National Association of Legislative Information Technology

NALIT Newsletter, Summer 2007   (Printer-friendly version)

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Chair's Corner
by Gary Wieman

I hope this newsletter finds you well and enjoying the start of the summer. In the last newsletter I provided updates about the Annual Meeting, the PDS, the LSCC, and the NCSL Executive Committee. In this newsletter I will update you further on meeting plans and other NALIT committees.
The NALIT agenda for the NCSL Annual Meeting is now available with session descriptions. The agenda includes topics that are leading edge with respect to the Open Standards/Open Source, integrated budget making/bill drafting, and new interactive technologies. In addition, a wireless network demonstration and discussion of IT questions that leadership should understand will bring awareness to IT security and policies. We are also looking forward to our visit to the Massachusetts Legislature to view its systems and applications.

The PDS Planning Committee has a preliminary agenda out for the meeting in Springfield. New this year are three concurrent session tracks: management, programmer/analyst technical and system/network technical. It is hoped that this arrangement provides attendees the ability to concentrate on their areas of expertise and to have smaller groups to facilitate interaction. Tim Rice sent a listserv note indicating that this is a working topic list; your comments are welcome to assist the committee in improving our program.

The NALIT Annual Meeting schedule can be found on pages 10 and 11 of this newsletter, and the preliminary agenda for the Springfield PDS is on page 12.
The Outreach Committee is preparing for the NCSL Annual Meeting, with the goal of making legislators and staff more aware of the services NALIT provides. The committee has also done an admirable job the last several years with the new staff orientation at the PDS. The committee provides handouts that describe NALIT, its purpose, and how it fits into the NCSL organization. It also provides an opportunity for new attendees to meet and ask questions of the NALIT officers and our NCSL staff liaison, Pam Greenberg.

The Legislative Staff Achievement Award and the LINCS/NALIT Online Democracy Award Committees are now reviewing the nominations they have received for their respective awards. The awards will be given at the NCSL Annual Meeting: the LSAA awards at the NALIT business meeting and lunch, and the Online Democracy Award at the staff luncheon.

The Nominating Committee is accepting nominations for NALIT Secretary until August 1st. If you are interested or know of a person interested in serving please contact Maryann Trauger.

Finally, as this is my last edition of the Chair’s Corner, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the opportunity to serve you as an officer. It has been a unique and rewarding experience that has allowed me to meet many new friends and participate at a greater level in NCSL. I would like to thank Pam Greenberg for all of her assistance. NALIT is very fortunate to have Pam’s experience and dedication so that all activities operate smoothly. I would also like to thank the officers, directors, and committee members for their work to make NALIT a better organization for all members.

Gary Wieman, NALIT Chair

The Navajo Nation Council Chamber Renovation Project and Computer Network Installation
By Emerson Notah, Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation Council is the legislative body of the Navajo Nation.  The Council meets in the Navajo Nation Council Chamber, a historic red sandstone building located in Window Rock, Arizona.

The Council Chamber building, now over 70 years old, recently underwent a significant renovation.  The renovations, funded by the Navajo Nation and a “Save America’s Treasures” grant from the National Park Service, will allow the chamber to continue to serve as the home of the Navajo Nation Council for years to come.
During the renovations, a new computer network was installed, and the existing electronic voting system was upgraded.
Construction of the council chamber was completed in 1935 by members of the Navajo Nation Civilian Conservation Corps.  The building’s design incorporates indigenous materials and architectural traditions tied to the Navajo heritage.  It is the oldest legislative building in the United States owned by an American Indian nation, and it has been used continuously since its completion.

The Council Chamber was designated a National Historic Landmark on June 16, 2004.
In 2004, the Council approved a grant to the office of the Speaker for the development of the legislative branch computer network.  The goals of the network were to help streamline the legislative process, to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the legislative programs and to make the legislative process more transparent and more user-friendly to the constituents.

Prior to the start of the renovation project at the Chamber, there was no computer network at all.  Two computers were networked together in a workgroup for the voting system software.  There was also a wireless access point.

The council chamber is now connected to a high speed fiber optic network and there is a thin client computer network in place.  The electronic voting system was upgraded by International Roll Call, and a new microphone and sound system was installed.

The new network provides each delegate with a thin client workstation and a monitor, connected via CAT-5E cabling to a patch panel, connected to a Cisco Catalyst switch. The switches are connected via fiber optic cable to the main servers, located in the office of the Speaker.

The new voting system allows legislative information, the Request to Speak queue, and voting results to be shown on the delegates’ monitors.  It also allows the delegates to log onto the main legislative network to retrieve documents, e-mail and access the Internet.  The legislative branch network is fed by a 12-strand fiber connection that branches off the main fiber backbone that feeds a majority of tribal offices.

Prior to the installation of the computer network, the existing electrical service had to be upgraded.  The old system was a 400 amp service and a new 600 amp service was installed, ensuring that the computer network and other electrical equipment in the council chamber will have adequate power.

