Government Bits

Tracking how technology is transforming interaction between governments and citizens.

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Adobe LiveCycle ES3 was recently released and contains several new features that will appeal to customers in both federal and state & local government.  Full resource documentation for ES3 is available here. This post will focus on the new features that will be most interesting to government customers.

CRX – Content Repository Extreme

Adobe LiveCycle ES3 foundation now comes with a full implementation of the CRX.  A Java Content Repository (JCR) based on Apache’s Jackrabbit. (http://jackrabbit.apache.org/)  It implements the JSR 170 and JSR 283 specifications.  This is a great solution for storage for customers who don’t want to purchase or don’t already have an enterprise content management (ECM) solution in place.

There are also operations in the LiveCycle Workbench for reading from, writing to, and managing the documents in the CRX.

Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES3

There were several updates to the Adobe LiveCycle Designer that will make the lives of form designers much easier.  The first is the ability to create and apply styles to objects in forms in much the same manner that CSS is able to style HTML elements.

The next new feature is added support for bulleted, numbered, and nested lists in text objects.  This is an update that was requested time and time again, and has now made it into the product.  The final added feature is support for the right to left languages, Arabic and Hebrew, which is very helpful to specific government agencies.

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES3

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management has been a great tool for governments to protect personally identifiable information (PII) of the citizenry as well as classified documents.

There are numerous new features in Rights Management with the release of ES3. The Microsoft Office plugins now support Windows 64 bit systems and also include added support for Office 2010.  The login dialog to authenticate to documents is now customizable, including the ability to implement wizards for multi-step authentication.  Authentication was updated to allow for additional authentication instruments including single sign on through SAML and header-based SSO.

Another frequently requested feature was the ability to use DRM in custom applications.  With ES3, a portable protection library has been introduced which allows developers to work with the management of rights, as well as rights managed documents, into their application. Also, the event tracking capabilities have been expanded upon.

Correspondence Management

Any government agency sending out a lot of correspondence to constituents should really take a look at Correspondence Management.  There were some significant changes that occurred to Correspondence Management in ES3.  The entire UI of the system was updated to make them more user friendly and efficient.  Features like spell checking and keyboard entry allowing for better navigation were added. Support for bulleted, nested, and numbered lists were also added, as well as the ability to use tables.

The system was built around the CRX which greatly improved performance and made the auditing of assets easier as well.  The ability to make more intuitive templates was made possible by support for complex and inline conditionals in text modules.  Template assets were also updated to allow for more control through specific public or retire dates and the ability to retrieve templates that were active in the system on a specific date.

Overall the Correspondence Management solution had big improvements made that makes it even more attractive for agencies seeking to streamline and save money on their correspondence. For more information on Correspondence Management, head to http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/correspondence_management/.

Odd and Ends

While the above features fit into nice little categories, there were some features that don't, but that certainly bear mentioning and will be of interest to government customers.  First, the ECM Connectors were updated to support IBM FileNet 5 and support for Microsoft Sharepoint deployed in farms.  For archival purposes, document conversion now supports the PDF/A-2b standard. Finally, the PDF Generation Windows based OCR service now supports multiple threads and conversion of Office 2010 documents is now supported through the addition of Acrobat 10 support.

Overall, the Adobe LiveCycle ES3 release added lots of new features that should interest government customers to help them streamline their processes dealing with documents and their interaction with the citizenry.

South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW) began nearly 20 years ago as an annual music festival in Austin, Texas. The event has since evolved into an incubator for all things digital, now featuring five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new web technologies, video advancements and startup ideas the “interactive” community has to offer.

From hands-on training to a big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW has become the place for thousands of attendees to experience a preview of what is unfolding throughout the world of technology. In fact, Twitter and Foursquare both gained initial traction at SXSW in years past.

As public sector enterprises aggressively strive to offer citizens and inter-agency customers a digital experience that rivals that of their private sector counterparts, events like SXSW are becoming more relevant to them as well.

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We recently hosted the daylong Adobe Creative Camp onsite at SXSW 2012 to delve into a long list of trending hot topics from web-to-mobile development, to providing sneak peeks at the next generation of Adobe creative solutions.

