Computech’s submission of the National Broadband Map was nominated as a finalist for the IT Services & Consulting category for the 2012 American Technology Awards this week. The awards, also known as the “Termans” in honor of the widely credited father of Silicon Valley, are awarded on the basis of a thorough evaluation by industry experts and technology leaders. Computech is one of three finalists for the Terman award, this in a year with record-breaking submissions. The Technology and Government Dinner award ceremony will be held on June 13^th, with two Computech representatives in attendance. Whether or not Computech takes the prize home, being nominated is a true honor and our employees who made the National Broadband Map a success deserve all the credit.

See Computech’s Press Release

Let’s face it – the most excellent people skills are rarer than we like to admit – even sometimes in ourselves.  As we try to gain the trust and confidence of stakeholders, we are constantly being judged on our performance.  Excellent documentation can infrequently make up for hurt feelings or trashed relationships.

All your thinking, analysis, and problem solving skills will gain you naught if stakeholders get the word that you don’t listen well, can’t understand their domain, can’t control the action in meetings, or can’t elicit effectively in interviews.

So here are some tips and how to use your skills to be more effective:

Set expectations at your elicitations – remember that you are collecting requirements (stated) to turn them into requirements (confirmed), but that decisions to build are completely separate from the discovery process.  Be honest with your stakeholders – you don’t make the decisions, you make sure that all inputs are considered in their proper context.  Most stakeholders understand that priorities come into play; they just want to know that their input wasn’t ignored, or heard by an ignoramus.

1. Get your attitude right – get neutral – if you favor some stakeholders over others, participation will decline, buy-in will decline, and sniping will increase.  It is okay that some ideas rise higher than others, just make sure that you aren’t perceived as playing favorites.  Make sure that ALL your stakeholders feel like teacher’s pets.
2. Do NOT judge ideas, or try to correct them, when they are offered.  Capture them, use them to stimulate further discussion – the secret to comedy improvisation is to always say yes to your partners – be encouraging, not judgmental, and don’t allow your knowledge of potential solutions to interfere with your goal of thoroughly understanding your stakeholders – completely.
3. If your stakeholder refuses to cooperate because your project isn’t important to them, get them to talk about what is important to them.  Intersections with your project will arise surprisingly often, and when they don’t, file the stakeholder interview against future projects – as trust builds, you will get their cooperation!
4. When a stakeholder gets angry or emotional in a meeting, use the “attitude ladder” to rapidly and effectively connect with them and bring them down.  The key is to understand that the emotions about the requirements effort can range from completely negative, to neutral, to extremely positive.  When a stakeholder goes negative, MATCH their emotion with a little (little) of yours, then bring yours down and see if they will come with you.  Example:  LOUD: “This meeting is a waste of time.  No one asked us if we even wanted this, and we are really busy!”  Response:  NOT QUITE AS LOUD: “I GET how frustrating this is for you!”  CALMER:  If we agree to keep it really short, can we focus on the assignment for the short time we take?”
Use humor – always risky, and yet the right joke can take ALL the tension out of a room.  It is safer to focus humor on yourself, such as:  “This meeting is idiotic!”  Response:  “I resemble that remark – that is why I have to ask all these questions!”  Use with caution.
5. Don’t use WHY.  Don’t argue with me, just don’t do it.  Don’t ask me WHY, or I will ask you “Why don’t you already know this?”  Any WHY question can be changed into a WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN question.  Example:  “WHY is it important to do X” can be turned into “WHAT happens without X in place?” or “WHAT will change given a project to do X.”  No, don’t quote “Root Cause” at me – Why are you still confused?”
6. Prepare, prepare, prepare – put yourself in the stakeholder’s shoes and think of everything you can that might be of concern to them.  Don’t use your preparation just to control the encounter – use it to allow the encounter to flow comfortably for the stakeholder.  When you are ready for most things to come up, it is not stressful if things wander, and it can be productive – over control is NOT loved, and don’t think they don’t notice when you do it.