The removal of the outdated voting system had to be completed before the network installation could proceed.  That work was performed by an electrical subcontractor, Nez Electric, a Navajo-owned firm from Cottonwood, Arizona.  The work included the removal of the cabling for the microphones, the voting buttons and the request to speak system.

After the wiring was removed, new cabling was run from the equipment room to the delegates’ workstations on the council chamber floor.
While the removal and the installation of the new wiring was taking place, we were working with International Roll Call to make sure the plans for the new voting system would meet our needs.  This included ensuring that the necessary information could be displayed on the monitor screen at the workstations, and that the voting system could be integrated with the microphone system and the Request to Speak system.  After all the preliminary work was done, three technicians from International Roll Call came onsite to do the actual installation and configuration of the voting system.

We also had to drill holes in the sides of the delegates’ desk to make room for the voting buttons.  Previously, the voting buttons were located in a thin box on top of the desks.  The decision was made to move the buttons to the front side of the desks, freeing up more desktop space.  This part of the project took about two weeks to complete.

At the same time, we began the installation of the thin clients at the council delegates’ workstations and at the Speaker’s desk.  This included making sure that each thin client was able to connect to the legislative network as well as to the voting system.  Next we had to make sure that the thin clients, the monitors and the mouse and keyboard left enough room on the desks for the delegates to take notes and such.  This part of the project took about five days.

The new network was used for the first time during the spring session of the Navajo Nation Council, which took place the week of April 16, 2007.  The system ran fairly smoothly during the session, once the delegates became familiar with its operation.  We have received a lot of positive feedback from the council delegates as well as the legislative personnel who are charged with running the microphones and other systems.  We continue to receive feedback and suggestions on how to improve the system, and plan to continue to make the legislative process more effective and efficient and beneficial to the citizens of the Navajo Nation.

As part of this effort, we have started to scan all legislation prior to the current council sessions.  The scanned legislation is saved in Portable Document Format (PDF), burned onto CD, and distributed to the delegates.  Each council delegate is issued a laptop computer for use during his term.  The scanned legislation is also put on a server at the beginning of the council sessions so that the delegates can access the text while the debate on the legislation is taking place.  This has helped to reduce the amount of paperwork that is generated during the council sessions, which take place four times a year.

One issue that has arisen is some council delegates want to be able to edit the legislation while the debate is happening but they only have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on their laptops and cannot edit with the reader.  We are looking into the costs associated with Adobe Acrobat Professional so that they can at least insert comments into the PDF files.

We are also working on a major project to scan and archive all of the legislation that has been dealt with by the Navajo Nation Council since the 1930s.  Because we currently store all that information on paper, the problems of storage space and information retrieval have become issues.
With the efforts of the Reporting Section of the Office of Legislative Services and an outside archiving firm, we have so far archived legislation through the mid-1990s.  This information is now stored on 25 CDs.  These CDs are keyword searchable and the legislation is also saved as PDF documents.
We continue to work on this data archiving and data retrieval project and we are initiating plans to eventually bring the project in-house.

What are the odds of a hurricane, tornado or tsunami hitting the State of Hawaii?  Believe me, the odds are very small compared to the rest of the continental United States.  So now I ask you, what are the odds of the computers in the Hawaii State Legislature being attacked by an unknown virus that threatens to shut down 1/3 of the computers in the Legislature?  We had thought that it was equally unlikely, as we have always kept up to date with the latest Symantec virus definition files, and all the Ad-ware, Spybot and Hijack This! updates.

How prepared are you to handle a malicious virus attack, with so many ways that a virus can enter your network and computers without being detected?
Recently the Hawaii Legislature had a run in with three different virus/spyware issues (W32.trojan virus, W32.spybot and the Delsim Dialer). It took the Legislature 150 man-hours over three days to get a handle on the problem and clean the last of the 100 plus infected PCs.

This all took place during our last legislative session.  Had it happened during a deadline period, key bills could have died, and the legislative session might have had to have been extended or a special session held.  In addition to the expense to the taxpayers, such a shutdown would have placed the tech departments in a awkward situation.  We were very, very fortunate that the attack came when it did.

The first thing we did was to find out whether we were dealing with a virus, spyware or other malware.  We then looked for a fix for each problem.  Next, we determined how many PCs had been infected, and if there was something that each PC had in common.

After several meetings and joint sessions with our tech counterparts in the Senate and Legislative Research Bureau, we were able to determine that only computers with Windows 2000 and Windows NT Server had the problems.  No Windows XP or 2003 servers were infected (although at one point it did seem that one of our main servers had similar symptoms).  We also tapped into our University of Hawaii computer department to help us tackle the problem. After further testing, we found out that on these particular PCs the Microsoft Windows updates and security updates were not up-to-date.

About 100 PCs were involved.  Tracking down the affected PCs in a five story building which contained over 800 PCs total, was a real nightmare.  We had to take them off the network to prevent the infection from spreading to other computers.

