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].

Computer Sciences Corp. announced today that it is part of the Verizon Business team that won one of three contracts under the federal government's Networx Universal telecommunications program, according to an article posted by TMCnet. CSC says it will provide "customer-specific network design support and engineering services, managed tiered security services and anti-virus managed services, which provide detection and removal of system viruses," according to the article.

Google and four state governments have teamed up to make public documents more easily retrievable when citizens conduct online searches, according to an article by the Associated Press.

"Google plans to announce Monday that it has already partnered with four states - Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia - to remove technical barriers that had prevented its search engine, as well as those of Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., from accessing tens of thousands of public records dealing with education, real estate, health care and the environment," the newswire reports.

The way state government computer networks are programmed has made it difficult for users to find public documents stored in state databases, but Google, working with state technology officers, have built "virtual road maps" to the databases where the documents are stored, the AP reports.

But privacy experts are worried that better access to public documents runs the risk of exposing private information, such as Social Security numbers. Many public documents in state databases contain Americans' Social Security numbers and other personal information.

Agencies thinking about using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology should first conduct security and privacy risk assessments, such as considering what the transmitted information will be used for and the risk to the business if the RFID system fails, according to recommendations released yesterday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The purpose of the report is to give agencies and other organizations a checklist of security and privacy risks to consider before developing an RFID system, how to evaluate the risks and recommendations on how to mitigate them, said Tom Karygiannis, the report's author.

Some of the recommendations include updating who has access to sensitive data to include information collected by the RFID system, minimizing the amount of personal data stored on the RFID tags and updating personnel rules on what's appropriate and not appropriate when working with RFID technology and data. NIST also suggests technological controls if feasible, such as encrypting data in transmission and in storage, and a kill feature for the tags, which disables the tag after it leaves the range of the RFID reader.

Some governments remain skeptical about RFID technology, such as California, which is considering several bills to regulate the technology, including placing a temporary moratorium on the use of RFID. Such skepticism, say experts in the field, is subverting federal and state governments from adopting technologies that could improve government performance.

Hat tip: InformationWeek

German intelligence agencies have stopped for now accessing via the Internet suspected terrorists' computers after the practice was publicly disclosed last week.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a German interior intelligence agency, had been accessing via the Internet the private information and communications on suspects' personal computers since June 2005, Deutsch Welle reported today. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble came under heavy criticism from privacy experts and from some in his own political party, the Social Democratic Party, that the practice violated "Article 13 of the German basic law, which governs privacy," according to the article.

"Schäuble has called for a change in the law, saying the monitoring is an important intelligence tool and that the practice should continue," according to the article. The German government is considering rewriting the law to allow the surveillance.

Since 9/11, intelligence agencies in the United States have sought an expansion of powers governing how agents collect data and monitor computer habits and electronic communications. The Associated Press reported this month that newly appointed National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier to monitor email accounts and phone calls.

Federal law prohibits the sale of guns to anyone judged mentally ill, but most states are unable to share mental health records with an FBI computer network that would block the sale of guns to the mentally ill because of privacy laws or state computer systems that are incompatible.

That may change if a long dormant bill in Congress -- revived after the shootings at Virginia Tech -- is passed. The bill would provide $1 billion to states to pay for computer network upgrades and to remove privacy law obstacles, according to an Associated Press article. According to the article:

Privacy laws and lack of technical ability now prevent 28 states from sharing such information with the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System based in Clarksburg, W.Va., according to a Justice Department report.

“Every one of these records that is not transferred is the record of someone who federal law has said is too dangerous to buy a gun,” said Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Such a system should have prevented Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman who killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech, from buying guns. In 2005, Cho was declared mentally ill by a special judge's order, according to a New York Times article.

The Defense Department is always on the look out for cutting-edge technologies, which can make perusing defense agencies' daily requests for proposals and information an exercise in suspending disbelief.

The latest such request comes from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which recently issued a so-called Broad Agency Announcement requesting information on advanced technologies that could be used to detect and neutralize Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

According to an article posted by Global Security Newswire (a sister publication of Tech Insider and Government Executive Magazine), the agency listed several WMD countermeasures it wants to investigate over the next year. For example,

One item on the list is biomimetic material, which could be used for so-called “living” clothes.

