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U.S. News & World Report outlines in an article posted today five ways you use your PC can get you fired. Of course, there's the viewing of inappropriate content and playing games like Solitaire. (New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired an employee after seeing the game on his computer monitor.) But also included on the list are some not-so-obvious uses, such as blogging, posting photos on your social network site and writing inappropriate or offensive emails. These offenses happen more than you may think: "Nearly one third of bosses have fired workers for misusing the Internet, according to a recent study by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute," U.S. News reports.

Wired's Danger Room blog posted an item this morning about a memo issued by the Coast Guard's leadership forbidding its employees from posting messages concerning agency business on outside blogs. "The Coast Guard headquarters Communication Center (HQ COMCEN) is designated as the only authorized CG organization to post messages to the Internet," the message read.

The message was issued in response to the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog -- which Danger Room has called "awesome" -- which at times posts unclassified messages from the Guard's internal network. Danger Room wonders if this is a crackdown or something else. Peter Stinson of the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog says, "We'll just have to wait and see."

The San Francisco Chronicle posted a story late yesterday about a contract employee at the NASA Ames Research Center pleading guilty to storing child pornography on his government computer. The odd thing about this story, as the paper points out, is that it is the third time in a little more than two years that an Ames employee has been caught with child pornography on a government computer. The paper makes it a point to say that the latest infraction is "at least" the third time.

First, it was the scare that electro-magnetic radiation emitted by computer monitors may cause skin rashes and abnormal pregnancies. Now you have to worry about catching a virus or staph infection from your computer keyboard or mouse (the pointing device).

But have no fear, a newsletter -- Washable Keyboard News -- just announced that it will "keep industry stakeholders abreast of current information that will help them to equip their home or work environments with appropriate technology for mitigating the transmission of these germs."

Unotron's Washable Corded Standard Keyboard

The newsletter is published by Unotron, "an emerging company that designs and manufactures high quality, washable data input and security devices that can be easily cleaned and disinfected to maximize user safety and minimize risk in nearly any environment," according to its Web site. Unotron tells us this unsettling factoid: "PC keyboards harbor more than 3,000 microbes per square inch - as compared to toilet seats' 49."

The site also has individual sections for health care, education, commercial and government. Seems as if viruses are sector specific, although the copy for each section is identical. Although we learn that the company will soon introduce smart card readers and fingerprint readers will soon use the company's SpillSeal® technology. Just in time for HSPD-12.

In the last month, SRA International has lost two top executives with deep government information technology experience. Dan Chenok, formerly branch chief for Information Policy and Technology at the Office of Management and Budget, considered one of the top IT management posts in the White House, announced he was leaving his senior vice president position at SRA to join Pragmatics Inc., which works with federal agencies to provide integration and information security solutions. Chenok was instrumental in creating OMB's IT and e-government policy and budget.

In January, Mary Ellen Condon, a former director of information management and security for the Justice Department working on information security, left her post at SRA to join federal consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as a principal in the Assurance and Resilience Service. At SRA, Condon was vice president and director of strategic services. Condon also held senior-level IT positions at the Agriculture Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of the Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Homeland Security Department), and the Energy Department. She also is a founding member of the federal Chief Information Officers Council.

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.

I'd like to draw your attention to -- if you haven't already seen it (and by the looks of it, many of you have) -- my colleague Tom Shoop's blog post on former presidential candidate Mitt Romney's withdrawal announcement. You can read the excerpt in Fedblog, but the gist is that government bureaucrats make too much money compared to their private-sector counterparts and that Americans should stand up to federal unions. Romney's comments have sparked a lot of heated responses from the federal workforce, to put it mildly. Please join the discussion and offer your viewpoint from an IT perspective.

As for the IT angle here? Federal IT executives and managers make far less than their private-sector counterparts. Top federal CIOs make in the neighborhood of $135,000. Private-sector CIOs running companies that rival the size of federal agencies make in the high-six-figure range, sometimes seven figures if they perform well enough to receive incentives. Differentials exist for lower level federal IT managers and their private-sector counterparts. Some CIOs in the private sector left their high-paying jobs to join the federal IT workforce out of a sense of duty, to serve the public. By doing so, they took huge salary cuts.

Update: This post was recently updated to correct an editing error, which appears below as a strike through. Our apologies for the confusion.

Due to an editing error, the It's called a talent-management system and many large American companies are suing using them. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the systems:

are designed to provide insight into an employer's recruiting and succession-planning needs. By tracking the number of employees that come in and out of a company, the programs can identify thinning areas along the organizational chart. Furthermore, they can pinpoint internal talent that might qualify or have the potential to qualify for expected vacancies and see from employee profiles whether a person is willing to relocate or aspires to work in a different area.

Look for them coming to government – if they haven’t already.

In my last (modestly named) “What’s Brewin” column, I suggested a way to honor the troops this season: Anyone lucky enough to fly in one of those big, cushy first-class seats should think about giving it up to someone in uniform – especially troops wearing their desert fatigues and on home leave from Iraq or Afghanistan.

Several well-intentioned, but definitely Pecksniffian, folks wrote in to say any service member who accepted such a seat would be in violation of various government regulations, which for the most part consign federal employees to steerage class.

