It’s not really a ‘put on a funny hat and blow a paper noise maker’ sort of event, but September is National Preparedness Month and I thought in honor of that I would share The Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.gov Business Fact Sheet. The fact sheet is distributed as part of their Ready Business campaign and you can find more details and resources for appropriate disaster planning and business continuity at www.ready.gov.

As our contribution to National Preparedness Month we have made our on-demand teleseminar, Riding the Storm Out, available FREE for the rest of the year.  Visit this page to listen to 4 South Florida experts discuss strategies, tips, and best practices for building a simple but effective business continuity and disaster recovery plan. The whole seminar is only about an hour and is packed full of real-deal advice, and each speaker also provided supporting documents that you can download.

2009 Business Fact Sheet Follows:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

Fact Sheet

September 1, 2009

READY BUSINESS

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Advertising Council launched the Ready Business Campaign in September 2004. This extension of Homeland Security’s successful Ready Campaign, designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies, focuses specifically on business preparedness. Ready Business helps owners and managers of small- and medium-sized businesses prepare their employees, operations and assets in the event of an emergency.

• Ready Business was developed by Homeland Security and launched in partnership with U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Administration, Society of Human Resource Management, The Business Roundtable, The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, ASIS International, Business Executives for National Security, International Safety Equipment Association, International Security Management Association, National Association of Manufacturers, National Federation of Independent Businesses, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
• The goal of Ready Business is to raise the business community’s awareness of the need for emergency planning and motivate businesses to take action. The campaign encourages business owners and managers to: plan to stay in business; talk to their employees; and protect their investment.
• Emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks, can paralyze business operations. Small- and medium-sized businesses in particular are most vulnerable to these events. Having an emergency plan can help protect a company and maximize its potential to survive and recover after an incident.
• According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all employers; provide approximately 75 percent of the net new jobs added to the economy; and represent 97 percent of all U.S. exporters. If these businesses are prepared to survive and recover, the nation and the economy are more secure.
• The campaign’s messages are delivered through: television, radio, print, outdoor and Internet public service advertisements (PSAs) developed and produced by the Advertising Council; brochures; www.ready.gov and www.listo.gov Web sites; toll-free phone lines 1-800-BE-READY and 1-888-SE-LISTO; and partnerships with a wide variety of public and private sector organizations.
• The campaign’s resources provide businesses with practical steps and easy-to-use templates that include information on creating an evacuation plan; fire safety; including employees throughout the process; considering people with special needs; and protecting business investments by securing facilities and equipment and reviewing insurance coverage.
• As of September 1, 2009, the Ready Business effort has received more than $101.1 million in donated media support; its Web site has received more than 41.3 million hits and more than 4 million unique visitors; and more than 3.9 million Ready Business materials have been requested or downloaded from the Web site.
• A national survey of businesses with 2-999 employees conducted by The Ad Council in December 2007 found:

91 percent of respondents said that it is “very” or “somewhat” important for businesses to take steps to prepare for a catastrophic disaster, such as an earthquake, hurricane or terrorist attack.

38 percent said their company has an emergency plan in place in the event of a disaster .

59 percent assessed their own business as “very” or “somewhat” prepared in the event of a disaster.

55 percent of businesses surveyed said that they had take either significant or small steps to improve emergency preparedness in the past year.

The surveyed businesses said that the most important threats for them to address are fires followed by cyber attacks and then hurricanes, winter storms, tornadoes and terrorist attacks.

• The Department highlights public emergency preparedness through National Preparedness Month, a nationwide effort held each September to encourage Americans to take simple steps to prepare for emergencies in their homes, businesses and schools. In 2008, the Ready Campaign was joined by more than 3,200 NPM Coalition Members to educate individuals, families and communities on the importance of emergency preparedness. The 2008 coalition of national, regional, state, and local organizations was the largest in the five year history of NPM, and represented a 4,000 percent increase in participation to date.

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Back in April, President Obama announced that Aneesh Chopra, formerly Virginia’s secretary of technology, would be the United State’s first Chief Technology Officer.

“Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities — from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure,” said Obama.

“Aneesh and Jeffrey [Zients, the newly appointed chief innovation officer] will work closely with our chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, who is responsible for setting technology policy across the government, and using technology to improve security, ensure transparency, and lower costs,” he added.

After hearing the news of Melissa Hathaway’s resignation I got to wondering how Mr. Chopra was holding up. I found this interview he gave on Buzz Out Loud just a couple of weeks ago.

BOL 1033: Special interview with federal CTO Aneesh Chopra | Buzz Out Loud Blog – CNET Blogs.

If you are interested in some background on Aneesh Chopra, Tim O’Rielly posted a comprehensive article on his O’Rielly Radar blog back in April entitled Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO.

IRS Tax Extension Application.

I hate to feed anyone’s procrastination habit, because sometimes i get it bad (did someone say boomshine?), but the link above will take you to an IRS approved provider website that will file an income tax deadline extension for you FREE of charge if you do it before April 20th. The vast majority of extension requests are accepted and they postpone your tax filing deadline for 6 months, until October 15th.

