Starting tomorrow, the first of the 78 million baby boomers become eligible for early retirement benefits, and the Social Security Administration hopes the more computer savvy of the boomers will turn to the agency's Web site for information, according to The Dallas Morning News.

"Look online first," Wes Davis, a Social Security spokesman in Dallas, told the paper. "If that's not possible, call our toll-free number [1-800-772-1213] or make an appointment to visit one of our offices."

Phone calls and office visits are more likely to be the preferred choice to gather retirement information, we think. Unlike their children (maybe their children's children?), who grew up with easy access to cell phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets, the first boomers (born in 1946) were well into their thirties before desktop PCs and cell phones were commonplace, and over 50 before the Internet was used routinely. We'll track SSA's Web traffic to see if it experiences any unusual traffic. But we're guessing the traffic will be more on foot and over land lines.

If you're heading back home tomorrow on New Year's Day, you may want to take note of a new Transportation Department rule that forbids air travelers from packing loose lithium batteries (those typically used in laptops, cell phones, digital cameras and other electronic equipment) in checked luggage.

Transportation Department officials have been concerned for years that the lithium batteries can ignite a fire. The batteries can generate intense heat if a short circuit occurs, which can be caused by metal touching both battery terminals or if internal seals fail. (More on why lithium batteries ignite.) Dell Computer recalled 1.4 million laptop computer batteries in 2006 because of a fire hazard due to the batteries. Days later, Apple Computer Inc. recalled 1.8 million batteries. Recalls of lithium batteries go back years.

According to the WSJ, the rule, which goes into effect Jan.1, requires that:

travelers can bring a laptop computer, digital camera, cellphone and other equipment on board or in checked luggage if their lithium batteries are installed in the items.

And fliers can bring spare batteries in carry-on luggage if they're stored in plastic bags or if they're in the original retail packaging. But travelers can bring only as many as two such spare batteries, and each must be packed separately.

Here are some examples of airline fires linked to lithium batteries, as reported by USA Today:

On July 26, 600 people were evacuated from a San Diego office building when a FedEx package exploded. The package contained a backup power supply for a computer, a type of battery. No one was seriously injured.

Prompted by a 1999 fire in a crate of lithium batteries at Los Angeles International Airport, the FAA two years ago banned shipments of such batteries on passenger planes because they can spontaneously combust. The batteries can still be shipped on cargo flights.

A lithium camera battery burst into flames and ignited a seat on a chartered Boeing 727 on Oct. 29, 2004, FAA records show. A flight attendant extinguished the fire, and the jet returned to Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Several aircraft accidents have been linked to hazardous cargo. Pilots of a UPS DC-8 barely landed in Philadelphia on Feb. 7 with a raging cargo fire. The National Transportation Safety Board says there is no evidence that an aircraft malfunction caused the fire, but they have not identified its cause.

Investigators found lithium-based batteries near the fire.

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.

Headlines from around the Web for Wednesday, Dec. 19.
Compiled by Melanie Bender

Poll Finds IT Workers Are Well-Off, Mostly Male and Concerned About Iraq
ComputerWorld
The IT workforce is overwhelmingly male, white and well-paid, and it sees the war in Iraq as the top political issue in the U.S., according to a poll of 600 tech workers by the Computing Technology Industry Association.

Congress Eases Access to Government Records
The Associated Press
Congress on Tuesday struck back at the Bush administration's trend toward secrecy since the 2001 terrorist attacks, passing legislation to toughen the Freedom of Information Act and increasing penalties on agencies that don't comply.

Congress Lags on Tech Issues in '07
ComputerWorld
No one is calling 2007 a banner year for the technology industry in the U.S. Congress. Congress passed a handful of bills that were on the wish lists of many tech vendor and trade groups, but in several cases, they represented only partial victories.

St. Louis Park Plans to Drop Wireless Contractor
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
St. Louis Park is dropping the contractor that was supposed to build the nation's first solar-powered citywide wireless Internet service. It will soon look for a new partner. City staff members estimate delays by the Maryland-based company have cost the city $300,000 in lost revenue.