But, according to Eric Rishel, a senior Defense Department attorney, that’s not exactly the case. The Office of Government Ethics does bar federal employees from accepting gifts due to their position from “prohibited sources,” which means folks doing business with the government, Rishel said.

This means that a service member flying out to test a new plane, gadget or gizmo, should not accept a first-class seat from a contractor program manager whose company paid for that cushy seat (on the grounds that this might be an attempt to gain some influence with the service member).

But, if a service member is offered a seat from someone who does not fall into the dreaded “prohibited sources” category offers a big cushy seat, it can be accepted – with some additional caveats, Rishel said.

It probably would not be a good idea for a three star in uniform to accept the upgrade because it would provide the impression of some “fat cat deal going on,” Rishel said. He added that the Air Force has regulations that say no one in the Air Force should fly in first class in uniform, a hard rule to adhere to as a “practical matter” if the cushy seat is offered on the plane.

The bottom line is anyone who does not fall into the dread “prohibited source” category can give away their first-class seat to a service member this holiday season reasonably sure the E4 or E5 will not end up standing at attention at the Office of Government Ethics.

Reporters are sometimes called all kinds of names by folks in uniform, but Rishel assured me that we scribes are not labeled “prohibited sources,” so I look forward to giving up my big, cushy seat once again when I fly to Washington next week.

Merry Christmas

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.

To reach more job seekers, the Office of Personnel Management announced last week that it has made job vacancies in the federal government more accessible to Internet search engines, like Google and Yahoo. Before job vacancies could only be searched by keyword from on the federal government’s USAJOBS Web site. Now, a job seeker “who types in a job title on Google or other engines, such as "IT Specialist" or "Electrical Engineer,” will now also see links to federal vacancy announcements in those fields,” according to the OPM announcement.

That should make the 60,000 openings on USAJOBS a bit more accessible, although the site already gets 10 million visitors a month.

John J. Young Jr. started work as the under secretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, last week, following confirmation by the Senate Nov. 16.

Young replaces Kenneth Krieg, who announced his resignation in June. Young previously served as the director of Defense research and engineering and the department’s chief technology officer.

Mr. Young also served as former assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. As the Navy's senior acquisition executive, Mr. Young implemented a wide range of innovative organizational and business practices to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of Navy and Marine Corps procurement and research programs.

Prior to his Navy appointment, Young was a staff analyst with the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, where he worked on Defense procurement, research, development, test and evaluation programs.

The Senate confirmed Friday Jeffery Sorenson for promotion to Lt. Gen. from Maj. Gen. and his new job as the Army chief information officer and director of command, control, communications and computers, Army spokeswoman Margaret McBride said.

President Bush had originally tapped Sorenson to replace now-retired Lt. Gen. Steven Boutelle in February, but the nomination paperwork sent to the Senate mistakenly put him in for a deputy chief of staff position, and it has taken since then to get it right.

Maybe Sorenson can automate the nomination process in his new CIO job.

The following item was posted by Government Executive's Jill Aitoro.

AmeriCorps, a network of local, state, and national service programs, is considering jumping into social networking. According to Matt Harmon, Webmaster for the Corporation for National and Community Service, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are perfect venues for recruitment and awareness, with social networking members typically ranging in their late teens to mid-20s. While still only in the idea stage, Harmon hopes to develop a Web page or pages that would bring service alums together to talk about their experiences and provide first-hand knowledge to those interested in getting involved in AmeriCorps. At the risk of shameless self promotion, recruits could download from the page necessary forms, link to the agency’s Web site, write blogs, and so on.

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.

For decades, studies of income levels have shown that the more education you have, the more money you earn. Now, add computer literacy to that relationship, according to a study conducted by the Centre for the Economics of Education in London. "The authors found the rate of return on computer use is between 3 percent and 10 percent, with the actual percentage dependent on 'unobserved differences and individual unobserved ability,'" according to an article posted by ComputerWeekly.com.

Those workers who have mastered word processing, email and programming tend to earn more than those who haven't, according to the study. Also, workers who completed more tasks that required a computer tended to earn more money. I guess the future looks bright for the just-graduated college students, most of whom have easily mastered those skills, as well as many other ones. Wonder how much knowing how to text message is worth.

Scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are suing NASA and the California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL, over what they say are unwarranted and overly personal background checks under the governmentwide access cards required under Homeland Security Presidential Directive - 12, according to an article by the Associated Press.

The lawsuit was filed by 28 plaintiffs, many of whom “have worked on such projects as the Mars rovers, the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn, but none are involved in classified work, according to the suit,” AP reports. “It seeks class-action status to represent similar JPL employees.”

The Department of Commerce also has been named in the suit because the department promulgates federal identification standards. To obtain an identification card, which will give employees access to federal buildings and computers, employees must fill out a form asking them about employment history, past residences and any illegal drug use.

More from the article:

The suit claims the directive was concerned "exclusively with the establishment of a common identification standard" and "contemplates no additional background investigation or suitability determination beyond that already required by law."

But according to the lawsuit, the Commerce Department and NASA instituted requirements that employees and contractors permit sweeping background checks to qualify for credentials and refusal would mean the loss of their jobs.

NASA calls on employees to permit investigators to delve into medical, financial and past employment records, and to question friends and acquaintances about everything from their finances to sex lives, according to the suit. The requirements apply to everyone from janitors to visiting professors.

