In the most recent New Yorker magazine, an article details how the Defense Department is using virtual reality gaming software to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, an mental illness afflicting soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The program, which takes soldiers back into the streets and battles in Iraq with scenes that look identical to a kid's upscale video game, is called Virtual Iraq.

More than a year before, Nextgov editor at large Bob Brewin wrote an article about using virtual reality to treat PTSD while working for Government Health IT. If you think gaming software – or virtual reality exposure therapy, as its practitioners call it – has no place in treating these soldiers suffering from PTSD, consider this from Brewin's article:

As reported in Government Executive, Congress is pretty angry with the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments over their "sending the wrong message" - a polite term for misleading it over the number of veterans attempting or successfully committing suicide. The VA claimed last year that only 790 veterans it saw in medical facilities attempted suicide, whereas the real number was over a 1,000 per month.

VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield, however, didn't think there was any attempt to mislead Congress.

In addition, Mansfield and Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness David S. C. Chu also tried to place the best spin on the increasing number of suicide attempts. Mansfield said that young people between the ages of 15 and 24 try suicide more than others, and since Defense recruits in that age group, an increasing number of suicides should not be seen as an epidemic.

This is an interesting view given that it appears that veterans between 20 and 24 years old, and the ones most likely to have been in Iraq or Afghanistan, are committing suicide at twice to four times the rate of civilians of the same age.

Chu put an even more positive spin on the situation. “I think the good news is that on an age-adjusted basis, department suicide rates as a whole tend to be a bit below the national norm. And even with the Army’s increase it puts at approximately at the national level.”

So active duty suicide rates are increasing, especially in the Army, but when you average it out, it is about the same as the general population.

Nothing to worry about here, mate, just move along.

If this is what Defense and VA think is good news, I would hate to see what they think is bad news.

For whatever reason, there seems to be a curse attached to many of the winners of the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. You win it, and something bad seems to happen.

Appears the curse hit again.

Last November, the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), which also is known as Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, became the first Department of Defense organization in history selected to receive the Baldrige Award.

Last week, a 2-pound metal fragment from a routine munition test traveled over a mile instead of the predicted 1,300 feet, crash landed onto a two-story house off the base, ended up landing in a child's bed and critically injuring the cat that was lying there. The cat had to be put asleep.

The Army is investigating what happened and why, suspended further tests and has apologized to the family.

The only good news about this, if you can call it that, is at least the event didn't happen the week before when ARDEC's technical director was giving a keynote speech at the North Jersey American Society for Quality Spring Quality Conference 2008 on winning the Baldrige Award.

With Tuesday being "Taxdueday," I hope all you Army employees have made that extra effort to file your taxes. In case you didn't get the word, the IRS sent a letter to Army Secretary Pete Geren asking him for assistance in getting Army personnel to comply with tax filing requirements.

It seems that the average tax delinquency rate (i.e., balances owed and/or an unfiled tax return) averages 4.68 percent for Army personnel, while for the rest of government it is only 3.8 percent.

The IRS told Geren, "Our system of taxation relies on voluntary compliance. If the public perceives that the federal employees do not maintain the highest level of tax compliance, public confidence in government will suffer."

So, if you would, the IRS asks Geren, please remind your employees through "memorandum, publication, pay statement insert or through your local area network" to voluntarily comply.

And, if they don't, the IRS told Geren to expect "this issue to generate congressional and media interest during the tax filing season."

So, for the good of public confidence in government that rests on Army employee shoulders, won't you please file your taxes?

Government Executive's Bob Brewin reports today that the Pentagon has come closer than ever to admitting it will engage in offensive cyberwarfare if provoked, including knocking out satellites and networks operated by adversaries. That's not a good idea, says Richard Clarke, former special advisor on cybersecurity for President Bush who spoke today at the inaugural Source Boston security conference, according to an InfoWorld article.

"The concept of mutually assured destruction that was employed by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the Cold War to discourage nuclear attack doesn't port well to the world of cyberspace, but the president's advisors seem to think that it will, he said," InfoWorld reports.

Says Clarke:

In cyber-space, who knows what capability anybody has? It's much more important to know what you could do if someone launched an attack on the U.S., how much could [someone] really shut down and what would be the effect, I suspect that the U.S. is much more vulnerable than other countries, because we are more wired and dependent on cyberspace. China has structured its infrastructure such that it can shut itself off, and create [its] own environment if it wants to; so it seems that there are asymmetries.

Clarke says the United States should focus more on telling American corporations and government agencies where common infrastructures and applications are vulnerable and how to patch them.

As reported by Government Executive's Bob Brewin, the latest GAO report on the Army's Future Combat System, "Significant Challenges Ahead in Developing and Demonstrating Future Combat System's Network and Software," is not particularly flattering.

