom Potter launched a web log in April this year in an effort to improve communication with the community and to get feedback about city programs. The blog is called Mayor Potter's Perspective, and although it contains the usual puff-piece public relations fodder, it also has some interesting insight as to why the city is choosing to pursue certain programs, and posted comments by readers are encouraged.

Subscribers may choose to have periodic "newsletters" emailed to them, or simply sign up to the RSS feed the same as any blog.

The comments section has the most interesting content, in my view. The city reserves the right to delete offensive remarks, but there is still spirited debate. On one particular posting, the mayor "exposed" an attempt by the local FBI office to gather information about the inside operations at city hall. Mayor Potter issued an open letter to the community giving his opinion, resulting in 389 comments that ranged from "atta boys" to jibes for trying to hide nefarious dealings.

As it turns out, there are a surprising number of government blogs out there. A huge directory of blogs can be found at BlogFlux.com, where the listing of government-related blogs reveals official and unofficial sites tracking everything from regulations to corruption and human interest.

Irreverent or bureaucratic, it is clear that blogs have come of age and are quickly becoming the communication method of choice for pundits and insiders. Where else can you reach thousands of people with a message that is not censored or squelched. And those blogs allowing comments become self healing when readers take serious objection to what is being said. One gets a sort of "Point / Counterpoint" view by reading the blog posting and the related comments agreeing and disagreeing with the blogger.

To be sure, bloggers should be aware of the legal pitfalls of libelous and slanderous statements. However, the free and unfettered exchange of information in the blogosphere is refreshing. I'm glad to see government is not slow to join the parade.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 03:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Todd Duncan has a NY Times best selling book on the market called Time Traps. Time management is something that we all need, and this book has some great tips to regain control of your productivity. I wrote one, and then a follow-up Tech Beat article on the topic of time management that may be helpful to those looking for ways to reign-in your time traps. Meanwhile, here the better of Duncan's tips:

* 75% of our time is not spent well. The goal should be to spend 100% of your time on your top 2 priorities.
* Don't focus on "time" management, look more toward "task" management.
* The traps that steal your time are pretty well known:
-- YES ... use the word sparingly. Saying NO more often is your best task management friend.
-- TECH ... many technologies and gadgets waste your time, not save it. Use the RIGHT tech, not simply the latest tech. Sometimes a paper calendar is better than a PDA.
-- CONTROL ... use a three part process to decide what to do. 1 = ACCUMULATE the data, 2 = ASSESS what to do (or what not to do), and 3 = ACT.
-- PHONE ... don't answer it unless it is an expected call. Uninterrupted time spent on high value tasks is more valuable that wasting time on low value calls.
-- LEASH ... don't give your work email or phone number to personal contacts, and vice versa. When you are on your time, don't bleed it into business, and when you're working, don't get distracted by personal tasks.

I, like many others, feel as if I am sometimes drowning in unproductive tasks without enough time to get everything done. The trick, of course, is to figure out the right things to do and stop doing stuff that is low payoff. And it's not always about money ... I carve out time for meditation and exercise because I know it will have a high return on my investment of time.

Sure, a lot of the content of Time Traps is stuff we already know. It's just that sometimes we need a booster shot.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)