LEARN HOW TO:

– Prepare for a successful engagement/meeting
– Gain the groups interest and support from the start
– Get executives to transfer their power to you
– Keep the group focused
– Handle disagreements and dysfunctional behavior
– Guide groups to effective business solutions
– Reach consensus around a decision
– Close the session with clarity and commitment

DO NOT DO THESE THINGS IF YOU DON’T LIKE BEING POPULAR.  Your phone will ring too much.

The FCC is dedicated to ensuring that all Americans – including Americans with disabilities – have full access to our nation’s communications revolution. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act put into motion new requirements to ensure that everyone has access to communications and video programming, as well as the ability to send and receive emergency information and services.

Part of those requirements included the creation of a clearinghouse to be available on the FCC’s website, which officially launched on October 28, 2011. More recent updates include a “Responsive Design” feature – a technique that delivers quality experience to users no matter how large or small their display – a first for the FCC. The Accessibility Clearinghouse boasts over 2000 listings including mobile phones, mobile apps and assistive technologies, disability organization, service provider and equipment manufacturer contact information, fact sheets and more.

Computech helped the FCC build this Accessibility Clearinghouse by providing data analysis, information architecture, interaction design, custom web development and accessibility management services. A key part of this clearinghouse is making all the information useful, usable and accessible to people of all ages and abilities. To ensure the achievement of these objectives, Computech assisted FCC in gathering feedback from various disability organizations and other federal agencies. Additionally, Computech went above and beyond the Section 508 and WCAG standards to make the system compatible with various assistive technologies, including the aforementioned “Responsive Design” feature.

This clearinghouse is more than a website, and we hope that it will enable and foster better communication access throughout the accessibility community. All of the clearinghouse data is available through RESTful APIs with intention to share. The data can be consumed and repackaged in other forums, in order to grow and share access exponentially. We believe it will benefit everyone to make the information openly available so all parties can tailor the information to different platforms and to different audiences.

Computech also helped demonstrate the clearinghouse to the accessibility community on the day of launch. The community expressed great excitement and enthusiasm with the amazing work done and how the site looks and performs. The FCC was absolutely thrilled with the site and could not give us enough kudos. Karen Peltz Strauss, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Deputy Chief had the following to say regarding our contribution:

“Just when I think that you cannot top yourselves, you do! Today’s event was truly extraordinary and a debt of gratitude goes to all of you, an amazing team of people!   The accolades kept pouring in throughout the morning, into the afternoon and continue into the evening. You have made the Commission shine with your highly professional work. The presentations went off without a hitch, the TEC looked beautiful, and the clearinghouse ‘wowed’ everyone.

“By your work, you have elevated public attention on disability issues to a new level, demonstrating to everyone that what was unimaginable just a few years ago is now making communications a reality for people with disabilities. Thank you so much for all your incredible dedication and hard work to this effort.”

A few days ago, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) along with Federal Communication Commission (FCC) released the mobile, optimized version of the National Broadband Map website. Computech led the development and completed all phases, from design, information architecture and user experience, to data integration, geospatial and back-end development.

Early in the information architecture phase we all agreed to leverage the unique features of the mobile devices, such as geo location capabilities, touch screen, gesture input and interaction, as well as the lower connection speeds, transfer and data usage,  and different nature of the mobile user experience.  This meant that the effort would not only produce the mobile version of the website, but a completely new user experience.

Users on-the-go do not require all of the features of the desktop version of the website.  However, if they, would like to access all the pages found on the desktop version of the website, they are still able to do this through a link provided on every page.

In addition, mobile users typically do not spend the same amount of time reading long description pages.  The attention span of a mobile user is even smaller than that of a regular desktop user.

The ability to access desired information through the least number of interactions is essential.  More specifically, ease of navigation by utilizing touch and gesture device capabilities makes the whole experience pleasant and enjoyable.

Design and Information Architecture

In the spirit of transparency and open data, following the principles of information design, Computech designed the information architecture of the mobile site around the philosophy of distraction-free content delivery.  The main content of the site captures the primary focus of the user.  Our design hides every other feature on the page into sections via slides.