As the GAO report notes, "Almost five years into the program, it is not yet clear if or when the information network that is at the heart of the FCS concept can be developed, built, and demonstrated by the Army and LSI."

Does this mean that the FCS probability of success has slipped below the 70 percent mark (actual "in excess of 70 percent") that then Chief of Staff of the Army General Peter Schoomaker in 2004 told Congress after FCS was restructured to follow a spiral process?

Some of you may recall that before the restructuring, Schoomaker told Congress that FCS had only a 28% chance of success (which makes one wonder how given its size and importance to the Army it ever was allowed to proceed in the first place).

I would be interested, given the latest difficulties, what the Army now thinks the probability of success for FCS is today - higher or lower than 70 percent?

I hope someone in Congress asks them.

Revealing some of the inside frustration that comes with leaks to the press, John Grimes, chief information officer and assistant secretary of networks and information infrastructure at the Defense Department, said a “disloyal” person was to blame for disclosing information about President Bush’s Cyber Initiative, reportedly totaling several billion dollars.

It was unclear whether the disloyal individual Grimes referred to in his morning session at the Information Processing Interagency Conference was the person inside government that leaked the information or the reporter with The Wall Street Journal that decided to run with the story. Regardless, he seemed to take personally the release of details on the White House cybersecurity directive signed by President Bush in January.

“We did not want this public until we got [various issues] resolved,” including those relating to privacy, Grimes said, referencing the numerous hearings that have been scheduled since the story broke. each hearing requires executives at Defense, the departments of Homeland Security and State, and the Office of National Intelligence to prepare to testify.

“This comes down to political [culture] of decisions,” Grimes said. “Whether an attack is an act of war or criminal -- who makes that decision?”

Reports from news outlets seem to have prompted the release of some details – though not many – about the cybersecurity initiative. Most recently, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff released remarks made to a roundtable of bloggers.

"We are beginning our cyberstrategy," he said. "That will not be done this year, but I'm hoping we can get it, a cybercenter, up and running, and have a full set of plans and a funding budget to move forward over the next several years to get to the next level of cybersecurity."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported today more than 400 seizures of counterfeit Cisco equipment and labels worth more than $76 million filtering into the United States from China.

The effort, which has been ongoing since 2005, is being driven by DHS and FBI. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Customs and Border Protection conducted 28 investigations and managed six indictments and four felony convictions, with more than 74,000 fakes seized, while the FBI’s portion of the initiative, dubbed Operation Cisco Raider, resulted in 36 search warrants with approximately 3,500 counterfeit network components identified, and a total of 10 convictions.

So why is government focusing on Cisco? Because the counterfeiters do. They go where the money is, and in terms of networking gear, which many regard as commodity items that can be easily copied, no manufacturer rakes in more revenue than Cisco. It’s the same reason that hackers focus on Microsoft: Market saturation.

The government is among the most profitable markets for Cisco. That makes federal agencies as susceptible as any to getting duped. Check out what happened to the Navy in 2004 for example, when counterfeit Cisco switches landed in one of its secure facilities. (You can read the whole sordid story at GovernmentVAR.com). One contractor involved was recently found liable, and now the circumstances are being investigated by the Navy’s Acquisition Integrity Office.

The lesson learned? Check those serial numbers.

According to a briefing by Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright, the recent successful shoot down of the wayward spy satellite was not a test of the missile defense system. While the Missile Defense Agency was helpful in netting all the sensors needed together, according to Cartwright,

the missile itself is a standard missile in the Navy inventory; the ship is a standard ship in the Navy inventory. We added a lot of instrumentation. We made some modifications to the software to be able to go after a satellite.

You know, this is a one-time mod. It is -- if you put this mod in, we can't use the ship or the missile for another function without taking the mods out. So it's not something that we would be entering into the service in some standard way.

Yet, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the shot proves that missile defense works.

I think, actually, the question of whether this capability works has been settled. The question is: Against what kind of a threat (do we employ the technology)? How large a threat? How sophisticated a threat?

So, is this shot "proof" of missile defense, or just a one-off highly constrained, albeit successful, experiment?

It's no secret that terrorists use the Internet to communicate, but the use is becoming more sophisticated, according to Jeff Bardin, a blogger for CSO online. Bardin, who worked for the National Security Agency and served as a chief security information officer for several private corporations, recently downloaded the Mujahedeen Secrets 2 Program (بـرنـامـج // أســرار المجاهـديـن) and wrote in his blog:

This toolset provides groups like Al-Qaw-eda methods to securely transmit and wipe their files. Not that they haven’t had such tools in the past, but a second edition toolset demonstrates a software development lifecycle with some level of sophistication and planning.

Bardin said a look at the tool set -- which contains automatic (instantaneous-instant) message/messaging encryption/authentication and file encryption, as well as code signing and checking (digital signature creation/checking) and file shredding -- "reinforced [his] decision that the cyber jihad is ongoing and continuous."

