New Ideas : Empire 2.0 Tech Talk

Honey and Cinnamon for Weight Loss

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:10:16 PST

Honey and cinnamon are a known name in both oriental and Ayurvedic medicine for centuries. The mixture of cinnamon and honey are used as a home remedy for many diseases. And, this is not a word of belief but a fact that proven by studies and researches. Both the ingredients have its own unique healing power. Cinnamon’s come with essential oils and honey have enzyme factor and together it produces a mixture that able to stop the growth of bacteria as well as fungi.

Comments (0) Uncategorized, honey, cinnamon, health

A system of Uniform domain names for NYS entities

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:41:04 PDT

Vote On Idea

establish a systematic strategy for names of official government websites of NYS entities. Any city, town, etc. should be
- cityname.ny.gov (e.g. Albany.ny.gov, or nassau.ny.gov)
whereas counties should be
- countyname.ny.gov (e.g. Albanycounty.ny.gov or nassaucounty.ny.gov)
or else at
- countyname.county.ny.gov (e.g. Albany.county.ny.gov or Nassau.county.ny.gov)
For example, the city of Albany, NY website is now at albanyny.org, which is both painful and embarrassing, and virually impossible to guess.
This would normalize the website names, and make them uniform and easy to find.

Comments (0) I.T. Policies, city, cities, county, counties, village, name

Location Based Social Media Tools

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:23:43 PDT

Vote On Idea

I think many New York State agencies can benefit from using location based social media tools. For example, SCVNGR (http://www.scvngr.com/) is like Foursquare in the fact that users check in to locations and can see their friends. However, it differs in that people can earn points by finishing challenges and completing treks (where people visit multiple locations). Also, unlike Foursquare, SCVNGR is looking to help out early adopters create their own treks. Just think OPRHP could create a trek for visiting the parks or monuments. The reward could be a coupon for free park admission. What do you think about this?

Let me know what you think.

Comments (1) Social Media / Networking

On site health centers reduce the cost of health care to all.

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:20:41 PDT

Vote On Idea

On the topic of 'Reducing State Spending’: there is an article in the July 20 ed. of Government Technology entitled, 'Local Governments Cut Health-Care Costs With Free On-Site Health Clinics for City Workers'@ http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/766548
This onsite healthcare entity is independently run, has confidential medical records (stored off site electronically), and has shown to reduce costs of premiums, co pays, state costs up to 50%, and improve the health of employees. It appears to be a win - win arrangement. OFT can be a leader in bringing down high health care costs and in improving the health of NYS employees by exploring such a plan for NYS government as a whole.

Comments (0) Cost Reduction Strategies

E-book readers

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:35:07 PDT

Vote On Idea

Look at the possibility to buy employees e-book readers, like Sacramento City Council, to save on printing documents. See http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/749789.

Comments (0) Cost Reduction Strategies, e-book reader print

Printing....

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:39:17 PDT

Vote On Idea

A recent article caught my eye, potential 5-10% savings on printing costs by switching fonts…..

