Predictive Policing, A new federal Acronym, and States head to the Cloud

Predictive Policing, A new federal Acronym, and States head to the Cloud by GovLoop Insights

We have a great show for you today…

• Big data is one of the hot new terms that people are talking about. And it is about all that data that is out there. How do you make sense of it all. We’re going to talk to officials from Santa Cruz California where they are using big data to predict crime. It’s pretty cool stuff.
• Speaking of big data, we’re going to talk about the cloud… and making cloud computing work on the state and local level. A group led by TechAmerica has some advice on how to avid the pitfalls… and do state and local governments have different challenges then federal agencies?
• Pull out your government acronym list — there is one you need to know about. Its CAP and it stands for the Cross-Agency Priority Goals. Its a 14 prong approach — we’ll get an overview with GovLooper John Kamensky from the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

The stories that impact your life for Wednesday March 7th, 2012… your government world in 120-seconds… and more details on our guests today…

• The battle of the budget. Could there be another face off for fiscal 2013? Politico reports that House Republicans moved toward picking a new fight with the White House about spending. Republican members of the House Budget Committee are discussing options for the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, and many GOP members are coalescing around a plan that would cap appropriations at $1.028 trillion — that is nearly $20 billion below what was agreed to last August as part of the Budget Control Act.
• Meanwhile, Senate leaders are one step closer to reaching a deal on the $109 billion transportation bill — we told you about yesterday. The compromise came after Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to limit floor action to 30 total amendments. Federal News Radio says the Senators expect a final vote on the bill expected by next week. The House and Senate both need to pass a transportation bill before the current extension runs out at the end of this month….if that would happen the federal government would lose the authority to collect gasoline taxes and spend money from the highway trust fund.
• The Postal Service has agreed to suspend its planned closure of processing facilities and post offices during election season. The Washington Post says state officials were concerned that the delivery of absentee or mail-in ballots might be delayed or lost. The closures are part of the postal services plan to say billions of dollars by closing or consolidating more than 200 processing centers.
• BRAC might be back….that is if Pentagon officials have their way. Dorothy Robyn, the deputy undersecretary for installations and the environment at the Defense Department, has asked Congress for two more base realignment and closure commission rounds. The Washington Post says the closures would take place in 2013 and 2015 and save billions per year. Robyn said the Army is reducing its forces by 72,000 and simply needs less space.
• China testing cyber-attack capabilities. For a decade or more, Chinese military officials have talked about conducting warfare in cyberspace, The Washington Post reports. but in recent years they have progressed to testing attack capabilities during exercises, according to a congressional report. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) probably would target transportation and logistics networks before an actual conflict to try to delay or disrupt the United States’ ability to fight, according to the report prepared by Northrop Grumman for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
• With the presidential race heating up, its hard for politics not to seep into the federal workplace. But that’s exactly what the Hatch Act is designed to do — keep politics out of the federal workplace. But two lawmakers think the Hatch Act needs some stricter guidelines. Federal News Radio says, Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Alaska) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) have proposed an update to the Hatch Act [PDF] allowing for a range of penalties. One provision would give the Merit Systems Protection Board more discretion over how to punish violators. The bill is getting some Republican support.
• And on GovLoop, we’ve got a new guide…15 Commandments for Government Agencies on Twitter. It breaks down the do’s and don’t s for using the social networking tool. You can find the guide right there on our home page GovLoop dot com.

AND… Yes… the iPad HD was introduced yesterday. Have you ordered yours? Slate says there isn’t any revolutionary introductions — higher definition screen… 4G wireless, which some analysts suggested might make it more of a business tool. There have been 55 million iPads sold so far.

And… my friend Bill Eggers at Deloitte has a piece on the Harvard Business Review Web site that is definitely worth your time — it’s headlined “Disrupting the Public Sector.” And he says that despite a host of obstacles, we’re beginning to see signs of disruptive innovations gaining a foothold in education, defense, and health care. If our political leaders truly want to deliver more for less, they’ll need to use the formidable tools at their disposal to nurture disruptions across the public services landscape. Read the research itself here.

And on Monday, we’re going to talk to somebody who has had a first hand view of some of that disruption… and how one agency is dealing with it.

* Solving problems using big data: The Santa Cruz, CA example

Zach Friend is a Crime Analyst for the Santa Cruz Police Department.

Popular Science magazine: The Santa Cruz Experiment: Can a City’s Crime Be Predicted and Prevented?
By turning its crime problem into a data problem, Santa Cruz is reinventing police work for the 21st century

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Before we close… a few closing items…

On International Women’s Day… we share these worlds spoken on this date in 1884…

“We appear before you this morning…to ask that you will, at your earliest convenience, report to the House in favor of the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Legislatures of the several States, that shall prohibit the disfranchisement of citizens of the United States on account of sex.”

That was how Susan B. Anthony began her address before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on March 8, 1884. Her statement printed in the 1884 document Congressional Action in the First session of the 48th Congress. Susan B. Anthony argued for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. Her’s argument came sixteen years after legislators had first introduced a federal woman’s suffrage amendment.

The 19th Ammendment was passed in August 18, 1920… 36 years later.

Is Congress essentially done for the year? Linda Killian, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, writes in The Atlantic that while it’s not even spring yet, but with the elections looming, the House and Senate may already have done everything they will do in 2012.

Meanwhile, Politico says that being a member of Congress just isn’t fun any more. The thrill is gone, Politico says. Lawmakers say that they don’t make national policy anymore. They can’t earmark money for communities back home. The public hates them. And that is why you’re seeing lawmakers young and old are trading in their member pins for a new life in the private sector.

Finally, we’ve heard about those solar flares?

Technically, by the way, it’s called the X5.4 solar flair and it happened on March 6 and is now reaching us three days later. NASA has a very cool video of the flares. I have the link online. And did you know that NOAA predicts space weather. Really? And they were right on the money on this one. I got to talk to them a few years ago about how they predict space weather…