The suit is structured so that it can become a class action suit. Could this just be the tip of the iceberg?

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.'"

It shouldn't be surprising that 60 percent of IRS employees fell for a social engineering test scam, in which the employees gave up sensitive computer information to a caller posing as someone from the help desk, according to a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and reported by The Associated Press. This kind of social engineering "attack" is particularly hard to guard against because 1) someone is contacting you (either by phone or email) who knows your name and other personal information about you and 2) is posing as a representative of a legitimate office in your organization.

The only real way to fight this kind of spoof is through education, as Government Executive magazine reports in the upcoming Aug. 15 issue. Look for the issue in your mailbox soon. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from the article, which appears in the Managing Technology column:

The most effective defense [against social engineering attacks] is education, security experts say. Agencies must train computer users to spot fraudulent e-mails [and phone calls] and resist replying to them. Educating includes “inoculation,” intentionally setting a spear phishing trap by sending out a false e-mail to a group of employees to see who takes the bait, according to Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute of Bethesda, Md., which manages the Internet Storm Center and tracks cyberthreats. IT managers contact employees who replied or opened an attachment and teach them what to look for in a fake e-mail. Mistakes sometimes are the best teachers, Paller says. He estimates that spear phishing attacks on government number only in the low hundreds, but says the threat should not be taken lightly. It takes only one successful attempt to create a lot of damage.

In its report, the Treasury IG office recommends the same course of action:

The Chief, Mission Assurance and Security Services, should continue security awareness activities to remind employees of the potential for social engineering attempts and the need to report these incidents to the IRS computer security organization, conduct internal social engineering tests on a periodic basis to increase employees’ security awareness and the need to protect usernames and passwords, and coordinate with business units to emphasize the need to discipline employees for security violations resulting from negligence or carelessness.

What's disconcerting about this particular approach is that training rarely gets the attention it needs to be effective. It's almost always one of the first line items to be cut from a tight budget, and agency IT budgets are tighter than they ever have been. Training also gets shortchanged when staffing is low, which means employees have little time to take off form regular work to attend training classes or even to read training materials. But training is the only defense. Firewalls and intrusion detection systems don't defend against social engineering attempts.

Do you see any efforts to increase information security training in your agencies?

The Inspector General's Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs has recommended that the department take "appropriate administrative action" against top managers, as well as an information technology specialist, at a VA medical center because of poor information security practices that led to the loss of an external hard drive containing personal information on veterans and medical providers, according to a report the IG office recently released.

In January, an unidentified IT specialist working at the Research Enhancement Award Program at the Birmingham, Ala., VA Medical Center reported a lost external hard drive, on which was stored personal information that included Social Security numbers and identifiable health information for as many as 535,000 veterans, and information from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Department of Health and Human Services, and from more than 1.3 million medical providers.

The IG concluded the IT specialist tried to cover up his actions during the investigation that immediately followed the loss of the hard drive. The IT specialist "encrypted and/or deleted multiple files from his computer shortly after he reported the data missing, making it more difficult to determine what was stored on his desktop computer," according to IG report. "Initially, he denied deleting and encrypting files to criminal investigators. However, after being confronted with the results of the OIG computer forensic analysis, he stated that he panicked and admitted deleting and encrypting the files in an attempt to hide the extent, magnitude, and impact of the missing data."

The IG also blamed the director and assistant director at the Research Enhancement Award Program for not developing appropriate policies for securing and handling data on external hard drives within the center and making sure those policies were properly followed. IT rules required specialists to encrypt all data on external hard drives, but that policy was not followed. In addition, external hard drives were supposed to be locked in a safe, but not all hard drives were stored in the safe and one IT specialist took home an unencrypted hard drive containing veterans' personal information.

The IG did not specify what the "appropriate administrative action" should be. The VA's undersecretary of health will decide what action the department will take.

Birmingham's VA medical center is not a unique situation when it comes to not encrypting hard drives or other removable storage devices. Only 33 percent of all organizations worldwide (private and public sector) encrypt stored data, according to CIO Magazine. Only 30 percent of government organizations worldwide encrypt stored data.

Hat tip: ComputerWorld

The General Services Administration announced Tuesday that Casey Coleman, chief information officer of the new Federal Acquisition Service, will serve as the acting chief information officer until the position can be filled permanently.

Coleman replaces Mike Carleton, who is leaving GSA to fill the Health and Human Services Department's open CIO position.

Coleman has been serving as the first CIO of the Federal Acquisition Service since it was created in October 2006. Previously she served for two years as the CIO of the now defunct Federal Technology Service and also headed GSA's Office of Citizen Services from 2002 to 2004.

We have received a number of comments on the Tech Insider post "The Importance of Computer Training." Half a dozen readers have posted comments giving their opinions about computer training, especially the importance of being able to analyze the data that networks are capable of producing. We invite you to keep the discussion going.

The acting deputy commissioner at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service has been given the fulltime job, according to an agency news release.

Barney Brasseux, a longtime GSA employee and member of the Senior Executive Service, will serve as the FAS deputy commissioner under Jim Williams, the FAS commissioner. Brasseux previously served concurrently as acting deputy commissioner and assistant commissioner for travel, motor vehicles, and card services.