Bardin wrote that Secrets 2 was easy to find, and that this comment from ‘alHambra’ was posted on the download site:

Mujahedeen Secrets #2 (Encryption Program) has been released today, and i just took a short look at it, but it is really a vast improvement compared to the first version, and seems like a really nice encryption program now. here's post and downloadinfo...

Not long from now, we will make laws, set policies, write regulations and create programs by first "playing" the likely consequences in synthetic worlds, says Anne Laurent, longtime observer of federal management and creator, just this year, of a new blog, “The Agile Mind.”

Laurent has written and edited for Government Executive for 12 years and did the same for Federal Times for 10 years before that. Now, she is blazing a new trail both in journalism and government, exploring how new human-computer interfaces, gaming, virtual worlds and other innovations will reshape the way agencies function and the way we explain what they do and how they do it.

Laurent has written recently for Tech Insider about NASA and other agencies venturing into synthetic worlds such as Second Life. She has written for Government Executive about the Defense Department’s increasing use of gaming software for training, and about the Army’s move into private virtual worlds.

On “The Agile Mind,” she's weaving all these trends and others into a vision of a virtual government in which, she writes:

We will interact with all kinds of data--program results, claims processed, rates of environmental change, response times, performance, cost, schedule, etc.--physically via wall-sized multi-touch screens and computer tables, not keyboards and monitors.

Displaying and manipulating on one large screen both live and historical information about the past and current conditions and the effects of agency actions will allow us to see trends and possibilities and make predictions in ways we simply cannot today, when information resides in silos and behind the walls of very different organizations and is static and lifeless. Most of what we do digitally will involve touching and moving images or actually stepping into situations via our digital doubles--avatars--in uncannily accurate models of the real world.

For a sneak peak at the future, she points out, we need only turn to CNN, which began using a multi-touch computer wall as a news broadcasting tool on Jan. 2. Or visit NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Second Life. Or test the online game, “America’s Army,” the hugely popular recruiting tool. Or join the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds.

Laurent suggests that gaming and synthetic worlds and visualization and ubiquitous computing will become commonplace in government because the next generation of politicians and employees will expect and demand it. "These people will not, cannot, manage information on paper, or in spreadsheets or online dashboards," she writes. "They will not endure the kludgy, slow, inefficient process of learning new software and keeping that knowledge up to date merely to be able to manipulate data. . . . They will demand to see and touch and manipulate what is known about problems and to 'play' possible solutions so they can view the likely outcomes before choosing how to proceed."

It’s a beguiling vision filled with promise and peril. Laurent is an able and engaging chronicler of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Problems and skepticism surrounding the Army's $200 billion Future Combat System (FCS) have been discussed for years now. (Government Executive Magazine ran its latest in-depth assessment last year, and The Washington Post ran a critical article this week.) In the Post article, reporter Alec Klein, quotes an executive from FCS prime contractor Boeing as saying the original estimate of the number of lines of code has always been 55 million -- not the 33.7 million lines of code that the Army estimated in 2003. (That number has now increased to 63.8 million.) Boeing FCS program manager Dennis "Muilenburg ... said that the original software estimate was 55 million lines of code, not 33.7 million," according to the Post.

That statement caught the eye of Robert Charette, a risk management expert who consults with governments, including the Defense Department, and companies worldwide. In his blog "The Risk Factor," he wrote in a recent post:

The reason I find this [Boeing's assertion that 55 million lines of code was the original estimate] curious is that the 33.7 million lines of code estimate has been around for several years, and appears in congressional testimony many, many times. That number gave lots of folks pause in 2003, since the Army claimed at the time that it would complete FCS in five and a half-years. Questions were raised then about whether that amount of code could be developed in that time frame, but the ever-confident Army said it could be accomplished.

I have never heard or seen that 55 million lines of code number ever mentioned before this article. If that was the true estimate at proposal time, did the contractor and the Army "forget" to let Congress, the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO), and a whole bunch of other people know the true system size so that they wouldn't ask questions in 2003 like, "Tell me again how you plan to develop and integrate an average of 10 million lines of native and commercial-off-the-shelf software per year over each of the next five years?" "Can you point to any military software-intensive development of 10 million lines of code successfully completed in 5 years?" "Can you prove you are not legally insane?"

Harris Corp. said it has tapped Dr. Bart Brad Harmon, who recently retired as chief medical information officer of the Military Health System (MHS), to serve as chief medical officer of the company’s new Healthcare Solutions unit.

Harris said its new Healthcare Solutions division will support commercial and military care customers with a range of information technology offerings including digital content management and visualization products.

Harmon, a retired Army colonel with both a medical degree and a Master’s in public health, spent the past decade working on electronic health record projects for MHS and chaired a working group that defined information sharing between MHS and the Veterans Affairs Department.