We needed to make sure that we fixed the problems completely, as we did not want to go to each machine more than once).  By the end of the first night we were able to clean a few PCs  in safe-mode and left them on overnight to see if the problems were indeed eliminated.

On the second day, we again analyzed the cleaned PCs.  There were no symptoms of the virus.  We then had the tech staff go to each office and run the same cleaning procedures.  In some cases, when we reconnected the PC to the network to download the latest Microsoft updates, some would hang or reboot before all the updates were completed.  We had to run the Microsoft updates two or three times to get all the updates installed.  Finally, we installed the most current antivirus update.

By the third day it was just a matter of running through the same procedures on the balance of the infected PCs.

We also had an evaluation session to go over our disaster preparedness procedures and readiness.  We don’t want to go through another bout with the viruses and other culprits. Like many other legislatures, nearly half of our computers are not used outside of the session, so keeping them up to date is an issue.

This was definitely a learning experience for the Hawaii legislative staff.  Despite having a firewall, an e-mail filtering service, Symantec's Antivirus, Ad-aware, Spybot, and Hijack This!, we still experienced an attack.  The likely method of infection came from inside our firewall, not outside, and was therefore probably the result of policy not being followed (personal computers are not allowed on the legislative network).

No one ever expects it to happen to them.  Do yourselves a favor, and develop a system for keeping all your workstations and servers up to date, making sure that policies are followed, and, just in case, create a plan for responding to the emergency.

Do you have a plan in place for responding to an attack of this kind?  Do you have other resources that you can count on to help analyze the situation, should the problem escalate?  Can your budget cover the costs of a cleanup?

EmergencyPreparedness:  A Reality and a Challenge for the Legislative Environment
By Peter Capriglione, North Carolina

When the nation or the world experiences a tragedy, all eyes and ears focus on said tragedy and ask: “Why did this happen, what more could have been done to prevent such an event, was everything possibly done to prevent said tragedy, and was the response to the event done in the most effective and efficient method possible?” Such was the case with the horrific event that recently took place at Virginia Tech.

People start to look at their own environments and ask the same question:  “Could it happen to us?” As a result, the North Carolina Legislature renewed its efforts to review policies and procedures that are in place to protect the legislative environment and population.

Preparation, prevention, protection and participation are the main ingredients for successful emergency preparedness and response in any setting. Our police are trained for disaster preparedness, but are we? The police have had training in “active shooter” response and building evacuation procedures, but their biggest obstacle to ensure the safety of members, staff and the public, are those very people they are trying to protect.

One major obstacle for our police force to overcome is that our legislature does not have any form of security screening equipment at our main entrances. While we do have security cameras throughout the complex, the cameras only provide a view to our police staff to building activities.  Cameras do not act as a deterrent to the entering population.

The sentiment of our membership and legislative leaders is that we are a facility that should be open and welcoming to the public. While that is all well and good, it presents a definite challenge for our police force.

Daily, groups of school children, here to learn about our government, and, during session, citizens and lobbyists, here to have their interests heard, are within our walls and on our grounds. The large numbers of citizens who have easy unencumbered access to our facilities offers any number of possible threats that require our legislative police to remain ready to react in the event a dangerous situation occurs.

We all remember the school fire drills we had to practice. When in school, those were welcome disruptions in the day. At the legislature it is not always easy to take disruptions when seemingly important work is taking place. Getting people to take drills seriously is like pulling teeth. Therefore, the first challenge to our police is to convince the building occupants that when you hear the fire alarm they must evacuate the premises, move to the prearranged safe sites away from the buildings and remain outside until the “all clear” sign is given.

While technology cannot solve the educational aspect of emergency preparedness, it can be used to improve communication to the legislative staff population on or off site.  It can also be used to notify the public while they are in the legislative complex. With this in mind, we have begun to explore off the shelf products, and the possibility of developing, in-house, an application that can help our police communicate with our population.

Our director, Dennis McCarty, has developed a flow chart that outlines what our response system needs to focus on in order to be successful.  This chart will aid in the education process as we move forward to inform our leadership on how we want to proceed during this process. There are different types of notification requirements. The following table illustrates the types and broadcast depth:

Emergency Type:
1.      Building Lockdown
2.      Perimeter Lockdown
3.      Tornado/Hurricane
4.      Bomb Threat

Broadcast Depth:
5.      Legislative Building (LB)
6.      Legislative Office Building (LOB)
7.      LB & LOB
8.      Capitol Police and State Highway Patrol
9.      State Agencies

The users of the system will determine the emergency type and then the broadcast depth, meaning what and who will be notified.
Because we have the public in our buildings, and our members and staff are not tied to a desk, the diverseness of the population requires a multifaceted design for the system in order to communicate to the population in the event of an emergency.

One of the technologies we are exploring is an application that integrates with our VOIP telephone system. Presently all members and staff do not have IP phones, but by next session this will not be the case, and this option will be one layer of notification.

