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:

The following item was posted by Jill R. Aitoro.

A discussion board recently posted an unclassified PowerPoint presentation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which provides an in-depth look at the criminal investigation into the selling of counterfeit Cisco networking equipment to federal agencies.

The presentation reports a spike in the total number of seizures of products that violate intellectual property rights from 8,022 in 2005, valued at more than $93 million, to 14,675 in 2006, valued at more than $155 million.

Counterfeit Cisco equipment – including routers, switches, and other hardware components -- finds its way into federal networks because of weaknesses in government procurement and problems with Cisco’s own sales practices, according to the presentation. In the case of the former, agencies purchase from uncertified suppliers using government credit cards or from subcontractors that are two or three levels separated from the manufacturer and allow “blind drop” or “drop ship” methods of fulfillment that limit the possibility of quality assurance checks within the contracting community by delivering the products directly to the agency from the supplier.

For Cisco’s part, reliance on distributors and resellers for the sale of products, combined with a lack of coordination between the company’s brand protection and sales teams perpetuates the problem, according to the presentation. Furthermore, it notes a lack of any vetting of companies selling equipment to government, beyond standard background checks, by either Cisco or the General Services Administration.

The presentation highlights a number of cases where counterfeit Cisco equipment managed to infiltrate federal agencies, including one that involved a top tier partner sourcing equipment from China, that eventually landed in a secure Navy facility.

I want to draw your attention to my colleague's, Tom Shoop's, FedBlog item "Zero Tolerance for Charge Card Abuse." The item refers to a report on the abuse of government purchase cards. In just a couple of hours, the item received, at last count, more than a dozen comments. "Why do we keep hearing these excesses?" asks James Boyd. "The cards have controls that can be programmed into them." And more.

Join the discussion here, or the one already talking place on FedBlog.

The following are quotes from experts in the federal information technology community about the suspension of International Business Machines Corp. from any new federal contract.

"You don't see this very often, particularly for large companies. This happens with small companies more frequently. But IBM -- wow."
Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer for FedSources, quoted by Nextgov.

"We are going to cooperate with investigators but we are also going to take all appropriate actions to challenge the scope of this action."
Fred McNeese, IBM spokesman, in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"It is rare for entire companies to be suspended. Suspending operating units of large companies is less rare and for smaller companies where all operations in one place we see an entire company suspended more often. I am hoping there was a lot of communication between EPA and IBM. I have the impression that there was not which would be unusual."
Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and general counsel for the Professional Services Council, quoted by Federal News Radio.

"A suspension is normally not assessed unless there is a very serious infraction that has been not only alleged but documented. The EPA move is "very unusual" and "it has enormous ramifications."
Stan Soloway, who heads the Professional Services Council, a trade group representing IBM and other government contractors, quoted by the Associated Press.

"The U.S. government contributes only 2 percent of IBM’s total revenue, roughly half of which comes from existing multi-year contracts that are not expected to be affected by the suspension, according to Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner."
FP Trading Post article.

"Just 0.2 percent [of the companies debarred from government contracting] share IBM's 'Suspension by any federal agency pursuant to Executive Order 12549 and the agency implementing regulations based on an indictment or other adequate evidence (a) to suspect the commission of an offense that is a cause for debarment or (b) that other causes for debarment under the agency regulations may exist.'"
Melissa Smith, INPUT blog

More details are coming out on the suspension of International Business Machines Corp. from receiving new federal contract. Reuters reports that the contract in question involves the modernization of the Environmental Protection Agency's financial management system. In 2006, IBM bid $80 million on the contract, which EPA has yet to award.

Reuters reports: "'What we are saying is that the case stems from information provided by an EPA employee to IBM employees,' [IBM spokesman Fred] McNeese said. 'Prior to Friday, there was not a hint that there were any type of issues with this contract.'"

The Census Bureau has had trouble managing the costs, time lines and, most important, the performance of a contract to develop a handheld computer to collect data during the 2010 census. The cost of the contract has increased from its original $600 million to $647 million, according to a General Accounting Office report released today. If all related costs due to the handheld contract's delay and mismanagement are taken into account, GAO estimates the increase in costs for the 2010 census could range between $600 million and $2 billion.

While those overrun costs are high, many government information technology projects (and private-sector IT projects) have suffered similar fates -- with little or no repercussions for the agencies. But Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has suggested something new that could set a precedent for other agencies. In a committee hearing held today on the problems with the handheld contract, Coburn suggested that any cost overrun in the contract be covered by the Census Bureau cutting the budgets for programs in future budgets. This is what he said:

For years, the Census Bureau has estimated that the 2010 count will cost between $11.3 billion and $11.8 billion. I hope that the Secretary of Commerce will work to ensure that the cost does not increase beyond that, even with these trying circumstances. However, let me be perfectly clear -- if the costs go over that amount, taxpayers should not have to subsidize this mismanagement more than they already have. If more money is needed, I fully expect that the department and the bureau will work internally and with [the Office of Management and Budget] to find offsets out of programs that already exist.

