TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

During his remarks this afternoon following a meeting with congressional leaders to discuss immigration, President Obama announced a new initiative that will allow applicants for U.S. citizenship to check their application status online:

Today I'm pleased to announce a new collaboration between my chief information officer, my chief performance officer, my chief technologies officer and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office to make the agency much more efficient, much more transparent, much more user-friendly than it has been in the past.

In the next 90 days, USCIS will launch a vastly improved Web site that will, for the first time ever, allow applicants to get updates on their status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online. And anybody who's dealt with families who are trying to deal with -- navigate the immigration system, this is going to save them huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold. It's an example of some things that we can do administratively even as we're working through difficult issues surrounding comprehensive immigration.

And the idea is very simple here: We're going to leverage cutting-edge technology to reduce the unnecessary paperwork, backlogs and the lack of transparency that's caused so many people so much heartache.

While the battle over comprehensive immigration reform is sure to be long and heated, this is one move that should prove popular with folks looking to apply for citizenship. The 90-day deadline means USCIS will be under the gun to deliver results by this fall. The agency did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. We'll be keeping an eye on this project going forward.

My colleague at TechDailyDose reports that Davis isn't interested in being cyber czar after all:

Former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said Tuesday that he does not want the job of President Obama's cybersecurity coordinator despite recent rumblings that he was one of the top contenders for the position. "If I'd wanted to stay in government, I would have stayed in Congress," he said at a National Press Club briefing. "I don't have any real interest in going back."

Davis said he isn't a candidate and expressed some reservations about the vague job description. He also thinks the Obama Administration has brought on too many czars

Time magazine reported on Friday that former Republican congressman Tom Davis of Virginia is the White House's leading candidate to be the nation's first cybersecurity czar:

Tom Davis, a moderate Republican from Virginia, has emerged as a leading candidate for the Obama administration's newly created position of cybersecurity czar. Sources familiar with the White House's deliberations on the subject say Obama officials feel a Washington power player would make a better candidate than a tech guru. "They want someone who understands technology issues, but more importantly, knows how to get things done in Washington," says a cybersecurity expert who has been consulted by the White House. "There are very few people who have that combination of skills, and Davis is at the top of that short list."

Davis, who served in the House of Representatives for seven terms before retiring last fall, is a Hill veteran with extensive experience in technology policy. He authored the Federal Information Security Management Act in 2002, chaired the Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy and was a co-chair of Congress's Information Technology Working Group. (He also led the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and is popular on both sides of the aisle in Congress.) Crucially, Davis also has good connections to the IT private sector. His district, the 11th, is bristling with technology companies. Since retiring from Congress, Davis has joined the consulting firm Deloitte. Davis was not available for comment.

Nextgov readers likely are familiar with Davis, who retired from the House last fall, because of his long track record with regards to technology policy. He is a respected figure in the federal IT community and would arguably bring more profile to the administration's cyber efforts than any of the other nominees. His standing as a moderate Republican is also attractive, as it should give him the ability to reach out to key players in technology policy such as Sens. Collins, Lieberman and Coburn.

The emergence of Davis as a front-runner also means the odds are that Melissa Hathaway is pretty much out of the running. It's unlikely the administration would have floated Davis' name if Hathaway was still being seriously considered. Her name will probably be mentioned until the position is filled, but considering the mixed reviews of her 60-day cybsecurity report, it shouldn't be surprising if someone else is nominated.

A twitter outage in Iran on Friday reportedly foiled some supporters of a leading reformist candidate in the country's presidential election.

Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi had relied heavily on the broadcast text-messaging application to rally voters, according to the Wall Street Journal. Heavy voter turnout was expected to help him beat hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But CNN reported that text messaging was not working in Iran on Friday.

Ahmadinejad was winning as of late Friday afternoon, according to various news sources.

Multiple twitterers in Tehran wrote that the SMS (Short Message Service) system in Iran had been taken down, just hours before polls opened.

One Twitter account recently reminded people not to wear reformist color green when it heads to the polls, as the government has threatened not to allow such people to vote. It asked to spread the word via SMS but at least for now that is not possible.

It was unclear what caused the service disruption.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday remodeled its Web site partly to direct users to its safety-related content.