If you were unable to join us, check out the following links for a sample of what you missed…

The Future of HTML5 Motion Design

HTML5 and CSS3 are hot, driven by an explosion of new, Internet connected devices. While they offer many new features that should allow you to do the types of things that you previously did in Flash, actually making it happen is really hard. Until now.

The Page Is Dead: Responding to the Responsive Web

Responsive Web design is changing the definition of a “page,” as it aims to address the growing variety of device form factors and locations where content is consumed. Additionally, as the Web evolves, rules and limitations must be better understood in order to create truly unique content. This session focused on design philosophy and development techniques to create and adapt your content for maximum impact, regardless of where and how it is consumed.

Boost Your Mobile Workflow with Adobe's Newest Product

Provided a Sneak Peek at Adobe Shadow, a new inspection and preview tool allowing front-end web developers and designers to work faster by streamlining the preview process, making it easier to customize websites for mobile devices.

We'd like to thank everyone who joined us in Austin, and ask how you will apply any of the technologies you learned about at SXSW. Let us know on Twitter at @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

Earlier this year, the TechAmerica Foundation comprised a group of thought leaders to serve on the Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2). The Commission’s three-month mandate was to provide the Obama Administration with recommendations for how government should deploy cloud technologies and for public policies that will help drive U.S. innovation in the cloud.

On July 26, the Commission released its recommendations in a report (.pdf) on its site and at events in a few locations across the U.S., including Washington, D.C. A shorter summary of the report is also available from the TechAmerica Foundation site.

Our own Barry Leffew, VP of Public Sector, was among the 71 Commissioners who lent their expertise and participated in the process of developing the recommendations.

Barry attended the Washington, D.C. event last week and also spoke as part of a panel arranged by BMC Software, which also had representation among the Commissioners. In addition to Barry, the panel included Commissioners from BMC, Red Hat, Inc., Cisco Systems, and Harris Corp.

We caught up with Barry at the CLOUD2 event to capture his thoughts on the Commission, the recommendations and the BMC panel on which he sat. Check out the video below.

As always, we’re interested in your thoughts and continuing the conversation on CLOUD2 and otherwise. Keep in touch with us on Twitter @AdobeGov and our Facebook page.

Have you ever researched a product or service at a particular website, and then bought it someplace else? Used a mobile device to compare the price of a product online while shopping in a store? Been influenced by the opinions of others in a social community when selecting a healthcare provider or learning more about ailing symptoms?

That list is just a small sample of behaviors that illustrate how customers are educating themselves beyond the information that traditional organizations are providing, and transforming the consumer lifecycle. When coupled with heightened expectations for personalized service after a commitment is established, this environment presents a unique opportunity. Leading enterprises understand the correlation between creating loyal customers and driving performance.

Conditioned by immersive digital experiences in the private sector, citizens now expect more from interactions with their government in the public sector as well. As a byproduct of powerful user-centric citizen experiences, government agencies have discovered they are also able to realize significant cost savings. For example, by making it easier for citizens to dispute inaccurate medical claims, Medicaid agencies could save millions of dollars annually by helping to reduce fraud.

Adobe’s “Experience Delivers” tour recently stopped in Washington DC where the focus was Customer Experience Management (CEM) in government (see the event video we created above, including our conversations with several of the speakers). Attendees from federal, state, and local agencies learned more about our CEM platform, and ways that it can be leveraged to build “brand” differentiation and improve citizen engagement across multiple channels.

Presenters from Adobe and our featured partners, Deloitte and SapientNitro, shared their perspectives and set the stage for CEM industry luminary speaker Bruce Temkin, Managing Partner of the Temkin Group, who articulated the measurable benefits of an effective CEM solution. Bruce further engaged the audience as he identified the following four competencies required to effectively leverage CEM in the enterprise.

1. Purposeful leadership
2. Compelling brand value
3. Employee engagement
4. Customer connectedness

Preliminary feedback from this event has been overwhelmingly positive. Other US cities in the Experience Delivers Tour include San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. European cities include London, Stockholm, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.

Here at Adobe, we’re passionate about CEM and very interested in your feedback and general thoughts. Is there an opportunity to improve engagement with your agency’s constituents? Let us know in comments and on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM.

