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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 Homeland Security Department announced today that the president’s budget, scheduled for release Monday, will include $12.14 billion for border security and immigration and enforcement efforts. But the details on IT are sparse.

According to the press release, $775 million will go toward secure border fencing, infrastructure and technology contributing to the Secure Border Initiative, or SBI, and $100 million will support the expanded use of E-Verify, DHS’ automated system employers use to confirm the employment eligibility of new hires. The department expects E-Verify participation to increase from about 50,000 employers now to more than 100,000 this year, and 300,000 in fiscal year 2009, according to the release.

DHS also announced that $442.4 million will go toward additional border patrol agents, $3 billion to enforcement activities by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and $1.8 billion to additional detention beds.

DHS officials gave no specifics of what those budget allocations will involve and whether any funds will go toward supporting IT efforts, but that doesn’t mean industry can’t provide some guesses. Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at FedSources, a federal research and marketing firm in McLean, Va., chimed in on the percent of funds he expects to go toward IT products and services:

• $775 million for secure border fencing, infrastructure and technology under SBI in fiscal 2009: 5 percent
• $442.4 million for additional border patrol agents: 0 percent
• $3 billion for enforcement activities: 2 percent
• $1.8 billion for ICE custody operations: 0 percent
• $100 million for E-Verify: 50 percent

Will the overall budget bring far bigger numbers for DHS IT efforts? One can only hope.

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.

On Nov. 7, the Sunlight Foundation released software that could prove a valuable tool for Republicans critical of congressional earmarks. The Sunlight Foundation, an organization that, according to its Web site, “supports, develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make information about Congress and the federal government more accessible to the American people,” uses the Google Earth application to plot the locations for almost 1,500 earmarks in the House Defense Appropriations bill.

By downloading Google Earth and a House Defense file, users can locate earmarks on a U.S. map, according to where the funds would be allocated. Click on the pushpin that marks an earmark location and you can find detailed information from Sunlight Foundation’s searchable database, EarmarkWatch.org.

Will the software application play any role in the fate of the House Defense Appropriations bill, which contains an estimated $5 billion in earmarks? Probably not. Congress passed it last week, and President Bush has stated no plans for a veto. Still, Senate Republican leaders that have made earmarks a soapbox issue no doubt cheer the application – along with other Internet efforts to garner support for their cause.

Tucked into the Defense Appropriations Bill passed by the House last Friday is an almost 100 percent increase in 2008 funding for the mammoth Enterprise Resource Planning-based logistics system, called the Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-A).

The House version of the Defense bill provides $94.7 million in finding next year for GCSS-A, an increase over the budget line of $59.7 million proposed by the Senate. This looks like an almost sure deal, as the funding was approved in a conference with the Senate, which needs to pass its version of the bill, and who knows when that will happen.

GCSS-A, according to the Enterprise Transition Plan released by the Defense Business Transformation Office in September, will serve as a data warehouse to track all the beans and bullets as well as gadgets and gizmos used by the Army worldwide. The system is based on an SAP ERP system.

It will take a while to fill up that data warehouse, according to the Army Enterprise Solutions Competency Center, which projects full operational capability for GCSS-A in 2014, which means at least seven years more of work for systems integrator Northrop Grumman.

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.

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.

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 agency gave no specifics about what kind of valuable information and resources the video provided. But one thing is for sure, the video, a flashy production that includes lost of charts and acronyms, promotes FEMA's IT program to upgrade its computer systems that monitor and predict floods.

Who would be interested in such a video? On FEMA's information resource library site, where you can download the Flood Map Modernization Video, FEMA says the audience for the video includes the general public and homeowners; floodplain managers; state, local and tribal representatives; the insurance industry; mapping professionals; FEMA regions; hazard mitigation officers; contractors and vendors.

That's a lot of people. But one group that that may have been left out is Congress. IT programs are big money for agencies, and Congress obviously holds the purse strings. Videos help sell the projects.

Other agencies producing glitzy, high-paced videos (with thumping soundtracks) for IT programs include the Coast Guard. The guard developed a video for its $24 billion modernization program Deepwater, in which the Coast Guard lays out the reasons it needs to upgrade its fleet with high-tech boats and planes. The Army, which has become the master at using the video medium to recruit and promote itself, has used its videography skills to develop at least four videos, which use real actors, to promote its $70 billion-plus Future Combat System. (A rather maudlin video called "Safehouse" shows an earnest doctor saving sick children in Southeast Asia.)