In addition, wireless speakers that broadcast throughout the building are an option that is also being explored.

Communicating with a mobile population is a requirement. We have looked at using our list serve application to allow staff to input their e-mail addresses and phone numbers so they can receive text messages. In addition, we are investigating an application that communicates to the desktop.

Finally, we are considering the concept of a “restaurant-style” paging system to get information to the many groups that are onsite.
Our police chief found a comprehensive document on the Web that provides valuable information that can aid an institution in the process of emergency preparedness:

http://education.byu.edu/comd/documents/ClinicEmergencyPreparednessPlan101006_000.pdf

We will be using portions of this document as we move forward with our emergency preparedness policies and procedures.

There is much to consider when it comes to emergency preparedness for any environment. At the North Carolina General Assembly we are well on the way towards a solution we all hope will never have to be used in the real world.

By default, Internet Explorer 7 does not show the menu bar, and when it is turned on, it is displayed in the wrong place. Way to needlessly panic our users, Microsoft!

Fortunately, there is an easy fix.  The following registry settings enable the menu bar and put it back at the top of the Internet Explorer window, where users expect to find it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\
Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
 “AlwaysShowMenus”=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser]
“ITBar7Position”=dword:00000001

These settings shown can be manually entered into RegEdit, or can imported from a .reg file.

This solution can be deployed domain-wide using Active Directory group policies. The latest version of the INETRES.ADM policy template (downloadable from Microsoft) contains both registry settings.

An Exciting New Research Tool For The California Legislature
By Bill Behnk, California

How many times have the legislators or legislative staff in your state said, “if only we had a way to determine exactly how the provisions of a bill would affect the specific code sections in the existing law referenced by the bill.”  Or, “I wish we could compare two bills on the same subject to see how the bills differ in the provisions!”  Or, “I want to know how many bills have been considered over the past five years that proposed a change to a specific code section or sections in existing law.”
Sound familiar?  Enter the “Legislative Information System” (LIS). On April 16, 2007, the Legislative Data Center (LDC) piloted a new tool to a select group of about 40 senior staff in the California Legislature to address these needs. LIS is a research tool that creates a view for the user of how any bill version would amend specific code sections and the law. The first released bill version is essentially an amendment to the California codes. Once the bill itself is amended, it is impossible, looking at the bill, to ascertain how this bill affects the codes. LIS eliminates the intense manual processes for researching how bills impact existing laws and provides huge time savings for staff time in conducting research. LIS also provides increased reliability and accuracy for comparing legislative documents.
How has the concept been received so far?  Well, comments directed towards the developer and others on the project range from a simple thank you note to resounding accolades.

Of course we hope this enthusiasm lasts as we go through the pilot which will end in September 2007, when this session goes into interim recess. The production product should be available in October 2007. Although we at the LDC see this as a prototype system, the legislative staffers are already using the product for real work as the crunch of hundreds of bills begins to hit the agendas of our policy and fiscal committees. To make this product fully capable of meeting our customer’s requirements, we needed a database of the California Codes, the full text of all bills for this current session and also going back as far as possible, bill history information and voting information.

Legacy Replacement, Technology and Architecture

California, like most states, is faced with the task of replacing its legacy legislative systems with applications employing the latest technology. The first of these new systems replaced our antiquated bill drafting system. Legal Services Phase 1 (the new bill drafting system) was rolled out in November 2004 in time for the beginning of the 2005-2006 session. NALIT members are familiar with Legal Services because of an article in the Fall/Winter 2005 edition of this newsletter, and it was discussed at our Vermont staff section meeting.

The Legal Services system was developed using Oracle XML DB and it is run on a Sun/Unix platform. Because of the use of XML in the Legal Services application we were able to derive quickly and very accurately all public bill text directly from the bill drafting system. As bills are transmitted to the state printing plant for publishing, a Legal Services output also updates LIS. Another system that provides data to LIS is our new Bill History system which went into operation in April of 2007. This system is another one of our newly architected systems (also an Oracle/UNIX application) that will eventually evolve to serve the increasing information needs of the California Legislature.

The LIS product is built using standard J2EE architecture and a service-oriented model. Web- logic 9 is used as the application server with Oracle 10g as the back-end database server. It is designed in four distinct tiers, with each tier decoupled to promote maximum reusability. The user-interface tier is developed using Java Server Faces technology which in turn communicates with backing beans and Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs) on the application tier. The Business tier is comprised mainly of stateless Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) which in turn use Data Access Object (DAO) to communicate with the database tier. The application also uses
a third party compare tool called “DeltaXML”.

The Future of LIS

The first release of LIS has been built to provide a specific and much needed service to legislative staff. However, the application will evolve into a much broader service to meet the legislative research and reporting needs of the modern legislature. LIS is planned to be released into production in October 2007. The next several releases will include additional elements of our current Inquiry System (IS) along with significant improvements. IS, another of our legacy systems, provides the standard legislative information that all states provide to legislators and staff. Bill tracking, bill status, bill history and the daily agenda will be available along with a new and more sophisticated search engine to replace the existing Inquiry System.