"Safety and efficiency are at the center of what FAA does, and we've dedicated a What We Do promotional area on the home page to highlight this message," the site states.

The agency, which is under fire after the fatal crash of an FAA-regulated regional airliner in Buffalo, N.Y., also dedicated a Web page to "safety and efficiency." It provides users with a hotline and e-mail address to report aviation regulatory violations.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D., at a Wednesday afternoon hearing of his Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee, said he is concerned about FAA's ability to prevent inexperienced, ill-prepared pilots from flying in icy weather or in planes with which they are unfamiliar.

The launch is part of an ongoing effort to improve the agency's Web presence, according to FAA.

On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt announced they instructed employees to immediately concentrate inspections on training programs to ensure that regional airlines are complying with federal regulations.

Have politicians learned from President Obama about the value of the Internet for campaigning? Larry Sabato argued that they haven't learned enough during a speech he gave at the University of Virginia on Sunday.

The U.Va. professor of politics and director of the Center for Politics pointed to the flood of television ads promoting candidates for the Virginia Democratic primary on Tuesday, which he called a waste of money.

"People tune out televisions ads," which typically feature the candidate, "because politicians don't have credibility," Sabato told alumni during U.Va.'s reunion weekend. "It's better to put money to new technologies."

Obama's use of the Internet and social media to get elected is a "play on Abe Lincoln's dictum to find them, and vote them," Sabato said. What does that mean exactly? While Obama reached his core base of potential supporters with Web sites and social media applications that touted his message, Abraham Lincoln used posters and leaflets and newspaper editorials to sustain enthusiasm. They were relentless without alienating voters, which won them both elections against candidates that relied too exclusively on traditional campaigning.

Politicians, like the rest of the world, will come around, Sabato said -- adding that he was as skeptical as anyone.

"I thought Twitter was the dumbest thing in the world at first," Sabato said. "But I realize now that it's a great discipline."

A Senate panel plans to examine on May 19 the nomination of Aneesh Chopra as the first-ever federal Chief Technology Officer, a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy official said on Tuesday.

While the nomination is not controversial, the timing is.

Because Chopra was not named to the post until April and has not been confirmed, his hands are somewhat tied in deploying President Obama's so-called "Open Government" initiative. Government watchdogs are growing more frustrated by the day, as they wait for a CTO to issue recommendations, which Obama requested on Jan. 21, for creating a more transparent, participatory and collaborative government. Recommendations are due to Obama two days after Chopra's hearing.

Furthermore, interest groups want a chance to comment on the initiative before the recommendations become policy.

The hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation -- the first step in the confirmation process -- is scheduled for 11 a.m., said OSTP spokesman Rick Weiss.

Senate sources said they were not aware of any debate surrounding his nomination.

More than a month went by between a February hearing to examine the nomination of OSTP Director-designate John Holdren and full Senate confirmation on March 19. While that hearing garnered relatively favorable reviews, multiple senators placed anonymous holds on the nomination reportedly to protest political issues that were unrelated to Holdren.

Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration for two years during the Bush administration and now a commentator on Federal News Radio, has a weekly feature on the station's Federal Drive program during which she offers up her "cheers and jeers" for the federal community. The cheers are praise for federal employees or politicians whom she thinks have done a good job, and the jeers are reserved for individuals whom Doan believes have done something boneheaded.

This week, her jeer went to the Veterans Benefits Administration, which began taking applications on its Veterans Online Application Web site, also known as Vonapp, from vets applying for funds to cover education-related costs (tuition and living expenses) as provided by the new GI bill. The problem, as Nextgov reported, was that the site was slow or unresponsive due to heavy traffic.

Doan, in a discussion available as an mp3 download, put it this way:

The jeer is for the VA, for the Veterans [Benefits] Administration. . . . And if this were the first time that the government had ever launched a Web site and ever done a lot of PR before launching it, I probably would have given them a pass. Except we've seen this over and over again where, you know, the government promises accessibility and then on the day when it occurs, they say, "Oh wow, we didn't realize anybody was actually going to log on."