The Census Bureau's total budget for fiscal 2008 is about $1.5 billion, with larger budgets coming at the end of decades to pay for conducting the decennial census. Using even the conservative estimate of a $600 million cost overrun in the hand held contract would present a financial challenge, to say the least.

Government Executive's Robert Brodsky reported today about how the Environmental Protection Agency may have wasted millions of dollars in extra fees to contractors for meeting performance thresholds. "EPA regularly gave contractors ratings of 'exceeds expectations' or 'outstanding,' which facilitated the higher incentive fees, according to" an EPA inspector general report.

Brodsky cites one of the nine contracts the IG analyzed, in which a high rating "was justified only with the following comment: 'The project management was excellent with no problems encountered and costs were within scope of work.' A project that merely encountered no problems or stayed within budget should have earned a grade of satisfactory, the IG said."

Since government projects typically miss deadline and come in over budget, encountering no problems and keeping costs within scope may seem like quite an accomplishment. Others may view it it as simply doing your job.

The New York Times reports today on the backlog of investigations facing the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA must inspect foreign plants that manufacture medical devices, drugs and process food. But, as the Times reports, antiquated computer systems cannot support the work. In fact, the FDA cannot create a list of plants that have not been inspected. The Times based its article on reports obtained from the Government Accountability Office. The reports will be released today at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Hill has become so concerned that the Census Bureau's development of its handheld computers the bureau plans to use in the 2010 census is in such trouble that House and Senate staffers have called the bureau's top leaders to a special meeting on the Hill today.

Newly confirmed Census Bureau Director Stephen Murdock and Deputy Director Jay Waite will meet with staffers from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In 2001, Waite created a plan to use handheld computers to collect data from Americans who fail to send in their paper census forms.

The Hill's concern over the performance of the handled computers, which the bureau is developing under the Field Data Collection Automation program, was heightened after Government Executive posted an article about a Nov. 29, 2007, meeting between Waite and Mitre Corp. During the meeting, Mitre presented its analysis of the contract's progress. According to a talking points document obtained by Government Executive, Mitre characterized the contract as being in "serious trouble" and advised the bureau to immediately develop a contingency plan for using paper forms to collect census data in case the handhelds did not work as planned.

Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, have asked the Democratic leadership on the House government oversight committee to schedule a hearing to investigate the Census Bureau's management of a project to develop handheld computers it plans to use for the 2010 census.

In a Jan. 7 letter, Davis and Turner cite a Government Executive article published Jan. 2 that was based on a Mitre Corp. document characterizing the handheld computer contract as in "serious trouble" because of poor management. The representatives have asked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., chairman of the Information Policy, the Census and National Archives Subcommittee, to schedule a hearing on the subject.

In particular, Davis and Turner want to know why Census Bureau Director C. Louis Kincannon did not mention during a subcommittee hearing held Dec. 11 the meeting that Census managers had with Mitre to discuss the contract's problems. The meeting with Mitre, in which Mitre delivered an unusually harsh analysis of how Census was managing the handheld contract, as outlined in Mitre’s talking points document, was held Nov. 29, 12 days before the hearing.

The Census Bureau's senior leadership has maintained – rather stridently at times – that the handhelds will work as planned for the 2010 census and that the only problems they have experienced are those consistent with any IT project of this magnitude. They have insisted they do not need to develop a backup plan in case the handhelds do not work. Forming a backup plan to use paper would be too costly, they argue. But the Government Accountability Office (and now Mitre), as well as project management experts, have all strongly questioned the Census Bureau's management of the contract, especially the inability to manage the inherent risks, as outlined in a Government Executive article last summer.

If the handhelds did not work as planned and the Census Bureau had to revert to using paper forms to collect census data, the cost of the 2010 census would increase by the billions of dollars. Already the cost of the census is tracking to be more than double the $6.5 billion cost of the 2000 census. Nevertheless, Congress would spend whatever it had to to conduct the census, because, as one Hill staffer reminds us, the census is a Constitutional requirement.

Update: In his blog, The Risk Factor, risk management expert Robert Charette, who is quoted in the Government Executive article on the Mitre analysis, discusses just what the Census Bureau means when they understand the handheld contract has "challenges."

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal claims that the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, may have improperly deleted files on his office computer. The story lays out an odd sequence of events, in which Bloch, in December 2006, bypassed his own IT shop and called Geeks on Call to come to his office to erase all files on his hard drive and the drives on two laptops used by deputies. Bloch claims in the article that the he was trying to rid the computers of a virus, and asked Geeks on Call to conduct a “seven-level” wipe of the hard drive, one of the most thorough cleansing operations for hard drives, which leaves virtually every file unreadable. The WSJ quotes a Geeks on Call executive saying the company typically doesn’t conduct seven-level wipes to remove viruses and that it is unusual to get calls from government officials. The article doesn’t say why Bloch felt it necessary to ignore using his own IT staff to rid the computers of the virus, and a WSJ examination of the $1,149 Geeks bill mentions nothing about a virus.