Consistency in branding and design assures user familiarity with the overall experience, as it follows already established information flow.  However. slight variations in the secondary element treatments allow a subtle distinction between the sites.

Our technical implementation includes the maximum usage of CSS-defined design styles, allowing the User Interface to include a low number of HTTP requests, leaving the connection for the data integration.

Focus on performance

Data power both the desktop and mobile versions of the site, streamed through the same APIs.  Backbone Framework of the website, written specifically to solve the unique nature of the collected broadband data, allowed us to reuse a fair amount of back-end and data integration modules.

All four levels of our caching mechanism proved essential in assuring high performance for both versions of the site.  Nature and frequency of the data collected, along with caching at the Database, Application Server and two levels at the Web server, make both sites up to 100 times faster than if we had developed them in the most conventional way.

Front-End and User Interface

The architecture of the MVC+ Framework, which we developed specifically for the National Broadband Map, gives us the control of every feature and every aspect of the site.  This holds true due to the fact that we power the site by a large number of small deployable unites or modules that we connect and interweave in many ways to achieve the desired effect.  Further, flexibility and vast number of combinations allows us to insert any new modules in any place and at any level.  This is the main driving power to a lean development process, one that was crucial in delivering the project in time and to the customer’s satisfaction.

With such a framework in place, expanding the front-end with additional modules to drive the mobile user experience took much less time than anticipated.  The decision to add an additional framework to back the front-end side of the website played an important role in delivering the product on time.

While we strongly considered limiting the utilization of the trendy responsive design techniques, given the limited focus of the device support (iOS and Android powered devices) we needed to target, and to assure lowest amount of front-end code that needs to download via mobile connections, we decided to separate the desktop and mobile version of the site.

Liquid layout leveled the slight differences in the viewport sizes of the screens.  It turned out to be a good decision as we have saved enough kilobytes to speed up the overall performance of the site.

JQuery Mobile was a clear choice as the web framework for development of the mobile site.   JQuery mobile performed with excellence in complementing the current framework, taking the lower level tasks of front-end development, leaving us to focus more on the integration of the modules.

JQuery Mobile also allowed us to add swipe gesture to the pages, which were required in order for the user to easily flow from one screen to another.  We left pages with text longer than the width/height with the usual up/down scroll, as this would be the most natural assumption of the mobile user.

Tablet

Computech built the desktop version of the site to nearly full compliance, and with slight upgrades to some of the UI elements, we were able to deliver the mobile version quickly.  Our initial strategy when building the desktop version included considerations that ensured tablet devices would have no major issues with most of the pages.  Map pages also worked well, even though they do not use the bundled technology, but a custom base map and desktop version of the mapping technology.

The Future is Mobile, powered by Computech.

Experience our latest mobile solution.
Visit nbm.gov on your iOS or Android powered devices.

Computech helped build this website by providing data analytics, custom software development and visualizations in a slick interface that integrated with COFETEL’s existing website design.  The project needed to be completed within a few weeks, giving us a tight deadline and thereby making our approach both lean and agile.  Our methodology allowed us to create unique tools for the Mexican government such as interactive maps with a minimum architectural footprint (no GIS server required) or a modern and spatially enabled speed test that captures where these tests are being run, creating a GIS layer on the fly and saving many hours of post-processing typically necessary to publish results.

On the software architecture side, Computech used standard open source tools, enabling the team to iterate rapidly and flexibly and adapt to changing requirements and new and unexpected challenges.  The key to this architectural approach is our extensive experience with RESTful APIs, as exemplified by our previous work at fcc.gov/developer and the National Broadband Map.  Having the site built on top of APIs allowed us to completely decouple the front end from the back end, enabling parallel development and improving the separation of concerns and future maintainability of the project.

In addition, our approach proved to be critical in the final deployment of the system, as the web and map services are being hosted by Computech in the cloud.  We have developed a virtual infrastructure built on top of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), providing an end-to-end solution for our customers, lowering their total cost of ownership and minimizing risk.  Having all web services running in a cloud-hosted environment allowed us to monitor and allocate resources dynamically when the website launched.  We will be monitoring its traffic over the next few weeks and make needed adjustments as more people learn about the site and usage increases.  We are very excited about the evolution of this important resource for the Mexican citizens.