“The skills, knowledge, and energy that Barney has already demonstrated as acting deputy commissioner give me great confidence in his ability to lead the Federal Acquisition Service in this role," Williams said in a news release.

Brasseux joined GSA’s old Federal Supply Service in 1993 serving in a variety of positions in the travel and transportation, services acquisition, and automotive organizations. He also had a stint as the organization's chief of staff.

Brasseux joined the government in 1982 as assistant to the director of the White House Travel Office. He arranged travel arrangements for the White House press corps in conjunction with President Reagan's domestic and international travel.

Brasseux worked in resolving the disagreements between the agency and the National Federation of Federal Employees union as one of the final hurdles in combining the old Federal Supply Service and Federal Technology Service.

In one of its recent reports on the U.S. workforce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology workers don't work the long hours that the media and, well, the IT industry have portrayed. The average computer professional works 42 hours and 24 minutes a week, according to the BLS. That's the lightest work week of any professional group save one -- that would be educators, trainers and librarians, who average 41 hours and 18 minutes a week, blogger Eric Chabrow of CIO Insight journal wrote in his blog.

To top it off, Chabrow points out, IT workers as a group had the fewest portion of workers working the insane 60-plus hours a week: 7 percent of IT professionals say they work those long hours. Legal professionals have the largest percentage of workers (15 percent) who say they work more than 60 hours a week.

Another interesting fact in the BLS survey, Chabrow points out: The number of women working in the IT field dropped by 75,000 from 2000 to 2006. Chabrow, using that statistic, busts another myth: Women are leaving the IT field because of the long hours, which leaves less time for family. If that is not the case, then what gives?

As expected, many readers questioned BLS' stats when Chabrow first wrote about the survey findings in April.

The following item has been updated to correct a misstatement about the personnel files of GSA employees who had given sworn statements to investigators. The Office of the Special Counsel had requested the files.

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan received an independent report Friday outlining its findings on whether she violated a law that limits government employees from participating in political activities.

The Office of Special Counsel investigated whether Doan violated the Hatch Act, and delivered its findings to Doan Friday, but the findings were not made public, government officials told Government Executive.

A spokeswoman for GSA said in a statement that Doan is "again disappointed in the failure to protect what remains an ongoing and confidential process." The spokeswoman would not comment on the contents of the report, which may or may not be made public. "It would be inappropriate for the administrator to comment on the investigation, until the process has been completed," the spokeswoman said.

A Jan. 26 meeting at GSA’s headquarters is at the center of the allegations that Doan violated the Hatch Act. The meeting, attended by Doan and about 40 other political appointees, included a PowerPoint presentation by Scott Jennings, a deputy to Karl Rove, the leading political strategist at the White House. Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee say the presentation was clearly political. The slides listed Republican and Democratic House districts viewed by the White House as most vulnerable in 2008 and included a map showing the Senate seats up for grabs in the 2008 election and whether the White House believes Republicans will have to play "defense" or "offense" for each seat.

Doan testified before the panel that she thought the meeting was appropriate. But she said she could not remember the details of the meeting, other than that people arrived late, quite a few were absent and there were "cookies on the table."

According to government sources, Doan has two weeks from Friday to respond to the report. After she responds, OSC investigators will review it and deliver a final report to President Bush because Doan is a presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate -- known as a PAS. OSC cannot take disciplinary action against a PAS and there is no word on whether OSC will make its report public.

The OSC has requested GSA to provide the personnel files of GSA employees who gave sworn statements to investigators claiming Doan asked at the conclusion of the presentation how GSA could help "our candidates in the next election."

A group of former and current State Department employees is calling into question the merits of an award-winning computer system designed to speed up the process of conducting security clearances, calling it "garbage in, garbage out."

The Concerned Foreign Service Officers, a group formed in 2005 by State Department employees who are concerned about abuses of the security clearance process, issued a press release Friday questioning the recognition that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security has received for developing a computer system that decreases the time it takes to issue security clearances. The security-clearance process has strained under an increased demand since 9/11, with the backlog of security clearances remaining at more than 100,000 and taking more than a year to complete.

State Department employee Donald Reid "recently received an IT Leadership Award from Government Computer News, for innovation in the use of automation to facilitate the security clearance process," according to the press release. The security clearance system also received the Guardian Award from the Office of Personnel Management, according to the press release.

The Concerned Foreign Service Officers group agrees the system is an undeniable improvement over the paper-based system and reduces the time necessary to gather information for security clearance adjudications, but:

It is important to understand that the speed of information gathering is the ... least important aspect of the security clearance process. Two other aspects are considerably more important: the quality of investigative reports and the quality of adjudications. Like medicine or science, a security clearance adjudication is a qualitative function. To focus on the speed of the process is a bit like focusing on speed of intake, rather than diagnostic or treatment abilities, in a hospital.

In its press release, Concerned Foreign Service Officers congratulate the Bureau of Diplomatic Security on increasing the speed of its security clearance process, but "we only lament that the primary result of this improvement is that DS now makes bad determinations faster."

The State Department public affairs office declined to comment.

The following item was posted by Bob Brewin.

It’s time to put into perspective this kerfuffle over the Defense Department barring access to MySpace, YouTube and other video and social networking sites.