Merging research in the life sciences, chemistry, physics and advanced materials, DTRA officials hope to end up with fabrics that could mimic living processes, including an immune response.

The material would continually check the environment, “possibly give some sort of warning indication” and then release a counteragent, according to the document.

The agency also wants to find out if industry can develop a so-called “brain-machine interface,” which would "detect and neutralize a toxic threat and immediately alert soldiers and commanders to their presence," according to Global Security Newswire. No other details were given.

Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you computing tips and information you can easily apply at your desktop.

This week: customizing Google.

As a follow up to an earlier post about simple tricks to make your Google searches more effective, we offer some basic steps to customize the search engine results and display.

Google automatically applies a search-return feature that they call “SafeSearch Filtering," which excludes sites containing explicit material. Google's default setting for SafeSearch is "moderate filtering." But maybe you want to decide what is safe. If you like that idea, here’s how to turn Google's SafeSearch Filter off.

On the Google homepage, click the tiny preferences link on the right hand side of the search box. SafeSearch Filtering is the third preference category down. Set it to your favored level of filtering. Note: For this to work, your computer must accept a Google cookie.

While you’re setting your filtering standards, you’ll see other preferences you can set in Google, too -- such as language. Maybe you only want Web pages written in Arabic. Go to Search Language and check off your favored languages.

Also, tired of clicking on the Google "O's" at the bottom of a search results to retrieve the next page of results? You can change the number of returns displayed by clicking on Number of Results and choosing 10 to 20, 30, 50 or 100.

In another sign of the growing business of information technology outsourcing, Computer Sciences Corp. announced that it has agreed to purchase systems integrator and consulting firm Covansys Corp. for $1.3 billion.

Of Convansys' 9,000 employees, 6,400 are based in India, which leads the world in providing outsourcing IT services. The purchase doubles CSC's workforce in India.

Most of Convansys' business is in the financial services industry, but it also has offerings in telecommunications, health care, and it performs application development and software testing.

Hat tip: webwereld

Not all government e-mails, electronic documents and notes stored on a computer should be considered a public record, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

According to an article published by the Arizona Daily Star:

[Arizona Chief Justice Ruth McGregor wrote in her opinion,] "Every note made on government-owned paper, located in a government office, written with a government-owned pen, or composed on a government-owned computer would presumably be a public record."

She said that logic would make a public record of a grocery list written by a government employee and a report card stored in the desk of a government worker.

"The public-records law was never intended to encompass such documents," McGregor said. "The purpose of the law is to open government activity to public scrutiny, not to disclose information about private citizens."

McGregor said a judge can withhold public records if the exposure would violate rights to privacy, confidentiality or "the best interests of the state."

The ruling was based on the trial of Arizona Pinal County Manager Stanley Griffis, who recently pleaded guilty to six felonies including theft, fraud and tax fraud. He is awaiting sentencing. Griffis was indicted for using money from the Sheriff's Department to purchase weapons for personal use. A court ordered Griffis to turn over all e-mails covering a two-month period.

Automating business processes is supposed to create efficiencies. But for the Wisconsin's Department of Motor Vehicles, a new computer system has resulted in the opposite outcome.

A new system installed in 2004 to reduce the time it takes to receive a license plate and vehicle title has more than doubled the wait time -- from three weeks to seven weeks, according to an article in the River Falls Journal. In addition, the cost of the system ($19 million) also more than doubled what was originally budgeted.

DMV officials now say "adjustments" to the system should drop the wait for license plates and titles to 30 days.

With losses of financial data and personal information on the rise, more universities now offer courses to students on how to combat hackers. An estimated 22 universities in the United States offer such programs, including the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, according to an article on Charlotte's News 14 Web site.

UNCC students learn how to lure hackers into a so-called "Honeypot," a data or network site constructed to look like it stores information that may be useful to hackers looking to steal identities or proprietary information. Students then observe how the hackers navigate the site looking for information, how they break into files, and how to track them. Some of the graduates from the program have gone on to work for the FBI.

