US ranked 16th in wireless broadband connectivity.

In Calling All Luddites, New York Times Thomas Friedman says, "I've been thinking of running for high office on a one-issue platform: I promise, if elected, that within four years America will have cellphone service as good as Ghana's." His issue seems to be 911 service in subways, mainly, but he also argues that as the world moves to an Internet-based platform for all its aspects (business, education, entertainment), wealth will go to the countries that can connect its people. But the telecommunication companies are fighting it.

Nevertheless, several municipalities recently have released plans to offer civic Wi-Fi services. The first city to announce such a project was Philadelphia, followed soon by San Francisco, Madison, and Seattle.

IM in State Government

NASCIO, which I assume stands for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, published TLK2UL8R: The Privacy Implications of Instant and Text Messaging Technologies in State Government. The research brief discusses the threats to network security posed by worms and spim, possible circumvention of network protection, and policy implications.

The report recommends that existing email policies should be reviewed and expanded to cover chat technologies. Enterprise-grade IM services are favored over commercial solutions because they offer more tools for security and enable the archiving of conversations (in keeping with records retention laws). The report comes close to endorsing policies that forbid the use of commercial IM clients on government computers.

Certainly an important discussion. But libraries are only just beginning to see the advantages of IM as a way to reach non-traditional users, and I wouldn't want to be in the position of telling them they can't use the state's network to offer chat reference services.

OPLIN work rules encourage/require us to be logged into an instant messenger client. We've found it to be a very useful tool: keeping our mobile staff in close communication, allowing easy communication and collaboration with partners across the statewide network.