By DINESH RAMDE, Associated Press Writer Dinesh Ramde, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 6, 4:17 pm ET
MILWAUKEE – Here's a way you might save $20 this year: Change the font in the documents you print.
Because different fonts require different amounts of ink to print, you could be buying new printer cartridges less often if you wrote in, say, Century Gothic rather than Arial. Schools and businesses could save thousands of dollars with font changes.
Data on the subject from Printer.com, a Dutch company that evaluates printer attributes, persuaded the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to make a switch. Diane Blohowiak, coordinator of information-technology user support, has asked faculty and staff to use Century Gothic for all printed documents. The school also plans to change its e-mail system so it uses Century Gothic.
"The feedback we've gotten so far has been positive," she said. "Century Gothic is very readable."
The school of 6,500 students spends about $100,000 per year on ink and toner cartridges. Although students and staff can change the default font to something more ink-intensive, Blohowiak said the university expects to save $5,000 to $10,000 per year with the font switch.
When Printer.com tested popular fonts for their ink-friendly ways, Century Gothic and Times New Roman topped the list. Calibri, Verdana, Arial and Sans Serif were next, followed by Trebuchet, Tahoma and Franklin Gothic Medium. Century Gothic uses about 30 percent less ink than Arial.
The amount of ink a font drains is mainly driven by the thickness of its lines. A font with "narrow" or "light" in its name is usually better than its "bold" or "black" counterpart, said Thom Brown, an ink researcher at Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's top maker of printers.
Also, serif fonts — those with short horizontal lines at the top and bottom of characters — tend to use thinner lines and thus less ink than a "sans serif" counterpart.
But while using less ink at home can help you buy roughly one fewer printer cartridge each year, it's not necessarily better for the environment.
That's because some fonts that use less ink, including Century Gothic, are also wider. A document that's one page in Arial could extend to a second page if printed in Century Gothic. Blohowiak said her research suggests that ink comprises the main cost of a printout, but the environmental costs of paper are probably higher.
"Maybe the individual characters use less ink, but if you're using more paper, that's not so green, is it?" said Allan Haley, director of "words and letters" at Monotype Imaging Inc. in Woburn, Mass., which developed Century Gothic.
Also, Century Gothic was designed for limited blocks of text such as titles and headlines, not for full documents, said Haley, who describes fonts as his "children." Despite Printer.com's research and UW-Green Bay's experience, Haley said he still recommends Times New Roman or Arial for their readability.
The standard advice for trimming printing expenses still applies: Print in "draft mode," if you can. Use both sides of a page and do a print preview to make sure you're not printing pages with useless text such as a copyright line. Using an ink-saving font is just one more technique to consider.
And the greenest way to save on ink is not to print at all.
That's the philosophy Microsoft Corp. said it uses in deciding which fonts to include in its Outlook and Word applications. The more pleasing a font looks on the screen, the less tempted someone will be to print, said Simon Daniels, a program manager for Microsoft's typography group.
That's why the company changed its defaults in Office 2007 from Arial and Times New Roman to Calibri and Cambria, he said.
"We're trying to move the threshold of when people hit the print button," he said.

Comments (1) Cost Reduction Strategies, printing

Characteristics that Drive Cloud Hosting Decisions

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:57:48 PST

Vote On Idea

Which application or data characteristics help lead to a decision to host an application in a public cloud or within private cloud?

Comments (2) Cloud Computing, cloud, rfi

Technical & Business Considerations of Cloud Computing

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:54:38 PST

Vote On Idea

What are the primary technical and business considerations CIO/OFT should address to build “best practice” processes, so a mix of public and private hosting configurations for State applications can be deployed effectively?

Comments (0) Cloud Computing, cloud, rfi

Internal Virtual World for CIO-OFT

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:55:48 PST

Vote On Idea

Do you think that a second-life like virtural world for CIO-OFT employees would foster more internal participation in internal communication, and expression and generation of internal ideas?

Comments (3) Social Media / Networking

SEFA

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:55:12 PST

Vote On Idea

In the future, SEFA may be able to partner more with their state affiliations. Emails and online documentation could be proliferated to cut costs of getting the word out. One distributed notification of SEFA providing 100% of donations to charities, would greatly increase participation.

If this could be realized, it could make the difference in one hungry child. I would be willing to donate my time on nights or weekends to help in any additional administrative processes. If successful, this could be a catalyst for other states to adopt.

Comments (0) Workforce Management

Revisit the web filtering procedure

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:55:03 PST

Vote On Idea

The CIO/OFT web filter often prevents access to websites needed for me to do my job, either because of false positives or false assumptions. This usually hits at the worst time-pressed times, so the current process for asking for an exception is too cumbersome. Specific examples of a:

- False positive: Assigned task, research security issue. A website that mentions the word "hacking" is misinterpreted as a prohibited hackers' site.