Latest Update

At the beginning of this article, we reported a few glowing comments. While we will not know how our pilot group is doing for certain until the pilot ends, we can view and report on comments from the “Community Forum,” an important feature of the new application. Here, our pilot group can post their comments, ask “how to” questions, and make suggestions for enhancements. Our developer, the product and project managers, and the training person read these daily and respond as appropriate.
We are closing with two comments “on the record” from the pilot group that were solicited for this article. Lynn Lorber, Principal Consultant with the Senate Education Committee, writes, “I am very excited about the power of the Legislative Information System and how it will help me with my work. Having the ability to view how a bill will amend the law and comparing sections should prove invaluable. Using these tools in preparing bill analyses saves time. The Community Forum is a wonderful safety net that provides swift feedback about any questions I have, and allows me to learn from responses to other people's questions.

Rick Simpson, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of the Speaker of the Assembly comments,  “All I can say is that I wish I had this system when I was still a committee consultant. It finally fills in important gaps in our ability to quickly and accurately analyze legislation, to compare similar provisions in multiple bills, and to compare how a bill affected the law at various points in the legislative process. Maybe I won’t retire very soon after all!

Proposed Changes to the NALIT By-Laws

Summary:  NCSL has recommended that each staff section adopt language identifying the staff section as part of the Staff Division of NCSL in order to establish a formal relationship that extends NCSL's insurance coverage to staff section meetings.

(Underline indicates additions. Strikethrough indicates deletions.)

Article 1:  Name

The name of the organization shall be the National Association of Legislative Information Technology (NALIT), a recognized staff section in the legislative staff division of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), hereinafter referred to as the Association.
 
 

These proposed changes will be considered at the NALIT Business Meeting on Tuesday, August 7, 2007.

Bill Drafting with MS Word and XML at the Maryland Legislature
By Michael Gaudiello, Maryland

Some of you may have been at the last NALIT session in Washington D.C., where I discussed some of the technical issues in implementing a new bill drafting system at the Maryland Legislature. As you may recall, Maryland’s attorneys have been drafting online for the past 15 years. The previous drafting systems were all word processor based, so this was an environment in which our drafters were very comfortable.

We set out on a development effort based on a “classic” XML design including a DTD, FOSI style sheet for publication and an XML authoring package for content creation. Initially, the design team viewed this approach as very attractive in that our bill drafts finally had a formalized structure and tagging definition.

It took approximately two years to get to the point where we were seriously ready to test our new system on the drafting community as a whole. Most of the initial testing was done by a small group of bill drafting managers and a sampling of bill drafters.

During the design and testing phase, concerns regarding the rigidity of the DTD and XML began to surface. At the cost of reduced functionality, several attempts were made to make the drafting process more user-friendly and word processor-like.

In the end, the decision was made to move the drafting process to Microsoft Word.

For the 2007 legislative session, we deployed what I have come to refer to as the “Hybrid Bill Drafting Approach.”  This system uses XML for all phases of the bill draft except the actual document which is kept in Microsoft Word format. That is, we convert the existing statute (XML database) to Microsoft Word and allow the drafters to operate in a strictly word processor-based environment. To assist the drafters and to provide consistency to the bill drafts, a group of macros, toolbars, boilerplate, keyboard shortcuts, etc., were added to the Microsoft Word environment.

The familiar Microsoft Word environment and these customizations provided an ideal drafting environment. With the Word-based environment, the existing information intake component, and the reporting components salvaged from the original XML drafting project, we have a complete system for drafting legislation.

Through the 2007 legislative session, we created the following:

·      Bills

o       3,700 legislative requests – pre bill documents

o       2,500 legislative requests were introduced as first reading bills.

o       1,200 bills were printed for third reading

o       500 bills were printed as enrolled

o       650 third readers or enrolled bills became chapters

·      Amendments

o       2,400 amendments to the first, third and enrolled bills

·      Amendment engrossment

o       730 amendments engrossed into bills

Throughout the drafting process, PDF versions of all the above documents were created at predefined workflow steps. With the resulting system, we were able to create tens of thousands of documents during our 90-day session with very few problems.

Moving the drafting environment to Microsoft Word, initially perceived as a gamble, actually turned out to be a robust and well received solution. 

The Certainty of Pandemics:  Why we must overcome “Pandemic Fatigue” and Prepare
By Scott McPherson, Florida

The recent hubbub created by the XDR-TB (that’s eXtensively Drug-Resistant tuberculosis) trial lawyer from Atlanta and his odyssey of evasiveness has catapulted public health measures back onto the front page of American newspapers.

But, as usual, the American media is missing the point, focusing on the individual’s plight instead of the gaping holes in public health measures and protocols – and the vulnerabilities encountered when trying to enforce any kind of public health measure.