Airport Fast-Pass Moves Slowly
BusinessWeek
Clear, a system which lets screened travelers skip long security lines, epitomizes the pitfalls of developing technology for Homeland Security agencies. Such partnerships between the private sector and DHS often become mired in bureaucracy.

In Colorado, Solution for Election Woes May Not be Simple
Rocky Mountain News
Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman tried Tuesday to ease widespread anxiety about upcoming elections by proposing ways that flawed electronic voting systems could be used in 2008 with small fixes and the help of new legislation. Meanwhile, voter advocacy groups laid the groundwork for another lawsuit.

Feinstein Offers Compromise: Secret Court Review of Wiretap Cases
San Francisco Chronicle
With the Senate at an impasse over protecting telecommunications companies from lawsuits for sharing phone calls and e-mails with the government, Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she has a possible compromise: allowing a secret court to decide whether the firms believed they were acting legally.

Judge Blocks Fla. Voter Registration Law
The Associated Press
A federal judge blocked enforcement Tuesday of a Florida law that prevents people from registering to vote if officials cannot match their Social Security or driver's license numbers to federal or state databases.

Usually, when a company toots its own horn it's because the positives aren't noteworthy enough to speak for themselves. Not so in the case of Chantilly, Va.-based solution provider GTSI. The company has promoted its recent accomplishments hard, but with what seems like good reasons.

Most federal agencies know GTSI. The company made its name (and profits) for the majority of its 25 years in business by selling IT products. But changes in how the federal government buys IT, poor corporate management decisions and a botched ERP system implementation led GTSI to a $16 million loss in 2005, no line of credit and a 55 percent employee attrition rate.

Fast forward two years to the present. The company's services revenue has grown from $18 million to $150 million -- that's a 733 percent growth rate. Earlier this month GSA awarded GTSI a Mission Oriented Business Integrated Services (MOBIS) Schedule, which some might argue as confirmation that company efforts to transition from product peddler to services provider are working. In its third quarter of 2007, its gross margin reached nearly 15 percent and operating expenses declined more than 5 percent. Sales for that same period declined 25 percent, but management points to the corporate decision to not discount orders of less than $10,000 and net certain software and service offerings as the reason. Net income for the quarter was $5.5 million compared to a let loss of $3.4 million a year ago -- a positive change of 263 percent.

CEO Jim Leto said in a meeting with Government Executive Tuesday that GTSI has achieved all of the objectives he set when he took over the helm in February 2006. Whether or not that will continue remains to be seen. When asked what we might expect for the year-end financials, Leto only said that he hoped a spending bill would get passed sooner rather than later. Maybe that signifies an impending loss, as agencies have slowed IT spending awaiting for the long-delayed passage of a fiscal 2008 appropriations bill. A loss would fall in line with analyst predictions.

But here's the bigger question: If GTSI manages to pull itself consistently back in the black after years of hemorraging cash, will Leto stick around? Not likely. Last month, he relinquished 'president' from his title, promoting Scott Friedlander from executive vice president to president and chief operating officer. Chances are that was step one in a planned succession. Leto is undoubtedly a turnaround CEO, having done exactly that for a number of other companies that he later sold off. At the very least, GTSI's success might spur Leto's retirement (his third, he will tell you). If that does indeed happen in the near future -- and Leto would neither confirm nor deny when asked -- it could be the best sign for the company yet. As stated by Bill Weber, GTSI's senior vice president of programs and services: "The goal of the management team is to let him retire."

Headlines from around the Web for Tuesday, Dec. 18.
Compiled by Melanie Bender

ACSI: E-Gov Losing Ground with Citizens
Government Computer News
The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, released Monday by the University of Michigan, shows that citizens’ enthusiasm for e-government is tempering a bit. But they are still more satisfied with e-government than with the federal government overall.

