Blog
May 13, 2009
A Private Federal World?
I think pre-interviews are my favorite part of Metanomics, because they provide the moments when I am most surprised.
Yesterday the eye-opener came when Paulette Robinson of the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds told me that the US Department of Agriculture (of all places!) was going to provide ‘trusted source hosting’ for all federal agencies that wanted a secure way to access virtual worlds for training and other uses. They already have proof-of-concept projects with Forterra and Protosphere. But when I asked if they were looking into Second Life’s behind-the-firewall solution (which I understand is going to be launched in a couple of months)….it’s not on the table.
Why not? Because Second Life requires a whole range of ports to be open, rather than just a few. The Feds view this as too much of a security risk, so they currently have no plans to pursue a Second Life option.
Second Life still has a major role to play in ‘forward facing’ activities that are open to the public—citizen outreach and the like. With its open access, Second Life is well-suited to this role. (That’s why we use it for Metanomics). But it sounds to me like Linden Lab might be losing out on a major opportunity. After all, the US Federal Government is about the biggest enterprise there is.
A more pleasant surprise was hearing about the momentum the Consortium has, and the funding—across a variety of agencies—that are being raised. Oh, and the Consortium is a finalist for the prestigious 2009 Intergovernmental Solutions Award, with the winner to be announced on June 1st
Congratulations, Paulette! Next stop for you: Disneyworld! After Metanomics, of course. See the rest of you there!
Rob Bloomfield
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Dusan Writer
I wish I understood more about firewalls and security and will, of course, be at Metanomics today to learn all about it.
But what’s interesting is that it’s increasingly clear that “behind the firewall” isn’t really the kind of wall that people are looking for, perhaps.
I was told yesterday that Second Life, even BEHIND a firewall, can still require a half dozen ports be opened.
And I believe the same is true of OpenSim but I’d like to hear other opinions on that.
It would be interesting to hear a response from the Lab on whether they have plans to address this, because what’s clear from this post and the actions at the Fed level is that even a “sim in a box” doesn’t offer the firewall protection that government needs.
Ramesh Ramloll
About the USDA being a the forefront, this is a little weird I agree, I had the same feelings when I found that it is thing organization that funded many of our telemedicine pojects. There are many federal agencies such as HRSA (in the past) and recently (ASPR) who have funded projects involving virtual environments such as SL. The security issue is number one of course. I keep getting in touch with LL regarding their behind the firewall solution regularly. I understand that they are still trying to nail down a pricing scheme. In addition to firewall issues (FISMA requirements and so forth) feds are also looking for encrypted communications. LL recently tried to boost up its staff regarding government efforts (so they are interested). It seems they are aware of the basic requirements. Many RFPs mention Second Life as a possible platform as well. Personally, for the federal projects I direct, I found that the plasticity and true user generated content opportunities of SL is a plus over the others, lack of web integration is a minus and the FISMA issues is really pretty much (in many cases disingenuously addressed), punching walls in firewalls to get SL to work is a big minus…and in many projects, we even had to develop a parallel open network just to get SL to run. I think SL is better poised to overcome all the other platforms out there simply because its openness allows many creative injection points that even LL have never failed to recognize. This is not the case for the competition. From this vantage point, SL should win…only the future will tell.
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