Is the Sheriffs Office Ever Going To Get Their Site Back Up?

[BarryG]

I don't agree with the "something is better than nothing" approach. It's odd to take that position in a thread about how the Sheriff's office gave the site design out to people robbing the sheriff's office. In my company, the Claims Department can't just go and host their own website.

In addition, it seems an odd position for a government agency to say "I don't like the rules made by government, so I am going to do my own thing". If the procedures are too cumbersome, the solution really isn't to just say "screw the procedures". Keep in mind IT isn't just setting up websites and installing Windows 7. A lot of it now a days is security and data integrity, not things to be taken lightly.

OIT does allow departments to use 3rd party hosting if it is approved. Take a look at http:/www.philadelphiastreets.com, it is hosted on Intermedia. That's a Sharepoint site, I think, which OIT cannot host. As I mentioned above, OIT will only host static HTML and guarantees updates in 5 business days... even assuming they are on-time, that is SLOW website updating in the information age. OIT in theory will host ASP.NET sites (like business.phila.gov) but this process is so cumbersome, departments will spend a fortune for a contractor to spend time dealing with the red tape. Point being, as of today there are lots of good reasons to look outside of the city for website hosting.

[ArcticSplash]

WordPress is free. At least 80% of Phila's websites can easily be handled on it. And it has that departmental review/publish crap so you can have layers of serfs reviewing/revising before it gets published. And with some TLC, you can run PHP/CURL sites like WP on IIS.

And MOSS (Sharepoint).

Or the City could run it all on LAMP and the custom .NET code could be done in MonoDevelop and run on Linux/Mono to cut licensing costs.



IT within the City of Philadelphia is a friggin mess. I mean it should be obvious when City employees still use Lotus Notes to do email.

[ArcticSplash]

I don't agree with the "something is better than nothing" approach. It's odd to take that position in a thread about how the Sheriff's office gave the site design out to people robbing the sheriff's office. In my company, the Claims Department can't just go and host their own website.

In addition, it seems an odd position for a government agency to say "I don't like the rules made by government, so I am going to do my own thing". If the procedures are too cumbersome, the solution really isn't to just say "screw the procedures". Keep in mind IT isn't just setting up websites and installing Windows 7. A lot of it now a days is security and data integrity, not things to be taken lightly.

There was nothing on PhillySheriff.com that was active content. Almost all the crap on it were dumps of PDF files and cuts and pastes from spreadsheets.

There wasn't even a working search feature. To search Sheriffs Sales I had to do this on Google:


>>> "9999 SALMON ST" site:PhillySheriff.com <<<<

[BarryG]

WordPress is free. At least 80% of Phila's websites can easily be handled on it. And it has that departmental review/publish crap so you can have layers of serfs reviewing/revising before it gets published. And with some TLC, you can run PHP/CURL sites like WP on IIS.

And MOSS (Sharepoint).

Or the City could run it all on LAMP and the custom .NET code could be done in MonoDevelop and run on Linux/Mono to cut licensing costs.



IT within the City of Philadelphia is a friggin mess. I mean it should be obvious when City employees still use Lotus Notes to do email.

City won't host PHP sites. I have been told this will change... eventually. Don't forget that besides running PHP on IIS, you need to run MySQL somewhere too.

Anyone remember when IBM came in and did a bunch of free consulting for the city? I wonder what they came up with. Hopefully not some insane WebSphere install that will be worse than what we have now.

[BarryG]

Anyway for all the city's IT failings, OpenDataPhilly - Connecting People With Data is freaking awesome. What you're doing on philadelinquency.com wouldn't even be possible in a lot, maybe most, cities.

[raider.adam]

OIT does allow departments to use 3rd party hosting if it is approved. Take a look at http:/www.philadelphiastreets.com, it is hosted on Intermedia. That's a Sharepoint site, I think, which OIT cannot host. As I mentioned above, OIT will only host static HTML and guarantees updates in 5 business days... even assuming they are on-time, that is SLOW website updating in the information age. OIT in theory will host ASP.NET sites (like business.phila.gov) but this process is so cumbersome, departments will spend a fortune for a contractor to spend time dealing with the red tape. Point being, as of today there are lots of good reasons to look outside of the city for website hosting.