At a conference this month, a panel of technologists will work through the ethical and legal implications of whether a robot can be held responsible for war crimes. The discussion, titled "When Robots Commit War Crimes: Autonomous Weapons and Human Responsibility," is part of the Technology in Wartime conference at the Stanford Law School.

The io9 blog, edited by Annalee Newitz, today pointed out that this question isn’t some academic exercise for eggheads; robot weapons have already been involved in friendly fire incidents, including one in South Africa.

An email making the rounds today among the federal community is the news of the death of Andrew Olmsted, a major in the Army who blogged for the Rocky Mountain News. He died of wounds suffered in an attack on his unit in As Sadiyah, Iraq.

In his blog, "From the Front Lines," Olmsted wrote about his life as a soldier fighting the war in Iraq. Olmsted's final post, which he wrote in the event he was killed in action and titled "Final Post," was posted by a friend. In it, Olmsted offers up his philosophy, musings and humor, interspersed with varied quotes from television series, Plato, movies and lyrics from songs.

"It's not fair." "No. It's not. Death never is." Captain John Sheridan and Dr. Stephen Franklin, Babylon 5

"They didn't even dig him a decent grave."
"Well, it's not how you're buried. It's how you're remembered."
Cimarron and Wil Andersen, The Cowboys

I suppose I should speak to the circumstances of my death. It would be nice to believe that I died leading men in battle, preferably saving their lives at the cost of my own. More likely I was caught by a marksman or an IED. But if there is an afterlife, I'm telling anyone who asks that I went down surrounded by hundreds of insurgents defending a village composed solely of innocent women and children. It'll be our little secret, ok?

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side.

"His voice was a voice of reason, and was a voice of logic," Olmsted's father, Wesley, told the Boston Globe. "He would discuss issues only to make people think."

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The word ‘retirement’ doesn’t count for much in government. As soon as an official graciously departs his or her post, industry pounces. Such is the case of former U.S. Army CIO, Steven Boutelle, who retired less than four months ago. He has joined Cisco Systems as vice president of the networking vendor’s Global Government Solutions Group.

Boutelle will lead Cisco’s participation in the Internet Routing in Space program, which is a collaboration between industry and government to demonstrate the viability of conducting military communications through an Internet router in space. In theory, satellite systems could integrate with ground infrastructure for anytime, anywhere IP-based data, video voice and mobile communications.

The Army’s key, next-generation battlefield communications systems, Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, earned the dubious distinction of ending up on the Defense Department’s list of programs that experienced cost increases of more than 15 percent or schedule delays of six months or more. These programs are reported to Congress.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the Defense Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) put the cost of WIN-T at $16.4 billion in constant 2003 dollars, up $4.6 billion from the 2003 baseline. That’s nearly a 40 percent increase, for those keeping count.

WIN-T is the network glue intended to stitch together the myriad platforms in the Army’s Future Combat Systems program. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that the Army has restructured WIN-T system development for five years, delaying a production decision until 2011.

I bet new Army CIO Lt. Gen. Jeffery Sorenson was just delighted to find out WIN-T had made the SAR-list on his second day on the job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our pals over at the innovation department in the Defense Intelligence Agency asked us to let the world know they are looking for some good ideas and technologies to power the next generation of the Defense Intelligence Information System.

Vendors can submit their ideas to DIA on Web and when products or technologies meet requirements, vendors are invited to present them in a one-hour pitch at a DIA facility in beautiful New Carrollton, Md.

DIA said it’s looking for IT innovation in a number of areas to help intelligence collectors and analysts in such areas as document and content management, knowledge and records management as well as new software, gadgets or gizmos that can improve systems and security management.

While Congress plays political games with the 12 appropriations bills, the Veterans Affairs Department groans under a backlog of 400,000 veterans benefits claims, according to the Senate report on the fiscal 2008 VA-Military Construction spending bill.

The backlog on each of those claims is 177 days, the report noted, while the complexity of adjudicating claims grows as combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan need to be evaluated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and multiple battle injuries to collect their benefits.

The Senate version of the fiscal 2008 VA bill attempts to resolve this backlog by providing $60.7 million to hire new claims processing personnel and another $39.7 million for computers and information technology systems to speed up the processing of the claims, which have increased 39 percent from 2000 to 2006.

The funding is held hostage until at least December (even though there is a war on, Congress needs a Thanksgiving break) when maybe the folks on the Hill will get around to passing the appropriations bills they should have passed two months ago.

One would think that Congress could have at least passed the VA bill before Veterans Day (Nov. 12) in honor of those the nation sends into harms way.

But, hey, the House did honor veterans yesterday with the passage of a bill that called for the creation of National Veterans History Project Week, to be observed next November.