Taxextension.com is basically an automated, online way to file a Form 4868. As far as i’m concerned, the ability to efile tax forms goes firmly in the ‘computers make my life better category’. The jury is still out on Boomshine…

I guess you can teach an old Congress new tricks!  In a desire to emulate Barack Obama’s success in using the iternet to raise funds and build an army of volunteers online – Congress is launching official YouTube channels where members of the House and Senate can create and control videos of floor speeches, hearings or ribbon-cuttings. (See the welcome video message below)

Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not – one thing everyone can agree on is his campaign had a very effective strategy for using the Internet to raise awareness and build community.

One of the refreshing things about his strategy for modern politics is the transparency and grass roots approach he believes in.  Using a mix of offline and online media and extensive use of videos on YouTube Obama released a constant flow of information about what he was doing, how he was doing it, and where they were spending the money they raised.  He connected with his supporters and the public was given the ability to respond, share their opinions, and get involved.

According to a recent NY Times article – Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World:

Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them. For many viewers, the 2008 election has become a kind of hybrid in which the dividing line between online and off, broadcast and cable, pop culture and civic culture, has been all but obliterated.

I applaud Congress for taking these bold but necessary steps.  This new direction which involves a using a combination of video sharing and social media, will provide a level of access and transparency never before seen in government. This will make it much easier to follow what is going on in Washington and for people to voice their opinion about it.

Here is their welcome video message on YouTube:

You can now find your Representatives and Senators’ YouTube channels on two new special platforms:

• The House Hub: http://www.youtube.com/househub
• The Senate Hub: http://www.youtube.com/senatehub

This is your backstage pass to your government. So tune in and make your voice heard!

Many people are wondering how this will differ from C-Span . . .

Because the YouTube videos would be controlled by lawmakers, they would be fundamentally different from C-SPAN coverage of House and Senate debates and congressional hearings. C-SPAN covers floor debates and hearings in their entirety without editing or editorial comment.

I am very interested to see how our first really “connected” President uses the modern technology at his disposal.  He already won the battle to keep his Blackberry. This is a topic I’m sure we will be discussing a good deal throughout this blog – I find it truly fascinating.

All the while I’ll be following along on Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube channel. The President’s weekly radio address, a staple of American politics since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, will be posted on this channel and is also available as a downloadable video and audio podcast.

I’m excited to see what this change in approach to government and communication means for politics, public opinion, and technology in general. Post a comment and share your thoughts!

The 2008 US Election has been unique since the campaigning began almost 2 years ago: defying many of the electorate’s expectations regarding gender, age, race, and party affiliation; and surpassing records of fund raising, voter registration, early voting, and potentially (likely!?) voter participation. Another way this election has been groundbreaking is in the use of technology both by the campaigns and in the coverage of the race.

From CNN’s ‘Magic Map’ and Anchors like Larry King and Rick Sanchez responding to viewer’s facebook and myspace messages on-air in real-time, to the use of email and text messaging to connect to supporters, social networking sites to organize volunteers, online videos to build candidates’ ‘brands’, and massive amounts of internet fund raising it’s clear that it is a brave new world out there.

Another way that technology has effected this election season is in the shear amount of information and just plain raw data available to voters. Like many others, I have become addicted to watching this historic moment unfold – frequently watching the television coverage over the top of my laptop screen while reading news articles and following polling data. I don’t know if this is necessarily healthy but I can’t bring myself to stop, and ultimately believe that these innovations are for the best.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government… whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
~ Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789. ME 7:253

Here are some of the places I have been feeding my jones:

techPresident.com – TechPresident is a blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web and how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign.

FiveThirtyEight.com -  538 is the number of Electors in the Electoral college and is also a mind altering blog by sport statistician Nate Silver. What is the mission of this website? Most broadly, to accumulate and analyze polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.

Electoral-vote.com – The home of the Electoral Vote Predictor, which tracks political polls for U.S. federal elections. The site was immensely popular in 2004, ranking in the top 1000 Websites in the world and the top 10 blogs in the world, with about 700,000 visitors a day. In some surveys, it was the most popular election site in the country. In 2006, it tracked the Senate and House elections. Now it is back tracking the presidential, Senate, and House elections for 2008.

CNN Electoral Map – Move over John King, do your own electoral vote projections and calculations.

This week we discuss telework and the US Government. We examined this from several angles to see where they are making strides and where they need to work harder. Thanks to Chuck Wilsker for joining us as our guests on the show.

If you missed the show you can listen in below or download the MP3 file.

Show # 7: Telework and the Government

Telework or telecommuting has long been an issue of much discussion in the US government on the federal, state, and local levels. Some embrace it while others seem to resist it. Joined by Chuck Wilsker, President of the Telework Coalition, based in Washington DC, we discuss the current state of telework in the government as well as look at some policy, success stories, and challenges for wide scale acceptance and implementation.

Here’s what we covered:

• The two sides of telework in the government:
  • Government Agencies Teleworking – The status of telework in the Federal Government
  • Tax incentives for employers and employees
• In the News:
  • Teleworking is catching on
  • Government promotes telework for security and business continuity – not just environmental issues.
• Resources for further research:
  • ITAC listing of State and Local Programs
  • The Telework Clearinghouse
• Guest: Chuck Wilsker – President, CEO, and Co-founder of The Telework Coalition

To listen to the show you can use the flash player below or download the MP3 file. Use the PLAY IN POPUP link below if you want to use our flash player and roam the web while listening.