2:30 – What the future holds in his market area of focus
If you haven’t yet, check out the first part of the conversation here.
And if you’re reading and watching this, you might also be interested in our recent conversation with Barry Leffew, Adobe’s vice president of Public Sector Sales. You’ll find parts one and two here and here.
To keep up on the latest with Adobe in government, be sure to follow us on Twitter @AdobeGov.
We recently sat down with Michael Murtha, an Adobe Department of Defense Solutions Engineer, to get his perspective on his area of expertise in the public sector. Mike’s work includes supporting the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Connect Online solution, which is based on Adobe Connect.
This is the first segment of a two-part interview. In today’s video, Mike discusses:
0:05 – His current role and background
0:28 – A typical day
1:03 – Key market trends in his area of focus
3:05 – The role and importance of customer experience
In part two, which we’ll post in the next couple days, Mike covers:
An overview of Defense Connect Online
The breadth of offering with Adobe Connect
What the future holds in Mike’s market area of focus
Keep your eyes on this space for the second part of the conversation, or follow us on Twitter to be sure you catch it.
Along with Federal Computer Week, we recently presented an event in Washington, D.C. focused on online analytics. The March 1 event was titled, “Leveraging the Power of Online Analytics to Elevate your Agency’s Performance”.
We were appreciative to have a great keynote speech by Bajinder Paul, Senior IT Advisor to the Associated Administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, General Services Administration. And the event also included a panel discussion with speakers including:
Phil Kemelor, Vice President of Strategic Analytics, Semphonic (Moderator)
Tim Fullerton, Director of New Media and Web Communications, Dept. of Interior
Mike Kruger, Director of New Media, Dept of Commerce
Rob Pinkerton, Senior Director, Industry Solutions, Adobe
Mike Evans, Senior Solutions Consultant, Adobe
We captured footage at the event, and spent some time with Rob to get his thoughts and perspective on the day. Check out the video below – and, as always, we’re interested in hearing from you in comments.
Sergeant Sean Holtz of the Training Bureau at Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) recently talked about the department’s decision to use Adobe Connect to provide officers with simple, dependable access to rich, interactive online training courses. Holtz says, “The Adobe solution provides an intuitive, convenient platform for us to create and deliver vital training to officers in every area of our department, regardless of location.”
Holtz likes how Adobe Connect enables MDPD to determine whether or not information is sticking with officers by testing their comprehension and retention. MDPD can easily add or modify the existing content to make it more effective to train officers.
Our colleagues in the UK recently began a series of interesting webinars on key government IT topics, and featuring some great speakers from gov organizations and elsewhere.
The latest in the series takes place tomorrow, Feb. 17, at 9:00am ET, and is titled, Online Citizen and Business Services: Online citizen self-service in the age of austerity. You can read more about it on the Adobe UK enterprise blog here, and can register for the event here. @AdobeEnterprise will also be live tweeting. Regardless of where you’re located, we encourage you to check it out.
The webinars are planned each month for the next several, and topics include:
March 17: Security – Citizen Data and Transactions
April 14: Designing and Delivering Intuitive Processes and Service Transactions
May 12: Simplifying Service Transactions and Business processes
Keep your eyes on the Adobe UK enterprise blog and @AdobeGov for the latest.
Update: an on-demand version of the Feb. 17 webinar is now available. Please check it out here. The discussion of Online Citizen and Business Services featured the following panelists:
Dominic Cain, Head of Client Services at the London Borough of Southwark
Guy Ker, Publishing Director at Directgov
Gilles Polin, Adobe’s European Head of Government Solutions
Helen Olsen, Managing Editor, Informed Publications
Adobe recently hosted its healthcare technology summit, “Federal Healthcare Solutions: Empowering the Patient, Payer, and Provider”, in Pentagon City, Virginia to stimulate dialogue among major federal healthcare stakeholders. The goal of the conference was to highlight ways that government agencies are leveraging Health IT to accomplish their missions and streamline complex processes through innovation.
Our keynote speaker, Dr. Peter Levin, CTO at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, set the tone for the event by sharing details of his inspiring vision to improve care for our nation’s heroes with the implementation of an open standards-based architecture for health data.
Referencing the significant role of customer experience management, Dr. Levin called for “a new model of engagement” as more users expect to securely interact with their health data through multiple diverse channels.
In the tradition of AGA 2010 (Adobe’s Government Assembly), our healthcare summit also provided everyone an opportunity to delve into relevant issues with the program speakers, including the need to balance the scope of policy with recent advances in technology.