Maybe someone can do a veteran history project on why the Senate and House could not pass a VA spending bill in 2007 before Veterans Day.

The World Radio Conference -- the quadrennial international meeting of 190 nations to slice and dice increasingly valuable and scarce radio spectrum -- kicked off Oct. 22.

And the Defense Department is interested.

How interested? Both John Grimes, assistant secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, and Air Force Lt. Gen. Chares Croom, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, showed up for the first week of the confab, which runs through Nov. 16.

Grimes, in a press briefing teleconference today from Geneva, said he is concerned about two key items on the conference’s agenda: protection of HF spectrum (4 to 10 megahertz), which has found a new life as a long-range data transmission medium, and a re-allocation of C-band frequencies (3.4 to 4.2 gigahertz), used by military radars and satellite communications systems such as the Navy.

Richard Russell, U.S. ambassador to the conference, said European nations at the conference represented by the 48-member European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrators advocate allocating portions of the HF band to digital shortwave broadcasting by stations such as the BBC in the UK and Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Germany. (That’s conference agenda item 1.13)

Grimes said the United States is “standing hard” on any incursions by broadcasters into the HF bands used by Defense and military forces in other countries, including some in Europe.

Russell said European countries are also pushing to use C-band frequencies for commercial, next-generation broadband mobile services. (That’s conference agenda item 1.4). Grimes said this was a critical issue for Defense, which cannot afford interference with military radars in the C-band.

Russell said the U.S. delegation, including Grimes and Croom, had lunch with the Mideast Gulf states today, and they are in line with the U.S. position to not use C-band for broadband mobile. Russell added that he did not expect the HF or C-band issues to be resolved until the last week of the conference.

A Defense spokesman told me Grimes and Croom will return home this Friday. Probably a smart fiscal move, as the price of hotel rooms in Geneva might require Congress to pass a Defense supplemental to pay the bill.

McQ Inc. said Boeing has selected it to provide a family of unattended sensors for the Homeland Security Department’s electronic border fence project, called the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet). McQ has a basic ordering agreement to provide unattended acoustic, magnetic and infrared sensors, according to contract information posted on Boeing’s online SBInet Toolbox contract page.

This summer, the Army Research Lab selected McQ’s unattended ground sensors as one of 10 “greatest inventions” of 2006.

In a related development, the House Homeland Security Committee plans to hold a hearing on the troubled SBInet project Oct. 24. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff threatened last month to withhold payments on SBInet until Boeing fixes problems on a 28-mile pilot project in Arizona. “I'm not going to buy something with U.S. government money unless I'm satisfied it works in the real world,” Chertoff said last month at a congressional hearing.

Northrop Grumman recently won a National Security Agency information management and data services contract, which will allow the agency to ingest data at a speed faster than any other entity that the company knows on the planet.

Kevin Henderson, chief systems engineer for the information management and data services project, declined to provide any speed benchmarks for me but said the system would outperform those used for high-energy physics computations, which does provide a good baseline to work from.

In 2005 a team from the Energy Department's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center transferred physics data at the rate of 150 gigabits per second, or the equivalent of downloading 130 DVD movies in one minute. The NSA system supposedly can work faster than that.

Such blistering data transfer rates of electronics signals intelligence will require storage measured in the petabyte (a quadrillion bytes) range, Henderson said. Northrop Grumman will provide that through disk- and tape-based storage systems, with an eye to nanotechnology-based systems when and if that becomes available.

Loren Ryder, Northrop Grumman’s program manager for the NSA job, said agency analysts will not have to sift through petabytes of data to do their job. The company, he said, has developed an information management system to send the right data, to the right analyst, at the right time.

I understand that Lockheed Martin and EDO also bid on the NSAQ contract.

The Defense Information Systems Agency periodically releases security guides for networks and devices connected to its networks, but the latest version of its Desktop Application Security Checklist would boggle the average end-user’s mind with its complexity.

Take for example, the guide’s instructions on how to check for file and directory permissions:

There are multiple ways to check file and directory permissions:

On Windows NT systems, the DumpSec utility can be used. Details on the usage of DumpSec can be found in the section Using DumpSec in the Windows Security Checklist document.

On Windows 2000 systems, the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) can be used with the Security Configuration and Analysis snap-in. Details on the usage of this tool set can be found in the sections Using the Microsoft Management Console and File and Directory Permissions in the Windows Security Checklist document.

The Windows NT Explorer application on Windows NT or the Windows Explorer
application on Windows 2000, XP and 2003 can be used. Details on this approach follow.

On Windows NT, the Windows NT Explorer application can be used to manually check the permissions on a Windows file or directory. Navigate to the object and right click on it. Select the Properties item, the Security tab, and then the Permissions button.

On Windows 2000, XP, and 2003, the Windows Explorer application can be used to manually check the permissions on a Windows file or directory. Navigate to the object and right click on it. Select the Properties item, the Security tab, and then the Advanced button.