Are solving the issues of effective identity and authentication pre-requisites to delivering channel shift to low cost online public services?

The future of public services is most definitely digital: confirmed last month in the Government’s new ICT strategy. Indeed, in the Age of Austerity the potential for reducing the costs of service delivery by a switch to digital is too great to miss – but unless we can securely deliver the right service to the right people we risk even greater waste through fraud and further contact.

The London Borough of Brent has been trialling a new concept – the Mydex citizen data store – along with exploring use of the Government Gateway; Enfield, meanwhile, has implemented a new corporate authentication service with help from Serco and GB Group. The panel explored the benefits and pitfalls of getting ID and authentication right.

On the panel:

• Dane Wright, IT Strategy Manager at the London Borough of Brent
• Lee Grafton, Serco and Enfield’s GB Group identity solution
• Gilles Polin, Adobe’s European Head of Government Solutions
• Helen Olsen, Managing Editor, UKauthorITy and ITU magazine

An on demand version of the Webcast is available from this link.

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.

Shortly ago today, Adobe announced Adobe Connect 8, the latest version of the company’s web conferencing solution for enterprise and government. We sat down with Peter Ryce, evangelist for the product, to get his perspective on the new release and how Adobe Connect is used by government agencies.

• 0:02 – Peter’s responsibilities and background
• 0:40 – Adobe Connect 8: what drove development; some of the new capabilities
• 2:20 – Adobe Connect in Government, including how agencies use it today

You can follow the Adobe Connect team on twitter @AdobeConnect and check out their blog here.

What happens behind your website is just as important as what is on your agency's website. To maximize your agency's web presence, think about how you can make the web channel the "sole" channel for specific interactions and how you can make your agency more responsive to these requests by transforming the review & approval process behind-the-scenes.

Your new government website just launched. The digital pages are visually stunning and impressive.

But is your website just a pretty facade?

Or…is it ready to turn those citizens who visit into satisfied customers quickly and without utilizing your agency’s overloaded phone, mail or in-person channels?

If citizens still need to call or visit an agency office after exploring your website, then there are still more opportunities for maximizing your agency’s web investments to reduce your agency’s operating costs and boost customer service. And, as I will note, investments in what the citizen doesn’t see, the operations behind your website, is just as important as what is on your website.

If your agency can provide required services online in a responsive and transparent manner, adoption of the digital channel will increase.

With the latest Pew research showing that more people are now connected to the internet, it’s time to think about online as a channel for completing end-to-end interactions with your agency. Not just taking a supporting role.

Health 2.0 in San Francisco: Everyone is milling around just before the fourth annual conference kicks off.

The fourth annual Health 2.0 conference was held this past week appropriately in one of the nation’s innovation hotbeds, Silicon Valley. Approximately 1,000 participants spanning the spectrum of stakeholders from insurers, health care providers, public sector representatives to patients, clustered together at the Hilton in Union Square San Francisco for the two day mind meld.

Even before the opening remarks, I could feel the energy of the room that is consistent with most web 2.0 and social media events. Similar to “2.0″ gatherings I’ve attended across other industries, the conversation in the “Dueling Keynotes” between Tim O’Reilly and Jeff Goldsmith culminated on the tension between the traditional institutions of the health care industry and the new innovations that are posed to be disruptive.

The inaugural GovFresh event this Wednesday offered a compelling glimpse at how to deliver on the open government promise.   After the event, we had a chance to chat with number of the event’s speakers and then pull their perspectives together into a short clip.   This clip highlights how government innovators and entrepreneurs are leveraging open government to drive environmental stewardship, advance public safety, speed public service, and foster innovation.  See the video below.

Overall, the event offered insight from both sides of open government equation: innovators and citizens using government information and governments making data available.   For those on the government side, you might also find the event’s Q&A particularly valuable (see the event replay starting at 1:01:50).  Many agencies are still struggling to define their open government strategy and allocate resources in order to make information easy to find, use, and trust for the public.  In the Q&A Chris Vein, San Francisco’s CIO, offers a perspective based on their experience overcoming many of the tricky practical issues governments are dealing with when it comes to opening up government data.