While the American mainstream media is focused on Brittany Spears’ underwear or Paris Hilton’s reduced jail sentence, the world’s press allows itself to focus on avian flu events and flare-ups across the world.  Astonishingly, you can learn more about avian flu from Al-Jazeera than from your average American daily newspaper.

For example, did you know that in August of last year, there was a regional outbreak of H5N1 in Indonesia severe enough to force the World Health Organization (WHO) to put a “Tamiflu blanket” of preventative dosages on some 2,000 villagers?  This was done to stop a potential pandemic dead in its tracks with apparent success.  Or that in Egypt, the severity of the H5N1 outbreak in humans in early 2007 was based on your location along the Nile Delta?  The further north you were, the more likely you would die from H5N1.

This brings us back to the issue of avian influenza and pandemic planning.  Dr. Mike Osterholm, one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of infectious disease upon society, is worried about what he calls “pandemic fatigue.”  This is where the American press and public become focused on a particular topic and, if the predicted outcome does not immediately occur, frustration develops.

We saw this in our profession during Y2K preparations.  Even HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt speaks about Y2K in derogatory terms.  Of all people, Leavitt should watch his tongue.  Y2K was a non-event because of all the hard work IT professionals performed across the globe, and we should stop apologizing for it!  Y2K was a perfect example of the dramatic success that can occur when an issue is clearly defined, project management takes shape, and the issue is properly funded.

But I digress.  In order for you to better understand what we face, let’s start with a quick primer on flu.

Influenza is a virus that has plagued civilization since historians have kept notes.  Hippocrates himself wrote of a plague around 412 BC that appears to have been an influenza epidemic or pandemic.  This is what killed Pericles and forced the downfall of Athens.   Influenza has definitely been tracked since the 1500s.

Influenza is an RNA virus, meaning when it duplicates, it does so with many “mistakes” or mutations.  There is no DNA “quality control.”  Simply put, it makes bad faxes of itself. These mutations are precisely what makes the virus so hard to contain.

There are three types of influenza:  Influenza A, which can infect birds and mammals; Influenza B, which infects humans only; and a third type, Influenza C, which is rarely spoken of and is frequently misdiagnosed as the common cold.

All Influenza A is avian in origin. Thus, all Influenza A had its start as “Bird Flu,” even if it circulates among people.  And it is only Influenza A that can cause pandemics, so we will focus only on Influenza A in our discussion.

Influenza has two “spikes” on its surface.  One, called hemagglutinin, cleaves or parts the cell wall in the human respiratory system, thereby allowing the virus to enter a host cell.  The scale might be a tennis ball (virus) to a doctor’s examination room (cell.)

Once inside, the spherical virus dissolves its protective protein and lipid outercoat and allows eight strands of ribonucleic acid to release and begin to multiply.  Tens of thousands of such new viruses are formed via these replications, with their subsequent mutations.

When these tens of thousands of new viruses are ready to go, the other spike – neuraminidase – re-opens the cell wall, and the new army of viruses begins striking at other cells in the respiratory tract. (Tamiflu, by the way, is a neuraminidase inhibitor).

There are sixteen known types of hemagglutinin and nine known types of neuraminidase.

Pandemics occur when a novel strain of influenza spontaneously appears, which has acquired the ability to be transmitted easily from person to person and for which there is no native immunity among humans.  Over the past 300 years, there have been ten identifiable influenza pandemics.  Pandemics plague the planet three times a century, on average.  Pandemics in the 1500s, 1800s and 1918’s H1N1 were especially lethal.  And we have not had a pandemic of any consequence since 1968’s H3N2, although 1977’s H1N1 “Russian Flu” was a pandemic for people 25 and under, because that strain had not hit since the early 1940s.

Today, H1N1 and H3N2 strains still circulate around the planet.  The strains are no longer pandemic, because there is much immunity.  But not too much immunity:  Several of the child deaths attributable to seasonal influenza in the US this season (there have been around 200) are typed directly to H1N1.  So the virus that killed between 50 and 100 million people globally in 1918 still kills today.

Now a new strain of influenza A threatens to “go pandemic.”  The strain, type H5N1, is causing the most concern because it has acquired many of the same traits of the 1918 virus. For example, the 1918 virus was an avian influenza that went directly to humans from birds, bypassing the traditional wildfowl-poultry-pig-human chain.  H5N1 is infecting people directly from both wildfowl and from poultry.

Another disconcerting parallel:  In 1918, half of the 675,000 deaths in the US were young, healthy adults. Today, ninety percent (90%) of

the fatal human H5N1 cases are people under 40.

There have been just over 300 reported cases of H5N1 in humans since 2003.  However, the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of H5N1 is increasing.  The CFR has doubled, from roughly 30% to over 60% in just two years, while the number of documented cases has tripled in the same period of time.  This means that if a case is reported to the WHO, its outcome is twice as likely to become fatal as it was in 2005.  By contrast, in 1918, the H1N1 Case Fatality Rate was 2%.