Yes, "War Is Hell," and that means troops in an all-volunteer military sometimes just don’t get everything they want or what is readily available to people in civilian life. Or, to update the best recruiting slogan ever hatched by my branch of service, the U.S. Marine Corps, “We Never Promised You a Rose Garden or Internet Access.”

The firestorm over DOD barring access to Web sites was kicked off by a tear-jerker of a lead in an Associated Press article carried by us and newspapers around the world from London to Perth, which said that a change in DOD policy barring soldiers’ access to social networking and video-streaming sites meant “soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home."

Somewhat true, but balderdash.

We have the most connected fighting force in the world. Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen today can communicate with their loved ones by email, cell phones, regular phones and computers in Internet cafes not hooked up to military networks. They also can go the old fashioned route: Write a letter via snail mail.

The only thing they can’t use as of this week are bandwidth hogging sites for the simple reason that no one, even DOD, has an unlimited amount of bandwidth to fritter away on social networking streaming video sites. There is a war on.

This wide range of communications options available to troops today stands in stark contrast to my experience in Vietnam, where a letter took days to reach home, or the experience of my father, who served in the Philippines during The Big One, and who had to wait weeks for his letters to reach home. U.S. military personnel today (including sailors and Marines floating around the bounding main) are far more connected than I or my father ever was.

The caterwauling by the chattering class about DOD and MySpace (The Washington Post declared this week that MySpace was “A Casualty of War”) also ignores one of the real harsh realities of war: The troops who most need access to creature comforts – the grunts who do the dirty work – have the least amount of access. Based on my experience, grunts don’t have high-speed Internet access, let alone access to essentials such as soap, water and hot meals. But, instead of focusing on that, folks such as Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) are beating on DOD about barring access to MySpace over military networks.

Finally, I suggest anyone wasting time blogging or bloviating over DOD and MySpace in the greater Washington area can put their time to much better use by driving to Baltimore Washington International Airport to greet the soldiers coming off the charter flights from Iraq, look the soldiers in the eye, shake their hands and say, “Thank you for your service.”

Shortly after the Army issued rules restricting soldiers' access to certain Web sites and what they can write in personal blogs, a print on demand company awarded a literary prize to a soldier who anonymously blogged about his experiences while serving in Iraq.

Colby Buzzell (View photo) won the second annual Lulu Blooker award for his book My War: Killing Time in Iraq, in which he writes about his experiences as a soldier fighting in the Iraq's Sunni Triangle in 2005. Lulu, which describes itself "as a technology company, not a publisher" and offers services "to publish and sell any kind of digital content," gives the $10,000 Blooker award a book that started out as a blog. The Penguin Group published My War.

According to a Reuters article:

Buzzell ... says he started posting his experiences online from a frontline Internet tent as a way to "kill time." ... His blog allowed him to explain the war to readers back home with an immediacy that he would never have been able to match if he wrote a book after he returned, Buzzell told Reuters by phone from Los Angeles.

"I would come back after missions, my ears still ringing from the firefight, and sit down and write about it," he said. "If you look at prior history and books about war, it's always in retrospect. I've been back two years. If someone told me to write a book about Iraq now, I wouldn't know where to start."

In an interview with Public Radio International's The World, Buzzell read an excerpt from his book, in which he encountered an insurgent who fired an AK-47 at him. He said bullets whizzed within inches of his head and made pinging sounds as they hit the metal around him. A bullet went through the helmet of Buzzell's platoon sergeant, but did not injure him.

Buzzell's blog post describing the fight identified him as the anonymous blogger, and Buzzell's commanding officer ordered him to stop blogging.

Have you ever tried to use your home computer network for a business presentation with a deadline in a matter of hours while the kiddos in the house are all downloading videos from YouTube or checking out their friends on MySpace? You quickly find out it’s difficult for business to compete with pleasure, and you yell at the kids to knock it off.

That’s the situation the Defense Information Systems (DISA) and the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations found themselves in when they assessed the impact that video and social networking sites had on the Defense Department’s Global Information Grid (GIG). What did they find? The GIG just didn’t have the bandwidth to support streaming video and music for thousands or even millions of end users, a DISA spokesman told Tech Insider. In an Associated Press reported that "the policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to" Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander. "This recreational traffic impacts our official DOD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," according to an Army memo released Friday that the AP quotes.

The Operational Directive Message sent by DISA and the joint task force told all combatant commands, the four services and all Defense Department agencies to bar access to video-sharing, photo and social network sites to preserve the bandwidth needed to support DOD missions, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Streaming audio and video -- including YouTube.com and MySpace web sites
-- have always been blocked to Coalition troops in Iraq," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. Army spokesman. "This is done to preserve military bandwidth for operational missions. There are some internet cafes and other networks in various locations throughout Iraq that do not rely on military bandwidth, and troops can often visit those types of web sites on those networks."

A DISA spokesman said some DOD circuits – including those to units operating in the two war zones – likely went over thin satellite connections, which have less bandwidth than units in the states hooked up to the GIG over high-speed fiber-optic networks.

The DISA spokesman said the order had nothing to do with censorship of deployed troops, but a need to conserve DOD network resources. And, just like home networks, DOD end users engaged in mission critical work can find that their work is slowed by too many people downloading videos or music over the network, he added.