Army's "Safehouse" video on Future Combat System

Not surprising, NASA, which offers dozens of videos on its Web site, has become quite skilled at the promotional video, too. A video produced by Goddard Space Flight Center doesn't focus on an IT program but rather promotes how numerous NASA technologies have boosted the Maryland economy.

What's the common theme here? Lots of money for IT and, at least for Deepwater and FCS, programs that have been criticized for mismanagement, according to this Government Accountability report and this one, respectively.

Does all this promotion work? It just may, as a recent mark up of the fiscal 2008 spending bill for FCS shows.

Russian President Vladimir Putin all but threatened this summer to restart the Cold War over plans by the United States to install missile interceptors in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic to counter potential missile attacks launched by Iran.

Putin said if the United States goes ahead with its plans to install a missile shield in Eastern Europe, Russia would retaliate by aiming missiles at Europe. “Of course, we will have to get new targets in Europe,” Putin said.

The Russian president followed up with a proposal to add a Russian radar system to the U.S. missile shield when he met in July with President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine. “In this case there would be no need to place any more facilities in Europe, such as the radar in the Czech Republic and the missile base in Poland,” Putin said.

Bush did not buy that, and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is moving forwrd with a five-year, $4 billion project to build a missile interceptor site in Poland and a mid-course radar site in the Czech Republic, according to the report on the House version of the 2008 Defense bill, which the House Appropriations Committee passed last week.

MDA asked for $310 million in funding for the European sites, but the House committee, maybe in a nod to Putin, slashed that by $139 million,“ given the uncertainty surrounding the program of this writing,” according to the report.

The committee also pointed out that the MDA's five-year projected budget ignores other funding issues, including infrastructure costs for barracks, family housing and personnel costs for manning the new facilities.

Hey, when you’re putting together a $4 billion system it’s easy to forget some of the minor details such as personnel and housing.

With the passage of the final fiscal 2007 spending bills earlier this year, the Office of Management and Budget could finally figure out exactly how the proposed fiscal 2008 information technology spending compares with fiscal 2007.

The answer: The fiscal 2008 spending request of $66.4 billion represents a 2.3 percent increase from fiscal 2007, according to an updated annual report. That's a bit lower than OMB's 2.6 percent guess when the budget was released in February. That continues a trend over the past few years of ever smaller increases in IT spending. The Bush administration asked for a 3 percent increase in fiscal 2007.

The details for the IT spending are normally released with the annual budget submission in February, but agencies were unable to produce the information needed for the report due to the delay in completion of the fiscal 2007 appropriations process.

This following item was posted by Bob Brewin.

The European Union’s ambitious plan to build its own satellite navigation network to rival the United States’ Global Positioning System has run into a snag, with an industry consortium balking at financially supporting the effort.

The EU and the consortium – a who’s who of the European space and communications industries, including Alcatel-Lucent, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, Inmarsat, and others – have not been able to negotiate a contract to fund the European navigation system, called Galileo. That has caused a ”serious threat” to the project, said Jacques Barrot, European Commission vice-president for Transport. If Galileo is to become reality, EU member countries and taxpayers would have to foot the bill, he said.

Galileo industry partners were expected to pay for two-thirds of the cost of the system and the EU one-third, with the investment paid back by the sale of satellite navigation services, the BBC reported. The BBC estimated the market for navigational services would hit $650 billion a year by 2025.

Despite the alluring revenue stream, maybe the industry consortium figured out the obvious: Why would anyone pay for precise location and navigation services from Galileo when they could get the same thing free from the U.S. backed GPS system, which is only going to get better.

The Times of London doubts if Galileo will ever get off the ground when it has to compete with free GPS service. “Europe’s desire to offer a competing system has been stymied by the free service provided by GPS,” the Times wrote in an opinion piece. “How do you persuade a minicab driver to subscribe to a Galileo navigation system when he can get GPS gratis?”

The EU has touted the accuracy of Galileo as better than GPS, with Galileo providing locations within one meter. But the Air Force plans to release a request for proposals this Monday for GPS III satellites, which will rival the accuracy of Galileo.

