The Almighty Signature, Last Stand for Paper Forms

Hubby and I have spent the past month preparing to move from Grande Cache back to Edmonton. There's a lot of paperwork from here to there, as we put our home on the market. Living in so remote a location, real estate forms, financial applications, rent applications, and leases all had to be done online. I have over an inch of paper generated in the past month just to get through this.

 The bugbear is the requirement for a signature.

This back-and-forth necessitated the printing and re-scanning of the forms multiple times, the quality degrading through each pass-through. How can integrity be maintained if the document is no longer readable?

 The process was so painful I was wondering if I might help industry take the leap to e-signature. Electronic transactions are legal, most governments having some form of electronic transactions legislation to ease the way for commerce. The process, however, must be proven confidential, secure, and valid. There must be some sort of validation to confirm that the Jane Doe signing is truly Jane. The signing must be password protected, and the transmission encrypted. Privacy watchdogs must be reassured that the identifying information and passwords are protected from loss or misuse.

I believe also there is public hesitation to trust an online process with their signature.

The potential benefits outweigh the risks, in my opinion, as society greens up, and is switching to electronic media wherever possible. Paper elimination saves trees.Crossing this final hurdle of e-signature could finally move offices to paper-free.

I was pleasantly surprised to find in my final transaction, a property management company that uses an online signature service. I initialed and forwarded my final forms completely online. The service is docusign, and it gets an excellent rating from PC magazine. A similar product for comparison is RPost Office. With several products out there, it is time to make the move to e-signature.

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As a post-script, I followed up this blog with an e-mail to the Alberta Real Estate Association, and I received a prompt and thorough reply. The ARCA has been hampered by legislation, specifically the Statute of Frauds and the Real Estate Act of Alberta, which requires "wet" signatures. Changes are in the works and the ARCA will be publishing forms that allow for e-signatures this September.

Kaizen Motivation

It has been an eventful few days as we travelled at times only hours ahead of floods and road closures in Calgary. What a spectacular flood. Now we are heading north to home and hearth. I am finishing up a borrowed book on Kaizen and I came across a quote I must not forget. "Individual-oriented Kaizen is often regarded as a morale booster, and management does not always ask for immediate economic payback on each suggestion. Management attention and responsiveness are essential if workers are to become "thinking workers" always looking for better ways to do their work"

I think of my time with the government, and the supreme effort required to being in the smallest change. I think of the bright recruits who sincerely asked why we might do a job differently. They were absolutely right, but the effort to implement would freeze me to immobility.

Stop employees often enough and they simply quit trying. The bold ones leave, the ones who stay a sepia portrait of their former selves.

I ran in to that same blandness at the town office. I needed to talk to Taxation, but their number is buried under the general directory, not under the department listings. It took a couple calls to figure that out. I mentioned this to the town worker. She admitted that more than one person has commented  on this, and then changed the subject. She treated this small issue as insurmountable as the Rockies visible out the window.

Am I exaggerating to think that an atmosphere where the individual employee is so disempowered, cannot build, grow, thrive, energize?

What does 100 calories look like?

I love 100 calorie snacks. Be a virtuous snackist and have your fun, too. Not only that, but the marketers of these reduced packages have convinced us to pay more for the privilege.  But of course the foot pundits must spoil our fun. They may be 100 calories, but are they good calories? Being a type-2 diabetic complicates things further. I am also supposed to make sure it is balanced. I am to pack in a carbohydrate, a protein, and roughage in to that teeny tiny bundle. There are days, well, the thinking needed to put together the perfect little snack, while my body rages to be fed, is more than I can handle. On days like that, I throw the marketing model in to my lunch bag.

I got to thinking, what's stopping me from putting together my own 100 calorie wonders? I document the creations as I go, and I never have to measure a second time. A happy by-product of this exercise is I got a better picture of what a hundred calories looks like. It's little.

One Wasa rye cracker, 2 tablespoons hummus, sliced bell pepper, and five Wasabi peas (hot!)

One Kavli cracker, 1/4 pepperoni stick, two skinny cow (lite) wedges, and carrot peels.

A great bedtime snack, shared by a type-1 buddy, is half a protein bar with 125 ml of (1%) milk. This tides over to breakfast very nicely.  It comes out to about 200 calories.

An egg is fifty calories. I paired it with half a crusty bun and a little ketchup. Salsa or fresh tomato would look better. I really wanted to show off my microwave egg cooker. One minute and fifteen seconds!

Two measly dates, stuffed with Laughing Cow cream cheese. Yum, tasty; a calorie punch in a tiny package.

Ten peanuts, count them and weep. Maybe measure with a tablespoon, no cheating!

Edamame, 1/2 cup. Now this is more satisfying! Break open one end and suck the seeds out. Try with parmesan cheese or a little hot sauce.