DISA spent months evaluating the drag caused by social networking and video on DOD networks and did not make the decision to ban them arbitrarily or capriciously, the agency spokesman said. He added that the decision was in no way related to an Army directive issued this month, limiting blogging by Army personnel.

The joint task force directive bars access to video sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365; and the photo-sharing site Photobucket. -- Bob Brewin

In a May 2 Tech Insider post, we linked to a Wired article on the Army's new policy of requiring soldiers (as well as contractors and soldier's family members) to have any blog material approved before posting. Some speculated it would effectively end all soldiers' blogs from Iraq.

It looks like soldiers' (and others') blogs may be around for awhile.

Wired today posted a response to the article from David Axe, the military editor of Defense Technology International magazine and a correspondent who has reported from Iraq and Lebanon since 2005, according to his bio page on his personal web site, War is Boring. Axe quotes from a memo the Army issued after Wired posted its original article:

In no way will every blog post/update a soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and operations security (OPSEC) officer. After receiving guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public forum.

And this from the same memo:

Soldiers may also have a blog without needing to consult with their immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer if the following conditions are met: 1. The blog’s topic is not military-related (i.e., Sgt. Doe publishes a blog about his favorite basketball team). 2. The soldier doesn’t represent or act on behalf of the Army in any way. 3. The soldier doesn’t use government equipment when on his or her personal blog.

Don’t expect an upsurge in the lifespan of your current laptop battery, warns a CNET article.

The laptop battery industry, now more safety conscious after reports last year of Sony-battery powered laptops exploding into flames, can’t pack much more power into their products, the article quotes industry experts. The laptop battery industry can increase battery power by about 7 percent a year, but “that's hard to stomach for an industry that has grown up with Moore's Law,” the article notes. Moore’s law states that computing power doubles about every 2 years.

The industry is trying to come up with alternative metals to the lithium battery, but the new batteries bring their own set of problems.

The U.S. Census Bureau has not developed an effective computer-training program for the thousands of temporary workers it plans to hire to interview citizens who may not send in census forms for the upcoming 2010 census, according to a report released last week by the General Accountability Office.

Census officials plan to outfit an estimated 525,000 enumerators with handheld computers. Census hires enumerators as temporary employees to track down individuals who have not filled out census forms. The enumerators will use the handheld computers to input answers to census questions and then later download the data to Census databases. The handheld computers, provided by contractor Harris Corp., will replace the paper-and-pencil process enumerators have used for decades.

But the GAO warns that the Census Bureau's hiring procedures do not look for candidates who have computer skills. For example, crew leaders, those in charge of supervising enumerators, will be in charge of troubleshooting any problems with the handheld computers. But the Census does not plan to ask candidates for crew leader positions if they have computer experience and skills that would allow them to be effective in fixing any problems that may arise with the handheld computers. The GAO concludes:

The bureau is providing some computer-based training on using the handheld computers for the nonresponse follow-up and address canvassing operations and will include visual aids to enhance training on using the handheld computers. Nonetheless, the bureau’s standardized approach to delivering training, including reading training scripts word-for-word over the course of several days, has remained largely unchanged. The bureau has not evaluated alternate training delivery approaches, such as providing video segments, as has been recommended by us and the [Office of Inspector general].

Managers are more likely than underlings to take vacation time, according to a new survey of U.S. workers.

New York-based employment agency Hudson found that 53 percent of managers “have plans to take both a full vacation and a long weekend compared to 44 percent of non-managers.”

All workers generally fail to make full use of vacation time, with a clear majority – 56 percent – reporting that they will not make full use of their annual vacation days.

About half – 49 percent – said they get 11 or more vacation days per year. The survey has a margin of error of 2.4 percent.

The survey also shows that even though managers tend to take more vacation than the proletariat, they also have a harder time relaxing. Thirty five percent of managers, compared with 14 percent of non-managers, say they check in frequently with the office while on vacation. “Finally, 27 percent of managers return to the office more stressed than they were when they left. That is true for only 16 percent of non-managers,” according to Hudson. (A Time Magazine editorial makes the same point.)

Hat tip: Information Week

Blackberry wireless e-mail devices suffered interruptions of service Tuesday evening that appeared to be ending Wednesday morning, according to multiple news sources.

The Blackberry outage appears to have only affected North American users.

An early morning call to the Blackberry U.S. technical support line was answered with a recorded message apologizing for the inconvenience, InfoWorld reports.

An online article from New York broadcaster WNBC says Blackberry company Research In Motion tried to reset their network system, but is concerned that the rush of backlogged data could cause a larger problem. As a result, “RIM officials said messages would be sent out in stages so the system does not crash,” WNBC reports.

InfoWorld quotes market analyst Emma Mohr-McClune of Current Analysis hypothesizing that the network outage originated in one of Research In Motion’s two Canadian Network Operations Centers. All Blackberry traffic is routed through the two Canadian NOCs, Mohr-McClune said.

In the April 9 issue of New York Magazine, author Steve Fishman writes an in-depth article laying out why so many workers dislike their bosses. Fishman quotes Robert Sutton, a Stanford professor who studies the topic, who says bosses tend to give off "subtle nasty moves like glaring and condescending comments, explicit moves like insults or put-downs, and even physical intimidation." Sutton, who has written extensively on the subject of bosses in academic journals, just released a book on creating a civil workplace titled The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.