Ohio E-Voting System Security Bashed in New State Report
ComputerWorld
E-voting in Ohio faces a host of potential security, equipment and process changes following the release of an 86-page report that criticizes the existing e-voting systems used in the state. The report concludes that security shortcomings in Ohio's e-voting systems are a continuing danger to the accuracy of elections there.

New Police Radio System in New York State Draws Scrutiny
The New York Times
A $2 billion emergency radio network intended to connect all emergency agencies and local police and fire departments in New York State has failed its first major test, prompting concerns from some state officials and causing the state’s second largest city, Buffalo, to opt out of the system.

E-Voting Decertification Leaves Elections in Turmoil
The Denver Post
Colorado's looming primary and presidential elections were thrown into turmoil Monday when many of the state's electronic voting machines were deemed unreliable and unsecure by Secretary of State Mike Coffman.

Data Storage Researcher Says Businesses Generally Ignoring E-Discovery Rules
CIO Insight
A year and 16 days after the institution of the revised Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on Dec. 1, 2006, about two-thirds of U.S. businesses remain unprepared to meet strict court requirements for the discovery and handling of electronic evidence, according to a data storage researcher.

Government Researchers, Academics Present New Threshold for Network Stability
Government Computer News
A researcher for the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory led a team to further define the point at which complex networks become unstable, inefficient or even unusable. Thanks to a further refinement in a mathematical notion known as percolation theory, they found these thresholds lower than previously assumed.

Energy Usage Benchmark May Help IT Buyers Find Greener Servers
ComputerWorld
Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC), a nonprofit company that creates performance benchmarks widely used by server vendors, has released a test suite designed to enable system buyers to comparison-shop on the basis of energy efficiency.

USAspending.gov Gets Lukewarm Reception
Washington Technology
The Office of Management and Budget’s publicly accessible database of government contracts, grants, loans and other transactions is receiving mixed reviews from the contracting community.

Deal on Verifying Workers Reached
Chicago Tribune
Illinois has temporarily backed down from enforcing a controversial new state law that blocks employers from using a federal database to check workers' immigration status.

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.

Headlines from around the Web
Compiled by Melanie Bender

GSA Issues IPv6 Training RFI
Washington Technology
In a new request for information, GSA said it wants information on IPv6 training from companies that already have GSA contracts suitable for providing training. GSA is also asking companies about their current IPv6 training courses.

Computer Servers in U.S., Japan and Europe are Power Hogs
InformationWeek
The worldwide consumption of energy to power computer servers, cooling equipment, and related infrastructure gear doubled from 2000 to 2005, and the U.S. devoured about 40 percent of that. However, research indicates the developing Asia-Pacific region will eclipse the U.S. by 2010.

Holiday Season Fertile Ground for IM, Web-Based Threats
NetworkWorld
E-mail and instant messaging programs can be compromised such that threats will most often materialize in a way that they appear to have come from known contacts. Attackers are also compromising the home pages of popular Web sites, allowing them to inject malicious code onto any system that visits a Web site that isn't adequately protected.

Survey: IT Managers Expect Problems with Projects
InformationWeek
According to a survey of 800 middle and senior IT managers in eight countries, 43 percent expect problems with their IT projects and have learned to live with IT project challenges.

GAO to USPS: Address Database Errors
Federal Computer Week
USPS developed the Facilities Database in 2003 to capture and maintain data on the agency’s 34,000 facilities nationwide, but five years later, the database is still not the central source for facility data as planned and its information is inaccurate, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Dec. 10.

States Must Designate Fusion Centers to Work with Feds
Federal Computer Week
The Homeland Security and Justice departments want state governors and other officials to name a single fusion center from every state to work directly with the federal government.

Open Source and the Corporate Elephant
InfoWorld
A number of corporations are moving into the free software arena, resulting in legions of programmers, paid by companies, moving into free software communities.