Half an energy, protein or health bar. Taste of Nature; nuts and agave nectar. Another favorite of mine is The Simply bar, carb-free and fiber-full. These bars are handy portable snacks, but typically about 180 calories each. Cut them in half for a home-made hundred calorie treat.

Chickpeas, 1.2 cup. High in fiber and protein, low in fat. So satisfying! Roast them, munch on them like nuts. I buy dried and reconstitute them overnight in water. Here's a fabulous oven-roasted recipe by Chris Rochelle.

Bad news, cheese-lovers. Due to its high fat content, cheese is a very dense calorie choice. This is Armstrong Extra Old low fat cheese, 3 cm, 80 calories. I fleshed it out with two croutons. Cheese is still great for its protein content, and it is so beautifully portable. And tasty. To keep from over-eating, I precut my block in to squares, line five cubes along a strip of plastic wrap, and wrap them tightly. I store them all in a Ziploc in the freezer, and take out a few at a time. If I am using a previously frozen cube in baking, it crumbles rather than shreds.

Four walnuts, or eight halves.

http://frugaledmontonmama.com/2014/03/make-these-simple-chocolate-100-calorie-snacks-at-home/

Under 50 calories:
http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/diet-weight-loss/50-Best-Snacks-Under-50-Calories?click=ht

I will post more.

Feel Free

Chances are if you have wandered here you found one of my Feel Free cards.

Be free to dance, wherever you are.

roll those shoulders

jiggle

laugh

Feel free to set aside the burdens of the week, the daily worries, and responsibilities. 

Have fun.

Children play in the park, shrieking, running, rosy cheeks, gushing adventure

 Today, take play back.

relax

soak

Take in the beauty of a scene. Be still. 

Taste it, savor it, roll it on your tongue. Promise yourself not to forget.

Open your new freedom account at a bank.

Dream a new dream that is all your own.

Allow the intimacy of massage, a fragrant oil maybe.

Whatever free means to you, do it. You have my permission.

There is time enough to take up your load again.

Irate Taxi Services in Calgary

Company threatens legal action over new taxi rules, shrieks a Calgary Sun article this past June. "The proposed bylaws will require cab owners to electronically submit vehicle GPS and other data from existing taxi meters...Some of the data the city wants submitted electronically include: the status of the cab’s availability, trip volumes, dispatch response times, in-service vehicle counts, average seconds to answer customers calls by dispatchers, abandoned call rates, hold wait times and detailed records of customer complaints."


Could these demands be met by a business bound by traditional paper-based forms and logs? If any current cab companies have not embraced the digital age, these new requirements would indeed be nearly impossible to satisfy. 


But if this information is collected digitally - and if all cab companies are on the same platform -  the value of having this data could transform the way cab services operate in Calgary. I would suggest further that City council go a step further and make this data available on an open platform to allow innovators to build new apps. Getting ahead in the data game may even be critical for the survival of the industry (Uber Expands to Canada).


Even more critical, however, is a shift in the way institutions work together. There has to be a fundamental trust between council and the taxi companies to openly share this data. This trust is obviously missing.


Could another forum be organized, other than rounds of council meetings and litigation, where both parties be introduced to the innovators and the big ideas and opportunities latent in this data? An UnConference or Hackathon might just be the thing.

Day 13 - A Rollicking Trip Home

It was 1:00 in the afternoon, and I was sitting in the lobby of our Best Western, surrounded by our luggage. I suddenly flushed, and my breath became ragged. Unnoticed by others, my heart raced, and my thoughts went wild. I was checking our boarding tickets again and realized I had made a mistake. We weren't leaving Nanaimo at 3:00; the flight from Vancouver was leaving at 3:00. The flight from Nanaimo had left at ten that morning. We were going to miss our connecting flight.

I quickly worked out our options as I waited for Art to return. I thought, perhaps, if we were lucky, we could take a sea plane (twenty minute flight) to Vancouver and catch up with that connecting flight. I alternately scolded and pleaded with Art to hurry, as we trundled our luggage to the harbor to get our tickets. I usually appreciate his easy-going pace. Not this day. 

As I sat impatiently in the Harbour Air waiting room, my neighbour touched my arm. Her mother is deaf, and she was wondering if I might watch out for her to make sure she caught her shuttle at the other end. At the word "deaf", my focus instantly shifted. I don't have as much opportunity to practice my ASL these days, and I delight in the opportunity to practice. As the daughter talked, I signed to the mother. The mother signalled to her daughter. The woman asked, "My mother says you can sign".

"That's right," I say, "aren't we lucky?" Then rushed down the ramp with the mother to the waiting plane. Art followed.