Fishman writes that organizations continue to promote people with poor leadership skills not only because bosses tend to promote individuals who are like themselves, but also because employees tend to view rude and inflexible individuals as candidates for supervisory roles. “Employees tend to see the jerk, the narcissist, and yes, even the asshole, as boss material,” the article states.

Hat tip: Slashdot

The Internal Revenue Service will get rid of as many as 2,000 jobs because of its push into electronic tax filing, reports the Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass. The majority of those who will lose their jobs will be seasonal employees, those who process paper returns at the Andover tax return center during the busiest time of the year, from January to June, according to the article. The paper continues:

For years, the IRS collected paper returns in 10 facilities across the country, [IRS spokeswoman Peggy] Riley said. Now, just seven locations are used, including the one in Andover. The IRS has decided to consolidate paper return collections even further, to just three cities: Fresno, Calif.; Austin, Texas; and Kansas City, Mo.

Riley said that nationally, paper filings have dropped from nearly 80 million in 2003 to about 60 million last year. Meanwhile, electronic returns have jumped from 52 million in 2003 to more than 72 million last year. That upward trend for so-called e-filers is expected to continue this year.

A review of the General Services Administration's daily briefing shows that several opinion pieces and news articles on the conduct of the agency's chief Lurita Doan were excluded. GSA's daily briefing is sent to all GSA employees and acts as an official archive of news coverage of the agency.

For example, a review of the daily brief by Government Executive shows that the March 26 news article by The Washington Post revealing that a deputy of Karl Rove was involved in the videoconference at GSA, which is under scrutiny for violating the Hatch Act, was excluded. Also excluded was an April 11 news article in the Federal Times that revealed that Doan pushed a contract award to Sun Microsystems despite learning that the agency's inspector general had considered notifying the Justice Department about allegations of fraud.

Most recently, a news article in Friday's Washington Post on the missing Karl Rove e-mails was excluded. The article references the "alleged politicization at the General Services Administration."

Edward Blakely, the agency’s associate administrator for the Office of Citizen Services and Communications and in charge of the briefing, said he is exercising "responsible filtering" in an attempt to improve the "diversity and variety" of the daily briefing. "If there is nothing new in the negative stories that are being published I don’t put them in there," Blakely said. "I make sure that every clip that is relevant gets out there. ... If there's not a new news hook on this, we shouldn't put it out there."

Blakely included in the daily briefing a hard-hitting April 3 editorial that appeared in The Washington Post titled, "Playing Politics at the GSA," citing Doan's "willful disregard of the Hatch Act."

Still, the two GSA employees that compile the briefing are under orders to forward all negative stories to Blakely and he makes the final decision on whether they are included, according to sources. Blakely said his approach to the briefing is an "ad hoc" policy he implemented, and neither Doan nor her staff asked for stories to be removed. When asked to give examples of neutral or positive stories that were excluded because they contained repetitive information, Blakely could not offer examples.

GSA included in the briefing more than a dozen stories on the recent announcement of the multi-billion-dollar Networx contract.

Mark Corallo, the founder of a crisis communications media services firm and former chief spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft, told Government Executive that he had not heard of an agency censoring its daily briefing. He said that while he was at Justice, his staff included all news articles or editorials.

"There was no censoring," said Corallo, who had represented Doan until last month. "Basically anything that came up [was included]. We saw lots of bad news."

Officials in the public affairs offices of eight agencies, including the Homeland Security Department and the Office of Personnel Management, said that excluding news articles and editorials from the daily briefing could put agency employees at a disadvantage because employees need to know what the public is reading.

The following is a list of articles that mention GSA but were excluded from the daily brief:

March 28 Cox News Service news article, "Democrats blast GSA chief for politics at agency."

March 28 Federal Times news article, "GSA chief grilled about alleged improper partisan presentation."

April 1 New York Times editorial, "The Rovian Era."

An April 2 Federal Times editorial, "Unfit for the job." (Unavailable online. GSA excluded the editorial calling for Doan's resignation, but it did include Doan's response in the following week's edition.)

April 4 column by Marianne Means, "Bushies remember they can't recall."

April 5 Washington Post column by Ruth Marcus, "Fox-in-the-Henhouse Government."

April 5 Cox Newspapers columnist Tom Teepen, "Tom Teepen: Contempt for government."

April 6, Philadelphia Enquirer editorial, "Karl Rove and the GSA."

April 11 Los Angeles Times editorial, "Send RNC emails to Congress."

April 12 Salon.com's Sidney Blumenthal, "Upending the Mayberry Machiavellis."

This week’s The New Yorker investigates the phenomenon of commuting, nominating Washington as a “worthy candidate” for one for the country’s worst commutes. (Article not yet available online.)

The article, “There And Back Again,” reserves the worst commuting honors for Atlanta and analyzes the experience of commuting in general. Simply put, commuting is overrated. People “tend to over valuate the material fruits of their commute – money, house prestige – and undervalue what they’re giving up: sleep, exercise, fun,” author Nick Paumgarten states.

According to political scientist Robert Putnam, whom Paumgarten quotes, there’s a simple rule of thumb for commuting: “‘Every ten minutes of commuting results in 10 percent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.’”