UNCC's program is offered by the school's Criminal Justice Department and its Software Information Systems Department. "We're very unique in combining the technical know how and also the criminology aspect," said Bill Chu, chairman of the Software and Information Systems Department.

The General Services Administration has awarded Electronic Data Systems a contract to help roll out the information technology infrastructure needed to provide identity credentials to agencies participating in GSA's governmentwide Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 program.

GSA's HSPD-12 Shared Services Provider II contract, worth an estimated $66 million, will establish the information technology to provide end-to-end compliant ID credentials. It will cover 42 agencies, boards and commissions.

The contract award, a Schedule 70 task order with a 17-month base period plus three option years, provides for up to 1.5 million identity accounts and credentials. The new secure credentials will be issued to federal employees and contractors with access to IT systems.

Michel Kareis, director of GSA's HSPD 12 program, said earlier this year that the contractor selected as GSA's provider would be expected within 90 days of the award to start producing cards that include a digital image of the holder's index finger and a digital certificate.

GSA decided last fall against exercising the remaining option years in a contract with BearingPoint for end-to-end ID card services.

A leading cybersecurity association says a report released yesterday by the President's Identity Theft Task Force falls short of adequately protecting Americans' privacy because the report's recommendations for the public sector are less stringent than those recommendations for the private sector.

According to a statement by the Cyber Security Industry Alliance:

[The report] offers several key data security measures for both the public and private sectors. Related to the public sector, the report calls for decreasing the unnecessary use of Social Security Numbers, educating federal agencies on how to protect data, monitor their compliance with existing guidance and ensure effective, risk-based responses to data breaches. For the private sector, the report states that national standards should be established for private sector data protection and breach notifications, better education on the safeguarding of data should be offered among private sector entities and to the general public, investigations should be initiated for data security violations and an online clearinghouse for current educational resources should be developed.

[Liz Gasster, general counsel for CSIA, said], "While the recommendations to limit the unnecessary use of Social Security Numbers, establish a National Identity Theft Law Enforcement Center and execute additional public awareness campaigns are important and necessary measures, one critical element is clearly missing the report stops short of requiring a national standard for the public sector that would mirror the mandatory data protection requirements and breach notification requirements suggested for the private sector. Merely re-issuing data security guidance to agencies is inadequate. Government agencies should be accountable to citizens for safeguarding their data, and compliance should not be optional."

Hat Tip: ComputerWorld

A White House board tasked to oversee possible infringements on privacy and civil liberties from government information systems and programs designed to fight terrorism has ruled that many programs have not compromised Americans' privacy, according to a report the board released yesterday and a brief posted by Wired.com.

In its first annual report to Congress, the Privacy and Civil Liberty Oversight Board ruled that controversial programs such as government watchlists and the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of Americans' phone calls did not impose on privacy or civil liberties, Wired reports.

Next year, the board, the members of which were chosen by the White House, plans to investigate the Automated Targeting System (also here), which will give international travelers a threat level rating and data mining efforts by the federal government.

Some education experts question spending on interactive white boards and other advanced technologies that connect classrooms throughout New South Wales in Australia, according an article on the online news site The Age.

The interactive white boards are "the latest high-tech device charged with transforming the state's classrooms, along with broadband links, a student portal, notebooks and digital cameras," the site reports. "But there are doubts in some corners whether the ... resources are being wasted on political techno-daydreams rather then basic school needs, such as toilet upgrades and roofing repairs. It is claimed the whiteboards and their video link allow greater subject choice to students, let gifted pupils take higher classes in other cities, facilitate expert lectures and afford online 'field trips' for children in remote localities."

The theory that computers in the classroom raise academic scores in American schools has been debated for more than a decade. Just today, the Kansas City Star published an article debating the academic value of technology in the classroom.

Charles Havekost, chief information officer at the Health and Human Services Department, told his staff Monday that he will be leaving his position in mid-June to take a position with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.