I didn't say OIT is run well. Hell, they have an abysmal track record when it comes to dealing with consultants. But again, my point is the solution is to fix IT, not balkanize.

WordPress is free. At least 80% of Phila's websites can easily be handled on it. And it has that departmental review/publish crap so you can have layers of serfs reviewing/revising before it gets published. And with some TLC, you can run PHP/CURL sites like WP on IIS.

And MOSS (Sharepoint).

Or the City could run it all on LAMP and the custom .NET code could be done in MonoDevelop and run on Linux/Mono to cut licensing costs.



IT within the City of Philadelphia is a friggin mess. I mean it should be obvious when City employees still use Lotus Notes to do email.

Down with Wordpress. Drupal4life

There was nothing on PhillySheriff.com that was active content. Almost all the crap on it were dumps of PDF files and cuts and pastes from spreadsheets.

There wasn't even a working search feature. To search Sheriffs Sales I had to do this on Google:


>>> "9999 SALMON ST" site:PhillySheriff.com <<<<

Which sounds like it would have been an excellent candidate for internal hosting.

[raider.adam]

Anyway for all the city's IT failings, OpenDataPhilly - Connecting People With Data is freaking awesome. What you're doing on philadelinquency.com wouldn't even be possible in a lot, maybe most, cities.

Yes, they are making good headway with it. Jeff Friedman is doing a great job pushing the idea of putting out data frameworks for the public to access. I am currently trying to push the City Commissioners to jump into the Open Data working group Nutter just signed. Al Schmidt was big on the idea.

[ArcticSplash]

Anyway for all the city's IT failings, OpenDataPhilly - Connecting People With Data is freaking awesome. What you're doing on philadelinquency.com wouldn't even be possible in a lot, maybe most, cities.

And TimW has been capitalizing on that in a big way.


On property searches in PA; I've got most of the collar counties now figured out but DelCo has a pretty ugly system. Though it DOES let you search by name which Philly doesn't do unless you use TimW's app, and he does it by using BRT data extracts.

New Jersey counties suck. Hit or miss when I try to get parcel information there.

[Tartan69]

lot of it now a days is security and data integrity, not things to be taken lightly.

There are potential liability issues with data security too

I'm in software development, so I do understand the implications. I agree that data security is where my argument starts to fall apart. However I wasn't thinking of going quite that far. That said, even if all they are doing is putting up a static website with just informational content, I still believe that some value to the public is better than no value. The statist view of "we have to make sure to conform and follow the rules" is what turns normal smart people into big-government bureaucrats.

This is probably why I got out of doing public sector work... ;-)

[Tartan69]

my point is the solution is to fix IT, not balkanize

The overall solution is to provide benefit to the public. Balkanization will do that. Yes there are downsides but which of these scenarios would you rather have?

A site that provides 50% of the possible value but is 100% completed and released to the public
A site that provides 99% of the possible value but is perpetually in development?

Also I feel that "going their own way" sends a message to the higher-ups at City Hall that they are not willing to tolerate less-than-helpful service from OIT. 5 day turnaround time on a static HTML website? Pathetic. BarryG's point about circumventing the cumbersome process is valid. Now I'm sure it's a budget issue, and they need to hire more (and possibly more qualified) people and just can't afford them. But doing a basic dynamic website does not need to be expensive or difficult.

[Tartan69]

FWIW I do give them a lot of credit for making their wide variety of data publicly accessible. Crowdsourcing *is* an inexpensive and creative way to get systems built, so they get gold stars for that.

[raider.adam]

I'm in software development, so I do understand the implications. I agree that data security is where my argument starts to fall apart. However I wasn't thinking of going quite that far. That said, even if all they are doing is putting up a static website with just informational content, I still believe that some value to the public is better than no value. The statist view of "we have to make sure to conform and follow the rules" is what turns normal smart people into big-government bureaucrats.

This is probably why I got out of doing public sector work... ;-)

For the record, I am a network engineer (one of those pain in the ass guys that tell you software developers "we aren't going to let you do that" ).