- False assumption: Assigned task, research a webpage creating-vendor's approach on one of the sample pages it has helped a third party create. The sample page is a federal government webpage about strengthening romantic relationships to reduce societal harms like divorce. False assumption is made by the web filter this is a prohibited "Dating" webpage.

- False assumption: Assigned task, determine vendor's statements on a public policy issue. Finding that vendor has taken down its webpage, try to access Internet Archive to find earlier version of page. Prohibited. (Not sure the reason why).

- False assumption: Assigned task, research public policy issue where most discussions have taken place overseas. Try to use web language translator websites to translate discussions into English. Prohibited. Not sure why.

I think CIO/OFT should explore a better approach, one which generally permits the requested accesses based on the assumption it can trust its workforce members, but with a more robust logging and alert capability.

For example, workforce member tries to access questionable site, receives warning message: "This site has been flagged as inappropriate because it contains ______ types of content. Please enter your work-related reason for accessing this site."

This would train and encourage any workforce members not following acceptable use policy to either desist immediately, or in the future.

But this would allow legitimate uses to go through with a justification without work being stopped in its tracks.

And this would still allow administrators to monitor and prevent abuses. ("Gee, Mary's website accesses were frequently flagged as possibly inappropriate this month. Let's make sure she isn't doing anything inappropriate and her assertion of work-relatedness is supportable").

Comments (1) I.T. Policies

Establish an information bank of policies, training materials, procedures, manuals, etc that can be accessed by all agencies

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:54:53 PST

Vote On Idea

Staff of state agencies frequently prepare information for administrative and other activities that is or may be useful and applicable to other government entities. Currently, some of this information may be shared informally, but it would be of great help to everyone if there were to be a centralized repository so staff could save time and effort (thus effecting cost savings) in researching and writing original materials by copying or adapting existing information.

Comments (1) I.T. Policies

SecondLife ~ Virtual New York

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:54:42 PST

Vote On Idea

Hello, as part of a community Health Information Exchange social media project, we've created a New York Statewide Virtual World in SecondLife (http://www.secondlife.com). Would be interested in demonstrating/collaborating/sharing our project as it might fit with the Empire2.0 intiative. We are planning to open in SecondLife in mid-july.

Comments (1) Social Media / Networking

Statewide Public Data Cataloging and Access Tools

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:54:32 PST

Vote On Idea

A Federal website called data.gov is working with states and local governments to launch their own sites with access to machine-readable data and it looks like New York is not at the moment participating.

Whether New York collaborates with data.gov or not, the concept behind what they are doing is compelling and worth investigating.

One of the goals beyond making public data readily available is to encourage innovative uses of the data - similar to how Google has taken data they have acquired and developed products and services around it.

It appears that this concept could develop into a "Data as a Service" offering that has unlimited potential.

Cataloging agency data also provides an opportunity to eliminate redundancy and increase data integrity via shared access to key data provider agencies which ultimately saves money.

Available data would be gradual at first as various agencies learn how to make their data machine readable through web services, xml, rss, etc and that could be done over time through workshops and training.

Perhaps there is Federal money that could be granted to this type of initiative.

Comments (9) Open Government

HR Open House- Option 2

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:54:07 PST

Vote On Idea

Option 2: HR could host a series of regularly scheduled training programs geared at providing interested employees with information on topics such as: eligible lists, exam announcements, how to study for a State exam, the Civil Service ‘Rule of Three’, etc. Employees would schedule attendance and HRS would provide each attendee with specific information related to their title, including transfer options, exam history, and any exam opportunities that might exist.

Comments (0) Workforce Management

HR Open House Survey

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:53:56 PST

Vote On Idea

Human Resource Services is interested in your feedback!

Would you be interested in attending an HRS open house? The open house would be held monthly and designed to assist employees with understanding the Civil Service merit system, discuss individual career options and opportunities, and provide general career and recruitment guidance.

Please vote yes or no to either of the options indicated below:

Option 1: HRS could host an ‘open house’ so that employees could visit anytime throughout the day and obtain information on career mobility, look at the eligible lists they are currently on, discuss any upcoming exams that they might qualify for taking, and review titles they are eligible for transfer into. Employees would meet personally with a Personnel Administrator and have one-on-one time to discuss any questions they may have.