Havekost has been a career civil servant at HHS for 29 years. He became the agency's CIO and deputy assistant secretary in April 2004. He led the Grants.gov e-government initiative from 2002 through 2004. At the IAEA, Havekost will serve as the director of the organization's information technology division in its Office of Management. He and his family will relocate to Austria in mid-June.

As instant messaging gains more converts, it still has one big drawback: Users of, say, Google chat cannot instant message users of, say, Yahoo! And then there’s the whole downloading software portion of it -- a pain especially for computer users denied downloading privileges. Meebo to the rescue! It’s a Web site that lets you logon and maintain open sessions in multiple chat from one location, without having to download anything. (Hat tip: ha.ckers.org.)

Looks like those of us here on the Web team at GovExec aren't the only ones giving themselves a makeover. The federal government's Web portal, USA.gov, has a new look. They've reduced clutter, added some images, and merged their "Federal Employees" and "Government to Government" sections into a single section called "Government Employees," among other things. You can read all about it here and tell them what you think of the new look here.

The Justice Department is joining whistleblower suits against Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, and Sun Microsystems, alleging the companies favored technology companies in exchange for kickbacks.

The three companies “submitted false claims to the United States for information technology hardware and services on numerous government contracts from the late 1990s to the present,” according to a Justice release. The suit was unsealed Thursday.

The suit contends that the three companies received payments, often in the form of rebates from more than three dozen IT vendors (including Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, and Oracle), which agreed to push their products. Justice claims that any discounts or rebates the companies offered should have been passed on to the government, InfoWorld reports.

“For example, Accenture received more than $735,000 in payments from IBM for ‘favorable treatment and influence’ on six government contracts between 2001 and 2006, the DOJ filing alleges,” InfoWorld notes.

Former Qwest chieftain Joseph Nacchio is guilty of 19 counts of insider trading.

Nacchio was on trial in Denver federal court for 42 counts of insider trading. The jury found him not guilty on 23 counts. The former chief executive officer sold $100.8 million worth of Qwest stock in 2001 just before the company's shares dropped.

Each guilty count carries a maximum 10-year sentence and a $1 million fine. Nacchio will be sentenced on July 27. The court also could claim Nacchio’s assets in forfeiture, the amount to be determined by a federal judge at a different date. Nacchio was released on bond.

Nacchio’s defense rested in significant part on an argument that Qwest CEO had access to classified information about big national-security-related federal contracts that he thought Qwest would win.

But, according to a Justice Department release, Nacchio’s indictment specifically states that “Nacchio knew that Qwest’s 2001 financial targets were overly aggressive, that Qwest did not have a good track record in growing recurring revenue, that the company’s business units were underperforming, and that there would be insufficient non-recurring revenue sources to close the gap between Qwest’s publicly stated financial targets and its actual performance. It further states that Nacchio was specifically warned about this information.”

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

Officials from the departments of Commerce, State and Homeland Security testified Thursday before a congressional panel about the rising threat of computer hackers penetrating federal agency information technology systems.

Key U.S. defense and nuclear contractors and other critical infrastructure are under continuous and increasingly sophisticated attacks from other nations, experts say. Terabytes of highly sensitive information have been stolen and some systems are under the control of the hackers.

Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., chairman of the House Homeland Security Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science and Technology subcommittee, said he believes that infiltration by foreign nationals of agency networks is one of the most critical issues facing the United States.

According to information presented by Langevin and the hearing's witnesses, hackers using Chinese Internet servers launched an attack on the computer systems at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security in October 2006. The hackers used a "rootkit" program that allows the attackers to mask their presence to gain access to the system.

Another incident examined by the panel was a June 2006 attack on networks at several State Department locations, including the Washington, D.C., headquarters and the Bureau of East Asian Affairs and Pacific Affairs. The attack was initiated when an employee of the department opened a Microsoft Word email attachment that contained an exploit code, which is a piece of software or data often used to gain control of a computer.

According to officials at State, a temporary fix was put in place but Langevin criticized the department for leaving the system online. "I believe they made the determination that accessibility to data is more important than confidentiality and integrity," Langevin said. "If State really valued the latter, they would have taken the system off line and done a full wash."

