Does government have the highly trained and talented top-level executives critical in promoting innovative ideas and growth through the use of information technology?

"The answer is 'No,'" writes Tom Hughes, chief information officer for the Social Security Administration, for a government management journal.

Hughes' blunt assessment appears in the upcoming spring issue of The Public Manager journal. Hughes' article, "The Courage to Change When Challenged," is one of four articles in the journal written under the purview of "PMA 44" (the President's Management Agenda for the 44th president, as in the next administration, a seminar series organized by Cisco's Business Solutions Group under the leadership of Alan Balutis, who also is a blogger for Tech Insider.) The other three articles cover human resources, acquisition and execution.

To improve government through the use of IT, Hughes recommends reinvigorating the bureaucracy by hiring younger leaders in the Senior Executive Service and hiring more private-sector managers in agencies' upper leadership ranks. He also suggests instilling in top leadership positions the understanding of how to use IT strategically to meet agency goals. One way, Hughes writes, would be to ask large companies to loan top executives to agencies to instill these changes.

Third, Hughes argues the government must invest in new technologies to remain competitive and to improve government services, such as spending more on high-speed broadband communications. (The United States has fallen from fourth in the world in broadband penetration to 24th, right behind Estonia.) Such an investment would provide new services to the public, including educational and recreational opportunities, and providing medical care to underserved populations.

You can read more about what the next administration should do to improve government management when the Public Manager is available in a few weeks.

Remember that story about the New York City employee who got fired for playing computer solitaire at work? Well, it turns out that just maybe the addictive game isn't all about wasting time; it's also, according to Josh Levin writing for Slate, "propelled the revolution of personal computing, augured Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies, and forever changed office culture. It has also helped the human race survive innumerable conference calls and airplane trips. If solitaire is not the most important computer program of all time, it is at least in the top two, along with Minesweeper."

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:

Fifteen years ago, cartoonist Peter Steiner drew two dogs sitting in front of a computer, one saying to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." This iconic adage, cute in its day, is now a warning.

Criminal, terrorist and nation-state cyberattacks against banks, technology companies, online merchants, individuals and government agencies cost the U.S. economy $400 billion annually, focused most often on stealing business and military secrets, and personal data.

In cyberspace, not knowing for sure what person or device is on the other end of the line has serious downsides. It erodes overall trust, limits users' ability to secure their own systems, hinders effective governmental response, and causes organizations to collect more personal data than they really need.

The following item was posted by Gautham Nagesh

Because June marks the culmination of several initiatives to standardize information technology practices to improve information security, Karen Evans, administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology at the Office of Management and Budget, took a moment on Tuesday to discuss the big picture at a conference sponsored by 1105 Government Information Group in McLean, Va.

Evans said the upcoming deadlines for agencies to comply with several IT initiatives was a deliberate choice, designed to help tie together the separate initiatives into one coherent security strategy across the government. She discussed the Trusted Internet Connection initiative, the shift to the newest Internet protocol called IPv6, the issuance of HSPD-12 credentials and the Federal Desktop Core Configuration, which requires users operating with a Microsoft desktop environment to adopt a standard configuration for the desktop.

The New York Times reported today that the Transportation Security Administration sent a letter to at least four graduate students at MIT informing them that the agency turned down their request for an identification card to work at the nation’s ports. The letters noted the students were “security threats.”

The students had applied for a so-called Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, card, a program the federal government created after 9/11 to tighten security at the nation’s ports. The deployment of TWIC has been delayed for months for numerous reasons.

The Times article cites two cases, one involving a German student, the other a British student. In the rejection letters, John Busch, who is identified as a security administration official, wrote, “I have determined that you pose a security threat.”

When news broke several weeks back about the Census Bureau and the decision to scrap plans for the use of handheld devices and a so-called “high-tech count” in 2010 I can’t say I was “shocked.” I held off commenting because it brought back so many memories from 1980, from 1990 and from 2000. In fact, if I unearthed meeting notes, memos, and briefings from then, I likely could produce an account that mirrored what is swirling now: One of those “ripped from today’s headlines” accounts.

But it saddens me in so many ways: