GovernmentExecutive.com

In an editorial in the New York Times Thursday, the paper calls the 2007 Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act, " a bad idea compounded by the notoriously bad state of federal government records."

The act would, among other things, "force all workers, including citizens, to prove they have a right to earn a living," by relying on the Social Security Administration to verify Social Security numbers for workers, the paper contends. The problem is that one SSA database has a 4 percent error rate, which would mean possibly thousands of workers would face firings and discrimination.

Other federal databases contain errors. The inspector general at the Justice Department reported last year that the Terrorist Watch List, which is used to screen 270 million people a month to identify possible terrorists, has a large error rate. "In an examination of 105 records, for example, the auditors found that 38 percent of the records contained errors or inconsistencies that the [Terrorist Screening Center's] own quality-assurance efforts had not found," according to a Washington Post article.

As the federal government relies more on information technology to support critical decisions, the importance of how clean its data is rises.

How confident are you that your data is error free?

The Risk Factor blogger Bob Charette, a risk management expert who consults with federal agencies on risk management, picked up yesterday's story on the deep trouble that the Census Bureau's handheld computer contract is in. In his blog post, he questions the credibility of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®). Harris Corp.'s Government Communications Systems Division, which is the prime contractor on the $600 million handheld contract (now likely much more than $650 million after all the costs from changes, errors and delays are included), has a Maturity Level 3 rating. "The Level 3 rating denotes superior process maturity within the division's program management, engineering, quality assurance, and other disciplines, and achievement of this rating has become a competitive differentiator on many government programs," Charette quotes.

Charette wants to know: "At the very least, I think the division's CMMI rating may need to be re-evaluated, or maybe better, the U.S. government better start looking at what, if anything, SEI CMMI Level 3 actually means in practice."

Or it could mean, the customer, the Census Bureau, put too many demands on Harris -- so many, in fact, that no maturity designation, no matter how high, could have avoided the very problems that now threaten the viability of the U.S. census.

The Census Bureau has had trouble managing the costs, time lines and, most important, the performance of a contract to develop a handheld computer to collect data during the 2010 census. The cost of the contract has increased from its original $600 million to $647 million, according to a General Accounting Office report released today. If all related costs due to the handheld contract's delay and mismanagement are taken into account, GAO estimates the increase in costs for the 2010 census could range between $600 million and $2 billion.

While those overrun costs are high, many government information technology projects (and private-sector IT projects) have suffered similar fates -- with little or no repercussions for the agencies. But Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has suggested something new that could set a precedent for other agencies. In a committee hearing held today on the problems with the handheld contract, Coburn suggested that any cost overrun in the contract be covered by the Census Bureau cutting the budgets for programs in future budgets. This is what he said:

For years, the Census Bureau has estimated that the 2010 count will cost between $11.3 billion and $11.8 billion. I hope that the Secretary of Commerce will work to ensure that the cost does not increase beyond that, even with these trying circumstances. However, let me be perfectly clear -- if the costs go over that amount, taxpayers should not have to subsidize this mismanagement more than they already have. If more money is needed, I fully expect that the department and the bureau will work internally and with [the Office of Management and Budget] to find offsets out of programs that already exist.

The Census Bureau's total budget for fiscal 2008 is about $1.5 billion, with larger budgets coming at the end of decades to pay for conducting the decennial census. Using even the conservative estimate of a $600 million cost overrun in the hand held contract would present a financial challenge, to say the least.

The administration’s top IT official bid an early farewell to government and industry IT workers at the 2008 Information Processing Interagency Conference in Orlando, Fla., Monday before announcing the winners of government project management awards.

Acknowledging the approaching end of the Bush administration, Karen Evans, administrator of the office of e-government and information technology at the Office of Management and Budget, called her fifth keynote at IPIC “bittersweet.” She then acknowledged the work of agencies to achieve the goals of the e-government initiatives, which identified several governmentwide programs to integrate agency operations and information technology investments.

“It isn’t work OMB has done; the work is done by vendors that help the agencies and the agency [IT administrators],” Evans said.

Recipients of government project management awards, some of which Evans announced Monday and others that will be announced at a Tuesday session, were recognized for programs that demonstrate excellence in project management:

Cost Savings/Cost Avoidance
Winner: NASA’s Shared Services Center
Winner: The Office of Personnel Management’s Human Resources Integration

Retooling the Infrastructure
Winners: The Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Campus Camera and Emergency Call Station System; and the Interior Department’s 104 Mainframe Efficiency Improvement Project

Service-Oriented Architecture
Winner: DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Enterprise Service Bus

Digital Trust-Infrastructure Security
Winner: GSA’s Managed Service Offering USACCESS Program

Identity Management-Biometrics
Winner: Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Quick Capture Platform

Delivering Mission Services/Practical Innovations
Winner: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ ATF Knowledge On Line

Delivering Mission Services/Practical Innovations
Winner: Small Business Administration’s Business Gateway Initiative

Government Executive's Robert Brodsky reported today about how the Environmental Protection Agency may have wasted millions of dollars in extra fees to contractors for meeting performance thresholds. "EPA regularly gave contractors ratings of 'exceeds expectations' or 'outstanding,' which facilitated the higher incentive fees, according to" an EPA inspector general report.

Brodsky cites one of the nine contracts the IG analyzed, in which a high rating "was justified only with the following comment: 'The project management was excellent with no problems encountered and costs were within scope of work.' A project that merely encountered no problems or stayed within budget should have earned a grade of satisfactory, the IG said."

Since government projects typically miss deadline and come in over budget, encountering no problems and keeping costs within scope may seem like quite an accomplishment. Others may view it it as simply doing your job.

Late last year we blogged about a feature from CSO Magazine on the dos and don'ts of disclosure letters, those messages to customers and citizens informing them that their personal information may have been stolen. The feature compared how Monster.com and USA Jobs, the federal government’s site for job openings, informed the public when after a hacker infiltrated monster.com’s database of resumes in August. About 146,000 names and contact information of job seekers on the USA JOBS Web site were stolen.

At the time, CSO hadn't posted the article, but the site recently posted the comparison on line. The interesting take away here is that the federal government, according to public relations experts, did a better job in communicating to the public than Monster did.

Last Thursday was IT Job Shadow Day in federal government, with 475 students trailing IT staff at 36 agencies. Two of those students shadowed Karen Evans, administrator for e-government and information technology at the Office of Management and Budget, and Tim Young, deputy administrator for e-government and information technology, during a press briefing about the IT budget. The hope, Evans said, is that the effort will attract young talent to computer science, which would in turn help deal with ongoing workforce issues. “We’re one of many competing here to attract these students,” she said.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) took the next step today in their merger with the Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) by announcing that current ITAA Chairman Hank Steininger will serve as the chairman of the new board. Steininger, currently a managing partner at Grant Thornton, also will lead a five-member executive committee.