Later, fellow panelists Jenna Noble, Deputy Program Manager for Clinical Support at Defense Health Services Systems (DHSS), and Dave Walsh, Chief Executive Officer at eServices Group, joined me for an interactive roundtable forum. Attendees were engaged as they introduced a wide range of topics including Meaningful Use interpretations as well as leveraging Health Information Exchanges and the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) for efficient claims processing.
Interestingly, one of the hot topics that emerged was the definition and implementation of standards to facilitate the seamless exchange of health data among public payers.
On behalf of Adobe, I’d like to extend a special thanks to all those who were able to attend and participate.
As we posted about recently, we were pleased to host the 2nd annual Adobe Government Assembly earlier this month in Washington, D.C. The event brought together over 500 attendees and speakers to discuss innovative ways to engage with citizens more efficiently.
We caught on video some of the key thoughts from the morning keynote, delivered by our president and CEO, Shantanu Narayen, as well as from members of the Blue Ribbon panel, including:
Alan Cohn, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Strategic Plans, Department of Homeland Security
Tom Davis, Former Congressman, 11th District of Virginia, and Federal Government Relations Director, Deloitte LLP
Craig Kaucher, Chief Information and Technology Officer, Defense Media Activity, Department of Defense
Gwynne Kostin, Co-Director, Center for New Media and Citizen Engagement, General Services Administration
You can also check out Adobe Connect recordings of the keynotes, Blue Ribbon panel, and track sessions on the Assembly web site here.
The 2nd Adobe Government Assembly was held last week in Washington D.C. Over 500 attendees gathered to discuss innovative ways to engage with citizens more efficiently. The major topics of discussion centered on improving engagement on the web, across mobile devices, using the cloud, and using social media.
Blue Ribbon Panel: Rob Pinkerton, Tom Davis, Gwynne Kostin, Craig Kaucher, and Alan Cohn
One recurring theme in both the keynote and the Blue Ribbon Panel was about the future of engagement as citizens shift how they access the Internet. In particular, this means preparing to engage constituents across multiple screens. In the opening keynote Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO, discussed technology trends that will affect Internet access in the future.
During our candid discussion, I asked Dr. Levin for his perspectives on the Blue Button initiative and the Developer Challenge, as well as the role of Health Information Technology as it relates to his vision of empowerment for V.A. consumers.
“Why isn’t there a button on your website that I can click to access my personal medical history? A little blue button.”
That simple question was posed to the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA), and proved to be the catalyst for significant improvements in the ways that a veteran can interact with his own health data.
VA developed that Blue Button in collaboration with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Department of Defense, along with the Markle Foundation’s Consumer Engagement Workgroup.
On August 2, 2010 President Obama announced the Blue Button initiative to thousands of applauding veterans, who stood to benefit from the ability to take ownership of their Personal Health Record (PHR), downloaded from the VA website with just a click.
. *Blue Button comments begin at 24:00
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That defining moment, however, was not the end of the story. Since each veteran’s comprehensive record was to be downloaded as a plain ASCII text file, the Markle and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations issued the Blue Button Developer Challenge on behalf of the VA. The goal of the challenge was to spur the innovative development of web-based solutions, enabling Blue Button users to meaningfully interact with their health data in an even more useful way. Sharing that common goal, respondents to the challenge were diverse; ranging from start-up IT companies and individual developers to Google and Microsoft.
On October 7, 2010, Adobe was announced the winner of the Blue Button Developer Challenge.
As the team lead, I had the privilege of receiving the award on Adobe’s behalf at the fourth annual Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco from a distinguished panel featuring Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Peter Levin,Chief Technology Officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Also, I had the opportunity to deliver a presentation, highlighting key features of Blue Button Health Assistant, Adobe’s innovative solution that combines the intuitive real-time interface of Adobe AIR technology with the benefits of the secure, auditable, and ubiquitous PDF format (leveraging PDF-Healthcare Best Practices) regardless of the user’s platform, browser, or device.
Certified PDF screenshot
These benefits resonated well with the discerning team of technology powerhouses who served as judges, including Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark; Assistant Vice President of the Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Steve Downs; Consumers Union health policy expert Steve Findlay; and personal health records pioneer Dr. James Ralston of Group Health Cooperative. Submissions were evaluated on the following key criteria:
Usefulness to patients in helping them stay healthy or manage their care.
Potential to impact health and well-being by addressing high-priority health goals.
Platform neutral (can be accessed by a consumer with simple web browser).
Usability / ease of use.
As a veteran myself, it was particularly rewarding to be a part of Team Adobe throughout this incredible process. But this story, and others like it, continues on as Adobe identifies and develops more ways to leverage Open Government as more than just a concept, but rather a tool to advance agency missions.
