Research Assignment technology part 2
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www.govtech.com // January/February 2020 15
Back to the Future How does the state of tech in 2020 compare to predictions made on the cusp of Y2K? By Pamela Martineau
2020 U
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Some of these tech predictions became reality, while others never came close or were only adopted in a limited fashion. And some — especially in the area of policing — exceeded expectations. And on the eve of the year 2000, the world held its collective breath, anticipating a massively disrup- tive Y2K computer crash. But that never happened at all, in large part because governments prepared for it. Neverthe- less, Y2K hype changed the way govern- ments view and secure digital systems.
Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation,
said technological advancement sometimes can be too fi ckle to predict.
“People tend to overestimate the rate of technological change,” said Atkinson, though there are exceptions.
Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in Government Program and Data-Smart City Solutions at the John F. Kennedy School of Govern- ment at Harvard University, said that in some areas, technological advance- ments have exceeded expectations made in 2000. But governments have not kept up with the pace of change
to the degree that could assist their missions even more, he added.
“We still are operating in command control silos and hierarchical systems which tamp down the ability to dramati- cally use the technological changes,” said Goldsmith.
Here we look at where we were technologically 20 years ago, where we thought we’d be today and where we are in the year 2020.
AU TO N O M O U S V E H I C L E S
In 2000, technology watchers predicted that by 2020, hundreds of thousands of autonomous vehi- cles (AVs) would be cruising streets throughout the U.S. The technology has advanced, experts say, but today, only a few thousand AVs are in use in 10 test sites throughout the nation.
Tech engineers, transportation offi cials and auto industry executives have long eyed AVs as a way to reduce auto accidents and fatalities by elimi- nating human error. AVs, also known as self-driving vehicles, are also viewed as possible mini-urban transit systems that can pick up a person, drop them off across town, then pick up another rider.
Google and several car manufac- turers have invested heavily in AV
technology. But Chris Urmson, who worked on AV technology at Google before founding Aurora, a company that makes self-driving car software, said he expects it will take 30 to 50 years before the cars are ubiquitous on U.S. streets. In fi ve to 10 years, he expects modest adop- tion. The reason for the slow rollout? People need
assurances AVs are safe and the industry needs to learn how customers want to use the technology, Urmson said. A recent survey by AAA revealed that 77 percent of U.S. drivers are afraid of the technology, an increase from
16 January/February 2020 // www.govtech.com
Technology predictions made in 2000 describe city streets awash in autonomous vehicles, citizens voting online from the comfort of their homes, and police solving crimes and thwarting terrorist attacks with facial recognition software, DNA databases and drones.
“People tend to overestimate the rate of technological change.”
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63 percent at the end of 2017, probably due to some highly publicized crashes.
Still, governments are setting policy for the vehicles. Some 29 states and the District of Columbia have enacted AV legislation. Governments have set levels of autonomy for the vehicles — ranging from zero automation to level 5, where an auto- mated system performs all driving tasks.
Atkinson said he doesn’t believe the U.S. will get to level 5 for a “long, long time.”
“There are certain problems that may be unsolvable,” Atkinson said, such as developing sensitive enough artifi cial intelligence to pick up a child dressed in white winter wear during a blizzard.
E L E C T R O N I C VOT I N G
After the 2000 hanging chads election debacle in Florida, computerized voting was viewed by many as a panacea to slow, sloppy elections. Adoption of electronic voting technology spread quickly, and by the 2016 election, according to the Pew Research Center, 47 percent of voters across the U.S. voted with optical scan- ners, 28 percent with touchscreens and 19 percent with a combination of both. A small handful of jurisdictions used paper only.
But confi dence in electronic voting has waned, in large part because of concerns over Russian interference in the 2016 elec- tion. Many jurisdictions are now adopting back-up paper trails — which some view as moving backward technologically.
“We’ve moved back to paper ballots due to security issues,” said William Eggers, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Government Insights. “The progress has been much, much slower [than expected], even reversed.”
By 2020, many experts predicted not just widespread electronic voting, but also online voting from home. In fact, a 1997 Wired article predicted that the majority of Americans would be voting online by 2008. Online voting is off ered by only a small number of jurisdictions to some military personnel and expatriates living abroad. The voting uses advanced blockchain technology via an app made by the company Voatz.