The overall solution is to provide benefit to the public. Balkanization will do that. Yes there are downsides but which of these scenarios would you rather have?

A site that provides 50% of the possible value but is 100% completed and released to the public
A site that provides 99% of the possible value but is perpetually in development?

If those were the scenarios, I would agree with you, but sadly they aren't.

What if scenario A was "A site that provides 50% of the possible value but is 100% completed and released to the public and also 75% prone to a security breech and identity theft"?

Philadelphia HAS to have certain uniform guidelines on how they handle their IT infrastructure and assets. Are some of their guidelines and procedures too strict? It is very possible, but now a days if the only choices are too strict or none at all we have to default to too strict. Fortunately it doesn't have to be a binary choice. They need to find the right setup where departments and agencies can get stuff done, but meet certain minimal thresholds.

Also I feel that "going their own way" sends a message to the higher-ups at City Hall that they are not willing to tolerate less-than-helpful service from OIT. 5 day turnaround time on a static HTML website? Pathetic. BarryG's point about circumventing the cumbersome process is valid. Now I'm sure it's a budget issue, and they need to hire more (and possibly more qualified) people and just can't afford them. But doing a basic dynamic website does not need to be expensive or difficult.

I agree, but it all gets back to having IT (I really hate the OIT acronym, by the way) properly responsive. For static sites there is no reason why they can't give the departments subdomains and an FTP account (or webdav). That really costs them nothing more than some hard drive space (and even then, I would assume phila.gov is a hosted solution). Or god forbid they setup a CMS site (like Chris recommended, but with Drupal ) where the layout is all templated already and they only need to worry about content.

So I agree there is plenty that can be done to make life easier, but I stand firm on this, they should not not not not not be letting people who know nothing about IT making IT decisions for government departments.

[Tartan69]

For the record, I am a network engineer (one of those pain in the ass guys that tell you software developers "we aren't going to let you do that" ).

I knew you were something along those lines, which is why I don't take your opinion on this lightly. And while you guys are indeed a PITA , you are the ones that truly keep the world humming along.

What if scenario A was "A site that provides 50% of the possible value but is 100% completed and released to the public and also 75% prone to a security breech and identity theft"?

Definitely agreed on that scenario. I think however there is quite a bit of information that can be made publicly accessible without the risk of identity theft. Scrubbing names, addresses, SSNs, etc before posting online is fairly easy as long as the data is stored in an intelligent and accessible way. They just need someone who understands how to do it in such a way that it eliminates those risks without requiring a ton of infrastructure.

it all gets back to having IT (I really hate the OIT acronym, by the way) properly responsive. For static sites there is no reason why they can't give the departments subdomains and an FTP account (or webdav). That really costs them nothing more than some hard drive space (and even then, I would assume phila.gov is a hosted solution). Or god forbid they setup a CMS site (like Chris recommended, but with Drupal ) where the layout is all templated already and they only need to worry about content.

Herein lies the true root issue. I feel that they're either understaffed or incompetant...I'm guessing a mix of both. IT is a world where the cliche "you get what you pay for" is incredibly true.

they should not not not not not be letting people who know nothing about IT making IT decisions for government departments.

Definitely agree there!

[raider.adam]

I knew you were something along those lines, which is why I don't take your opinion on this lightly. And while you guys are indeed a PITA , you are the ones that truly keep the world humming along.



Definitely agreed on that scenario. I think however there is quite a bit of information that can be made publicly accessible without the risk of identity theft. Scrubbing names, addresses, SSNs, etc before posting online is fairly easy as long as the data is stored in an intelligent and accessible way. They just need someone who understands how to do it in such a way that it eliminates those risks without requiring a ton of infrastructure.



Herein lies the true root issue. I feel that they're either understaffed or incompetant...I'm guessing a mix of both. IT is a world where the cliche "you get what you pay for" is incredibly true.



Definitely agree there!

I think we seem to be pretty much in agreement. There are definitely baselines IT in City Hall needs to set, but at the same time they also need to realize there are certain things that they can empower departments to do without all the red tape.

Of course the trick is finding that middle ground.