Georgia Outsourcing Tech Jobs, Cutting Positions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Sonny Perdue announced he plans to consolidate the 11 agencies that account for most of the state's information technology spending. Those agencies spend about $617 million on computers and other technology a year. A restructured Georgia Technology Authority will then bid out technology services to private companies. The contracts will be awarded late next year.

First Responder Budget Cuts Draw Congressional Ire
eWeek
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are blasting a Bush administration proposal to cut 2009 funding by as much as half for local emergency management operations, including interoperability grants. A lack of funding could jeopardize state and local emergency management agencies' plans to utilize spectrum that will be auctioned by the government in January.

Data Breach Prompts Ohio Pact with McAfee for SafeBoot
ComputerWorld
State officials announced late last week that they have agreed to purchase about 60,000 licenses of McAfee Inc.'s SafeBoot encryption software. The state will begin rolling out SafeBoot's policy-based encryption technology to government offices beginning early next year, according to the Ohio Department of Administrative Services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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

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

And this lesson comes from a security vendor.

Like companies in the private sector, federal agencies may eventually be required to notify citizens of an information security breach on a federal computer network that exposes citizens’ personal information, such as Social Security numbers, financial data, addresses and credit card numbers. (The Federal Agency Data Breach Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., in May, would establish standards for how an agency informs the public if it loses personal information as does like legislation passed by more than two dozen states.)

As is the case in most comparisons with the private sector, the federal government would likely not do as a good a job in notifying the public, most people would say. But that isn’t the case in one, real-world example. In its December/January issue (not yet posted online), CSO Magazine compares how Monster.com and the USAJOBS, the federal government’s site for job openings, handled the security breach of monster.com’s database of resumes in August. About 146,000 names and contact information of job seekers on the USAJOBS Web site were stolen.

CSO Executive Editor Scott Berinato offers a side-by-side comparison of the notification letters that the organizations sent out to notify customers of the breach. (He describes such notification letters as requiring “verbal contortionists who must twist words unnaturally and move sentences in awkward, sometimes contradictory directions.”)

The upshot: USAJOBS did a relatively better job in its letter than Monster.com did, according to the two anonymous public relations executives CSO asked to critique the letters. Here’s a synopsis of CSO’s critique:

-- While neither organization should have started out their letters using the “dear” salutation (the personal touch doesn’t match the urgent tone of the notice), USAJOBS executives wrote a better letter by stating the facts immediately and clearly versus Monster’s “hollow marketing spin” opening. (“We value the trust you place in Monster,” the company’s CEO wrote.)
-- USAJOBS avoids saying sorry and uses the more legally safe word “regrettably.” Monster tells readers that they, too, are a victim in this crime (a no-no) and that many other companies have experienced security breaches as well (another non-no). USAJOBS dos not offer similar excuses.
-- Monster violated the rule more than USAJOBS in urging customers to learn more about online fraud. (That makes it sound like customers/citizens are partly to blame for the breach, which is an implication you don’t want to make.)
-- Both organizations failed in putting the breach into fuller context of what the breach could mean to the customer.

Maybe one reason for why Monster’s letter was less effective than USAJOBS’ letter is the fact that Monster’s letter had more of a lawyer’s influence. The federal government may be less afraid of being hauled into court over a security breach.

Headlines from around the Web for Tuesday, Dec. 11.
Compiled by Melanie Bender

Web Leaders Seek More Searchable Government
The Washington Post
Leaders from Google and Wikipedia plan to tell the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs today to require federal agencies to make Web sites, records and databases more searchable.

Washington State Area High School Pilots Technology Program
The Columbia Basin Herald
Teachers can soon create customized computer desktops and offer students access to online resources from home. The school district is the second district in the United States to use a virtual-learning environment called Editure.

Trusted Users Pose Significant Security Threats, Survey Finds
NetworkWorld
It probably doesn't give security managers much comfort to hear that the majority of internal employees that pose a significant threat to network security are well-meaning, innocent offenders -- as opposed to those with malice on the mind.