By: Paul Salasznyk, Ph.D

Last week, with support from Computech, the Comisión Federal de Telecomunicaciones (COFETEL) launched MiCOFETEL, a website that collects and disseminates telecommunications information for consumers within Mexico.  The site also serves as a means for COFETEL to assess the status of telecommunications within the nation.  Computech’s contribution to the interactive portal focused on broadband, a topic that we have become intimately familiar with during our work on the FCC’s speed test, National Broadband Map and various broadband-related data analysis projects.

Data is the foundation of the MiCOFETEL website.  Of paramount importance was Computech’s ability to familiarize itself with Mexico’s geographic and broadband landscape, shape relevant broadband data into a usable format for analysis, design a means to collect important data from consumers (data that was not readily available), and exhibit the data using visualizations.  These steps exemplify Computech’s standard data analysis methodology, described in more detail in the detailed steps below.

Data Familiarization

-   To gain an understanding of the broadband landscape within Mexico, Computech learned about broadband providers and technologies in the nation, read published broadband research on broadband and studied available broadband datasets.

-   To perform analysis for particular geographies within Mexico, we familiarized ourselves with Mexico’s geographic composition (state, municipalities, etc.) and the relationships they have with one another.

Standardizing, Coalescing, and Analyzing Datasets

-   To establish a standardized data format, Computech transformed millions of data records on broadband pricing, speeds and complaint data into a geographic “common denominator” for each provider and geography.  Computech then extracted useful insights from this standardized data.

-   To highlight relationships and synergies between similar (but different) datasets, Computech merged and analyzed data from disparate broadband data sources.

Crowdsourcing Data

-   To collect other required broadband data, Computech created a portal that collects broadband data from consumers, including location, provider, pricing and speeds which Computech then analyzes and visualizes.

Data Visualization

-   To highlight the analyzed broadband data, Computech created a series of charts, graphs, maps and tables that most appropriately exhibit the analyzed data.

-   To improve each consumer’s experience with the visualizations, Computech added interactive functionality, allowing users to filter for various criteria and compare broadband data to other providers and geographies.

Computech’s contributions to the MiCOFETEL site are anchored by its expertise with data – from familiarization to analysis and visualization.  Going forward, Computech will work with COFETEL to incorporate additional data sources and improve functionality of the portal, to further increase Mexican consumer understanding of broadband within their nation.

By: Paul Salasznyk, Ph.D

Yesterday, the Comisión Federal de Telecomunicaciones (COFETEL) launched a website (http://micofetel.gob.mx/) that displays a wide array of information about the Mexican telecommunications industry.  COFETEL, which regulates, monitors and promotes the efficient development of telecommunications throughout Mexico, tasked Computech with the construction of several key portions of the new website, including a speed test application and several maps and visualizations of telecommunications information.  Here is a summary of Computech’s contributions to the MiCOFETEL website:

1) Speed Test Application and Data Visualizations

In order to provide Mexican consumers with a measure of their broadband connection quality, Computech worked with online speed test provider Ookla and developed a broadband speed test portal.  (http://www.micofetel.gob.mx/medidor_de_velocidad)  Highlights of the speed test portion of the website include:

-  A report of download speed, upload speed, and latency of each internet connection (speed test) on the website as well as IPhone and Android Applications for mobile devices.

-  A place for COFETEL to collect location, broadband provider and price information from consumers

-  Estimates of download durations (for a online book, song and movie), based on a consumer’s download speed

-  Average broadband speed information in the area where a consumer runs the speed test, as well as speed information for other providers in their location

-  A summary page that highlights broadband speed test information for each state, municipality and provider within Mexico.  Metrics include       number of tests, download/upload speeds, latency and metrics by time of day and day of week.