Langevin criticized the department for failing to meet the requirements of the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act, which requires agencies to track down and identify all devices connected to the agency's network. The recently released 2006 FISMA report shows that State did not inventory at least 50 percent of its systems.

"I think these incidents have opened a lot of eyes in the halls of Congress," Langevin said. "We don't know the scope of our networks. We don’t know who's inside our networks. We don’t know what information has been stolen. We need to get serious about this threat to our national security."

Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you computing tips and computing information you can easily apply at your desktop.

This week: cookies.

By now most of us know that Web sites deposit little chunks of themselves onto your hard drive. So-called cookies aren’t executable programs (one less thing to worry about), but they track your surfing habits.

Cookies can be good, such as allowing an email provider like Yahoo! to deposit a cookie on your drive so that you won’t have to continually re-log back in. Cookies can go bad, such as when third-party Web advertisers place a cookie on your machine to monitor your Web surfing habits.

People have different tolerances for cookies. Set your own tolerance level in Internet Explorer by going to Tools, choosing Internet Options from the drop down menu, and clicking the Privacy tab.

Then, hit the Advanced button. Check the white box that says Override automatic cookie handling. If you always want to personally approve each cookie, choose the prompt setting for both the First party Cookie and Third party Cookie settings. Don't forget to hit OK.

Chinese police officers are trying out cap-mounted video cameras, reports the online news service Ananova.

The flashlight-shaped cameras, which weigh less than two ounces, have 1 gigabyte of storage, enough to record about 1 hour of video, according to the article, which cites Xinhua, the official China state news agency. About 100 policemen in the city of Chongquing have been outfitted with the cameras.

The police chief for Chongquing said the cameras could gather evidence to refute lawsuits against the police and could be edited for television, according to Ananova.

Hat tip: Pasta and Vinegar

Austin Yerks, president of Computer Sciences Corporation's Defense Integrated Solutions and Services division, has been named the president of CSC's new Defense Division. In his new role, "Yerks will provide executive leadership and strategic direction for the company's Department of Defense business," according to a CSC press release. "The division, which comprises more than 8,000 employees, supports all of CSC's DOD clients, including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and defense agencies."

Yerks will report to James W. Sheaffer, president of CSC's North American Public Sector business unit.

CSC also named David Browder vice president of business development for its North American Public Sector (formerly called the Federal Sector) business unit's Defense Division. Browder will be responsible for managing teams pursuing government contracts that support DOD. Browder "most recently served as the acting vice president for Federal Sector's Strategic Business Management organization, responsible for managing new business opportunities and proposal development operations." accord to a CSC press release.

A minister in the Australian government has suggested using Web 2.0 applications to help set federal policies, according to an article in the Brisbane Times.

Special Minister of State Gary Nairn envisions the Australian government setting up blogs in which citizens and community groups could comment on proposed public policies. The newspaper quotes Nairn:

Instead of going through the long and iterative process of drafting papers, issuing them to community groups and waiting for feedback, we could be doing this online through blog sites. ... There are a lot of risks but it would be silly not to do it. This is the way the younger generation interacts. A problem the political process has had for a long time is how to get people engaged. Web 2.0 could help rectify the situation, which is exciting, because further engagement builds education.

Nairn gave no timetable in which to establish the blogs and admits the government does not yet have the technology to offer the service.

Wisconsin's government computer projects are failing because of poor planning, cost overruns, delays and a lack of oversight, a report released by a state representative shows.

Sue Jeskewitz, R, Menomonee Falls, who oversaw the Legislative Audit Bureau report, "says we need project managers, for accountability, and the state should think about looking into new contractors. Jeskewitz says the Department of Administration, which was too busy with its own problems to address other problems, has lost credibility," according to an article on Wisconsin Radio Network's web site.

Jeskewitz plans to hold a hearing May 2 of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to review the report's results.

CDW Corp., the parent company of government vendor CDWG, is having a big week on Wall Street. Thanks to an announcement by company officials that they expect to release a report of higher-than-expected first-quarter revenue, the stock jumped late last week about $5 a share to around $67 a share. CDW plans to announce its first quarter results April 24, according to bloggingstocks.com. No details on whether its government business has been better than average. However, CDW comes in fairly low (No. 34) on Government Executive's Top 50 Technology Contractors list.