The bottom line is:  We will have another influenza pandemic.  And we are, in the estimation of every public health professional and medical scientist worth quoting, long overdue for one.  No one knows when the next pandemic will occur, where it will begin, what strain of flu it will be, or how lethal it will be.  We do know that pandemics come in waves and can take 12 to 36 months to pass.  We also know that even a minor pandemic can drop Gross Domestic Product by 1.4%.

So what can we expect the next time a moderate to severe influenza pandemic hits?

The American healthcare system cannot handle the “surge” of critically-ill patients that a pandemic would create.  One trip to the emergency room during a normal flu season is reinforcement of that fact.

Absenteeism will reach up to 40% of the work force, crippling entire industries and impacting commerce substantially.  Entire industries will be crippled.  The Congressional Budget office, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the British government have all released economic projections that say a severe pandemic of any significant lethality will devastate the global economy and risk putting the planet into a severe recession, if not outright depression.

Also, with economic calamity comes an increase in the crime rate.  Think of what will happen if 40% of the uniformed police force cannot show up for work.  Remember, there will be no mutual aid.  Every police force will be on its own.

The global Just-In-Time economy is clearly not built to withstand a pandemic.  Goods and services will certainly be disrupted. Remember, grocery chains operate on JIT philosophy.  So does Wal-Mart, Target, and other discount retailers.  And so does IT.

There will be no vaccine for the pandemic strain until four to six months after the outbreak, although some pre-pandemic vaccine might afford lifesaving protection.

In the face of this potential (and long overdue) calamity, America must prepare – every sector, every home, every community.

For government IT, that means drawing up two contingency plans:  First, IT must prepare to support what I call “retail government” no matter what.  These are those social service agencies that are always on the front lines during an economic crisis.  Now add a health emergency.  Think of an anthrax or biological weapons attack on top of a hurricane in every community in America.

Second is determining how you will maintain your service levels in the face of despair, illness and death of your own staff.  The chief countermeasure here is cross-training your people, making sure people’s individual tasks are broken down and reassignable in the event of a pandemic. That does NOT mean training someone to “cover Doris’s work.” That means breaking down Doris’s tasks and cross-training several people to cover the individual tasks.

Determine how to move data centers to extended “lights out” remote operations.  Define what will be accomplished by “work at home” plans.  Unless you are a truly digital legislature, you will find work at home plans to be fine in the short term but almost impossible to administer during a pandemic “wave” lasting eight weeks or longer.  When decision-makers start preaching “telecommuting,” remind them of what additional bandwidth it will take to implement – and remind them that the Internet is a resource that, ultimately, takes people to maintain, meaning it, too, may become undependable.

This also means holding meetings with ALL of your upstream and downstream suppliers and finding out how prepared they are for a pandemic.  Ask them to share their plans with you in detail.  If they are unwilling to share, find alternate suppliers.  Pull out your old Y2K supply chain plans and transfer them to your pandemic notebook.

Finally, consider stashing a supply of “Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions” such as NIOSH-compliant N95 masks and respirators, antiviral hand sanitizer and disposable gloves.  Teach proper hygiene and how to sanitize contact surfaces.  This will produce results on par with the best antivirals.  Consider staggering work shifts to reduce the proximity of people who work with each other.

Do not make these decisions in a vacuum.  Every continuity of government and disaster recovery plan must be reworked to include pandemics.  Make sure your decision-makers are not making light of the issue themselves.

An influenza pandemic will be like 400 Katrinas occurring simultaneously all over the nation.  There will be no mutual aid and precious little inventory.  Jails, prisons, and health care facilities will be at great risk.  The economy will suffer and the more lethal the virus, the greater the suffering.  If government fails to inform, prepare and protect its citizens to the extent possible, then government will continue its slide toward irrelevance in the minds of the American people.

And that is a far greater tragedy than the pandemic itself, with far greater consequences.

Scott McPherson is a former state legislator and the current chief information officer of the Florida House of Representatives.  He is a nationally-recognized expert on pandemic planning and disaster recovery.  His presentation on IT preparations for pandemic influenza, as well as other planning materials for IT professionals, can be downloaded at the Florida CIO Council Pandemic Website,

http://www.bpr.state.fl.us/pandemic/.

He is currently working on a book about the history of influenza and the need for pandemic preparedness, which he hopes to have published before it is needed.  He can be reached at

scott.mcpherson@myfloridahouse.gov.

New Technologies Increase Acceptance of thePaperless Office (part 2 of 2)
By Dawna Attig, Vermont

The nature of paper and its physical presence seriously impacts work mobility. We are an instantaneous society and the ability to access information wherever and whenever we want it has changed from a nicety to a necessity.

In the last five years, there has been a push to develop online government (e-government), business and banking (e-commerce), and education services (e-learning). The development of these services has not only significantly reduced paper use, but the public, as a result, is realizing a faster, more flexible, efficient and economical government, commercial, and educational environment.