Current GEIA Chairman Gene Glazar, vice president for business development at BAE, and Gordon Coburn, CFO of Cognizant Technology Solutions, will serve as co-chairmen. Former GEIA Chairman Randy Lucas, a program executive at Verizon Business and former ITAA Chairman Dave Sanders, chief operating officer at Avotus, will round out the executive committee.

The new 28-member ITAA board of directors will be composed equally of ITAA and GEIA member companies. The merger will bring 400 companies focusing on public policy and IT together under the ITAA banner. The merger has been discussed since last fall and is expected to be completed April 1.

The following item was posted on the Blog "The Agile Mind," written by Anne Laurent, who gave permission to have the item posted in its entirety in Tech Insider.

The military services have been early and avid government adopters of gaming technology and especially software platforms. The Army has had tremendous success with its recruiting game, America's Army, and follow-on training modules built on the same game engine. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Sandia Laboratories have created wildly successful trainers for languages -- chiefly Iraqi Arabic -- culture and non-kinetic (civil-military) operations.

I've written about DARPA's projects and their Godfather, Ralph Chatham, for Government Executive magazine. I caught up recently with Chatham, who just left DARPA at year's end. Among the many strands in our rich and fascinating discussion, we talked about a very exciting DARPA project that could revolutionize the way the military -- and the rest of government -- uses games, as well as wreaking wide-ranging effects on the way games are created in the commercial world.

In March, Chatham expects to see a first version of DARPA RealWorld become available for use in the field. What's the big deal? Well, the huge speed bump to military use of games for training is that service members haven't been able to easily alter them to accurately represent the terrain, buildings--outside and inside--and vehicles they confront in the field. Real World is designed to be truly user authored by not-so-technically-adept soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines on the ground. That means Real World can become a real mission rehearsal tool.

Daniel Kaufman, the RealWorld program manager, says his goal is to be able to build simulations without programmers. This "dictates a new approach to getting software requirements," he told the audience at DARPA Tech 2007, the systems and technology symposium held in August in Anaheim, Calif. "The 20 meetings to write the 100-page RFP to generate the 1,000-page specification to find a product that will not be delivered for four years has consistently failed," he continued. So he set out to build tools and capabilities so warfighters can create applications when they need them. Take a 19-year-old soldier in the field, Kaufman said:

He’s out on patrol in a rocky canyon in Afghanistan and some OPFOR pops up and shoots at him because that’s what an opposing force does. Our warfighter engages, the OPFOR vanishes, and our Soldier returns to base to be debriefed by his commanding officer. Our soldier gets out his laptop – and, voila! On the screen appears a scene that is an exact 3-D recreation of precisely where he was in that canyon. Not generic terrain – this is exactly his patrol and exactly his location.

Within seconds, our soldier is dragging-and-dropping:

“This is where I was; this is where my buddy was; this is where George was; this is where the HMMWV was, this is where the sniper was, and this is where we got shot, sir.”

Notice that I said he does it. There’s no software guy; there’s no writing down specs. He does it, and within seconds it’s right on his laptop screen and it’s exactly correct.

If you think about it, in that one small instance, four very important things have taken place: RealWorld has become an after-action review tool, a mission planning and briefing tool, a mission rehearsal tool and a training tool.

Imagine recording this whole sequence, and then sending it back by e-mail to Ft. Polk and Ft. Lewis, and Twentynine Palms, or anywhere else. And instead of trying to tell a kid back at a U.S. training base, "Look here’s 100 pages of doctrine that explains how you are supposed to handle an IED, and here’s a PowerPoint slide, and here’s a satellite map, and here’s a contour map," we put him right there!

Now training takes on a whole new meaning. Our stateside soldier is not working with, "Here’s a square: imagine that’s you, and imagine the bad guy is this circle over here." We’re saying, “In 90 days, you’re going to be there. Work with this simulation and figure out what you would do. Because if we have not gotten that sniper – who really does exist -- in three months, odds are he will still be out there and it will be your job to go get him.”

OK, so that's a revolution in military simulation, but what about overturning commercial game creation? Kaufman's prime contractor, Total Immersion, is making a bet by developing RealWorld for very little money. The company is getting its R&D paid for and gets to hang onto the real-time mission-rehearsal building tools it is creating. Since it now costs $20 million to $40 million to build a computer game, companies only invest in those that appear to have "blockbuster" written all over them. But what if a company developed a set of tools it could both use and license relatively inexpensively to others to use to create games quickly? Kind of blows open the whole game economy, eh?

More on all this to come, but for now, it's worth noting that before DARPA, Kaufman worked for DreamWorks Interactive, a joint venture between Microsoft and DreamWorks SKG, where he was involved in creating games including Goosebumps, The Neverhood, Jurassic Park and the precursor of what was to become Medal of Honor. Before that, he was an attorney with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison (Palo Alto, Calif.), where he had the largest game company representation in the United States, handling the EA/ABC joint venture, Spectrum Holobyte's management buy-out and merger with Microprose, which led to an IPO, the formation of Crystal Dynamics, and the formation and subsequent sale of Humongous Entertainment for $76 million. Oh, and the CIA's venture catalyst, In-Q-Tel, once commissioned him to look into how gaming could help the CIA train, too.

Smart development, smart acquisition, smart partnering with the private sector and smart risk taking. Watch out big, entrenched military simulation companies!

While progress is being made, the government has a ways to go before it can claim to have fully embraced Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), subject experts said at a panel discussion on the topic yesterday.

Attending the 2008 AFFIRM CFO Summit were Douglas Webster, chief financial officer at the Department of Labor; Jim Martin, chief financial officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and Mark Krzysko, an acquisition executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Each spoke about the unique challenges of trying to implement newer risk assessment and mitigation strategies to the federal arena.

According to COSO, ERM is defined as a process to identify, assess and mitigate potential risks across an enterprise. The approach has been gaining steam in the private sector and has started to cross over into the federal workspace.

Webster said that one of the problems with the current approach is the focus on audits and internal controls, which he called a foundation on which better risk management practices must be built. "Internal controls are largely operational, while audits are backward looking. ERM focuses on projected risks,” Webster said. “Identifying all risks is not enough. You must balance those risks with the amount of monetary investment they require.” He added that the government should look to the private sector for those best practices.

The concept of risk vs. return is an interesting one, and one highlighted a Government Executive article on the Census Bureau's rationale and later contract problems in switching to handheld computers to support the 2010 Census. According to Krzysko, such risk/reward calculations are a critical part of ERM. “I believe the dialogue has shifted; we are now asking ‘What value does this (project) bring the taxpayer, the warfighter, or the community at large?’”

As an example of how ERM could improve the acquisition process, Krzysko referred to Defense's success in establishing a new software program that allows senior decision makers to instantly view on a computer the critical pieces of information on major weapon systems. “Within 45 days, we were able to access the programs of 12 major weapon systems worth over $103 billion in nanoseconds," he said. "Before that, you had to go through multiple services and someone had to prepare and walk the data through the process. It has helped us move from a focus on compliance to one on responsibility.”