The Internal Revenue Service encourages as many taxpayers to file electronically as possible. They may have got their wish, but now they have another problem.

So many taxpayers submitted their returns electronically on April 16, the deadline for having your taxes filed, that the servers at Intuit Inc., which processes the electronic tax returns for the IRS, became overloaded and slowed the filing of e-returns by hours, according to an Associated Press article. The delays may have caused many taxpayers to have missed the filing deadline.

Under normal working conditions, it takes a few minutes for an electronic tax return to complete its submission using TurboTax, according to the AP. But by late Monday, it was taking hours.

No word yet if IRS officials will grant amnesty from late penalty charges for those filers who missed the deadline because of the overloaded servers. But the lesson here, says Harry Pforzheimer, an Intuit spokesman, “Don’t wait until the last minute is the moral of the story."

But some IT experts may rebut, quoting the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

Another example of why cybersecurity is a matter of trust and behavior, not technology: a USB device that simulates the movement of a mouse.

Some PCs and Web sites will automatically log out users after a period of apparent inactivity, such as a few minutes of no detectable movement of the mouse. The feature prevents a user from absent-mindedly walking away from a computer connected to sensitive information, leaving it wide open for passers-by to read. By automatically logging out an inactive user, the system makes a trust decision for you, particularly that it distrusts you’ll remember to log off.

Insert this USB device into your PC, however, and you’ll override the distrust mechanism, and you’ll take back the decision on whether to trust yourself to secure your PC.

Admittedly, this probably is not an option for federal workers, some of whom must deal with a federal IT shop allegedly filling USB ports with epoxy glue to prevent any USB device.

Hat tip: Boing Boing

The United States isn't the only country concerned about the accuracy and security of electronic voting machines. The Dutch government plans to redo its certification process for e-voting machines after an independent oversight committee criticized the govnerment for failures, the International Herald Tribune Europe reports.

Federal systems integrator CGI Group Inc. could be facing charges of conflict of interest in a $400 million (Canadian) contract it won from Public Works and Government Services of Canada, according to an article in the Ottawa Sun newspaper.

CGI has dozens of contracts with state and local governments in the United States, as well as U.S. federal agencies, including the General Services Administration, which hired CGI to build and maintain its Pegasys system, which integrates more than 4,000 users nationwide and processes more than 40 million transactions annually, according to CGI's 2006 annual report.

TPG Technology Consulting, based in Ottawa, has asked the Public Sector Integrity Office in Canada to investigate the computer support contract because Canadian Public Works Minister Michael Fortier had worked for CGI as the primary investment banker to sell a $330 million CGI stock offering in 2004. At the time, Fortier headed up the Montreal office of Credit Suisse.

Fortier denies any conflict of interest and argues he and his staff do not award Public Works contracts.

Nevertheless, "TPG president Don Powell says his firm ... was the low bidder for the support work," according to the article. "He maintains that public servants involved in the process told him that the technical evaluations were “very close.” TGP vows to take the case to court to stop work on the contract.

New York state Attorney General Andy Cuomo has criticized Verizon, which provides local telephone service on the East Coast, for “chronically poor” telephone repair service, reports Reuters.

Verizon, which became a significant federal contractor when it bought MCI in 2005, is seeking permission from New York regulators to expand “its fiber-optic network to offer high-speed Internet and video services, along with phone services, to compete with cable,” Reuters reports.

But Cuomo wants the company to improve its telephone repair service before expanding. He wants the state’s Public Service Commission to hold Verizon to a promise to repair 80 percent of phone lines within 24 hours of receiving a customer repair request, “but 20 out of Verizon's 35 repair service bureaus across the state chronically failed to meet the PSC's standards, Cuomo said," according to Reuters.

A Verizon spokesman told Reuters the company is improving service levels and that “upgrading to a fiber-optic network would also improve the quality of phone services.”

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.