Bloch, whose office is conducting an investigation into the White House’s political operations, is himself under investigation by the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general, who is looking into claims that Bloch retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases before thoroughly examining the charges. The IG has asked Bloch for emails; Bloch says the hard-drive erasure did not affect files pertinent to any investigation. In June, Bloch sent a report to President Bush recommending he punish General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan to the “fullest extent” for violating the law prohibiting federal employees to use federal resources for political purposes.

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.

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.

Sometimes it's hard to get a grasp on just how well the federal government is doing in securing the nation against possible terrorist attacks. After all, such information is generously stamped as not for public release because of national security reasons.

That means Americans frequently get a watered-down account of the government's performance when it comes to security. Sometimes very watered down. Consider this report that the inspector general at the Homeland Security Department posted this month. The report, if you can call it that, has to leave the public wondering why the department even bothered to waste resources to print it and store it on its Web site.

The report, with the title “A Review of Homeland Security Activities Along a Segment of the Michigan-Canadian Border (Unclassified Summary),” is a spine-straining three pages long. That includes the title page and the back page, on which is printed the boilerplate end-of-report information on how to request additional reports.

That leaves one page for the five-paragraph “Unclassified Summary," three paragraphs of which are devoted to the report's objective and how the IG conducted the review. The last two (short) paragraphs present the IG's findings and recommendations:

We identified several concerns regarding the integration and dissemination of intelligence, the protection of critical infrastructure/key resources, local targeting capabilities, the extent of local performance measures, and the need for additional technological resources.

We are recommending that DHS increase its local intelligence presence; better coordinate the funding of protective measures for critical infrastructure/key resources; introduce additional standard operating procedures at the ports of entry; and deploy additional technological resources along the border. DHS is already taking steps toward remedying some of these issues in response to concerns that were raised during the course of our review.

Ignorance is bliss, they say.

You just knew there had to be an IT angle to the special inspector general reports on procurement abuses associated with the Iraq War. You were right. There is. Seems that the United States spent $38 million to develop a financial management system for Iraq's government. When it stopped working for a month, no one noticed, according to an Associated Press article. From the article:

"According to U.S. Embassy officials, the Ministry of Finance continues to use its legacy system for overall budget and accounting, 'nobody noticed' when IFMIS was down for a month and no one relies on IFMIS to produce reports," [special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr.] said.

Other ministries, such as interior and defense, have developed their own financial management information systems, and they are not compatible with the new one and cannot transfer financial data from one system to another.

Sound familiar?

In an item posted today in his blog, “The Risk Factor,” risk management expert Bob Charette calls into question OMB's announcement yesterday that the number of IT projects on its Management Watch List had dropped 61 percent – in seven months. “This is truly amazing,” Charette writes. “Sixty-one percent of government IT projects on the OMB watch list, which indicates whether they are well-positioned to execute, all got better at the same time. One can only conclude that the government has found a new, secret way to manage IT project risk.”

The skepticism doesn’t stop there. In an article posted today on Government Executive’s Web site, government project management expert J. Donaldson Frame says, “When I see miracle improvements occur very quickly, I wonder whether the improvements are genuine or reflect statistical artifacts."

And Ray Bjorkland, chief knowledge officer at federal marketing research firm FedSources, wonders how IT projects get on (and presumably then come off) the Management and High Risk lists in the first place.

For the 212 IT projects that came off the Management Watch List, OMB officials said those “agencies were able to adequately address deficiencies and weaknesses identified in these 212 investments by mitigating planning deficiencies, or in some cases, providing and completing additional documentation supporting their management activities.” No word on how well the projects are meeting budget, deadlines or performance measures, which Bjorkland says are the best indications of success in oversight of technology investments.

And the reason given for more IT programs going on the High Risk List? Again, better reporting from agencies, OMB said.

Interesting, better reporting was the reason OMB gave yesterday for the doubling of the number of reported security breaches exposing personally identifiable information. “An increase in reporting isn't necessarily a bad thing,” said Karen Evans, who holds the Bush administration’s top IT executive position at OMB.

This reason given when on the same day, Microsoft reports that phishing scams had increased more than 150 percent in the first six months of 2007 and the number of malware incidents increased 500 percent. Not to mention the 90 percent increase (over nine months) in the number of cyberattacks directed at electric utilities.

It still hurts my head to try to follow this logic. The message seems to be: It's good to know how bad things are. That could be helpful, if you then used that information to develop a plan to fix the bad things. No word on that, yet.

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.

In August, the federal IT market research firm INPUT released a report showing agencies spending a greater portion of their IT budgets in the government’s fiscal fourth quarter. That’s up from 28 percent from the four year time period of fiscal 1997 to fiscal 2000.

Tech Insider blog item wondered if such an increase in IT spending over such a short period of time increased the chance that agencies may not be aligning spending with strategic goals and wasting money.

The answer may very well be yes, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In a recent report, the IG found that the value of purchases by the Internal Revenue Service made in the month of September increased 671 percent from 2002 to 2006. Reviewing purchases made in August and September 2006, the IG “identified deficiencies with 14 (15 percent) of 92 procurement actions …,” according to the report. “We believe appropriations regulations may have been violated for four of the actions, while all required acquisition steps were not completed for the remaining 10 actions.”