Still, there remains much to be done. “Not to be negative, but there’s a good ways to go in terms of best practices when compared to the private sector," Webster said. "You still don’t hear the risk part of the equation in the daily vernacular of decision making."

When asked who was leading the charge in the government towards ERM, Webster said the only agency to enforce COSO’s definition of ERM is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “They got it. It would be worthwhile if more organizations did the same,” said Webster. “There are difficulties in applying ERM to the federal government, but they are not so great that we shouldn’t attempt moving in that direction.”

After much speculation, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., confirmed yesterday that he will not run for office in 2008. As Republicans and Democrats scramble to defend or snag (respectively) the Davis' congressional seat, the technology community – both in and outside government – bids farewell to a staunch advocate.

The list of IT issues that benefited from Davis' support is long. In his early days in Congress, he founded the Information Technology Working Group to promote a better understanding of issues important to the computer and technology industries. He sponsored the Y2K Act, which encouraged Y2K compliance in industry, and later helped pushed several bills through Congress that advanced efforts to more strategically implement IT: the E-Gov Act of 2002, the Federal Information Security Act, and the Critical Infrastructure Information Act, to name a few. He speaks frequently in support of changes to trade agreement laws that would make it far easier for agencies to purchase technology goods and services.

Phil Bond, the president and CEO of the Information Technology Association of America, described Davis as the “ultimate champion for technology in Congress,” helping to “tear down the wall between the federal government and commercial technologies.

“When other members needed to get smart on IT, they often called Tom,” Bond said in a prepared statement.

Now what? In a statement released this afternoon, Davis said that he has not yet decided what opportunities to pursue, "but it’s clear to me that returning to the private sector and reacquainting myself with that view of the world is the best move." He was careful to call his departure “a sabbatical from public life,” keeping the door open for a return to government, but no doubt the number of offers coming his way in the meantime promises to be staggering -- if it isn't already -- as IT firms and organizations scramble for the chance to profit from his knowledge of government IT as well as his influence.

The New York Times reports today on the backlog of investigations facing the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA must inspect foreign plants that manufacture medical devices, drugs and process food. But, as the Times reports, antiquated computer systems cannot support the work. In fact, the FDA cannot create a list of plants that have not been inspected. The Times based its article on reports obtained from the Government Accountability Office. The reports will be released today at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The pressure to go green – adopting policies, processes and technologies that reduce energy consumption -- is building, as Government Executive reported last year. Study after study has shown how much U.S. companies and the federal government can save by using more efficient computer equipment – and it’s not insignificant.

Now, two more studies released this week pile on to the findings. The federal government could save about $960 million over five years if it adopts green technologies such as virtualization, consolidating servers and dynamic smart cooling, according to an article published by InformationWeek. Another study found that the federal government could save about $330 million over five years "by using more energy efficient PCs, specifically those that meet the Environmental Protection Agency's more stringent Energy Star standards that went into effect last July," according to the article.

Or, in other terms:

The annual savings by the feds using more energy efficient PCs would be equivalent to conserving 1.3 billion barrels of oil. Over four years, the report estimates the cost savings would be equivalent [to providing] 28,537 Americans with Social Security benefits for a year, or more than 989 million meals "to the hungry."

The studies were underwritten by the technology companies Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

It's official: The Senate confirmed four new leaders at the Homeland Security Department last night, one of which could play a key role in cybersecurity efforts.

Robert Jamison was appointed under secretary for the National Protection & Programs Directorate. The office is charged with minimizing the department's risk through an integrated approach of physical and virtual threats. Previously, Jamison served as deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, leading a transit security program and Lower Manhattan transportation recovery operation, which was established after 9/11.

Other confirmations included Julie Myers as assistant secretary of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Jeffrey Runge as chief medical officer and assistant secretary for the Office of Health Affairs, and Ross Ashley as assistant administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff released a statement on the confirmations this morning.

We think you, the technology manager in the federal government and industry, have a pretty good insight into just what are the hot issues and events that will unfold in 2008 for the federal IT market. Over the past few weeks we've invited you to take an online survey to let us know what you think; we just want to take this opportunity to invite you to take the survey again, if you haven’t.

We are conducting the survey in conjunction with our friends at Government Futures, which is also offering readers a chance to place bets on what’s going to happen in the federal IT community using the prediction markets on Government Future's Web site.

If you have taken the survey and placed your bets, thank you. If you haven't, please visit the site and give us your opinions. The questions cover a number of hot areas, including information security, the next-generation Internet and federal information technology spending.

In January, we’ll host a webinar to discuss the results of the survey and present an analysis of the predictions.

In the December issue of Government Executive, we discuss some trends that IT experts told us would be important. Now, we want your opinion. So, please take the survey and join the government futures market to help us figure it out.

Shannon Kellogg, director of government and industry affairs at RSA Security, recently recounted a decision by a federal agency to encrypt everything (systems, emails, devices) to avoid the dreaded security breach that so many other agencies have reported. Apparently, after the decision was made, a contractor working with the agency (Kellogg declined to name the agency or the contractor) accessed sensitive information while on the network, saved it on a USB memory stick -- and then walked out the door. Kellogg didn’t say if the agency reported any data loss – but who's to know? Exposure is exposure, and the risks still apply.

This story certainly isn't unusual, but it bears repeating because this plays out in every agency routinely. Among the most important lessons that can be learned may be to avoid knee-jerk reactions to security threats -- such as believing an encrypt-everything policy will insulate you from security breaches. Such policies are, by definition, reactionary – not strategic. Encryption – like any security strategy – works in specific circumstances, but should not be the end-all-be-all security policy.

And this lesson comes from a security vendor.

For years, information technology has been trying to break into the corporate board room or the high-level government management meetings where it can help inform strategies to accomplish an organization’s goals, be it making more profit or serving the public interest. Despite assertions that state otherwise, IT still, by a long shot, has yet to really become a driver in helping government deliver public services and fundamentally transform how agencies do business. IT has tinkered at the edges.

The reason may be that most of our political leaders are so disinterested in IT. We were reminded of that last week during the Republican presidential debates. As Garrett Graff, an editor at large at Washingtonian magazine, reminded us in the Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook section, presidential hopeful “Sen. John McCain let slip a fairly stunning admission,” when he said he “might ‘rely on a vice president’ for help on less important issues such as ‘information technology, which is the future of this nation's economy.’”

The problem, as Graff points out, is the odd allowance we as a nation give presidential candidates to admit that they know so little about an industry that is vitally important to the national economy – and for that matter, to national security. Such admissions happen with surprising regularly. We’ve written about Defense Secretary Robert Gates – who oversees the world’s largest military complex, which has pursued network-centric warfare as its primary strategic objective – that he is “a very low-tech person.” President Bush also has made statements about his ignorance of IT, as my colleague Tom Shoop pointed out in his FedBlog this past summer.