2) Telecommunications Maps

In order to summarize complaint data collected on the MiCOFETEL website as well as broadband provider pricing, and broadband speeds, Computech developed a series of maps.  (http://micofetel.gob.mx/mapa_telecomunicaciones) Highlights include:

-  A map that visualizes the number of complaints (mobile phone, local/ long distance telephone, television, internet) by state

-  A map that disseminates information about average download, upload, latency for all providers by state

-  A map that highlights provider availability by state, as well as speed tiers and prices offered by those providers

The launch of the MiCOFETEL site promises to provide an opportunity to gather even more data from consumers in Mexico.  Computech is looking forward to working with COFETEL to include additional functionality and datasets into future releases of the MiCOFETEL website.

Last Wednesday, the NTIA and the FCC released the first major update to the National Broadband Map since its highly acclaimed debut in February. Computech has been a driving force on the project and has provided application development, GIS, operations research, information architecture, user experience, interaction design as well as expertise in design, front-end development and data analysis services in support of the launch and update. Along with updated data from a larger number of broadband providers, the map also provides additional features and functions.

Below is an explanation of the new National Broadband Map features:

• Data Refresh — We receive SBDD broadband data from all providers throughout the country every 6 months. The site is now updated with data from December 31, 2010 including Search, Analyze and Maps.

• There is a new page that summarizes broadband statistics for each provider in the US. The user can now select a specific geography then view a provider’s availability within that geography.

• We have introduced the sub data set that cannot be found anywhere else.
The user can also compare the selected provider with all the providers in this geography by population served, technologies served and most common download speed.

• There are new maps in the map gallery, including:
Community Anchor Institution Map — Allows a user to enter their address and view the closest 25 Community Anchor Institutions as well as information about broadband at those locations.

Feedback Map — The NBM collects crowd-sourced feedback about the accuracy of the information returned to the user in Search. A new map has been added that plots these feedback points by Provider confirmation and Speed confirmation.

• Several Summarize and Demographic APIs now return new information.
• This release included 10 more APIs. 8 APIs provide information about the providers.
• We have introduced the new API Developer pages which document the APIs more clearly
• We have also included a set of dictionary APIs to help the developers explore all the parameters in the API call and response.
• A brand new Social Layer was integrated which will enable closer Facebook, Google+, Linked in and Twitter Integration. Facebook integration now includes geospatial open graph tags. As a results of this integration, The National Broadband Map is already appearing in the Facebook Search results as a unique result. We have taken the opportunity to associate all pages of the site through National Broadband Map geographical keywords into the Facebook search.The number of modules that power the National Broadband Map has increased to 1050.

According the National Broadband Map blog, the Map is used by business owners, consumers, policy makers, research firms, academics and application developers, just to name a few. In its first seven months, the National Broadband Map has received millions of page views and countless amounts of praise.

When government agencies procure and install a new core accounting system, their goal is to limit customization of the software and adapt business processes to function within the new system.  However, some processes are unique to an agency and must continue to serve their intended purposes.  When the business logic clearly does not involve accounting transactions, the decision to maintain a separate system is obvious.  However, it is sometimes unclear whether an accounting-related function can be incorporated into a core financial system or whether it should remain separate.

This guide illustrates which functions should and should not be included in the core accounting system.

Functions to embed within the core financial system

It is typically recommended to implement the main functional accounting areas in the core system, including: General Ledger, Receivables, Payables, Payroll, Budgeting and Forecasting, Reporting, Reconciliation and Transaction Journals.

Functions to build and maintain outside of the core financial system

Web systems used by the public

Some accounting systems may include public-facing modules in order to, for example, display invoices or bills or to collect online payments.  However, agencies which are committed to providing their users with a seamless, branded web experience, including single sign-in for all web interactions, should develop these systems within the agency and then build the necessary interfaces with the financial system.

Intermediary web services

For any interface to the core financial system which is used in multiple places in the agency, build an intermediary web service with fail-over handling.  This will be more efficient and require changes in only one place if the financial system’s interface specifications should change.  Additionally, the core financial system will not be available 24/7; it may at times be necessary to queue requests until the system is available and this is best managed in one location.