The IG also wrote:

Inefficient and ineffective procurement actions can occur when there is a rush to use funds before they expire at fiscal yearend. This rush increases the risk that items purchased may not meet the requester’s need, thus requiring a second procurement action; were not obtained at the best possible price; or did not use the best vendor or type of contract because Office of Procurement personnel do not have the time necessary to perform a full contractor competition process. Therefore, funds may be spent inefficiently and ineffectively.

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 federal government may soon be asked to take a leadership position in reducing the amount of energy that datacenters consume.

According to a report released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal government, working with the private sector, should develop a standard method to measure how much energy federal datacenters consume; publicly report how much energy each federal datacenter consumes; conduct in two to three years what energy efficient methods can be utilized; and install cost-effective equipment that leads to reduced energy consumption in each datacenter. EPA found that by following certain best practices (including consolidating servers, purchasing energy-efficient servers, installing energy-efficient fans and coolers, and adopting advanced technologies such as “direct liquid cooling), federal data centers could cut up to 80 percent of its electrical demand, producing a savings of $510 million a year.

You may wonder why. It turns out that datacenters and servers are using up an increasing amount of electricity to process, store and manipulate the exploding amount of digital data. And that leads to the emission of more greenhouse gases. Datacenters and servers in the United States accounted for 1.5 percent of all electrical consumption in 2006, double the consumption in 2000, according to the EPA report. If unabated, consumption could double again in the next five years with a cost of $7.4 billion. According to the report:

The peak load on the power grid from these servers and data centers is currently estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to the output of about 15 baseload power plants. If current trends continue, this demand would rise to 12 GW by 2011, which would require an additional 10 power plants.

No information exists for the number of federal datacenters and servers, but the EPA estimates that the federal government accounts for 10 percent of the national consumption of electricity by all datacenters and servers. Therefore, the report concludes:

These forecasts indicate that unless energy efficiency is improved beyond current trends, the federal government’s electricity cost for servers and data centers could be nearly $740 million annually by 2011, with a peak load of approximately 1.2 GW.

EPA submitted its report to Congress as required by Public Law 109-431, asking the EPA to work with the computer industry to determine if anything can be done to curtail the energy consumption of federal datacenters and servers.

The trend is clear for federal datacenter operators: Expect some new energy requirements coming from the Hill.

We received in our email inbox last week an announcement from FEMA about a video it recently produced on its Flood Map Modernization program. The 8-and-a-half-minute video, "made its debut at the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) Conference in Norfolk, Virginia on June 6, 2007," according to the email. The email said the video "provides valuable information and resources."

The agency gave no specifics about what kind of valuable information and resources the video provided. But one thing is for sure, the video, a flashy production that includes lost of charts and acronyms, promotes FEMA's IT program to upgrade its computer systems that monitor and predict floods.

Who would be interested in such a video? On FEMA's information resource library site, where you can download the Flood Map Modernization Video, FEMA says the audience for the video includes the general public and homeowners; floodplain managers; state, local and tribal representatives; the insurance industry; mapping professionals; FEMA regions; hazard mitigation officers; contractors and vendors.

That's a lot of people. But one group that that may have been left out is Congress. IT programs are big money for agencies, and Congress obviously holds the purse strings. Videos help sell the projects.

Other agencies producing glitzy, high-paced videos (with thumping soundtracks) for IT programs include the Coast Guard. The guard developed a video for its $24 billion modernization program Deepwater, in which the Coast Guard lays out the reasons it needs to upgrade its fleet with high-tech boats and planes. The Army, which has become the master at using the video medium to recruit and promote itself, has used its videography skills to develop at least four videos, which use real actors, to promote its $70 billion-plus Future Combat System. (A rather maudlin video called "Safehouse" shows an earnest doctor saving sick children in Southeast Asia.)

Army's "Safehouse" video on Future Combat System

Not surprising, NASA, which offers dozens of videos on its Web site, has become quite skilled at the promotional video, too. A video produced by Goddard Space Flight Center doesn't focus on an IT program but rather promotes how numerous NASA technologies have boosted the Maryland economy.

What's the common theme here? Lots of money for IT and, at least for Deepwater and FCS, programs that have been criticized for mismanagement, according to this Government Accountability report and this one, respectively.

Does all this promotion work? It just may, as a recent mark up of the fiscal 2008 spending bill for FCS shows.

George Ou, a blogger at ZDNet, takes on Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, over Waxman's call for tighter regulation of peer-to-peer software. After ZDNet posted a story on a Government Reform Committee hearing on how peer-to-peer software threatens national security, Ou wrote that Waxman "hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about and this new round of political grandstanding is absurd." Committee members grilled Mark Gorton, the chairman of peer-to-peer Lime Wire who testified before the committee.