I’m better than an average reader but have little idea what any of the above means. So, I assume this security guide must be designed for advanced techno-geeks – as the entire Defense Department would otherwise grind to a halt while end users plowed through similar verbiage on the other 143 pages of the guide.

U.S. and coalition forces are the single largest source of jamming of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers in Iraq, according to a co-inventor of the system.

As much as 85 percent of the jamming of GPS receivers in Iraq was caused by U.S. and coalition forces, according to GPS co-inventor Bradford Parkinson with Stanford University, and Martin Faga, former president and CEO of MITRE Corp. and a former director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Parkinson and Faga reported their findings in a briefing given this month to the multi-agency National Space Based Positioning, Timing and Navigation Meeting.

The origins of the GPS jamming was made by personnel from the 14th Air Force, which provides space support to operational missions, but the 14th Air Force did not identify which U.S. or coalition systems had inadvertently jammed GPS receivers. The14th Air Force did not know how many GPS receivers were in use in Iraq, according to the briefing, reporting only that a “significant number” of receivers were in use.

The 14th Air Force team also determined that 15 percent of jamming incidents in Iraq were of unknown origin, raising the possibility that opposing forces or groups in Iraq have access to GPS jamming gear.

In March 2003, prior to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush called Russian President Vladimir Putin to voice his concern that Russian companies were supplying the Iraqi military with GPS jamming equipment.

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

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

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

The Defense Department inspector general released a report last week that shows despite releasing over the past year a grand total of 36 investigations and reports on Defense’s managerial shortcomings in information assurance weaknesses, Defense still has real problems with information security basics.

Investigations conducted between Aug. 1, 2006, and July 31, 2007, by the Defense IG, the Army Audit Agency, the Air Force Audit Agency and the Naval Audit Service repeatedly found problems with system access control, safeguarding of privacy information, poor security policy and procedures, training and education, according to the latest IG report, which is a bibliography of sorts of all the other info sec reports.

A total of 15 reports over the past year identified problems with system access control, the Defense IG said, including allowing unauthorized users to gain access to protected health information covered by the Privacy Act and “For Official Use Only” information.

Ten reports over the past year covered Privacy Act violations, and it seems that the message not to throw documents containing protected privacy information into the trash still needs reinforcement.

The audit agencies also identified weaknesses with security policies and procedures in 33 reports and poor security training, awareness and education in eight reports.

“Without adequate security program management and security polices and procedures in place, DoD cannot provide and maintain appropriate security for managing, protecting and distributing information,” according to the Defense IG.

Add this stark view to threats posed by Chinese zombie computers and it looks like Defense really needs to work on network defense.

You typically don’t associate the Space and Naval Warfare System Command with armored vehicles, but it turns out the command’s Space and Naval Systems Center in Charleston, S.C., plays a key role (page 46) in the final assembly of vehicles designed to protect troops in Iraq against Improvised Explosive Devices.

SPAWAR installs all the command control gear for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles at the Charleston facility, according to Steve Davis, a command spokesman. Davis declined for security reasons to provide me with any details on C2 equipment used in the current generation of MRAP vehicles.

But, the statement of work included in the solicitation (from the Marine Corps Systems Command) for the next generation of MRAP vehicles reveals that each of the new MRAP IIs could be stuffed with enough comm gear to take care of an infantry battalion.

The statement of work says each vehicle could be equipped with a wide range of communications gear including multiple radio and satellite systems. The satellite systems eyed for use in the MRAP II include the Movement Tracking System from Comtech Mobile Datacom, which supports two-way text messaging and the ROVER III receiver from L3 Communications, designed to receive battlefield video feeds from manned and unmanned aircraft.

Terrestrial radio systems planned for the MRAP II include workhorse, VHF Single Channel Ground Airborne Radio Systems manufactured by ITT and other companies, the multi-band (including UHF satcom) AN-VRC 103 from Harris, and the AN-VRC 104, an HF radio widely used by the Marines.

Other C2 gear planned for installation in MRAP IIs include the secure Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (from Rockwell Collins) and the satellite-based Blue Force Tracking System from General Dynamics.

The once-a-Marine radio operator in me can hardly wait to test drive a new MRAP II stuffed with all these goodies.

Bids for the MRAP II are due Oct. 1, and, according to the Marines, potential bidders include vehicle manufacturers such as AM General and Oshkosh Truck, as well integrators such as Lockheed Martin Systems Integration Group and BAE Systems.

For about a decade, the Defense Department has pursued the military strategy of network-centric warfare, the idea of using computers to deliver strategic real-time information to the battlefield and commanders in war rooms. The Chinese think this is a soft underbelly that can be exploited to its advantage, according to an article posted yesterday by The International Herald Tribune. From the article:

[U.S. and other foreign military analysts] cite articles and reports in Chinese military journals and magazines that suggest attacks aimed at extracting intelligence from enemy computer networks or disrupting communication and signals processing could deliver a decisive military advantage.