Comments (1) Workforce Management

NYS Civil Service Eligible List Management System (ELMS) Announcement

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:53:44 PST

Vote On Idea

Eligible List Management System (ELMS)

NYS Department of Civil Service now offers a tool to view Civil Service eligible list information online. Visit the Eligible List Management System (ELMS) at http://www.cs.state.ny.us/elmspublic/ to look up eligible lists by list number, list name, or job title. For example, you can look up the eligible list for Professional Careers Test (Human Resources) by typing in that eligible list name, its list number (24448), or one of the titles which may be filled from that eligible list (such as an Agency Training & Development Specialist Trainee 1). Once you open an eligible list on ELMS, you also have the option to view all of the titles which may be filled by that particular eligible list.

How do I view my eligible list information?
You can see your personal eligible list information through the My Lists option after logging in to ELMS using your Civil Service ID. If you do not currently have a Civil Service ID, you can obtain one through the log-in screen.

My Lists lets you view the name of the eligible lists on which your name appears, when the lists were established, and your score. Under the list number and title that appears on the upper left hand side of the page you will see ‘Show Me’. Using the arrow down function you may select any one of the following choices: entire list, active people, appointed people, inactive people, my department-all, my department-active, or my department-inactive. Your selection will depend on whether you want to look at either a statewide or a departmental list.

Please note that for promotional exams open to employees in many agencies (commonly referred to as interdepartmental exams or IDP exams), ELMS displays the entire (statewide) list in score order. However, when there are IDP lists, each agency is provided with its own employees on a departmental list. A viable departmental list is used to fill positions before the statewide list.

How was someone appointed off an eligible list with a score of 75 when others have higher scores?

When looking at the statewide (interdepartmental) promotional list, you may notice that someone with a lower score has been appointed and wonder how that can happen. There are a number of factors that could cause this to occur. For example, the person appointed at a lower score may have been appointed from a departmental eligible list specific to his or her agency; persons at higher scores may have declined the position or been temporarily unavailable, or have eligibility dates which precluded them from consideration. Departmental eligible lists typically have a much smaller candidate pool than the statewide interdepartmental lists therefore a person with a lower score may be reachable on the departmental promotion list but not reachable on the interdepartmental list.

I took some exams a few months ago but haven’t received my exam results; can I view those lists on ELMS?

New eligible lists are not yet available for a number of recently held examinations so it is important to remember to check the “start date” of an eligible list in order to determine when the list was established. For example, an examination for Senior Computer Operator was held in December 2008, but that eligible list is not on ELMS. The eligible list currently displayed on ELMS for that title is from the previous holding of the exam.

If you have any questions regarding your score or these lists, please direct your questions to Human Resource Services at (518) 473-0398 or www.oft.sm.adm.human.resources

Comments (0) Workforce Management

Shared mailbox use

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:53:28 PST

Vote On Idea

Every unit should have a shared mailbox for employee use. In some cases, it may be appropriate for customer use as well. For example, I need to submit a PR. The PR form, instructions, and the BU write up on inSIDE should tell me where I have to submit the PR.

Comments (0) Workforce Management

Reducing printing and copying costs

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:53:12 PST

Vote On Idea

CIO/OFT is implementing steps to reducing spending on paper, print supplies, maintenance and purchases of printing equipment. These steps include configuring all network printers to default to duplex printing, electronic transmission of documents to the maximum extent possible, minimizing the provision of printed material at meetings, presentations, etc. We are soliciting employee ideas to further reduce costs associated with printing and copying.

Comments (8) Cost Reduction Strategies

Encourage Semantic Markup and Linked Data as a Best Practice

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:52:58 PST

Vote On Idea

The W3C (http://www.w3.org/) defines the Semantic Web as an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

Tim Berners-Lee("Inventor of the web") coined the term Semantic Web back in 1999.