Voters are assigned a unique ID number and a digital receipt of their votes is sent to a ballot tabulation center. The technology is not without critics, however. The Demo- cratic National Convention, for example, would not approve the use of the tech- nology in next year’s primary in Alaska.
Atkinson said he doesn’t see online voting happening en masse anytime soon, in part because the U.S. govern- ment lacked the “courage to put in place digital signatures” for residents that would make them recognizable to online secu- rity systems. The small northern Euro- pean country of Estonia, often viewed as the poster child for digital government, uses such signatures and employs online voting almost exclusively in its elections.
P O L I C I N G / S U RV E I L L A N C E
The digital shift in policing and surveillance in the last 20 years has been tectonic, experts say, although like all tech changes, those agencies with the greatest fi nancial resources have trans- formed the most. And the changes have amplifi ed thorny issues of privacy.
In 2000, community policing was viewed as an antidote for crime-ridden neighborhoods. Police offi cers hit the streets — on foot and in cars — to drill down into communities to learn the players — good and bad — so they could disrupt patterns of crime. Now, commu- nity policing is aided by things like drones, facial recognition technology, and CCTV cameras and microphones that are moni- tored in real time. Advances in mapping software and analytics allow police depart- ments to pinpoint hot spots — something known as predictive policing. Arrays of microphones combined with spatial mapping allow police to respond more rapidly to violent incidents. Gunshot detection technology allows more accu- rate responses to gunshot calls by more closely pinpointing their origins. Chatbots allow police offi cers to run profi le checks and license plate numbers, bypassing dispatchers altogether. And body cams aid in investigations of suspected police abuse or suspect assault on offi cers. New records management systems also allow offi cers to make comparisons across cases, and in some cases across jurisdictions.
But these new technologies require humans to make sense of the streams of data. The Chicago Police Department created six high-tech police hubs — Stra- tegic Decision Support Centers — to cull through data using a blend of human and computer analytics to develop police response. Other cities have similar centers.
The surveillance technologies also open up diffi cult issues of privacy. Throughout
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www.govtech.com // January/February 2020 17
“We’ve moved back to paper ballots due to security issues. The progress has been much, much slower [than expected], even reversed.”
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the nation, cities are enacting laws to place parameters around police surveillance. Seattle has enacted a law to review and place restrictions on use of the technology in all its city departments. San Francisco is among a small group of cities that have banned the use of facial recognition tech- nology in all its municipal buildings, and other cities are considering similar bans.
C O N S U M E R H A R DWA R E / I N T E R N E T
Few people in 2000 imagined that by 2020, millions of people across the planet would carry a mini computer in their pockets that could be used as a phone, camera, TV, stereo, security system acti- vator and portal for millions of computer applications that can do everything from locate your airplane boarding pass to fetch you a ride on a freelancer-driven taxi. High- tech consumer hardware and applications have exploded over the past two decades, and not just because of the smartphone. From Bluetooth devices to virtual reality
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W hen the Virginia Information Tech-nologies Agency (VITA) announced in 2018 the termination of its 12-year
outsourcing contract with Northrop
Grumman and plans to migrate to other
suppliers, it marked an end of an era. For
nearly 20 years, a handful of states and
at least one large local government have
pursued outsourcing strategies that put
much of IT in the hands of big IT fi rms,
contractors and system integrators.
The idea that government should priva-
tize its tech operations took root in the late
1990s when computing in the public sector
increased substantially, becoming more
complex and costly. For mayors, county
executives and especially governors, the
growing burden of expensive hardware,
software and specialized tech workers
hit their budgets hard just as costs for
education, health care and crime fi ghting
continued to rise. At the same time, the
growth of large-scale system integrators,
along with fast-growing tech fi rms — IBM,
Unisys and HP, for example — created an
opportunity to change how government
procured and ran its computer systems.
In 1999, Connecticut Gov. John
Rowland explained why he wanted to
change the role of IT in his state. “I hope
that government entities, whether [they’re]
cities, counties or states, take a very
serious look at getting out of the busi-
ness of information technology,” he told
a governors’ Task Force on Information
Technology during the National Gover-
nors Association meeting in February that
year. Rowland, who was in the process
of outsourcing his state’s entire IT opera-
tion to systems integrator EDS for an
estimated $1.35 billion over seven years,
said the cost savings and improvement
in services would be worth the eff ort.