DNS Attack Could Signal Phishing 2.0
ComputerWorld
Georgia Tech and Google estimate that as many as 0.4 percent, or 68,000, open-recursive DNS servers are behaving maliciously, returning false answers to DNS queries. They also estimate that another 2 percent of them provide questionable results.

CIA Tape Destruction Offers Cautionary Tale for CIOs
ComputerWorld
The recent revelation that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two terrorist suspects may offer a timely reminder for CIOs at private companies in the U.S. tasked with electronic evidence preservation rules since last December.

New System to Track Evacuees with Special Needs
The Houston Chronicle
After dealing with massive, chaotic evacuations that followed hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Texas hired AT&T to help it improve the way it handles future disaster relocations. The system AT&T devised should help emergency workers better track "special needs" evacuees, or those who are unable to drive themselves to safety after a disaster.

N.J. Urging Congress to Halt Transfer of High-Tech Defense Jobs to Md.
The Baltimore Sun
One of Maryland's largest military base expansions is slated to come under congressional scrutiny this week, as civilian employees at Fort Monmouth press their fight to spare the 90-year-old base in New Jersey and keep its high-tech defense jobs from moving to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County.

Saving E-mails Could Cost Missouri More Than $1 Million
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Missouri's computer chief said it could cost more than $1 million to keep backup copies of the hundreds of thousands of e-mails that are sent and received daily by government workers. The move to back up the e-mails came as Gov. Matt Blunt was facing increased scrutiny over the e-mail deletion practices of his office.

New Software Improves the Reliability of Wireless Links
The Wall Street Journal
Traditional virtual private networks were designed to work with personal computers and laptops plugged into a phone or data line. But more recently, field workers have begun accessing VPNs from outside of the office or workplace, using a laptop and wireless card, or a smart phone. The applications these workers use weren't designed for wireless networks.

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.

Headlines from around the Web for Monday, Dec. 10
Compiled by Melanie Bender

Sophisticated Cyberattack on National Labs Under Way, Oak Ridge Says
NetworkWorld
The U.S. science and technology lab Oak Ridge National Laboratory yesterday disclosed it has been compromised by what it described as a “sophisticated cyber attack that appears to be part of a coordinated attempt to gain access to computer networks at numerous laboratories and other institutions across the country.”

Denver Airport Goes Fast and Free with WiFi
InfoWorld
The airport, one of the busiest in the United States, last month switched its public Wi-Fi offering from paid to advertising-supported. Within a week, and with no public notice of the change, Wi-Fi use grew tenfold, said Jim Winston, director of telecommunications for the airport. He expects the network to get even busier.

Data Breaches, Regulations Fueling Data Encryption Adoption
NetworkWorld
Although data encryption adds cost and complexity, business and government sectors are becoming wedded to it -- even though at times it’s like an arranged marriage driven by regulatory compliance and fear of data-breach fiascos.

Companies Provide a Blueprint for IT Governance
InformationWeek
It's not simple for IT to define its goals, position services and the need for constant evolution, and then communicate its capabilities and services to its line-of-business customers. The good news is that a lot of thinking has already gone into the problem.

Personal Data Thefts More Than Triple This Year
USA Today
More than 162 million records have been reported lost or stolen in 2007, triple the 49.7 million that went missing in 2006, according to USA TODAY's analysis of data losses reported over the past two years.

E-Prescription Firm Receives a Political Boost
The Washington Post
Electronic prescriptions are considered a key component in a long-discussed national system of electronic health records. Last week, lawmakers and the Department of Health and Human Services took several steps to speed the transition.

Houston Threatens to Sue Company that Provided Its Court Technology System
The Houston Chronicle
City officials, at their wit's end with the company they hired to turn municipal courts into an electronic operation, this week threatened to sue unless the company fixes problems with the $10 million system.

Cuyahoga Elections Officials Not Ready to Scrap Touch-Screen Machines
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The election board's hesitation came despite pressure from secretary of state to switch to optical-scan equipment with the March 4 presidential primary looming. The board president said members will welcome public comment on the county's voting system during the board's Dec. 17 meeting.

