On Friday, I handed in my letter of resignation from my position as chief consultant in the National IT and Telecom Agency.

So, quitting a perfectly good and interesting job, why? Well, I’ve been employed by government all my profesisonal life and think it’s time for me to stand on my own feet 🙂

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed being a civil servant, and the decision to move on has not been an easy one. But, as I’m closing in on turning 40, I have felt an urge for changes in my life.

I don’t know whether my on-going “watch the complete West Wing seasons 1-4 in a month”-exercise under the concept “inactive vacation” has been the turning point in my considerations. Perhaps. I’ve served my terms, it’s time to move on.

So. What’s next?

Wait and see. Hmm. Anyone need a consultant? Call me.

What’s bootstrapping called in Danish? Thomas, any ideas?

Well, I’ll actually still be in the government payroll system, because I still have my non-tenured associate professorship at Copenhagen Business School, and will start teaching EA there and will also continue being in charge of the CBS-run EA-course at the IT-University, if we get students enough – we just need a few more to be safe; anyone interested? Sign up now! It’ll be a great class, I promise!

When in Rome, do as the Romans, they say. So when I was in California, I acquired an iPod Shuffle.

I’ve powered it up with some IT Conversations and some podcasts, but also want to use it for music, which however has proven more difficult than expected. Copying ordinary CDs is slow, but otherwise painless. But when going online, things are worse …

For some reason, Apple has no iTunes Store in Denmark.

And for some reason, the online music stores in Denmark – such as TDC, Bilka and Jubii – are ipod-unfriendly and only offers WMA-files with DRM, and also generally a small selection (mainly Danish music, which is of course a good thing). Morten wrote a letter.

Technorati Tags: ipod

I’m going to California for a few days for some meetings. If anyone has any suggestions as to what to do on Sunday or on Monday’s President’s Day in San Francisco, get in touch.

One of the meetings I look most forward to is a visit to Dave Sifry and Technorati.

If everything works as promised by SAS, my next blog entry will be made at 35,000 feet. Let’s see… tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: technorati, california

About a year ago, I predicted that the 2004 eGov challenge would be digital identity management. According to Digital ID World Magazine, digital identity management did indeed hit the fast track. That it’s been a “hot” issue became clear when the Gillmor Gang got geeky with Phil Windley over it. Also in eGov, we have seen a growing interst in the field, but it has not been singled out as much as I had expected in the eGov domain. I’m sure it’ll come in 2005.

To round up 2004, here is my personal list of highlights in e-government and enterprise architecture, and a few more general ones:

eGov question(s) of the year

Are leaders of governments losing interest in e-Gov and its government to citizen, government to business, and government to government objectives. Is the job so complex that it will take another 20 years to reach the end state; and, if so, who has the staying power? Is the energy of the last six years escaping like the air in a leaky balloon? From Frank at i-gov

Good questions, Frank.

eGov programme of the year
Canada’s Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP), which does not brand itself as an eGov programme per se, but is exactly the kind of programme that takes us from eGov to iGov. Well done, Gary and Neil and all.

As much as I like the Canadian GSRM, however, I take advantage of the fact that I do this list, and give my office and the Danish e-Government the prize for the eGov reference model of the year with our Interoperability Framework.

eGov memorandum of the year
Swedish Statskontoret’s Public administration in the e-society, a shortened version of Den offentliga förvaltningen i e-samhället.

eGov advertisement of the year
FirstGov.gov’s Uncle Sams TV Public Service Announcement

Boldest move by a new EU member state
Poland and Wlodzimierz Marcinski, the Polish Minister of Science and Information Technology, for standing up against software patents. Thank You, Poland.

eGov survey of the year
The UN Global E-government Readiness Report 2004. Denmark comes in second (to the US) in overall readiness, and enters the top 10 on e-participation (whatever brings us there, I wonder). Other suveys during the year are also noteworthy: Accenture, that said that Denmark has reached a plateau, and IBM/Economist, where Denmark is also found to be the e-readiest.

EA book of the year
Jane Carbone‘s IT Architecture Toolkit is my new favorite book on enterprise architecture.

IT governance book of the year
Peter Weill and and Jeanne Ross brought us IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results.