Graff does tip his hat to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for issuing last month an “innovation agenda,” which lays out an IT agenda for government. Yes, the agenda represents “an exception to the rule” in the presidential race, as Graff says, but almost all Obama’s ideas are vague and warmed, and only advance the introductory Bush IT agenda, which accomplished little of what it set out to do, in just small ways.

The nation and government need something more. Something bolder that shows an understanding of how important IT is to the U.S. economy, how it can transform government and truly improve public services.

It’s been more than 10 years since President Bill Clinton described the 21st Century classroom as a place in which “computers are as much a part of the classroom as blackboards." Since then, schools -- and parents -- have spent millions of dollars on computers for students and their children under the assumption that the computers are directly related to improved learning and higher test scores. The problem is that no national study has proven those claims.

Now, more than a decade after the fact, the federal government wants to find out what the link is and has awarded a grant to education researchers at Indiana University to study how teachers and students use computers to learn. This seems a bit late.

For sure, the study could shed light on just what value computers give students in the classroom. But this fact has been debated for years. As Todd Oppenheimer pointed out in his article (subscription required) that appeared in the July 1997 issue of The Atlantic, computers’ value to education is questionable. An excerpt from the article:

… Alan Lesgold, a professor of psychology and the associate director of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, calls the computer an "amplifier," because it encourages both enlightened study practices and thoughtless ones. There's a real risk, though, that the thoughtless practices will dominate, slowly dumbing down huge numbers of tomorrow's adults. As Sherry Turkle, a professor of the sociology of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a longtime observer of children's use of computers, told me, "The possibilities of using this thing poorly so outweigh the chance of using it well, it makes people like us, who are fundamentally optimistic about computers, very reticent."

Oppenheimer compares the computers-in-the-classroom phenomenon to film-strip technology students used 40 years ago: “‘Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of the 1990s,’ Clifford Stoll, the author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway (1995), told The New York Times last year, recalling his own school days in the 1960s. ‘We loved them because we didn't have to think for an hour, teachers loved them because they didn't have to teach, and parents loved them because it showed their schools were high-tech. But no learning happened.’”

There's no reason to believe that these arguments are outdated -- especially given the fact the federal government just issued a grant to find out if they are. Besides, the rush to introduce computers in the classroom before researching whether they would, indeed, increase performance is part of a long string of similar information technology investments that organizations of all kinds have made, an act of chasing the hottest technology under the assumption that technology, in and of itself, will allow us to work faster and be smarter. “It’s technology, after all," goes the argument. "It must provide value."

For years, IT managers in federal agencies and in the Office of Management and Budget have tried to head off such thinking before it gets too far down the IT investment road. OMB's requirement for agencies to write business cases are just one example of this. A technology may seem like it would create efficiencies and add value, but the results from an IT investment are typically hard to measure – if an organization ever measures them at all. Or, which is more likely, the added value many times falls far short of the expectations managers had when the technology idea was first dreamed up.

The computers-in-the-classroom policy seems to have followed this same line of reasoning, although, at first, some research showed computers raised achievement. Years ago supporters pointed to the study “Connecting K-12 Schools to the Information Superhighway,” conducted by McKinsey & Co. for a Clinton task force formed to study technology and education, as the reasons why the federal government should support a policy that made computers a big part of curriculums. It concluded:

Many schools have experienced significant improvements in student performance after introducing computer-assisted instruction. For example, the Carrollton City School District in Georgia established a computer lab, among other changes, to reduce the failure rate in 9th grade algebra from 38% to 3%. In New Jersey, the Christopher Columbus Middle School saw student performance rise from well below to above state averages on standardized tests in reading, language arts, and math after the school implemented reforms that included extensive use of networked computers. The academic literature confirms technology's role in these improvements: a review of 254 controlled studies concluded that appropriate use of computers in the classroom reduces the time needed to master certain types of knowledge by as much as 30%. Put another way, in three school years, students benefiting from computer-assisted instruction can learn almost a full year's worth of material more than students who do not have access to the technology.

But Oppenheimer, in his article, refutes many of these findings.

Back to today. Now Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy will try “to figure out how teachers use technology in lessons and how students learn from that technology,” according to the Indianapolis Star article. “There have been some larger efforts, but it's mostly been a study here, a study there,” Jonathan Plucker, director of the center, told the Star. “It's a critical question that has never been answered. That's just so exciting.”

It might have been a good thing to ask that "critical question" more than a decade ago before schools and parents spent billions of dollars on computers without knowing for sure if they do indeed raise student achievement or how the computers could be used to do so.

The study is due to be completed in April 2009.

In this month’s cover article, CIO Magazine details how Wal-Mart lost its IT edge. The story is applicable to the federal government. The article catalogues how after years of being an IT leader (being among the first to adopt bar-code scanning, satellite communications, electronic data interchange, and a supply chain management system that automatically triggered orders to suppliers when stocks dropped) Wal-Mart’s legendary IT department has fallen on hard times, including some failures in the social networking realm. The IT problems have indirectly contributed to failed ventures in international markets and missed profit projections.

The failed ventures and lower profits may not be specifically applicable to government, but the reasons for Wal-Mart falling off its IT game may be. According to the article, Wal-Mart “has relied too much on centralized decision making” and “analysts say that Wal-Mart's reliance on homegrown IT systems -- and its conviction of their superiority -- needs to change.” Wal-Mart’s chief information officer, Rollin Ford, “must bring in best-of-breed commercial applications,” such as Business Intelligence and other IT tools to improve operations. “We cannot overestimate how much packaged software can help them right now,” says Paula Rosenblum, an analyst and managing partner with Retail Systems Research, according to the article.

Sound familiar? Also, what Wal-Mart is trying to do to recover its "IT mojo," as CIO calls it, holds some lessons for the federal government.

As an aside, it wouldn’t be too surprising if some government IT managers are now feeling redeemed after Wal-Mart was held up as a better relief provider than FEMA after Hurricane Katrina – mostly because of the company’s superior IT operations.

You just knew there had to be an IT angle to the special inspector general reports on procurement abuses associated with the Iraq War. You were right. There is. Seems that the United States spent $38 million to develop a financial management system for Iraq's government. When it stopped working for a month, no one noticed, according to an Associated Press article. From the article:

"According to U.S. Embassy officials, the Ministry of Finance continues to use its legacy system for overall budget and accounting, 'nobody noticed' when IFMIS was down for a month and no one relies on IFMIS to produce reports," [special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr.] said.

Other ministries, such as interior and defense, have developed their own financial management information systems, and they are not compatible with the new one and cannot transfer financial data from one system to another.

Sound familiar?

In an item posted today in his blog, “The Risk Factor,” risk management expert Bob Charette calls into question OMB's announcement yesterday that the number of IT projects on its Management Watch List had dropped 61 percent – in seven months. “This is truly amazing,” Charette writes. “Sixty-one percent of government IT projects on the OMB watch list, which indicates whether they are well-positioned to execute, all got better at the same time. One can only conclude that the government has found a new, secret way to manage IT project risk.”