Ou argues that peer-to-peer makers like Gorton are not the problem. Rather, federal information technology shops should do a better job of policing federal employees' computers for peer-to-peer software and to remove it when it is found. "The onus is on the Government or any organization to lock down their infrastructure from the physical layer to the application layer to the people working for them," Ou writes. Good point. Transportation Department chief information officer Daniel Mintz told the committee that DOT, after a peer-to-peer software downloaded on a DOT laptop opened access to government documents, developed a policy that requires "written authorization for installation of P2P programs on government machines," according to the ZDNet article.

But Ou goes a few steps further, which pushes his argument over the edge. He argues that the problem isn't the technology, but the people who use the technology to commit crimes. "Sandy Berger stole secret documents from the National Archives by shoving the documents in to his socks so will Congressman Waxman propose a new law against socks? Will Congressman Waxman call the CEO of Fruit of the Loom to the hearings and grill him about the dangers of socks?"

This misses a finer point. Creators of peer-to-peer software such as Gorton know that their software can be misused to spread malware. It is questionable -- and the committee did raise the questions -- whether Gorton and other peer-to-peer programmers have ignored this fact to spread the use of their software and whether they have been responsible enough in informing users that, if not properly configured, peer-to-peer software can open up personal files. Think of a warning label like you see on a pack of cigarettes. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to come up with that possibility. It does take a stretch of the imagination for Fruit of the Loom to consider the possibility of someone using their socks to pilfer documents. Regulation to prevent such an event would be absurd. No one in their right mind would think of such a thing.

Not so for peer to peer. The makers of peer-to-peer software know the dangers that their products present. Just like drug manufacturers know the dangers of misusing the drugs they make. But we have regulations in place to require drug companies to inform the public of possible side effects and the dangers of drug interactions and overdosing. Is it too onerous to ask peer-to-peer manufacturers to act as responsibly? By requiring some action from peer-to-peer providers to better secure their products, together with more vigilance from federal security IT shops, peer to peer can become a safer app and continue to provide value to federal workers.

A White House spokeswoman said today that the Office of Special Counsel report finding General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan guilty of violating the Hatch Act is still being reviewed. The report was delivered to President Bush two weeks ago.

The spokeswoman also noted that there is no deadline for the White House to meet in completing its review of the OSC findings that Doan violated the law that limits political activity in federal agencies.

Last week, two senior House Democrats joined members of the Senate in calling for Doan to step down.

Eighteen agencies have been asked by the Office of Special Counsel to preserve electronic information dating back to January 2001 as part of its governmentwide investigation into alleged violations of the law that limits political activity in federal agencies.

The OSC task force investigating the claims has asked agencies, including the General Services Administration, to preserve all e-mail records, calendar information, phone logs and hard drives going back to the beginning of the Bush administration. The task force is headed by deputy OSC special counsel James Byrne.

OSC recently ruled that GSA Administrator Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act when she attended a Jan. 26 meeting at the agency's headquarters. At that meeting, attended by Doan and more than 30 political appointees, Scott Jennings, a deputy to Karl Rove, the leading political strategist at the White House, presented a PowerPoint presentation that listed Republican and Democratic political races viewed by the White House as most vulnerable in 2008. Doan asked Jennings how GSA could help Republicans, according to the OSC.

The White House revealed a month ago that about 20 other similar briefings were held in federal agencies in 2006 and 2007. Officials at OSC last month formed a task force to investigate if these other presentations may have violated the Hatch Act. The investigation is in the preliminary stages.

First there was President Clinton's defense during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which he raised the issue of the meaning of "is." Now we have the "hortatory subjunctive" defense.

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan appeared Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify about comments she made to federal investigators, who ruled last month that she violated a law that limits political activity in government. One contentious issue had to do with a comment she made to investigators regarding GSA employees, who had testified that Doan asked at a meeting of GSA political appointees how the agency could help Republican candidates. Investigators included in their report last month that Doan claimed the GSA employees who testified she asked that did so because they were biased and poor performers who needed "extensive rehabilitation."

In trying to explain those comments, Doan testified Wednesday that she struggles with verb tense as well as personal pronouns. She also said she was using a "hortatory subjunctive" when she made those comments and that she was in the area of conjecture and supposition.

Doan, who has an English degree from Vassar College (with honors) and a masters in Renaissance literature from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "Actually, you may notice -- I noticed as I went through the transcript that I have probably some problems sometimes with tense, as well as with personal pronouns. You have to look at what came before. And yes, we were talking about what goes on in a process and how does a performance review process happen."

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., responded later in the hearing that there are only three tenses (past, present and future). Doan responded that wasn't true. There are in fact other tenses to consider such as present perfective, present progressive and past progressive and in this particular case, the hortatory subjunctive.

The chairman of the panel, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., responded by saying the following:

Waxman: You've already told us that that future tense sentence didn't mean it because you didn't know future tense or, you know, something about a hortatory something or other. God, I feel like Tony Soprano.

The point is, you neither know or you don't know, about the authority you have. And it looked like, according to a strict reading of those words, that you, in the future, will make your -- use your authority to make sure they don't get the reward, they don't get the bonuses, they don't get whatever benefits they might otherwise get.

Doan: That's incorrect.

Waxman: OK, those words don't mean what they said.

Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., whose mother is a Latin teacher, disagreed. He said that her statements about employees not getting promoted were made in the basic "future" tense.

Sarbanes said that the best example of the use of a hortatory subjunctive was when she allegedly said, "How can we help our candidates?" at the conclusion of a presentation given by a deputy of Karl Rove. Doan promptly disagreed.

"The hortatory subjunctive is used when you are exhorting people to do something, which is exactly what that statement was. That was an exhortation in the subjunctive tense," Sarbanes said.

This post has been updated to include new information

The Office of Special Counsel confirmed that it delivered to President Bush today its investigative report concluding General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the law that limits political activity in federal agencies, leaving Doan's future in the hands of the White House.

A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that investigates alleged Hatch Act violations, confirmed that the report was sent to the White House, but would not provide details.

OSC's investigation focused on Doan's role in a Jan. 26 meeting at GSA headquarters, where Scott Jennings, special assistant to the president and a deputy of political adviser Karl Rove, showed a 28-slide PowerPoint presentation to more than 30 GSA political appointees that analyzed the results of the 2006 midterm election and prospects for the 2008 elections.

The OSC concluded Doan violated the Hatch Act when she asked at the conclusion of the meeting how the agency could help Republican candidates. Doan's counsel has argued that the investigation was not conducted objectively and a stigma of impropriety overshadows the case.

Federal employees who violate the Hatch Act should be removed from their position, according to the Hatch Act. But the Merit Systems Protection Board can find, by unanimous vote, that a violation does not warrant removal and issue a penalty of at least 30 days of suspension without pay.

Since Doan is a presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate, Bush, not the Merit Systems Protection Board, must make a decision regarding disciplinary action. The White House did not return calls requesting comment.

In related news, OSC has provided the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee with redacted transcripts of their nine-hour interview with Doan, along with the e-mail records obtained by OSC to determine whether Doan was using her Blackberry during specific time periods during the January meeting. The panel's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and ranking member, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., both received copies of the report, the OSC spokesman said.

On Wednesday Doan is scheduled to appear before the oversight committee to discuss her allegations that GSA employees who testified about her statements at the Jan. 26 meeting were biased and poor performers. Waxman also said Doan may be asked other questions about her previous statements to the committee and to officials involved in the OSC investigation.

Update: A White House spokeswoman said late Friday afternoon that the report has been received by the administration and it will be reviewed. She did not know how long that will take.

With all the conflicting testimony and claims of not being able to remember specific statements that are central to the Hatch Act violations leveled at General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan, one wonders if someone just may have recorded or videotaped the infamous January 26 meeting. That way we would know for sure what was, or was not, said.

Unfortunately, there is no such recording of the meeting held at the General Services Administration headquarters building in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, a deputy of White House political strategist Karl Rove presented to more than 30 agency political appointees a PowerPoint presentation that analyzed the results of the 2006 midterm election. The Office of Special Counsel ruled Doan violated the Hatch Act by inducing "her subordinates to engage in the type of political brainstorming session that is prohibited from occurring while the political appointees are on duty or in a federal workplace." Witnesses testified that Doan asked the presenter how GSA could help Republican candidates in the next election. Doan testified she cannot recall asking the question.

A recording of the meeting would help. But according to a reply to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Government Executive, none of the equipment used to facilitate the meeting -- which included attendees joining the meeting via video conference -- was set up for, or capable of, making an audio or video recording.

The response to the FOIA request states that the GSA video managers responsible for setting up the video conference said that the equipment used for the meeting was a standard Polycom MGC-50 audio/video bridge. The bridge is capable of bringing together 24 video and 48 audio sites on a single conference call, but is not equipped to record conversations.

As the Office of Special Counsel report suggests, the only way to find out what Doan said at the conclusion of the presentation is to rely on the memory of the witnesses, who testified that Doan asked how the agency could help Republican candidates.

Reporters typically try to get both sides of a story. So, when someone alleges or rules that an individual, say, violated a law, a reporter asks the accused for a response.

That's what we did when the Office of Special Counsel ruled that Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, violated the Hatch Act. Typically, a reporter will get one response. But Doan gave us, over a three-hour period, three slightly different statements.

Listed below are her statements sent via email. The bold portions are words that were either altered or removed in the succeeding response.

Government Executive received its first statement via email from Doan at 2:37 p.m., Wednesday:

I received the staff-drafted report, and I disagree with its preliminary findings. I have concerns with the leaps in logic and the many inaccuracies contained in it, such as an error as simple as citing a non-existent employee in my office. I have an opportunity, which I will take, to work with the Office of Special Counsel to correct the many inaccuracies before the final report is issued.

Doan then sent a second response via email at 5:07 p.m., Wednesday:

I received the staff-drafted report, and I disagree with its preliminary findings. I fundamentally disagree with the approach taken by investigators to include facts and information that were not included in the report. I have an opportunity, which I will take, to work with the Office of Special Counsel to correct the many inaccuracies before the final report is issued.