A blogger who writes the Philocrites blog (on "religion, liberalism and culture") claims that a reader accessing his site from an Air Force computer has been blocked from accessing his site.

Chris Walton, who says he writes about the Unitarian Universalist movement, posted an item on his blog reporting that an Air Force employee sent him an image of the message that pops up on the employee's monitor when he types in Philocrites web site address www.philocrites.com. "The Site You Are Trying To Access Is Prohibited," the message begins. "Category of Blocked URL: "Forum/Bulletin Boards. Monitoring of Your Web Activity is Being Performed."

The reason for blocking access to the site, according to the message, was because of "unauthorized personal use."

But Walton wonders if the reader was blocked because his site is considered liberal. He provides links to stories about the possibility of federal agencies blocking access to liberal Web sites, one from the political blog Daily Kos and another from Federal Computer Week. Wikipedia describes the Unitarian Universalism as "liberal."

Walton also writes that readers from other federal agencies have not been blocked from accessing his site, including one from the Justice Department who visited his site in March.

Tell us if you have had any problems accessing sites considered liberal or conservative by clicking the "comments" link below.

What’s a toasted bagel plus avocado in a CD container? Lunch! Click the link above for a neat way of re-using CD spindles (the plastic container for a pack of blank CDRs, for example) as a high-tech variant to the tin lunch box to bring your bagelwich to work.

Hat tip: Boing Boing

Being a civil servant is a calling. But keep in mind that no matter how bad it might get, it’s often much worse in the private sector.

Consider what electronic retailer Circuit City is doing. Here's what the San Diego Union Tribune reported this week:

Circuit City said yesterday [March 28] that it had fired 3,400 [about 8 percent] of its highest-paid sales staff and will replace them with lower-paid workers. … The fired workers will receive severance packages and a chance to apply for lower-paying positions after a 10-week delay, said the 655-store electronics chain based in Richmond, Va.

Writes an indignant, anonymous reader of Slashdot: “So: work hard, become the best in your field, and get fired so they can offer you a new job 10 weeks later at a lower salary.”

It's no secret that government agencies and the contractors that work for them find it hard to attract young workers with information technology skills. Another reminder of just why appeared in an article in today's Washington Post.

The newspaper interviews Michael Gagnon, a 23-year-old George Mason University student who works at a Fairfax, Va., research lab, about job opportunities he is considering. Although the Post cites stats that show the Washington, D.C., area as a haven for IT workers, halfway through the article Gagnon talks about how he is likely to turn down the many software development and programming jobs he has been offered in Washington (the jobs "bore him," he says) in favor of a job-scholarship package at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he can focus on information security. Gagnon says his classmates, who also are sifting through many job offers from local companies, are considering leaving because "they are also looking for 'more innovative work,'" the Post quotes Gagnon saying. "I don't think people like me will stay here if they aren't offered as stimulating opportunities as there are elsewhere," Gagnon told the Post.

For years, the federal government has found it a challenge to attract and keep young talent because of varying reasons, threatening federal programs and the innovation needed to support them. The Washington Monthly reported on some of those reasons back in 2000.

As if you didn't have enough to worry about, a report released last week links sitting down for long periods at work -- i.e. in front of a computer -- to an increased risk of death from blood clots.

Thirty-four percent of all patients suffering from deep-vein thrombosis, the potentially fatal condition of blood clots formed after long periods of inactivity, reported having sat for hours at a time at work, according to the Medical Research Institute in New Zealand. Some of the patients reported having sat for 12 to 14 hours in one day.

"The 34 percent finding is far higher than the 1.4 percent of blood-clot patients who recently traveled on long-haul flights, and the study showed a clear link between travel and work-related thrombosis," according to an article posted on Wired News.

An organization called the "Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis" provides a self-assessment risk tool to measure your risk for DVT. The National Institutes of Health's MedLinePlus advises to "minimize immobility of the legs" to lower your risk.

The percentage of federal employees who say they have the option to telework increased to 44 percent this year compared with 38 percent in 2006, according to the third annual telework survey conducted by CDW. Growth of the telework option in the private sector lags far behind, with only 15 percent of private-sector employees saying they have the option to telework. (However, 24 percent of private-sector employees said they did not know if they had an option to telework compared with only 9 percent in the federal government.). Federal telework options have been driven largely by law and the Defense Department's policy to offer telework options in order to retain employees, CDW reported. Do you have an opinion as to why telework is far more popular in the federal government than in the private sector?

In today's work environment, we are frequently asked -- like our computers-- to multitask. At times, it may feel like you are being pulled in five directions at once. With all those simultaneous demands (writing a memo while talking on the phone only to switch over to tap out an email message on your BlackBerry while listening to a PowerPoint presentation), do you feel like you are performing as well as you could?

Well, you aren't, says Russell Poldrack, a UCLA psychology professor who has studied how the brain operates when multitasking. According to his research published last year, but which has just recently reached the mainstream press, we humans -- unlike our computers -- are not wired to multitask. Multitasking, Poldrack said in an interview with National Public Radio last week, "drives us to be less efficient." Could Poldrack have part of the answer to why IT projects so often fail: Project managers try to do too much at one time. How many projects are you working on at one time? And do you think multitasking distracts you to the point of not doing as good a job as you are capable of doing?