John Duddy, GPS program manager for Boeing, which with Lockheed Martin is on the Air Force short list for the GPS III contract, told Tech Insider that Boeing believes it can build GPS satellites that will provide accuracy “down to around a meter,” coupled with a more powerful signal than existing GPS birds.

Barrot said that EU member states must come up with funds for Galileo quickly to meet the service date of 2012. But considering the level of effort needed to get buy-in, the United States may well beat Galileo into orbit with the new GPS III satellites, which will provide four signals for civilian users and new jam-proof signals for military users.

James Miller, senior GPS technologist, space communications and navigation at NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said in a presentation last month at the Satellite Positioning and Application Research Center in Tokyo that the first GPS III satellite should be launched in 2013 or close to when the EU originally planned to turn on Galileo.

NASA is promoting a return to the Moon with a slick computer-generated video. Click below to watch a lunar base quickly unfurl, listen to the Hollywoodesque drum machine-powered soundtrack and feel the roar of the mighty rocket engines. And click the comment link below to let us know if the video will help NASA convince congressional appropriators to fund the trip.

Hat tip: Boing Boing

The following item was posted by Editor at Large Bob Brewin.

Kevin Carroll, the Army's Program Executive Officer for Enterprise Information Systems, (PEO-EIS) told Tech Insider that due to the fracas over the Defense Department's 2007 supplemental spending bill – an issue way above his pay grade and ours – he has put his contractors on a “slow pay” schedule, either on a quarterly or monthly basis.

Spending on PEO-EIS programs, which provide the Army with all kinds of widgets and gizmos, ranging from computers to tactical network gear, is focused primarily on supporting deployed or about to be deployed units, such as the Maryland National Guard, Carroll said. “Stay back forces”, Carroll said, are going to have to wait for equipment until a supplemental budget is approved.

Carroll's grand plans to develop and field Enterprise Resource Planning systems to support the tactical Army have been put on hold due to the funding crunch, he added. But that might be a blessing in disguise. Commercial enterprises find that it sometimes takes almost as long to field an ERP system as DOD has been working on the Joint Tactical Radio System.

General Services Administrator Lurita Doan is scheduled to testify Wednesday at a hearing held by the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee. The subject: GSA's fiscal 2008 budget request.

The hearing was scheduled to be held in one of the smaller rooms in the House Rayburn Office Building, but interest in the hearing prompted the subcommittee to move it to a larger room. The committee's spokeswoman said that they expect this hearing to be one of the "more interesting hearings this week." The subcommittee plans to webcast the proceedings.

The following post was written by Tim Clark, editor and president of Government Executive.

It was a long day of technology talk at the Press Club yesterday. The security event (see below) began at 7:30 a.m., and another event, sponsored by the Association for Federal Information Resources Management ended at 7:30 p.m. I moderated both.

At the AFFIRM gathering, I moderated a panel on the topic, "Beginning a National Conversation: Using IT to Improve Government Services to Citizens."

Some might think that that conversation has been going on for close to a generation. But it turns out that what the AFFIRM organizers are really after is more engagement on the part of Congress.

Of course, Congress has been funding federal IT to the tune of $70 billion or so per year. And a lot of good things have happened:

• IRS electronic filing
• Electronic delivery of food stamps
• Veterans Administration development of electronic health records
• Fantastic military applications such as the very sophisticated systems for managing the Predator aircraft flying over Baghdad. I saw this first-hand during a trip to the Persian Gulf sponsored by the Defense Department last October.

Congress has funded these kinds of projects, and there have been big payoffs in agency capabilities. Less easy have been efforts to develop cross-cutting e-government systems. I observed that there have been at least two thrusts here:

• Measures to increase standardization and thus bring efficiencies within the four walls of government itself. An interesting example was provided at the morning GE-SANS event on cybersecurity: OMB’s mandate that agencies use a common set of security standards for Microsoft systems that command most of the government’s desktops.
• Measures to serve citizens of the United States that range beyond agency stovepipes. Citizens, especially needy citizens, often are beneficiaries of a number of government programs, yet often have had to travel from office to office, dealing with bureaucracy after bureaucracy, to get their due.