The final statement was received by Government Executive at 5:27 p.m., Wednesday:

I received the staff-drafted report, and I disagree with its preliminary findings. I fundamentally disagree with the approach taken by investigators, including the omission of important and relevant facts from the report. I have an opportunity, which I will take, to work with the Office of Special Counsel to correct the many inaccuracies before the final report is issued.

Earlier today Government Executive reported that the Office of Special Counsel concluded that General Services Administration Administrator Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act. The 21-page report, obtained by Government Executive, is a sharply worded document that calls into questions much of Doan's recollection, or lack thereof, of the charge that she violated the law by hosting a meeting at GSA headquarters, where a special assistant to the president showed a PowerPoint presentation that analyzed the results of the 2006 midterm election. Doan allegedly asked how GSA could help the Republican candidates.

The report is full of details of Doan's testimony and questions of how it contradicts other witness testimony, most of which we could not fit in the news story. We provide some for you here:

-- Throughout the report, investigator Scott Bloch suggests that Doan did not give an accurate portrayal of the events that occurred at the January meeting. For example, according to the report, Doan told investigators that she did not pay attention to the PowerPoint slide presentation on the 2006 elections because:

she dislikes PowerPoint presentations; she was uninterested in the topic; she does not care about polls; and, she felt the presentation had nothing to do with her or what she does on a daily basis at GSA. Lastly, Administrator Doan testified that she was on her Blackberry ... reviewing emails ... and only periodically looked up and down.

In a footnote, investigators report that Doan contributed $226,000 to Republican candidates and Republican organizations and asked Doan why she contributed to candidates and organizations when "she does not care about polls or election results. Doan responded by testifying that the contributions had been 'taken out of context.'" She told the OSC that she does not believe that $225,000 is a substantial amount in light of her other contributions to nonpolitical organizations, such as giving more than $1 million to her alma mater Vassar College, more than a half a million dollars to the New Harman Center of Shakespeare Theatre and more than $50,000 to fund minority businesses.

"Although Ms. Doan again repeated that her donations to these Republican organizations have been taken out of context," according to the report, "she failed to explain why she donated any amount to these organizations whose purpose is to elect Republican candidates."

Also, an OSC review of her e-mail use during the meeting failed to corroborate that she was checking or sending email via her BlackBerry.

-- The report challenges Doan's claim that she cannot remember whether or not she made any remark along the lines of "how can we help our candidates," but the report provides a long list of events at the meeting she did recall:

Administrator Doan testified that as she was getting ready to leave for the January 26 meeting, she was interrupted by a phone call or her personal digital assistant. She testified that she told Meghan and Brittany, her two assistants, that she would be down to the meeting in a few minutes. She remembered that they took with them the cookies she had purchased previously for the meeting. Upon entering the meeting, she remembers being surprised that the video conferencing system and the refresh rate were working. Ms. Doan also testified that she remembered thinking that there were not that many people at the meeting. Administrator Doan also remembered that she sat near Mr. Jennings and was sitting near a "young perky looking" woman, whom she thought might be a new GSA employee. Administrator Doan remembers that Kevin Messner was sitting at the far end of the table. She also remembered that three or four people left during the presentation including her Associate Administrator for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs. Despite remembering all of these details concerning the meeting, Administrator Doan testified that she could not remember whether she made any comment about "how can we help our candidates.

Doan also told OSC that she did not give Scott Jennings, who presented the slide show, a tour of GSA's offices and did not know if Jennings went elsewhere in the building after the presentation. But Jennings and GSA White House Liaison J.B. Horton told OSC that after the meeting, Doan gave Jennings a tour of the immediate area around her office and talked about the artwork.

-- Investigators report that Doan tried to defend her contention that she could not remember the statement regarding helping candidates by questioning the memory of the witnesses who testified that she did ask the quesiton:

Administrator Doan's implication that the adverse testimony provided by her political appointees should be questioned because of the alleged variations is unconvincing. Administrator Doan is holding the adverse witnesses to a standard which she does not hold herself. First Ms. Doan does not recall or remember anything about Mr. Jennings' presentation or any of the comments that Mr. Jennings' made, yet she claims to remember the statements made by attendees after Mr. Jennings' presentation concluded. Second, with respect to the alleged statements she can remember, they were preface with a caveat that she could not recall verbatim what she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Monday that the investigation into the leadership of the General Services Administration continues, despite the fact that there are no hearings scheduled. "We're not holding public hearings on [Doan's alleged misconduct], but we're continuing our investigation into GSA," Waxman said.

On March 28, Waxman held the first and only hearing into whether GSA Administrator Lurita Doan violated a law that prohibits political activity within government offices, among other allegations.

The Office of Special Counsel is expected to release next week a report on Doan's alleged violation of the Hatch Act, sources have told Government Executive.

The federal government should create a position for a federal privacy czar, who would oversee federal employees' information management practices and policies to ensure they do not compromise Americans' privacy, according to a report released last week by the National Research Council.

The recommendations, laid out in a 456-page report that the NRC worked on for seven years, are similar to how some European nations and Australia approach privacy protections, according to an article posted by ars technica.