"It is part of China's concept of unlimited war," said Philip Yang, an expert on the Chinese military and professor of international relations at the National Taiwan University.

"The idea of unlimited war means employing all possible means including nontraditional or nonconventional means in the aim of winning the war."

The article goes on to state, "Chinese defense planners also view cyber warfare as a means of undermining the technological edge of American forces," according to a June report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

This may not come as big news to U.S. Defense strategists, but the recent tensions over allegations that the Chinese military hacked into computer systems operated by the German government has increased worldwide interest in China's interest in cyberwarfare and its intentions.

In early flight tests, new radar for the Air Force’s B-2 bomber, which was designed to not interfere with commercial satellite television signals, had technical problems, but the Air Force reports it will solve the problems.

In 2002, the Air Force and B-2 contractor Northrop Grumman started a $900 million program to develop radar that would not interfere with satellites operating in the Ku-frequency band (11.7-12.7 gigahertz) and to upgrade defensive management systems. But the Air Force ran into “technical maturity problems” with the new radar, which could require the B-2 radar to stop using the Ku-band frequencies at a classified “near term” date, according to the House Appropriations Committee report on the 2008 Defense Appropriations bill.

The Air Force is restructuring the radar modernization program, and details will not be finalized until next year, Christopher McGee, a spokesman for the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center, wrote in an e-mail response to questions. McGee wrote that the design of the radar and the technology it uses is sound.

The Air Force has required Northrop to conduct more development work on the B-2 radar, McGee said, such as developing more capable transmit/receive elements for a relatively large antenna array. Last month, Kenny Linn, Northrop Grumman’s director of business development, said the company is replacing the bomber's mechanically steered radar antenna with an advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array Antenna (AESA). The antenna, under development by Raytheon, consists of 2,000 transmit/receive modules.

Until the new radars go into production and are installed on the aircraft, McGee said the Air Force will continue to operate the legacy B-2 radar on a non–interference basis with primary users throughout the transition.

McGee did not provide a date on when the Air Force expected to complete the radar modernization project.

The request by the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency 9NGA) for contractors to move the agency from six locations in the Washington, D.C., area to new digs at Ft. Belvoir, Va., in 2011 has attracted the attention of not only moving and relocation management companies, but also aerospace contractors and systems integrators.

Steve DeLane, business development veep at Alexander's Mobility Services (an Atlas Van Lines affiliate in Baltimore), told me that representatives from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin showed up earlier this month for an informal NGA presentation and walk-through on its requirements for the move.

Delane said the two companies may have been attracted by the requirement that the movers have Top Secret/Special Intelligence/Talent Keyhole clearances, and he wondered if the solicitation was written in such a way as to attract players from outside the moving industry.

If either Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin wins the job, they’re going to need a lot of trucks to move 8,500 NGA employees, the contents of their offices and assorted highly classified gadgets and gizmos, Delane said. He estimated it would take about 400 tractor trailer loads to handle the NGA move, which he estimated could take a year and cost about $2 million.

Delane said his company is well positioned to handle the NGA move. Alexander's Mobility Services is currently handling the move of the Army's Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command from the Washington area to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. But Delane may be reluctant to bid on the NGA move if a wide range of vendors decide to go after the job.

Katrina Redmond, a spokeswoman for Fox Relocation in Boston, said her company has personnel who can meet NGA’s security requirements, and she added that the agency’s planned move is the kind of work her company does well. However, she didn’t say whether Fox intended to bid on the job.

I have yet to hear back from Northrop Grumman or Lockheed with official word on whether or not they intend to get into the moving business. But after a flurry of calls on this and other stories today, I am convinced I am one of the few people working in the federal space not on vacation this week.

The members of the 9/11 Commission recommended that the intelligence agencies do a better job of sharing intelligence information. The direct quote form the 9/11 Commission Report: "We propose that information be shared horizontally, across new networks that transcend individual agencies."

Is this what the commission had in mind as a new network? Intelligence agencies say they plan to create "A-Space," a private social networking site modeled on the popular social networking sites MySpace and Facebook.

This is how The Federal Times described it in an article posted yesterday:

The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of “MySpace for analysts” – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community. He says the technology can also help process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is limited.