The skepticism doesn’t stop there. In an article posted today on Government Executive’s Web site, government project management expert J. Donaldson Frame says, “When I see miracle improvements occur very quickly, I wonder whether the improvements are genuine or reflect statistical artifacts."

And Ray Bjorkland, chief knowledge officer at federal marketing research firm FedSources, wonders how IT projects get on (and presumably then come off) the Management and High Risk lists in the first place.

For the 212 IT projects that came off the Management Watch List, OMB officials said those “agencies were able to adequately address deficiencies and weaknesses identified in these 212 investments by mitigating planning deficiencies, or in some cases, providing and completing additional documentation supporting their management activities.” No word on how well the projects are meeting budget, deadlines or performance measures, which Bjorkland says are the best indications of success in oversight of technology investments.

And the reason given for more IT programs going on the High Risk List? Again, better reporting from agencies, OMB said.

Interesting, better reporting was the reason OMB gave yesterday for the doubling of the number of reported security breaches exposing personally identifiable information. “An increase in reporting isn't necessarily a bad thing,” said Karen Evans, who holds the Bush administration’s top IT executive position at OMB.

This reason given when on the same day, Microsoft reports that phishing scams had increased more than 150 percent in the first six months of 2007 and the number of malware incidents increased 500 percent. Not to mention the 90 percent increase (over nine months) in the number of cyberattacks directed at electric utilities.

It still hurts my head to try to follow this logic. The message seems to be: It's good to know how bad things are. That could be helpful, if you then used that information to develop a plan to fix the bad things. No word on that, yet.

In August, the federal IT market research firm INPUT released a report showing agencies spending a greater portion of their IT budgets in the government’s fiscal fourth quarter. That’s up from 28 percent from the four year time period of fiscal 1997 to fiscal 2000.

Tech Insider blog item wondered if such an increase in IT spending over such a short period of time increased the chance that agencies may not be aligning spending with strategic goals and wasting money.

The answer may very well be yes, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In a recent report, the IG found that the value of purchases by the Internal Revenue Service made in the month of September increased 671 percent from 2002 to 2006. Reviewing purchases made in August and September 2006, the IG “identified deficiencies with 14 (15 percent) of 92 procurement actions …,” according to the report. “We believe appropriations regulations may have been violated for four of the actions, while all required acquisition steps were not completed for the remaining 10 actions.”

The IG also wrote:

Inefficient and ineffective procurement actions can occur when there is a rush to use funds before they expire at fiscal yearend. This rush increases the risk that items purchased may not meet the requester’s need, thus requiring a second procurement action; were not obtained at the best possible price; or did not use the best vendor or type of contract because Office of Procurement personnel do not have the time necessary to perform a full contractor competition process. Therefore, funds may be spent inefficiently and ineffectively.

Ever feel that those thick, heavy volumes on how to better manage information technology in your IT shop are just a bit dense and hard to comprehend, much less put into practice? Well, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey, reports Network World, while 51 percent of IT managers use the Information Technology Infrastructure Library – known as ITIL, a set of volumes that present best practices in delivering IT services to an organization – more IT managers (55 percent) use practices that they themselves developed.

IT consulting firm BT INS conducted the survey. The firm also reported that those who think ITIL is critical to delivering IT services to their organization declined sharply to 32 percent this year from 45 percent in 2004 and 43 percent in 2006.

What may explain that is at the bottom of the article: “Also fewer survey respondents said they feel that they understand ITIL at both a conceptual and detail level.”

If you don’t get it, you won’t do it.

ITIL’s seven volume set, which was condensed from 30 books a few years ago, is supposed to be condensed even further – to five volumes – and released sometime this year. Not sure if that will help.

As if the Census Bureau didn't have enough risks to manage for the upcoming 2010 decennial census, now the bureau has to worry about not being able to conduct its dress rehearsal. In a New York Times editorial yesterday, the paper laid out the consequences of a stop-gap bill to fund the operations of the federal government through November. That means no funding for the Census Bureau's decennial dress rehearsals, which are critical for testing business processes and, most important, new handheld computers it plans to use to help count the population. Already, the handhelds present numerous risks to the bureau, according to a Government Executive magazine article published this summer, and not being able to test them only exacerbates the problem.

So much so, that the stop-gap funding measure "would virtually guarantee a flawed census," the Times concludes. "Especially imperiled by a funding delay is a contract for the hand-held computers that the bureau intends to use for the first time in 2010," the Times points out.

Information security managers in government, corporations and universities are about as frustrated as they can get in trying to find ways to tighten network security and protect privacy. (Just last month, as posted in Tech Insider, a well respected cybersecurity expert from Georgia Tech figuratively threw up his hands, saying securing the Internet against cybercrime isn’t going to happen.)

But the gloomy outlook hasn’t stopped security experts from trying new approaches. The University of Toronto this year launched the Identity, Privacy and Security Initiative (IPSI), which includes two related interdisciplinary masters level programs: a Masters of Professional Engineering and a Masters of Information Studies with concentration in security, reports InterGovWorld.com.

The program’s chair, Dimitrios Hatzinakos, says security managers have not been trained in programs that combine identity, privacy and security technology, processes and management. “Most of them are self-trained after they joined companies, but they have never been trained to have a holistic understanding of security,” according to the article.

Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, said:

The IPSI program will not only educate future generations on how to build privacy into technology, but it will also hopefully develop a culture of privacy, a way of thinking that is committed to better information management and the protection of privacy. Even the most advanced technologies and the most rigorous privacy policies will not be wholly effective if organizations do not accept the protection of privacy as part of their institutional culture.

Changing culture. Not sure if a masters degree is the tool that can make that happen.

News that a special agent with the Commerce Department's Office of Export Enforcement was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury for accessing a government database to track the travels of a former girlfriend raises the question: Just how often do federal employees misuse government computers? For sure, the case of Benjamin Robinson, a 40-year-old special agent for Commerce who had been with the department for 10 years is rather extreme. He accessed the database 163 times, lied to his supervisors and threatened his former girlfriend's life. It’s not the only one. Another extreme case of improper use of a government computer was posted in Tech Insider here. (I urge you to read the comments that accompany the item to get a complete picture.)

Discussing the former case with a source who has spent nearly 30 years working and consulting on federal IT projects here in Washington, D.C., tells me that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, we hear about the more egregious, yet infrequent, abuses. But this source says less serious misuse, such as accessing private information for purely prurient interests and using powerful government applications for personal use is, if not common, widespread. In an upcoming "Managing Technology" column in Government Executive Magazine, a long-time General Services Administration employee says that the GSA has a well-publicized policy of monitoring Internet and network use, but it is widely known among employees that the logs are rarely scanned, leaving no check against misuse. I'll post a link to this story when it is published.

What's your experience at your agency or contractor's office of employees improperly using or accessing government databases or applications? Is it widespread? Let us know by clicking the comment link below.

Want to know what a knowledgeable private-sector chief information officer for a large health system thinks about the task that faces the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs in trying to share electronic health records? The following is what John Glaser, vice president and CIO for Partners Healthcare in Boston, had to say about it. (Glaser was testifying at today's hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the committee's chairman, asked Glaser what the private sector experience was with sharing electronic health records, or EHRs, at the scale of what the VA and Defense are trying to do.)

"A common EHR? That's interesting to me," he said. "That's a codeword for, 'You got to be kidding me.'"

Glaser then said a common EHR can be created, but it has to be closely managed by properly assigning resources and people's time.

The University of Michigan and ForeSee Results released its latest quarterly American Customer Satisfaction Index for federal Web sites today, and the overall score for federal Web sites has remained fairly level. The third-quarter 2007 score for the 91 government Web sites measured dropped 0.5 percent to 73.3, a score that hasn’t changed that much for the past two years.

What’s interesting, however, is that the sites that dominate the top 10 are sites operated by the Social Security Administration, such as the Internet Social Security Benefits Application site and the Help with Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Costs site, and several operated by the National Institutes of Health, including the National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus and the site operated by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

In fact, out of the 19 federal Web sites that score 80 or higher in the satisfaction index, 13 (or two-thirds) relate to health or retirement (namely Social Security).

The University of Michigan and ForeSee Results, which calculates the index, reports in the press release announcing the scores that the sites that do well have four characteristics in common: “total commitment to meeting the public’s diverse needs; recognition by management of the web’s strategic value; using ‘voice of the citizen’ data as an improvement tool; and focus on the mission of citizen service.”

But could something else be at work here? The National Institutes of Health and the Social Security Administration manage programs that are extremely popular with the public, as any member of Congress can tell you. Could some of that popularity spill over to their Web sites? Also, health and money (retirement) are top of mind issues with the public. Could that interest influence the scores, too?

But then how do you explain the CIA’s recruitment site receiving such a high mark – an 81? Well, one could argue that defending the nation against terrorism and other threats is a health and a top-of-mind issue.

After some big information security scares – stolen laptops, lost hard drives and reports of hackers gaining access to networks – government agencies responded over the past year by beefing up their security practices, according to a worldwide security survey released last week. The Global State of Information Security survey, conducted by CIO and CSO magazines and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, found government security managers worldwide had added more security staff and processes to their business practices. But governments as a whole still lag the financial industry, which leads all others in putting in place security strategies and technologies.

Among the highlights from the security survey:

-- The percentage of government organizations employing a chief security officer increased from 56 percent in 2006 to 72 percent in 2007. (86 percent of financial industry organizations employ a CSO.)

-- Percentage of government agencies that had an overall security strategy: 42 percent in 2006 vs. 60 percent in 2007. (71 percent in the financial industry.)

-- Continuity or disaster recovery plan in place: unchanged from 2006 to 2007 at 55 percent. (Financial industry: 71 percent.)

-- According to the survey, 38 percent of government organizations said they had standards and policies in place for mobile and handheld devices, and only 60 percent said they encrypted the data in transmission to and from the devices. Less than half – 44 percent – encrypt data at rest and only 39 percent encrypt data on laptops.

Overall, security in government agencies is improving, say PWC security experts, but it is slow. Very slow, they say.

Wisconsin, which has suffered some high-profile government IT project mishaps (and here and here), is debating whether to elevate its chief information officer to reporting directly to the governor. An independent group called the Task Force on Information Technology Failures spent this year investigating the state's troubled IT management. Among its recommendations in its report released this summer, the task force suggested the state legislature elevate the state CIO (a position now held by Oskar Anderson) to report to the governor. (Right now the state CIO is head of the Division of Enterprise Technology, which is deep within the state's Department of Administration.)

An editorial yesterday in the Wisconsin State Journal argued that elevating the CIO position "should be one of the prime elements in a reform plan responding to a series of costly foul-ups that has plagued efforts to improve the state 's computerized data systems."

Although a good idea, it is not the answer to what ails Wisconsin IT. Plenty of public agencies and private-sector companies have a CIO reporting to the head of the company or agency, but IT projects at these organizations still regularly go off the rails. Wisconsin suffers from project management problems, not how much power the CIO has. (Still, elevating the CIO is a great idea if Wisconsin wants to create the management environment in which IT can become a strategic player in helping state agencies meet mission goals and improving state government performance. But that's a totally different discussion.)

What would help state IT projects become more successful, as the editorial points out, is to re-establish the two groups that oversee IT project management. "The reform should encompass an array of other solutions, including re-establishing two dormant oversight panels -- the Legislature 's Joint Committee on Information Policy and Technology, and the Information Technology Management Board -- and improving technology project specifications and standards," according to the editorial.

But the recommendations are headed no where. The Journal reports that Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) is cool to the idea. After all, Doyle killed the cabinet-level IT agency that former Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum (R) created and operated from 2001 to 2003. Doyle thought the agency was inefficient.

One of the biggest challenges that the Homeland Security Department has always faced is creating a "DHS identity" among the thousands of employees working at the disparate 22 agencies that make up the department. If DHS' top management can pull that off, they will encourage agencies to work together and share information, which will lead to more efficiencies in IT.

One way to develop that "oneness" is to create a contract from which all DHS components can buy information technology. The Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) contract is supposed to be that contract. Consolidating IT contracts departmentwide into EAGLE (which has a $48 billion spending ceiling) is designed to create a "one DHS view," says Jeremy Potter, a senior analyst with the federal marketing research firm INPUT.

Whether DHS can pull that off using EAGLE is still up for debate, although early indications show the contract is attracting large task orders, according to an INPUT analysis. In a webinar for IT vendors held today, Potter said the EAGLE contract has attracted 49 task orders worth $575 million from DHS agencies. Another $1 billion worth of IT task orders are expected to be submitted to EAGLE in the next 12 months, according to INPUT.

But one webinar attendee asked whether DHS may create a new agencywide contract because the attendee had heard that EAGLE was not popular among DHS contracting officers because its fees were too costly and it didn’t provide enough choices. Potter responded that it was still too early to draw any conclusions on EAGLE's success and added that he had not heard any "rumblings" of a new acquisition vehicle at DHS.

It isn't much of a secret that the federal government spends a large portion of its information technology budget in the fourth quarter of the federal fiscal year (July through September). But what may not be so evident is that the fourth quarter, known in federal parlance as "the buying season," is becoming more of a buying frenzy, according to a report released today by the federal market research firm INPUT.

From fiscal 1997 to fiscal 2000, the federal government spent 28 percent of its total IT budget in the fourth quarter, with IT spending fairly even for the rest of the year, according to the INPUT report (purchase required). That percentage increased to 31 percent in fiscal 2001 to 2004, and then increased again to 34 percent in the fiscal 2005 and 2006 period. In fiscal 2007, INPUT projects the federal government will spend one-third of its IT budget in the fourth quarter, equaling 2005-06.