Furthermore, the rise of e-commerce has generated a new economy; more and more private individuals are doing their shopping and banking online. Corporations and governments have implemented online transaction services, including electronic billing and electronic banking. Email marketing has replaced much of the traditional marketing activities.  It is considered an effective sales tool and is cheaper than traditional methods. Finally, the concept of e-learning has exploded as a result of the Internet, contributing to an improvement in the quality and availability of education, where books and periodicals have been supplemented or replaced by e-books, web sites and electronic documents.

The reduction of paper from government, commerce and educational activities is still limited.  However, as these new e-services gain ground and become mainstream, the need for paper will continue to subside.

As an IT professional looking at the stacks of paper on my desk, it is evident that the need to print is overwhelming.  Most of us find it more convenient to work from a hard copy; we can make notes on it and take it with us anywhere we go. Often, when given paper documents to review, users will return more paper. Also, many of us find it difficult to read documents from screens for various reasons.  Finally, there are those who place more credence on the hard copy than the electronic version.

The widespread availability of printers provides a temptation too great to resist in many cases. As a consequence, it will be necessary to introduce “responsible printing on demand” policies, mandating that readers only print what is really necessary. Substantial changes to business operations could be introduced in offices in order to favor electronic working systems and reduced paper use. Lastly, by simply configuring office equipment properly, and implementing efficiency measures and best practices regarding paper generation, organizations can reduce paper consumption significantly, reducing the associated costs as well.

It may be necessary to invest in equipment in order to achieve reduced consumption levels without losing operational capacity. The most suitable mainstream devices for working without paper at this time are flat screens or tablet PCs.  Users can actually write on these devices, creating electronic documents that can be readily carried and shared. However, there are remarkable new technologies being introduced every day that make it even easier for us to live and work without paper.

Some of the most promising new technologies are built around the concept of electronic paper, which is both literally and figuratively a more flexible output device than current display screens.  Electronic paper is essentially a flexible screen which is only a little thicker than a standard piece of paper.  In addition to the thinness and flexibility, electronic paper is illuminated only by ambient light, like an ordinary piece of paper, and draws power only when the image is changed.  These characteristics allow for extremely compact devices with very long battery lives. One single device, the size of a sheet of paper and as thick as a card, could hold many books, newspapers, even magazines. While still under development,  these devices will become widespread in the future, and will create ideal conditions for significant reductions in paper consumption.  One such device is from a company called e-Ink:

Another exciting concept device is Universal Display Corporation’s Universal Communication Device. The UCD is a pen-like device with a roll-out display that offers full-color, full-motion video in a low-power package – to provide users with advanced voice and data communication capabilities in an almost ridiculously compact form factor.

At the end of May, 2007, Microsoft announced a revolutionary concept, a very new multi-touch computing product, called Surface. At first the rumors were this would be an iPhone competitor, but it's clear now that it is a much larger concept.  Surface is built into a desktop, and people interact with it, its applications, and the Internet using touch, natural gestures and physical objects. No mouse or keyboard is required. From the Microsoft press release:
“Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.”

The paperless office offers many benefits, but going completely paperless will not be accomplished overnight. All of the new technologies will reduce the need for paper, but it will take time and effort to change users’ habits (e.g., the habit of printing email) to finally eliminate our reliance on paper. As the old saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water…” In the same vein, we can provide all of the new technologies available to encourage less paper use, but if we do not change our users’ habits, paper will prevail, despite access to new technologies and digital content.

“Technology convergence is the development of an alternative product with improved performance for the same purpose.” (Beaudry, 2006) Significant paper reduction will only happen when electronic paper becomes, not just as good as standard paper, but better.

Compiling, editing, and formatting the last two issues of the NALIT newsletter has been a lot of fun, and something of a learning experience.

I was a bit slow to get going on the first issue, so I was determined to get a fast start on this one. The day after the Winter 2006/Summer 2007 issue went to press, I posted a note on the listserv looking for articles.

In twenty-four hours, I had seven volunteers, and was suddenly faced with a newsletter roughly the size of the Black Box catalog.  What a wonderful problem to have!

My thanks to the Garys (Wieman and Schaefer), to Pam Greenberg, and to all who contributed to both issues of the newsletter this year. I could not have done it without your help!

Duncan Goss, NALIT Secretary

Call For Newsletter Articles

Publishing this newsletter would be impossible without your participation. The incoming editor will be publishing the Winter 2007 issue later this year, and will need articles from you, the members of NALIT.

What kind of articles do we need?

·        Descriptions of IT-related projects undertaken by your office.

·        Reviews or studies that your office has done on IT-related issues.

·        IT-related policies or systems implemented in your state (not just by your office) that affect legislative IT operations.

·        Anything at all that you think would be interesting to your peers in other states.

Don’t be shy!  We’re not looking for a master’s thesis. Take the space you need to describe your subject adequately, but no more. A typical article is two single-spaced pages, but longer or shorter articles are fine.