The 20-Year Reign of Big Outsourcing Draws to a Close BY TOD NEWCOMBE
headsets, smart refrigerators and drones — not to mention the wide range of devices connected through the Internet of Things, or IoT — consumers have massive connec- tivity and convenience through an array of gadgets unimagined 20 years ago.
“Part of the reason we’ve made such progress [in this area],” said Atkinson, “is there is no role for government and no opposition.”
The Internet also has exploded beyond expectations. From 2000 to 2010, the number of Internet users increased 500 percent, from 361 million worldwide to almost 2 billion. Now, close to 4 billion people throughout the world use the Internet. People go online for every- thing from buying groceries and clothes to fi nding a date. They can register their cars online, earn a college degree, shop for houses and apply for a mortgage.
But the increase in online traffi c spawned an increase in cyberbullying, scamming and people just generally behaving badly in the comments sections of articles and other forums. Darker forces lurk online as well, from bad actors looking to victimize youth for human traffi cking to racist zealots looking to spew hate and spread their ideology. As awareness has grown of potential dangers
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
“Part of the reason we’ve made such progress [in this area] is there is no role for government and no opposition.”
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online, organizations have sprung up to teach online safety, with schools playing an important role in educating kids about digital dangers. But the attack surface is vast, and the nature and scope of threats seem to evolve ever more quickly.
Y 2 K / S E C U R I T Y
At 12:00 a.m. on Jan. 1 in the year 2000, computer systems throughout the world were predicted to crash due to outdated programming that could not read years ending in 00. That debacle was avoided, in large part because of massive repro- gramming eff orts by governments large and small. Y2k was a wake-up call on computer upgrades and cybersecurity. It helped spawn a massive industry in fi re- wall and anti-virus software — but some experts say governments still have a long way to go to keep up with cyberthreats.
“This needs to be much, much higher on the priority list for governments, mayors and legislative bodies,” said Eggers.
Cyberattacks are growing for governments large and small. Data shows that in the past year they’ve spiked dramatically, particularly ransomware. There is no central authority that offi cially tracks cyberattacks, but cybersecurity fi rms do. An analysis
of data shows 47 reported ransomware attacks on government in 2016, compared with 77 in 2019, just through Sept. 30.
To shore up cybersecurity, govern- ments are working with big data analytics to understand trends and patterns to reveal larger threats, including those coming from the inside. They’ve employed “ethical hackers” to search for vulnerabilities. Employees unknowingly clicking on a link or downloading an attachment have brought down entire networks, leading to massive increases in staff cybersecurity training programs. Cybersecurity has grown from a basic systems administrations function to one of the largest sectors in IT, estimated to be worth more than $155.74 billion in 2019.
Still, said Eggers, “the level of sophisti- cation in government is not high enough.”
C I T I Z E N E N GAG E M E N T / S O C I A L M E D I A
On and around the year 2000, govern- ments started to come online with websites that off ered citizens informa- tion about services, public meetings and government leaders. But the sites were static, off ering little interaction with users. Over time, governments retooled their websites to allow for citizen signup for city services and other programs, but the
progress was slow. In his book Delivering on the Digital, William Eggers argued that the glitch-ridden launch of the federal Aff ordable Care Act website in 2013 woke governments up to the failings in their digital presences from a user perspective. Large-scale reimaginings got underway.
Now, governments’ digital presence is greatly expanded as they strive to create Amazon-like experiences for citizens online. In addition to off ering more service enrollments online, governments have opened up huge troves of data for citi- zens to mine, map and otherwise visualize what’s happening in their communities.
“Open data and open govern- ment was on the way in 2000, but not anything like what we see today with the tools that are available and the third-party use,” said Goldsmith.
Social media outreach also has evolved into a staple form of government commu- nication. Jurisdictions use various chan- nels to advise community members in real time about events, natural disasters, public service disruptions and other issues. Elected offi cials also communicate directly with their constituents via social media.
But Goldsmith argues that govern- ments could be doing more “sentiment mining,” or consuming of residents’ social media feeds to identify problems earlier or pinpoint concerns about governance that could inform offi cial decisions.
“What is immature is the mining of social media so they can better under- stand the trends of their residents … digest the information and make it into policy,” said Goldsmith.
pamelamartineau@yahoo.com
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“Open data and open government was on the way in 2000, but not anything like what we see today with the tools that are available and the third-party use.”
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