The Army has canceled for the third consecutive year the Army Small Computer Program (ASCP), its annual information technology conference. The ASCP was scheduled to take place next March in Phoenix.

Instead, ASCP said in a note to vendors it will hold its conference in conjunction with the LandWarNet Conference in Orlando Aug. 19-31, 2008, which may make things a wee bit hot for golf.

I asked the Army’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems if the conference was canceled for budget reasons. The folks at PEO-EIS said they could not answer that question and pointed to a statement on the ASCP Web site for an explanation. The statement reads: “The ASCP move to the LandWarNet Conference is aligned with the Vision set forth in the Army CIO/G-6 500-Day Plan, to deliver a joint net-centric information enterprise that enables Warfighter decision superiority.”

The PEO-EIS folks, who understandably like to remain anonymous, said they really did not know what that means. Neither do I. Anyone who would like to enlighten me or PEO EIS, please send in a comment.

Headlines from around the Web for Friday, Dec. 7.
Compiled by Melanie Bender

IT Growth Expected to Slow in 2008
InformationWeek
Worldwide IT spending will experience slower growth rates next year because of economic uncertainties and risk, according to a report out Thursday by IDC. The analyst firm is predicting global IT market growth for 2008 at 5.5 percent to 6 percent, down from 6.9 percent this year.

Texas AG Sues Two Sites for Children's Privacy Violations
ComputerWorld
Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott has sued two Web sites that cater to children for failing to take adequate measures to protect their identities and personal information. The lawsuits are the first in the U.S. to be brought under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 and highlight the many privacy pitfalls facing minors that the law is designed to address.

Montana Dept. of Corrections Employees Disciplined for E-mail Use
Government Computer News
Montana’s Department of Corrections yesterday announced it was disciplining 74 Montana State Prison employees for misusing e-mail. Most of the employees received a verbal warning, department officials said. A few received written warnings, counseling or unpaid leave. One employee resigned.

Feds OK Arizona's Plan for High-Tech Driver's Licenses
The Arizona Republic
Arizona could start issuing new driver's licenses with radio-identification chips next year that would be used in lieu of a passport at the U.S.-Mexican border. The licenses also could prove work eligibility under a new state law that requires employers to verify that workers are in the country legally.

New Contract Provision to Standardize Green IT
WashingtonTechnology
The Office of Management and Budget is expected to publish next week a provision to the Federal Acquisition Regulations to purchase environmental and energy-saving electronic products when they are available.

Two State-of-the-Art Buildings to House Montana's Computers
The Billings Gazette
State computer managers are beginning to plan two state-of-the-art computer buildings that should ensure voting, tax and other vital electronic functions are impervious to floods, power outages - even an earthquake.

New Mexico Driver's Licenses Aim to Cut Identity Theft
The Santa Fe New Mexican
The Motor Vehicle Division will issue licenses from a central source, a state-contracted vendor in Washington state. The MVD also will use the latest technology to make sure you are who you say you are and to help ensure that someone hasn't swiped your identity.

New York Governor Plans Statewide Broadband Internet Access
The Associated Press
Gov. Eliot Spitzer plans to provide broadband Internet service to even the most remote areas of the state. An affordable high-speed Internet service plan was part of what Spitzer said would be a transformation and expansion of New York's economy and aims to provide a tool to boost the long-stagnant economy in upstate counties.

Diann McCoy, who has served as the Defense Information Systems Agency’s component acquisition executive since 2002, plans to retire Jan. 3, 2008. The component acquisition executive develops and provides acquisition policies, processes, procedures, tools and lifecycle oversight for the agency.

Tony Montemarano, the agency’s director of information assurance and network operations, will replace McCoy, DISA said.

McCoy began her government service in August 1971 at the Directorate of Materiel Management at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. McCoy was tapped for Senior Executive Service in 1989 and joined DISA in January 1994, where she served as deputy commander of the Center for Computer Systems Engineering, Joint Interoperability and Engineering Organization. She became deputy director for the C4 and Intelligence Program Integration Directorate in June 1996 and served from November 1999 to April 2001 as deputy manager of the National Communications System.