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 U.S. federal attorney's office and CA Inc. officials aren't saying whether they’ll pursue legal action against CA founder Charles Wang for alleged accounting fraud, InfoWorld reports.

A CA board report released last week accuses Wang, who stepped down as the company’s chief executive officer in 2002, of accounting fraud that led to a steep decline in the company’s stock. Wang’s successor, Sanjay Kumar starts this month a 12-year sentence in federal prison and has agreed to pay restitution to stockholders.

The board report recommended suing Wang for damages, but CA didn't comment on its plans, in the InfoWorld article. Likewise, the “U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York also had no comment on whether it was pursuing charges against Wang,” the article states.

Norman Berle, a criminal defense lawyer who teaches white-collar crime at Fordham University's business school, says a civil action against Wang is likely, but that a criminal action by the federal attorney is less likely.

Everyone knows the legend of the superhacker, the supersmart electronic code breaker tearing through security barriers.

But University of Colorado Law School professor Paul Ohm writes that the incidence and danger of superhackers, or whom he calls "superusers," tend to be exaggerated. Ohm cites a study by two University of Washington professors who found “that sixty percent of reported incidents of the loss of personal records involved organizational mismanagement, while only thirty-one percent involved hackers.”

Unfortunately, Congress has fallen for the superhacker myth, passing laws that Ohm says infringe on civil liberties.

The myth is unlikely to disappear, Ohm says. “Law enforcement officials spin yarns about legions of expert hackers to gain new criminal laws, surveillance powers, and resources. The media enjoy high ratings and ad revenue reporting on online risks. Security vendors will sell more units in a world of unbridled power.”

On a not entirely unrelated note, a sequel to the 1983 hacker flick Wargames is reportedly in production.

Hat tip: Slashdot

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.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who oversees the issuance of agencies' security grades, wrote yesterday in The Hill newspaper's Congress Blog why the government's overall security grade increased from a D plus to a C minus. The reason: More agencies like the Department of Homeland Security know what electronic equipment they have, which goes a long way in knowing what you have to protect. Still, Davis says the Defense Department's grade of F "should worry us all."

He doesn't elaborate.

The futures Web site Poolitics.com offers a betting pool on whether General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan will stay or leave. The site allows visitors to bet $1.20 on whether Doan will remain in or leave her position by June 1. The closing date on wagering is tomorrow.

Poolitics describes itself "as the world's first and only parimutuel predictive polling outlet. ... New Pools are posted to the Marketplace daily — each one posing a question about the future outcome of an event or issue in the news, and offering entries for sale covering all of the possibilities."

Education Department officials are considering temporarily shutting down access to a student loan database due to some users accessing students' private data without permission, The Washington Post reports.

Some student loan companies have allowed marketing firms, collection agencies and loan brokerages to mine the database to collect information from the 60 million records in the system, the Post reports. The database, part of the National Student Loan Data System, stores sensitive financial information on students such as family income, Social Security numbers, addresses and other information.

A culture of corruption pervaded the security software company and government contractor CA Inc. almost from its inception, according to a report issued by the company's corporate board Thursday.

According to the report, founder and former CEO Charles Wang oversaw “accounting fraud lasting more than a decade at the software company,” once known as Computer Associates, reports The New York Times.

CA, which makes network management software, was 46th on Government Executive’s list of top 2005 federal technology contractors. It captured $117,763,017 worth of federal contracts in fiscal 2004, or 0.25 percent of the federal technology market. CA did not rank in the top 50 during fiscal 2005.

Wang’s successor, Sanjay Kumar was sentenced to12 years in a federal prison and agreed last week to pay $800 million in restitution to stockholders who lost money when it was revealed the company overstated earnings.

Wang has not been indicted, but the CA board charges he “masterminded accounting gimmicks that led his company to report inflated sales and profits,” the Times reports. CA “is still struggling to rebuild the trust of employees and shareholders, the report says. ...'Fraud pervaded the entire CA organization at every level, and was embedded in CA’s culture, as instilled by Mr. Wang, almost from the company’s inception,' according to the CA board."