What's happening? INPUT gives two reasons. First, agencies have a spend-it-or-lose-it mentality. Agencies are fearful that Congress may reduce their IT budgets if they do not spend the entire budget before the end of the fiscal year. That means money hanging around at the end of the fiscal year, which typically is a fairly large portion of the budget, must be spent -- and spent quickly.

Second, an increase in continuing resolutions (because Congress can’t pass spending bills on time) means more IT budgets are frozen at levels equal to the previous fiscal year. That means IT spending stays flat. It is frequently months into a new fiscal year before Congress passes the budget for that fiscal year. Because the IT budgets typically increase from year to year, this creates a pent-up demand for IT spending for the fourth quarter. (It would be similar to receiving your annual raise five or six months into the year. All of a sudden, you're flush with money.)

"Operating under a CR, if even briefly, limits the ability of these agencies to move forward on their planned IT investments and often stalls them until the second quarter," according to the INPUT report. "In FY 2007 only the Department of Defense and Homeland Security had their appropriations bills passed by Congress – all other agencies are operating under a year-long joint funding resolution that sets their budgets at 2006 levels with a few exceptions. The full impact of this will not come to light until well into 2008. The current round of 2008 appropriations bills is on a rocky road and may fare no better."

The question that INPUT's research now raises is this: Does the spending spree have any effect on agencies' buying judgment and the value these agencies receive from their purchases? In an email, John Slye, manager of INPUT's federal industry analysis, said, “That’s a great question,” and he tried to answer it this way:

It would stand to reason that when people are up against a deadline that they have less time to weigh value options, although there's probably a point where they would balk at an obviously unreasonable option. Off the top of my head I'm unaware of any studies that explore this, but yeah, if the primary objective is to exhaust the resources, then that probably has a negative impact of value pressure. One thing to consider though is that some buyers may have researched their buy in advance, possibly even lining up proposals with the hopes of getting a green light for the purchase at quarter's end. It's probably fair to say that some of these last minute purchases come as agencies look at their "must-haves" and "nice-to-haves" along side what money they have left at the end of the year.

It seems that most federal projects with a lot of zeros in their budget run woefully way behind schedule and way over budget. But the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories proves big projects can come in way under budget and way ahead of schedule.

Sandia said it completed its $516 million Microsystems and Engineering Science Applications (MESA) project $40 million under budget and three years ahead of schedule. Sandia describes MESA as “a major capital construction activity that will create the facilities and equipment required to design, prototype, and fabricate qualified microelectronics and microsystem components for nuclear weapons.”

A Sandia spokesman couldn't -- yet -- offer reasons why the project was completed under budget and ahead of schedule. However, he did say that Sandia bought two old chip wafer machines from Intel for $25 each. The machines were valued at $7 million each.

Sandia plans to dedicate the final building of the project, the Weapons Integration Facility, located on the Sandia campus at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., Aug. 23.

The 400,000 square foot MESA complex – the largest project in the history of Sandia, which started operation in 1945 as an offshoot of nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory – also includes the previously opened Microfabrication Facility and the Microsystems Laboratory.


















MESA Microlab

The Weapons Integration Facility includes laser, electrical, visualization and computer labs and office space for 375 scientists and engineers. Sandia said the MESA complex will produce ”hardened” electronic circuits and computer chips that can withstand high levels of radiation to insure the reliability of nuclear weapons and other capabilities under even the most hazardous of conditions.

Pooh-bahs scheduled to show up for the dedication ceremony this Thursday include Thomas D’Agostino, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, and
New Mexico’s senior senator, Pete Domenici.

If Sandia promises marching band – and how can you open anything without a band – I may show up.

Jared Sandberg, author of the “Cubicle Culture” column in The Wall Street Journal, writes today about how purchasing agents, supply managers or any lower level manager in charge of a process that is elemental to the smooth working of an organization can capriciously exact his or her power to slow down work needlessly.

While the examples in the column are mostly from private-sector firms (although Sandberg offers up one, and a rather funny one at that, from the Navy), one doesn’t need to work too hard to see the parallels to the federal government. What comes quickly to mind are political appointees who hit resistance from career bureaucrats who work with the knowledge that the appointee will be gone in two years anyway, so why change? Also, entrenched IT managers resist consolidating infrastructure and IT processes. The Department of Homeland Security comes to mind as an example.

A quote from the column that is relevant to the government workplace: "'You might have the keys to the kingdom,' human-resources executive Mike Farrell notes, 'but if you don't have the keys to the gate, you're shafted.'"

What is it with computer systems designed to serve the most vulnerable children?

From The Columbus Dispatch, comes another story of a computer system that was poorly developed and puts at-risk kids at even greater risk. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services last year turned on a new computer system -- the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System -- to better track children in foster homes. But when the state began using the system, the foster families who did not have children in their care at the time the system went online were not placed in the foster family database. When children were placed in those families, case workers could not add the family to the computer system. That makes it more difficult to track children put in the care of those families.

As a result, the state runs the risk of losing track of foster children, according to the article. Counties are still being added to the system, but child welfare advocates have called for the state to stop adding counties until the problem can be fixed. The state says an electronic fix is not expected to be available until January, and it doesn't want to stop adding counties to the system because the system already is far behind schedule and over budget. The system has cost $93 million to develop and has had a history of problems and missed deadlines for the past decade, according to the article.

Numerous state and local jurisdictions have been upgrading child welfare systems -- without much success. New York and Philadelphia have reported similar problems with new computer systems developed to better track cases for state child protective services agencies.

Aviation officials in Los Angeles are pretty steamed at the folks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

A computer system used to process international travelers coming into the United States was down for nine hours Saturday, creating a backload of 17,000 travelers looking to enter the United States, according to a Los Angeles Times article. Thousands of travelers were stranded on planes for hours. According to the article, Steve Lott, chief spokesman in North America for the International Air Transport Association, explained the airport’s frustration with U.S. Customs this way: “Although ‘we understand that computer systems are not perfect, the frustration is why customs had no contingency plan.’"

LAX officials may be on to something. In June 2004, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued the "Federal Preparedness Circular," which was sent to the "heads of federal departments and agencies.” The circular presents guidance on how agencies can set up a Continuity of Operations (COOP) plan. According to the circular (emphasis added):

It is the policy of the United States to have in place a comprehensive and effective program to ensure continuity of essential Federal functions under all circumstances. ... All Federal agencies, regardless of location, shall have in place a viable COOP capability to ensure continued performance of essential functions from alternate operating sites during any emergency or situation that may disrupt normal operations.

It seems as if most agencies didn't follow FEMA's guidance because on May 9 President Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20. The directives mandate that agencies develop a COOP plan “to ensure that Primary Mission-Essential Functions continue to be performed during a wide range of emergencies, including … technological … emergencies.”

Bush's directive obviously came too late for international travelers coming through LAX Saturday. So maybe now's a good idea for a COOP plan to be at the top of Jayson Ahern’s to-do list at U.S. Customs. It was just last week that Ahern assumed the position of deputy commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection – the No. 2 position at the agency. That's one bad first week on the job.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a report listing ways federal datacenters could reduce the amount of electricity they consume, therefore saving money and reducing greenhouse gases.