Who's at fault, according to Doan? The Obama administration. She immediately made the leap to blame the sluggish site on the White House because it hasn't been able yet to put together its IT management mojo. As a result, the administration, she said, is headed for a "crisis of confidence."

And to me, it's just another failed promise. It's sort of as if I was talking about in the op-ed, the Obama administration seems to be having some execution problems that might create a crisis of confidence. There is a very ambitious sort of grasping into a lot of different areas, a lot of outreach, whether it's the banking industry, the auto industry or something as simple as putting up benefits. But it looks to me like execution, the actual ability to execute on the promise, is a systemic problem. And to me if they can't do the simple stuff they promised like just put some data up on the Web, I lack confidence that they are going to be able to do some of the really difficult stuff.

Three problems here. First, VA announced it was building the Vonapp system in November 2000, just after Bush was elected president. Second, VBA has known it had to develop this application since Bush signed the new GI bill into law on June 30, 2008, nearly a year ago. Third, Obama has been in power for just a bit more than three months, or 105 days as of the broadcast of Doan's comments. Not sure that IT management processes - in either government or the corporate world -- can be improved in that amount of time. OK, and a fourth problem: Vonapp, I am willing to bet, is pretty low on the list of priorities at the White House. It may, however, be pretty high on the to-do list of VA's new chief information officer, Roger Baker, when he takes over the reins.

Of course, there will come a time when performance problems such as this will be hung on the Obama administration. Not sure now is the time.

Following reports that surfaced last week, a White House spokesman has confirmed to Nextgov that Google executive Sonal Shah will be joining the Obama administration as director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

Formerly the head of Google's philanthropic arm, Shah is slated to lead the office, which is expected to work with non-profits and community organizations to encourage "social entrepreneurship." The administration has thus far avoided releasing any details about the mission or structure of the office. Shah also served as a member of Obama's transition team, helping to develop technology policy.

The news of Shah's appointment has been greeted favorably in some circles, particularly among the philanthropic community.

However, her involvement with the White House has been controversial due to her ties to the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which is accused of using charitable works in India as a cover for inciting communal hatred. The VHP has been condemned by the State Department and the non-profit Human Rights Watch for its role in the 2002 mob violence in Gujurat, which resulted in the deaths of 1,000 people, most of whom were Muslims.

Nextgov first reported the allegations following Shah's appointment to the transition team in November. At the time, Shah released a statement denouncing the VHP of America for standing by silently "in the face of its Indian counterpart's complicity in the events of Gujarat in 2002." She also stated that at no time was she affiliated with the VHP of America.

However, a subsequent investigation by Nextgov uncovered email messages from May 1998 revealing Shah was not only an active member of the VHP of America, but considered one of the organization's next generation of leaders. The emails show Shah offering advice to VHP leaders about how to improve public perception of the VHP and directly contradict her claims to have never been affiliated with the organization.

Shah's father Ramesh is also known as a leader of the American wing of several right-wing Hindu organizations.

In addition, the Web site of another right-wing Hindu group, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, references a 2004 speech by Shah where she:

"exposed the hypocrisy of the Western way of life, highlighting its wasteful ways and compared them to the simpler but more genuine life in India. She mentioned how Indians would sacrifice whatever they had for their guests, but we in the West cannot even sacrifice a little time for them."

A White House spokesman acknowledged that the administration is aware of the reports but declined to comment on Shah's VHP ties. Regardless, the appointment is one of the most controversial out of the new administration, attracting criticism from both the left and the right.

Perhaps that's why the White House has gone this long without making an announcement. Shah's appointment had been common knowledge in the nonprofit world for months.

Seems like the White House got the memo on the importance of social media to national security.

While I was discussing the National Defense University's report on social media and national defense with former Defense new media chief Jack Holt, he mentioned that his title recently changed to senior strategist for emerging media. The reason for the new business card? Apparently, the White House has a job description out for his former position as chief of new media operations at Defense. More interesting, the position will be politically appointed.

So it looks like the Obama administration not only recognizes the strategic importance of social media at the Pentagon, but they view as politically sensitive enough to warrant having their own person in charge rather than a career official.

If you're wondering what exactly that person will be doing, check out our lead article on the NDU report, which details the various ways in which social media can be used to support national security. The NDU report itself should be released later this week.