A-Space should appeal to younger recruits whom intelligence agencies need to attract. After all, the intelligence agencies are relying on younger employees to develop new ways to fight terrorism, as The New York Times Magazine pointed out in a Dec. 3, 2006, cover article:

[T]hroughout the intelligence community, spies are beginning to wonder why their technology has fallen so far behind — and talk among themselves about how to catch up. Some of the country’s most senior intelligence thinkers have joined the discussion, and surprisingly, many of them believe the answer may lie in the interactive tools the world’s teenagers are using to pass around YouTube videos and bicker online about their favorite bands. Billions of dollars’ worth of ultrasecret data networks couldn’t help spies piece together the clues to the worst terrorist plot ever. So perhaps, they argue, it’ s time to try something radically different. Could blogs and wikis prevent the next 9/11?

We'll find out.

As we all know, moving is a painful experience eased by careful planning. The National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) seems to be trying to lessen the pain as much as possible.

The NGA kicked off this week the process for moving 8,500 of its employees, and a whole mess of classified gadgets and gizmos, to new digs at Ft. Belvoir, Va., by 2011.

NGA said in the only procurement notice it plans to issue for the move that it needs a contractor that has the “the proven ability to plan, integrate, organize, synchronize and execute a complex sustained, classified move of equipment, materials” and all the NGA personnel and their office stuff from six locations in the Washington, D.C., area to its new 2.4 million-square-foot building.

NGA is looking for more than a bunch of Irish guys with strong backs and a fleet of trucks. The agency says it needs folks to handle the move who are cleared at the Top Secret/Special Intelligence/Talent Keyhole level.

If anyone knows what all the above means, they’re probably a quarter of the way to getting the job.

The Defense Department plans to stop using commercial electronic data interchange (EDI) systems to process payments and instead will require contactors to use the Department’s Web-based Wide Area Workflow - Receipt and Acceptance system.

Defense wrote in an Aug. 14 Federal Register notice that neither the American National Standards Institute X12 EDI nor the Web Invoicing System cannot process all Defense contract payment requests and cannot be made available to all government offices and organizations.

Wide Area Work Flow is the only system that can process all payment types. According to a fact sheet from the Defense Business Transformation Agency, it uses a virtual folder that contains the three documents required to pay a contractor: the contract, the invoice and the receiving report.

The Wide Are Workflow helps eliminate lots of paper documents, which also can be misplaced, and compresses the contract payment process from weeks to days or minutes, according to the fact sheet.

According to the Federal Register notice, the change in Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations requiring use of Wide Area Workflow will require about 1,000 small businesses to switch to the system – a relatively low number compared with the 20,000 small companies already using it. (Contracting officers can allow the use of other payment systems if they choose.)

Defense said it will take comments on the proposed rule change until Oct. 15. The department said it anticipates that the use of Wide Area Workflow will fully automate its payment process, significantly improve the timeliness of payments and reduce interest charges on late payments.

In 2004, Defense had $206 billion in contract payments subject to the Prompt Payment Act, according to a May 2006 Government Accountability Office report. Out of a pool of some $24 billion in payments the GAO studied, Defense was late in paying an average of 10 percent of the payments to large vendors, while late payments to small vendors ran about 14.5 percent, according to the report.

Since it takes only one hour to learn how to use Wide Area Workflow, according to the the Federal Register notice, it seems the new change in rules will be a boon to small vendors, even though I have yet to encounter any computer program that can be mastered in an hour.

It’s as slow as molasses in Colorado Springs in January. That's a good way to describe the progress of the Air Force Space Command’s $800 million Uniform Communications (Uni-Comm) information technology services contract. The contract – once awarded – will provide a single network for 40,000 personnel at Los Angeles and Vandenberg Air Force bases in California, Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, and Peterson and Schriever Air Force bases in Colorado. Besides voice, video and data networks, the Uni-Comm contract also calls for operation of base land mobile radio systems.

Uni-Comm was originally hatched in December 2005, with a request for proposals slated for this summer and an award date planned by Oct. 1.

But summer is almost over, and the Colorado Springs-based Space Command said Aug. 10 that it does not anticipate issuing the RFP until early or mid-September. The command gave no deadline for awarding the contract.

The Uni-Comm contract, which some vendors view as a Naval Marine Corps Intranet for Space Command, has attracted interest from a wide pool of bidders, including integrators such as CSC, EDS, Lockheed Martin and communications companies such as the federal business unit of Verizon Business.

They probably hope they do not have to wait another two years for the Air Force to award the contract.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The U.S. Defense Department isn't the only military organization that has set strict guidelines on the use of the Internet, particularily for social networking and video sites and for blogging. Britain's Ministry of Defence just issued new guidelines outlining what British soldiers and Defence civilian employees can and cannot do online, according to an article posted by the British telegraph.co.uk. According to the article:

Members of the armed forces are ... no longer able to play multimedia computer games or send text-messages, photographs and audio or video material without authorisation from a superior, if the information they use concerns matters of defence.

The rules, circulated by the Directorate of Communication Planning, severely curtail the extent to which servicemen and women can speak publicly about their service.

The regulations say "all such communication must help to maintain and, where possible, enhance the reputation of defence".