In a quick analysis of the report, IT research firm Gartner praises the report by saying it "is bursting with good ideas," but quickly adds that EPA ...

should have made this a stronger call to action, with recommendations that would provide incentives for stakeholders to work at getting closer to the best-practice scenario the report outlines. The U.S. is home to more than 40% of the world’s largest data centers, and most server and processor manufacturers are U.S.-based. The EPA thus had a unique opportunity to provide forceful recommendations that would help to set a worldwide agenda.

Many of the recommendations are based on the principle of "lead and they shall follow," which Gartner believes is too optimistic for this subject.

President Bush today plugged the use of information technology in the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to better manage the health of wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There's a lot of amazing things taking place here in this facility," Bush said at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "For example, we saw information technology, health care records that are being passed seamlessly from the Department of Defense to the VA, to make sure that the care providers here have got up-to-date access for each patient."

Bush was accompanied by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and Donna Shalala, former secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services under the Clinton Administration. Dole and Shalala co-chaired the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, which was put together after news broke about the poor treatment of wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of the mismanagement could be traced back to lost health records and desperate, poorly performing health IT systems at both Defense and VA. The commission recommended improving the IT systems managing soldiers' and veterans' electronic health records.

More money for a better system seems like a lock. Bush urged Congress, which returns from recess next month, to send him a bill that would implement the commission's recommendations. Bush said:

Any time there is any doubt in anybody's mind that our veterans are not getting excellent care, then we in government have a duty to deal with those doubts. I have asked [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates and Secretary [James] Nicholson to review their respective departments and the interface of their departments -- the Defense Department and the Veterans Department -- to make sure that any doubt as to whether or not a veteran, or one on active duty, gets the best care, does so.

... When [members of Congress] come back in September, we want to work with Congress to pass that which is necessary to make sure that the Dole-Shalala commission recommendations are fully implemented.

Just a few months ago, there was plenty of doubt about the quality of care at Defense and VA, especially coming from soldiers, their families and those inside the departments.

Look for Defense and VA to quickly hire a contractor to build a Web health portal for the two departments, much like what already exists in the private sector.

The federal government may soon be asked to take a leadership position in reducing the amount of energy that datacenters consume.

According to a report released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal government, working with the private sector, should develop a standard method to measure how much energy federal datacenters consume; publicly report how much energy each federal datacenter consumes; conduct in two to three years what energy efficient methods can be utilized; and install cost-effective equipment that leads to reduced energy consumption in each datacenter. EPA found that by following certain best practices (including consolidating servers, purchasing energy-efficient servers, installing energy-efficient fans and coolers, and adopting advanced technologies such as “direct liquid cooling), federal data centers could cut up to 80 percent of its electrical demand, producing a savings of $510 million a year.

You may wonder why. It turns out that datacenters and servers are using up an increasing amount of electricity to process, store and manipulate the exploding amount of digital data. And that leads to the emission of more greenhouse gases. Datacenters and servers in the United States accounted for 1.5 percent of all electrical consumption in 2006, double the consumption in 2000, according to the EPA report. If unabated, consumption could double again in the next five years with a cost of $7.4 billion. According to the report:

The peak load on the power grid from these servers and data centers is currently estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants. If current trends continue, this demand would rise to 12 GW by 2011, which would require an additional 10 power plants.

No information exists for the number of federal datacenters and servers, but the EPA estimates that the federal government accounts for 10 percent of the national consumption of electricity by all datacenters and servers. Therefore, the report concludes:

These forecasts indicate that unless energy efficiency is improved beyond current trends, the federal government’s electricity cost for servers and data centers could be nearly $740 million annually by 2011, with a peak load of approximately 1.2 GW.

EPA submitted its report to Congress as required by Public Law 109-431, asking the EPA to work with the computer industry to determine if anything can be done to curtail the energy consumption of federal datacenters and servers.

The trend is clear for federal datacenter operators: Expect some new energy requirements coming from the Hill.

Wouldn't it be great revenge to hit spammers who fill up your email inbox with those messages touting low-interest mortgage loans and male enhancement drugs right where they live -- on their Web sites?

You can, according to a paper published by researchers at the University of California, San Diego. While thousands of servers deliver those unwanted solicitations and phishing scams to your inbox, only one Web server typically hosts the site that a user is directed to if they respond to the email, the researchers found.

That means, "'a single takedown of a scam server or a spammer redirect can curtail the earning potential of an entire spam campaign,' write the UCSD computer scientists in their paper accepted for publication at USENIX Security 2007 conference," according to an article posted by USCD.

"'The availability of scam infrastructure is critical to spam profitability. Our findings suggest that the current scam infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to common blocking techniques such as blacklisting,' said Geoff Voelker, a computer science and engineering professor at the UCSD Jacobs School involved in the study."

The researchers found that 94 percent of all email scams advertise through an embedded link that is hosted on a single Web server. "Using their new 'spamscatter' approach, the computer scientists studied over 1 million spam messages from a live feed (all the messages sent, over the course of a week, to any email address at a four-letter top-level domain that has no active email accounts). Spamscatter allows researchers to mine emails, identify URLs in real time and follow these links through any redirection mechanisms and on to the Web page on the destination server," according to the article.

Any reduction in spam not only would make individuals' lives easier to manage, it would help clear the clogged pipes carrying Internet traffic, increasing performance. Studies indicate that 80 percent of all Internet email traffic is spam. Some studies indicate spam traffic accounts for as much as 90 percent of all email traffic.

Determining what, exactly, constitutes a spam site versus someone exercising free commerce and freedom of speech could be the next round. But until then, we can hope this approach can slow down the deluge of email spam.

The researchers will present the peer-reviewed paper Aug. 9 in Boston, at the USENIX Security 2007 conference.

I predict a standing-room-only crowd.

Government Executive has posted items in its Fedblog and Tech Insider blog about the importance of top executives -- even political leaders -- to be at least knowledgeable enough about information technology to know what questions to ask so that IT can help drive agency strategies. The consensus is that executives and political leaders have a long way to go.

But not all political leaders ignore IT. And some are rather tech proficient. Take Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R). In an interview with CIO Magazine, Perdue, who set up a client-server network for his commodities business in the 1970s, talks about the importance of IT to state government and why he hired a CIO with a business background, not a technology background. An excerpt from the interview:

The way I look at [the Georgia Technology Authority, the state's central IT organization] is as somewhat of an IBM Solutions type of agency for the state of Georgia, to help agencies think through their processes, to think through the operations that they need, to help them to define within the context of the state what is the best use of technology.

It's a good bet that Perdue probably uses email, too.

We received in our email inbox last week an announcement from FEMA about a video it recently produced on its Flood Map Modernization program. The 8-and-a-half-minute video, "made its debut at the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) Conference in Norfolk, Virginia on June 6, 2007," according to the email. The email said the video "provides valuable information and resources."

The