Awards McCoy received during her career include the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award, the Technology Award for Government Leadership, the Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive Award and the Certified Professional Logistician from the Society of Logistics Engineers.

A group called Techno Patriots in Southern Arizona has set up its own version of the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative Network, called SBInet, replete with wireless cameras. The group says its do-it-yourself version has a better response time than the problem plagued Boeing-built DHS system, according to an article in the Sierra-Vista, Ariz., Herald.

Techno Patriots, which describes itself on its Web site as “basically a high tech Neighborhood Watch group on the border,” said it has installed a commercial grade wireless Internet infrastructure in Cochise County, Ariz., the most highly trafficked smuggling area in the United States.

The group said it has installed video cameras on this infrastructure, which are then monitored by its members, who keep an eye out for illegal immigrants. Techno Patriots said it can easily shift the cameras from one location to another and intends to eventually operate the system 365 days a year.

John Healy, the group’s director, told the Herald that the cameras used by Techno Patriots can be controlled remotely with a joystick, with only a two- to five-second delay from joystick touch to camera movement, compared to a 30- to 40-second delay for the SBInet cameras.

Techno Patriots may have some pretty nifty camera technology, but its Web site needs some work. I tried to use the “Contact Us” page to send an email to the group, only to receive a dreaded HTTP 404 “page not found” message.

Headlines from around the Web for Wednesday, Dec. 5.
Compiled by Melanie Bender

New York to Begin Emergency Notification Pilot Program
The New York Times
The city announced it will start a pilot program on Monday that will deliver alerts by text messages, e-mail messages and phone calls, warning about flooding, chemical spills and other emergencies to anyone who signs up.

Network Skills in High Demand, Poll Finds
NetworkWorld
Research shows that nearly 20 percent of CIOs cite networking as the single job area in which they expect to see the most growth.

Authors Advises on How to Recruit and Retain the Net Generation
ComputerWorld
Author Don Tapscott notes that the Net Generation's work habits are different from those of their parents, because they have been profoundly influenced by technology like instant messaging, video games, mobile phones and search -- but they are not lazy.

MIT Puts Entire Curriculum Online
ComputerWorld
First announced in 2001, MIT's OpenCourseWare includes syllabuses, homework assignments, exams, reference materials and video lectures when available. The information is published under an open license that allows for reuse, distribution and modification of the materials for noncommercial purposes.

Birmingham City Schools will be First in Nation to Get $200 XO Laptops
The Birmingham News
The Birmingham mayor signed a purchase agreement for 15,000 laptops from One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to provide every child in the world with access to technology.

Penalty Fee Allows City to Revamp WiFi Plan
The Houston Chronicle
City officials in Houston are planning to use part of the $5 million penalty fee that EarthLink paid in September to finance a "digital inclusion" program intended to help students and the elderly in low-income neighborhoods access the Internet.

DHS' Data Mining Sparks More Controversy
Federal Computer Week
Although the Homeland Security Department terminated a controversial visual analytics data mining program this summer, it continues to engage in visual analytics research in a separate program, a spokeswoman confirmed.

Security Vendor: Malware Samples Doubled in One Year
InfoWorld
Through the end of 2006 and 20 years prior, Finnish security vendor F-Secure counted a total of 250,000 samples of malicious software, said the company's chief research officer. This year alone, 250,000 samples have been counted.

Web-Based Campaign Finance Reporting System Promises Ease
The Arizona Republic
The Arizona Secretary of State's Office is rolling out a Web-based campaign finance reporting system designed to make it easier for campaigns to enter information. Deputy Secretary of State Kevin Tyne said the simplified process will help get the information to the public sooner.

Pentagon Pursues Mashups, Microformats for Battlefield Intel
eWeek
The Pentagon is experimenting with using microformats with mashups to help expose legacy information for broader reuse.