The report's authors also recommend the federal government undertake a broad and deep review of all national privacy laws and regulations to find gaps in privacy protections and to determine the social and economic impacts of the laws and regulations. The report, "Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in the Digital Age," also recommends Congress to oversee agencies' outsourcing practices to private-sector companies to manage or process Americans' private information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An undetermined number of e-mails sent by White House aides from a Republican National Committee account have been lost, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said some e-mails were lost because they had no clear policy for archiving the emails.

"This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the AP. Congressional oversight committees are seeking White House emails sent via RNC accounts in connection with the recent firing of eight federal prosecutors and a potential violation of the Hatch Act by General Services Administrator Lurita Doan.

Hat tip: Boing Boing

The two latest Candorville comic strips (one that ran April 10 and another that ran today, April 11) have an eerily familiar ring to them -- especially for anyone who has followed the congressional hearing investigating General Services Administrator Lurita Doan's role in the possible violation of a law that prevents political activity within government offices. We'll let you be the judge.

In testimony she plans to give Wednesday morning before a House oversight committee, General Services Administration chief Laurita Doan lists her accomplishments in creating a more efficient agency and defends some of the controversial decisions she has made since taking over the agency, according to a copy of the testimony obtained by Tech Insider.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asked Doan to testify before the committee to answer allegations of mismanagement.

In the testimony, in which she calls herself "a woman of action," Doan says that she welcomes "this opportunity to set the record straight" and that "GSA has turned around and created a positive relationship with the Judiciary and the Defense Department." She also says she has "tightened all financial controls, instituted sound financial management and inspired federal employees to find better and more innovative ways to improve all out operations."

With regards to a controversial extension of a Sun Microsystems' contract, Doan says that much of the documentation is proprietary and protected, and she urges the committee to not make it public.

Doan also answers allegations that she undermined the GSA Office of Inspector General by cutting its budget increase, saying she was attempting to "bring a little sunshine to all GSA spending decisions" and to "strengthen the internal oversight of all spending in an effort to make sure that all decisions were cost efficient and duplicative operations were eliminated." She says that she was not trying to intrude on the IG's authority and independence, but improve management of the office's $47 million budget.

She says that the IG made spending decisions that seemed hard to justify and that there was a "complete breakdown in any oversight or review." She cites as examples the office's information technology program and its "unchecked and unaccountable human resource process responsible for promotions and the awarding of bonuses for SES employees."

Later in the statement Doan denies comparing IG employees to terrorists and says that she wants to change the "perception that the OIG fosters a hostile work environment."

On her attempt to award a sole-source contract for public relations services to a longtime friend, Doan says she "made a procedural mistake in my zealous efforts to promote small and disadvantaged businesses ...."

Citing national security issues, the Navy yesterday refused to handover to a court information about its use of sonars, which an environmental advocacy group says kills whales, the AP reports today.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued the Navy to compel it to use sonar in such a way as not to harm whales. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered the Navy to provide information on when and where it has used sonar since 2003, the AP reported.

The Navy does not dispute whether the sonar may hurt whales, but it claims that it takes precautions, such as looking out for whales. The Congressional Research Service reported last year that Navy sonar had been responsible for six whale deaths and other unusual behavior.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, met last week with embattled General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan, David Marin, Republican staff director for the committee, confirmed today.

Davis, who chaired the committee when the Republicans controlled the House, met with Doan to gather information Davis' staff says they need to better prepare for the hearing, which committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called to investigate a variety of actions Doan has taken while head of the GSA. Davis' staff declined to elaborate on what Davis and Doan talked about. It is not uncommon for Davis, or other House members, to meet with those asked to testify before a committee.

The hearing was originally scheduled to be held last Tuesday, but it was unexpectedly canceled last week.

Several sources, including some within GSA, say that the hearing is tentatively scheduled for the week of March 26 with the likely date of the 28th. Sources say the committee delayed the hearing to give GSA's inspector general more preparation time. The IG is investigating a public relations contract that Doan attempted to award to a friend and has accused the administrator of undermining the office through reducing its 2008 budget increase.

Meanwhile, more supporters of Doan are stepping out in print.

Ed Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based public policy research institute, wrote in a March 19 commentary for CNSNews.com that Doan is "working from within to make the federal government more efficient."

Doan says she wants to prove she can run a federal agency like a business (something voters would no doubt approve of). When she took over GSA, it had a deficit of more than $100 million, which she immediately slashed by ordering the agency to make a 9 percent across-the-board spending cut. It may be the first time in decades an administrator actually cut government spending.

But now Doan's under fire. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wants her to testify before the House Oversight Committee "so that she can respond" to his allegations that she awarded a no-bid contract worth $20,000 to a friend.

If Doan did steer business to a friend, that would be wrong. But it's worth wondering if there isn't a witch hunt going on here. After all, this is a woman who has angered important bureaucrats by slashing their budgets. Her agency manages $56 billion in contracts, and she's being grilled about a $20,000 award? The hearing (scheduled for March 20) should be interesting.

Contracting officials familiar with GSA say that the amount of a contract, $20 or $20 million, is immaterial when it comes to allegations of steering contacts. It's still improper, they say.