The flight was as much adventure as Art and I would dare, dipping in the air pockets, bobbing and weaving in a most queasy way. Art is white-knuckled on such trips, and this was no exception, great views notwithstanding. I was wonderfully distracted, chatting away in a combination of lip-reading and sign with my companion. Noisy little airplanes are no obstacle for the deaf. I translated the pilot's instructions. The mother chatted happily with me, and every time we dipped, she joked we could swim the rest of the way. This mother, deaf from birth, was not introduced to sign until she was in her forties, so she is not fluent. Nevertheless, she is very skilled at communicating in a hearing world, lip-reading where sign failed. She is the mother of seven children, from South Africa and travelling to London next to visit one of her other children. She lost her husband of many years to cancer, I think. I could see that without her companion, finding people to chat to, to connect, is an ongoing challenge. The hearing can be so blind. 

She let me know that our finding each other was the work of the Lord. I can barely argue. What should have been an anxiety-filled trip quickly evaporated. Her daughter should not have worried. The mother found the shuttle driver and had her luggage in order before Art and I were fully out of the plane.

Despite our best efforts, we were still ten minutes late for the connecting flight. This meant another interminable line-up, a grim-faced Air Canada worker doing more than she needed to, rearranging our flights. Instead of leaving at 3:00 that afternoon, we left at 10:30 that evening. I took the opportunity to set myself up at a wi-fi bar and marked papers. Art watched the hockey game.

The flight was hot, close. We dragged our luggage (with some practiced ease, I must say) to the final cab ride to my friends' house in Northeast Calgary. Art and I whispered our way to the ready guest beds, and crashed.

P.S. Guess where our luggage is stored on the sea-plane? In the floats!

Playing with Data

With computers came data, and a whole new generation of data hounds who love to play with it. I'll give you a taste of what can be done with big data which has generated new appetite for raw, unfiltered data. One can make a vivid graphical display that tells a new story, an app that revolutionizes how work is done, or a new way for the public to access services. The data hounds are targeting municipalities for the opportunities there, but close around the corner is other levels of government and big business. This new hunger for data has spawned the Open Data movement. Others are working on disentangling copyright issues (Open Data Commons) to make big data more available.

Vivid Graphics

With 3D modelling and timeline software, graphs have inherent beauty of their own. When they tell a story, they are even more compelling. Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data ...and weaves them into stunning visualizations. His work takes real world and community-generated data and uses it to reflect on cultural trends and the changing relationship between humans and technology.

Hans Rosling of the nonprofit GapMinder is using descriptive graphics to illustrate the potential for social change. His findings may surprise you.

Great Apps

With the availability of real time, reliable, raw data - as it relates to what people are doing - when and where they are doing it - and how many people are doing it - has led to some slick applications. The application SeeClickFix allows citizens to post pics of fixes for their community. The city acquires a legion of eyes on the ground, allowing them to spend more time prioritizing, planning, and fixing. The software tracks performance, adding transparency and accountability to city services.

Code for America, another nonprofit, is made up of web geeks, city experts, and technology industry leaders. They are building a network of civic leaders and organizations who believe there is a better way of doing things and want to make a difference. One app that is now in use in four major centres in the US, allows citizens to adopt fire hydrants buried in winter snowstorms.

A recent open data challenge resulted in a real-time map, showing the location of all trains on the London underground.

The demands from this community is for real-time linkages to existing managed databases. The data must be current and accurate.

Business Analytics

As an aside, IBM is supporting big business through their Advanced Analytics to mine the masses of unstructured data they have at their fingertips. We have no lack of information in this new age. What is missing is the talent to interpret the great masses of information in to comprehensive models and graphics so we can learn their story. I believe that there is an untapped talent of data hounds who know how to ask the right questions and leverage that information to new insights about business, customers and the environment.

Openness - Privacy Threat?

While data hounds call for open access, the public is ever more aware of their privacy rights. People rightly want to be informed when information about them is being requested by third parties. This creates new tensions, as data by its nature is fluid. It is easy to grant access.  As we browse the internet for instance, our hits and habits are tracked by literally hundreds of entities. Gary Kovacs has created a Firefox add-on that tracks the trackers.

While it is easy to share, it is much harder to parse information to satisfy privacy requests. That's not to mean we it is impossible to put the appropriate safeguards in place, or that we should reject all requests for greater data access.

The public can be surprisingly open, however, when asked for their permission. Just this past week, British Columbians expressed their willingness to share masses of historical health information, to provide the opportunity for new insights. All they ask is that the information be protected so that it cannot be tracked back to the individual. Read more, "Survey shows B.C. health database could be a wellspring for researchers - 80 per cent of British Columbians onside to share their information — but only anonymously".

In Summary

There is a new generation of data hounds who have new skills of data manipulation and graphical representation that can help us make better decisions and support direct civic involvement to solve problems. 

Their demands are for open, unfettered access to reliable data that are typically managed by government. Along with these demands for more openness, the public wants assurances that their personal information is protected. This complicates sharing, but does not prohibit it. As records professionals, recognize that these new demands to data are coming. Be aware that personal information must be protected either through anonymizers or presentation of aggregate data.