Today it is frequently referred to as Linked Data "the Semantic Web done right" - http://linkeddata.org/

My suggestion is that CIO/OFT could recommend or even establish best practices that would encourage a concerted effort to learn about and actively pursue innovative ideas in how to implement and leverage linked data across all New York State managed web sites.

Comments (1) Open Government

Publish Current Projects to the Public like DOL does

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:52:43 PST

Vote On Idea

The Department of Labor publishes publicly the status of all of their current projects. This transparency sounds exactly like what OFT has been after with Empire 2.0.

DOL: http://www.labor.state.ny.us/cioshares/activeprojectlist.shtm

Comments (0) Open Government

Reducing the CIO/OFT Carbon Footprint

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:52:30 PST

Vote On Idea

As an off-shift worker at the State Campus Data Center I am often amazed at the number of lights and computers not in use, being left on for the entire weekend. As of environmentally conscious member of CIO/OFT, I think that during this fiscally challenging times it would be beneficial to enhance the awareness of the cost of keeping these assets left on when not in use. In addition to the money saved it could also serve as an example to other agencies in an effort to reduce our total carbon footprint left on our and our children’s environment.

Comments (2) Cost Reduction Strategies

Posting of CIO/OFT Project Management Portfolio project status

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:52:14 PST

Vote On Idea

A general periodic (monthly)status of the CIO/OFT Project Management Portfolio should be made available via the Intranet.

Comments (0) Open Government

Find Alternative to the closed font CIO/OFT is using, TW Cen MT

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:51:51 PST

Vote On Idea

Two of the five elements identified by federal CIO Vivek Kundra and others as furthering the administration's technology innovation are "open and transparent government" and "participatory democracy." But how can individual members of the public and small businesses participate in their government if their government is using closed tools?

I understand the appeal of our agency-wide TW Cen MT font - it is lean, efficient, attractive, professional. But it is also tightly closed and proprietary.

The TW Cen MT font is licensable only from its copyright holder, (Monotype Imaging), is typically packaged with proprietary software or sold separately for hundreds of dollars (http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?pid=427641) and is subject to an extensive End User License Agreement (http://www.fonts.com/Legal/MI-EULA.htm).

So, this font is not accessible for the 5,000+ NYS businesses and countless individuals using office software that is open -- ironically, the types of citizens most likely to want to participate in open government. CIO/OFT has received criticism from the open standards community for using this font.

I recommend CIO/OFT look for an alternative, either an open font which already resembles TW Cen MT, or alternatively, by offering to pay a small "bounty" to members of the open source community to design one. (Such bounties are a common event in the open source community for small projects). CIO/OFT could also reach out to large open source entities who have already addressed these issues who may be able to easily point CIO/OFT in a helpful direction. See, for example, the open "Liberation Fonts" made available by one large vendor for use on any system -- https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/

"You are free to use these fonts on any system you would like. You are free to redistribute them under the GPL+exception license found in the download. Using these fonts does not subject your documents to the GPL--it liberates them from any proprietary claim. Once you have installed these fonts, we encourage you to make them your default in Thunderbird, Firefox, and Open Office. Heck, for that matter make them your default in Microsoft® Office®, in Microsoft Windows®, in Apple OSX®... in anything you would like. In many applications you can set Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New to convert to these fonts."

Before it publicly released these fonts this vendor likely canvassed these issues in great detail, and could transfer its knowledge to CIO/OFT.

Comments (0) Accessibility

Training

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:51:32 PST

Vote On Idea

We use Ilinc remote classroom training and we're saving a lot of money compared to the cost of sending trainers to counties and New York City. One distinct advantage of this approach is that it enables us to train one or two people from a district while training others from other districts simultaneously.

Page-specific help should be a standard for all New York State agency applications. It augments (and in some cases eliminates the need for) training on our application for child support.

Also, a zero training philosophy around user interface design can help. Use of error, warning and informational messages that can be altered to direct user activity prospectively create on the job training in the use of a given application.

Comments (2) Workforce Management