It’s notable that one effort to solve this problem now is a finalist in the Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government contest: Govbenefits.gov. Here’s what the Labor Department had to say about it this past Friday: “GovBenefits.gov offers extensive benefit program information for veterans, seniors, students, teachers, children, people with disabilities, dependents, disaster victims, farmers, caregivers, job seekers, prospective homeowners and more. … The Web site has attracted more than 25 million visitors since it went online in April 2002, increasing citizens’ access to benefit programs and information they may not have known existed.”

What a great idea.

Other projects have struggled. And one reason has been reluctance of Congress to fund them. Congress has never appropriated more than $5 million to fund such cross-cutting e-government projects. And it has resisted subventions among agencies, seeing the pass-the-hat method of funding as violating appropriations’ turf boundaries. One committee report last year said: “Many aspects of the initiative are fundamentally flawed, contradict underlying statutory requirements and have stifled innovation by forcing conformity to an arbitrary government standard.”

One of our panelists was Richard Burk, chief architect in the Office of E-Government and Information Technology at the Office of Management and Budget, who is also current president of AFFIRM. He, and others in the audience, expressed the fervent hope that Congress could step beyond the stove-piped approach endemic in its authorizing-committee and appropriations-subcommittee structure. That’s needed if Congress is to get behind governmentwide, and intergovernmental, IT initiatives.

We had a lone but game person from Congress on the panel, Charles M. Phillips, who is minority policy counsel on Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, responsible for technology and information policy issues under ranking minority member Tom Davis, R-Va.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Phillips said, in essence, that it would be a very cold day in the hottest precincts of Hades before Congress got behind multi-agency, cross-cutting IT initiatives. My words, but that was the gist. I think he and Davis probably approve of some of them, but most of Congress has no interest at all.

To its credit, AFFIRM isn’t giving up, and will continue to work on “beginning” the conversation.

What's the future of federal IT spending? According to market research firm INPUT, a couple of lean years followed by a steeper growth curve. Overall, agencies' spending will grow 5 percent annually from $79 billion in 2007 to $102 billion by 2012, according to INPUT forecasters. But most of the growth will be back-loaded. This year and next, the firm's market researchers say, spending will be sluggish due to appropriations delays and ongoing disagreements between President Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Because the Republican-controlled Congress didn't pass all fiscal 2007 appropriation bills before the White House released its fiscal 2008 budget proposal in February, the Office of Management and Budget couldn't compare fiscal 2007 spending with President Bush's fiscal 2008 spending proposal.

But since the Democratic-controlled Congress last month passed a continuing resolution to keep agencies running through the end of the fiscal year, some have wondered whether OMB would release the comparisons.

Yes, but you'll have to wait a bit longer. Karen Evans, OMB administrator of e-government and information technology, Monday told a group gathered at the General Services Administration for a meeting of the Industry Advisory Council that OMB would release the comparison sometime in the Spring. That means after March 20 but before June 21 -- when agencies are putting together their budget proposals for fiscal 2009.

Spending on federal IT has slowed in recent years, with the Bush administration proposing a meager 2.6 percent increase in overall federal IT spending for fiscal 2008 over the fiscal 2007 proposal. Whether that is a wise or shortsighted strategy is debatable.

But according to a study released yesterday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C., investing in IT is the primary way to increase productivity, the level of services provided and innovation when compared to other investments -- by a long shot. For example, IT investments improved worker productivity four to five times greater than investments in non-IT capital, such as buildings and machines, according to the "Digital Prosperity" report. "Policy, according to the study, should focus less on incentives to use certain technology products or help particular companies than on encouraging market forces to hasten the pace of technology-aided change in industries," according to an article on the report in today's New York Times. A disclaimer: Technology companies such as IBM, Cisco Systems and eBay support the non-partisan foundation, but foundation President Robert Atkinson says the foundation does not advocate policies that give tax breaks to technology companies to encourage technology investments.

The study comes at a time when many federal agencies are facing IT budget cuts. Bush's 2008 budget request would cut IT budgets at 11 agencies, including the Homeland Security Department and NASA, as we reported. The Army Corps of Engineers, Interior Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and Office of Personnel Management also would receive cuts of at least 11.6 percent in IT spending, and six agencies, including the Defense and State departments, would receive budget increases below the Congressional Budget Office-projected inflation rate of 2.2 percent.

So, the question is: Is the Bush administration's proposed IT budget cuts and slower spending growth threatening productivity gains, quality of public services and innovation at federal agencies? Let us know what you think.