Processes that combine accounting and non-accounting information

When business logic includes information that exists both within the accounting system and without, the entire function should be built and maintained outside of the core accounting system.  For example, certain conditions may prevent the agency from providing service to an outside entity, including the presence of unpaid delinquent debt.  Although information about debts are inside the core financial system, other information, such as a pending request to waive the debt, may be tracked in a separate workflow system.  The process can easily pull data from both systems.

An extensive collection of custom data fields

Extensive data that is needed to connect revenue or expenses to business processes may be collected and tracked outside of the core financial system.  If the financial system cannot easily handle the number of data fields or data relationships that the agency tracks, or the level of detail would produce a burdensome number of accounting lines, then the agency should consider maintaining the detailed information in the originating system and generating a unique identifier, which would then be referenced in the core financial system.

Functions to include in the core financial system and to stand-up separately

Data validation functions

Although data validation must be built into the core financial system, data should also be thoroughly validated before integrating.

Dashboard of integration results

Operations staff should be able to view data being loaded into the system from other coupled systems.  They should be able to review this information both outside and inside the core financial system to independently verify that all operations were successful.

Real time information services

If there are dependencies which delay information from reaching the core financial system, the data might not be available as quickly as possible.  For example, credit card authorizations may be known in real-time but cannot post as accounting transactions until the funds are deposited.  Other actions may be pending entry or approvals.  Staging such information outside the core accounting system may make sense in order to accelerate dependent business processes.

Risks of over-customizing the core financial system

Over-customizing an off-the-shelf financial system will likely have adverse effects.  The more extensive or complex your customizations are, the greater the risk of a mismatch between business rules and the actual implementation.  Agencies can isolate and resolve the impact of such issues more easily within a separate custom system compared with a heavily-customized financial system.

Coupling agency processes too tightly will also lead to additional effort and cost when the agency upgrades the base software package or when it needs to alter businesses processes.  Loosely coupled systems connected via web services are going to deliver the greatest value and flexibility.

An agency’s financial department may also experience decreased staff productivity or encounter reduced system performance if the agency insists upon using the system in ways not originally intended.  For example, if a complex workflow or a large data set is tying up system resources, then staff will waste time working in a sluggish system.

Agencies face many decisions when standing up a new system; if you are involved in such a project mull over your various options and keep in mind this mantra: When in doubt, leave it out!

The point of a Platform is that it is Application Independent. A platform, like the Interstate highway system or an Electric Grid, is meant to be used for things that cannot be specified or predicted when the platform is being built.

It’s the same with a platform for Data and Analytics. It should never be built around specific reports or use-cases.

In almost all cases, agencies store data in application-specific structures.

Complex Applications need to store a lot of data to deal with short-term workflow, e.g., as users go through the process of filling out a form, and the Application goes through the process of fulfilling the requests etc. Most of this data is of no long-term value and is very irrelevant, confusing, and overwhelming for someone looking for patterns and trends, and who is in the business of steering an organization.

The point of Data/Analytics platforms are to remove all of the messy data that is only of transient value to the workflow.

The next debate we usually get into is how to organize this data for a decision-making platform in a normalized structure, dimensional structure, how much to snowflake etc.

These days, most organizations that depend on data/analytics for their survival don’t agonize over the data modeling. This is because of two factors:

1. There is an entirely new marketplace of products that are meant specifically for analysis – for example, column-stores, MPP solutions, distributed-key-value pairs and cloud-stores.

2. New types of data are being generated so quickly, that   data models have to be very generic. The Semantic web concept of storing all data in a subject-predicate-object is an extreme example of this movement. Data in science experiments is in totally new structures as people do new types of experiments.

Data-driven companies don’t bottleneck their analytics while the development team conforms incoming data into existing facts and dimensions.

The moral of the story is this: if you want to be a data-driven organization, get the data to the hands of the analysts as quickly as possible, make it clean and understandable, and create a culture where analysts can show-off their results and start discussions.

Standardization of data elements and concepts emerge out of the actual analysis on new data, rather than in specs that are used for a long software development lifecycle. Standards (i.e., Master Data / Metadata management) are still critical, but should not be a pre-requisite for analysis.