The City of Westminster – the London Borough which encompasses the West End Theater District and government buildings such as Parliament – launched last week what it described as the first service in the United Kingdom to help people find their nearest public loo using mobile phone location technology.

SatLav is a play on words for the term used in the UK for consumer GPS receivers – SatNav – and the word lavatory – for toilet. But SatLav works by determining the location of the nearest public toilet for a desperate user by triangulation with nearby mobile phone towers.

If nature calls while in London, just send a simple text message – “toilet” to 80097 – and the SatLav technology provider will do a database search to determine the location of the nearest public toilet – much to the relief of the caller.

Gail King, a 26-year-old student, came up with the idea for SatLav while writing her Master’s thesis, “'Public Toilets: A Woman’s Place” and figured “a text service would be really useful for people on the move.” And, ostensibly, who just can’t hold it.

The Westminster cabinet member for street environment said that the SatLav service puts the Borough way ahead of any other local authority in the UK in public lavatory service. Bradley said Westminster already had “an unrivalled, award-winning provision of public toilets” but the “groundbreaking” SatLav initiative “shows we are always looking for new, innovative ways to improve our service.”

This is a government that really cares at the most basic level.

For the past two weeks, we've invited you to take an online survey to find out what you think will be the hot federal technology trends in 2008. 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.

Headlines from around the Web for Dec. 4
Compiled by Melanie Bender

Group Will Develop Antivirus Testing Guidelines by Early Next Year
ComputerWorld
Last week, security vendors and software testing organizations agreed during a conference in Seoul to form the Anti-Malware Testing Working Group, which will determine how best to conduct behavioral tests of security software, said Andreas Marx, who works for AV-Test.org, a German antivirus software testing group.

Data Sharing, Access Present Problems for Fusion Centers
Washington Technology
Many state and local officials who work at fusion centers report problems logging onto federal networks and have difficulty handling the high volume of information they receive from federal authorities, according to a recent survey by government auditors.

Investigators Continue to Probe Data Access by Denver DA's Office
The Denver Post
After the U.S. attorney's office brought charges last month against a federal special agent for obtaining information from the National Crime Information Center, state and federal agents interviewed employees at the DA's office to find out why they accessed the same information; and the agents aren't finished yet.

Symposium Discusses 'Government in the Age of YouTube'
Government Technology
In an attempt to get a better grasp on how government ought to operate in a Web 2.0 world, the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council, a consortium of leaders from the public and private sectors, recently held its 2007 symposium titled Government in the Age of YouTube.

Report Paints Bleak Picture of FDA IT, Resources, Science
Federal Computer Week
The Food and Drug Administration is so underfunded that it does not have the science foundation, staff or information technology to meet mounting demands to oversee the country’s drugs, medical devices and food safety, FDA’s Science Board said in a report released Nov. 29.

DOD Including COIs in All Major Defense IT Projects
Government Computer News
In the federal sector, the Department of Defense is spearheading a movement to incorporate communities of interest in all phases of major IT projects, and, after early success with the approach, is beginning to codify the best practices for creating and managing COIs to achieve the maximum benefit.

Oregon Schools' New Online Assessment Test Appears Free of Glitches that Doomed Previous System
The Register Guard
Nearly six weeks into the first round of assessment testing, schools are reporting only a smattering of glitches, and most say they prefer the new Technology Enhanced Statewide Assessment system better than the old.

Web Hosting Providers Let Security Sag
eWeek
Several .gov domains in the past few months have seen their sites seeded with redirects to malicious servers in other countries that have pushed pornography, malware, Viagra ads and the like to site visitors.

IT Spending Will Get Off to Weak Start in 2008, Research Firm Says
ComputerWorld
The outlook for IT spending in the new year is "unusually bad," according to ChangeWave Research LLC, which said its latest quarterly tracking survey of corporate users shows that an increasing number of companies are looking to hold down their purchases of technology products and services.

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

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

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

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

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