EA article of the year
Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer: Guiding Principles for Enterprise Architects.

Best EA-student blog
Signe Wagner. I’ve suggested all my students to run blogs. Signe has taken up this challenge, and has created a beautiful blog.

Takeover of the year
There were many mergers and acquisitions in 2004. To close the year up, Gartner buys META Group.

Browser of the year
I’ve rediscovered the web with Firefox.

Email service of the year
Gmail. Google’s email service is not only a killer app in itself, but also a taste of what we can expect in terms of rich web environments.

News aggregator of the year
Bloglines. My subscriptions.

Most annoying trend on the internet
Spam. Blog comment spam takes the special prize. It is sad that innovations like Trackback are suffering.

I have reopened for comments here in the blog, but have taken several measures to avoid spam. Let’s sse if it works.

Martin hosted a small event with David Brin tonight. I’ve never actually read any of his work, neither The Transparent Society nor any of his scifi books nor Star Trek scripts.

I enjoyed his talk, and will certainly read some of his work. I noticed a link to a Government Technology interview, Transparent Privacy.

Brin certainly has a refreshing perspective on things. And a very wise one too, in his own “crazy” fashion.

I was reminded of my own PhD. I too wrote about transparency, but also about participation, which I didn’t hear Brin come to (must check). In fact, while I concentrate on transparency in relation to public life, Brin is talking more about the relation to private life, and privacy. Allow me to quote myself:

The Benthamite idea of transparency is in normative terms complementary to Rousseau’s idea of a ‘transparent society’, in that both ideas express a relationship between the ‘comrade’ and the ‘overseer’, but doing so with opposite normative orientation: Bentham arguing that ‘each comrade becomes an overseer’, and Rousseau arguing vice versa. There is, apparently, an asymmetry between the concepts of ‘power through transparency’ and ’emancipation through transparency’. The term ‘transparency’ is not only ambiguous, it is ambivalent. On the one hand, transparency has to do with power structures and the exercise of power, and can, as in the case of Panopticon, be a threat to the individual integrity and autonomy, but it can also function as a means for shaping the individual’s own life agenda if the transparency (and therefore the power) is ‘possessed’ by the individual. On the other hand, transparency has to do with mutual intersubjective transcendence and relations of mutuality and reciprocity, making sharing between individuals possible.

Oh, Phil Windley blogged Brin’s book long ago. I just heard from Phil that Phil’s own book is coming very soon.

Anyway, why not join me and buy some of Brin’s books via his website or here (both leads to Amazon).

I am back from my mission to Sarajevo. Edna, Gianni and all the others in the system review team made sure I had a great time. Thanks guys!

This photo is taken from the office.

I’ve tried out TypePad’s photo album feature, which works great, but can’t be blamed for the photographic quality in my Sarajevo photo album.

Last night, I rented and saw No Man’s Land, Danis Tanovic’s Academy Award-winning satire of the war in Bosnia. I warmly recommend it (buy it!). The dark humor of the film is “very Bosnian”. I love it. And the food’s nice too 😉

Speaking of films, the Sarajevo Film Festival is one of the biggest local cultural events of the year. The 10th fesitval will take place on 20-28 August 2004. I will try and have one of my missions in that period.

One of the general lessons I’ve learned is that government changes happen in many ways. After elections or reshufflements, the “top-management” not only often changes, but a good number of “merger and acquisitions” often happen. Once in a while, we also see larger structural reforms – from the one currently undergoing in municipal and regional Denmark to the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it starts with peace and a stability pact and then goes on to state-building with large aid programmes, donor projects and feasibility studies and now a beginning government enterprise-building as part of a Public Administration Reform. I can’t help but see more commonalities than differences between Denmark and BiH, although the differences of course are very notable: Denmark still has a long way to go …

I will try and keep track of online resources about BiH, and can now offer a unique BiH XML-feed. Anyone interested in joining up and doing something more with XML for Bosnia?

I’ve noticed that Loic Le Meur is looking at European Political blogging and Emergent democracy. I also noticed Dave Winer is coming to Europe soon. Wanna meet up in Sarajevo? (or Copenhagen?)