In a statement, Wang called the report "fallacious" and blamed Kumar for the company's woes.

A former Social Security Administration employee was indicted Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for stealing identities from an SSA database, InformationWeek reports.

Jennifer Batiste, 45, allegedly received $20 for each query she made to an SSA computer network to collect social security numbers and other information needed to steal identities to apply for bogus credit cards, according to a government report. She allegedly handed the information over to Craig Harris, 50, and other co-conspirators, who used the data to make about $2.5 million worth of unauthorized charges to credit card accounts, the indictment alleges. Harris "pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and unlawful possession of a means of identification. Harris, who faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 17," according to the article. Batiste faces a maximum of 15 years in federal prison.

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan plans to meet Monday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel as part of the investigation into whether she violated the law that limits political activity in federal agencies, government sources confirmed.

The meeting with the independent federal investigative agency was expected to be arranged after allegations were leveled at Doan for violating the Hatch Act, a law limiting on-the-job political activity in government offices. Legal experts are divided on whether Doan broke the law.

OSC is investigating a Jan. 26 meeting at GSA's headquarters, which Doan attended with about 40 other political appointees. At the meeting, Scott Jennings, a deputy to Karl Rove, the leading political strategist at the White House, gave a PowerPoint presentation that listed Republican and Democratic House districts that the White House views as most vulnerable for the 2008 election. The presentation also included a map showing the Senate seats that are up for election in 2008 and whether the White House believes Republicans will have to play "defense" or "offense" on each seat.

Biometrics is becoming more popular in government as a security tool. Using digital fingerprints is a favored biometric because of its supposed infallibility – a belief that this video from the Discovery Channel show "MythBusters" proves to be misplaced.

In it, two innovative hackers manage to foil a door lock that doesn't use a key but rather an individual's fingerprint to identify those who are allowed access. The average person would have trouble replicating the hackers' methods, but they also use a low-tech method to gain access. They manage to lift the fingerprints of someone who has access to the fingerprint door lock by handing him a plastic CD case, and then retrieving the case and lifting the fingerprint. (For those of you who think the show gives hackers a "how to" manual on lifting fingerprints to break into laptop computers and door locks, the MythBusters producers inform viewers that they left out "one crucial step.")

Hat tip: ha.ckers.org

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."

Maine's Department of Health and Human Services will pay another $7 million on a failed Medicaid claims processing system before it can kill the project, according to an article in Maine's Times Record.

The total cost of the claims processing system could surpass $70 million, close to five times the amount Maine agreed to pay in 2001, when it awarded a $15 million contract to CNSI to develop the system. When the system was switched on in January 2005, it immediately began to have processing problems. IT program management experts blamed the state for not following best practices for project management, as reported by CIO Magazine.

Maine decided earlier this year to scrap the system in favor of privatizing the claims processing system.

In a recently released white paper, Information and Privacy commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Ann Cavoukian, and biometrics scientist Alex Stoianov, argue that a new biometric technology removes the privacy risks and concerns leveled at traditional biometric technology. Biometrics, which uses personal characteristics such as digital fingerprints and iris scans to identify individuals, has been criticized for its vulnerability to abuse by governments and to identity theft. Some U.S. agencies rely on digital fingerprints for identification, such as the U.S. VISIT program, which fingerprints visiting foreigners entering the United States. Those fingerprints are stored in a database.

In their white paper, Cavoukian and Stoianov acknowledge that "done poorly, biometric technologies can be highly privacy-invasive. Biometric data, once collected, can be stored, shared and used for numerous secondary purposes, inviting potential discrimination and identity theft."

But an emerging technology called Biometric Encryption dispenses with the need to store an image of, say, a fingerprint in a database in favor of using "the fingerprint [image] to encrypt or code some other information, like a PIN or account number, or cryptographic key, and only store the biometrically encrypted code, not the biometric itself. This removes the need for public or private sector organizations to collect and store actual biometric images in their database."

The technology, however, may not be enough to assuage fears in the European Union, which is facing strong opposition from citizens in all 27 EU countries to a proposed central fingerprint database, the London Times Online reports.

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