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."

Ed Meagher, deputy chief information officer at the Interior Department and former deputy CIO at the Veterans Affairs Department, announced today that he plans to retire July 1 to take a position with SRA International, in that company's health care unit.

In a short email sent out this monring, Meagher wrote:

Folks,

I have decided to retire from the government effective July 1, 2008.
I will be joining SRA International in their Health Care Unit in mid July.

Regards,
Ed

Meagher was known for working hard to push information technology into the strategic decision making processes in agencies' top executive levels. He has been a strong proponent of giving the CIO more influence in agencies to improve government performance. In March, Meagher told Government Executive in an article that the government has failed to make IT strategic, as laid in the Clinger Cohen Act of 1996:

With a few notable exceptions, we're moving in the wrong direction. Clinger-Cohen was the direct result of these same conversations in the 1990s, when folks recognized that IT is a $70-billion-a-year operation in government. But Clinger-Cohen has fundamentally been ignored. The CIO has no voice. He doesn't get invited to meetings, he gets his directions and gives feedback through a third party after decisions have already been made, and he only gets called in when things are broken.

Meagher also was equally known for his work with wounded veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, frequently providing them a steak dinner and helping them work their way through the Defense Department's and VA's health care maze so they could re-enter society.

The new partnership between IBM and virtual-world-builder Forterra Systems Inc. won't be affected by IBM's suspension from federal contracting, according to Forterra's Vice President for Marketing, Chris Badger.

"Nothing has changed with Forterra's plan to partner with IBM around the Babel Bridge program," he said April 1 via email. "This program starts development this quarter with two releases planned for this year- one later this summer and the second one by end of year. I am sure that IBM will have cleared up the temporary debarment for federal contracts by the time our releases are available later this year."

The plan is for IBM to incorporate Forterra in its Unified Communications and Collaboration platform to help solve the problems created by interoperability among intelligence agency communications systems. The enhanced product will meld Forterra’s On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment 3-D platform with IBM’s Lotus Notes calendar Sametime.

Babel Bridge will allow agencies to instantly share information and interact in a synthetic world to plan operations and take real-time action in the real world, according to the companies.

Badger said the project has been going great guns since it was announced March 20. "We have received very strong interest outside the government market, particularly in the corporate and healthcare markets," he said. "This broader interest beyond the government markets is actually reinforcing the need to invest in near term, robust product development and marketing plans."

IBM is a leading large-industry player in virtual worlds, as well. The company was represented at last year's inaugural conference of the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds. It's unclear whether or how the suspension would affect and fledgling agency efforts in virtual world Second Life or elsewhere in the metaverse.

As a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, I feel I am entitled to take a gentle poke at the group now and then, and goodness knows, I have. Sometimes it has seemed to me more like a cigar-smoke-filled gentleman's club home to endless arguments about the "M" in OMB than a leader in public service innovation. But lo and behold, along comes NAPA's new Collaboration Project to blow a hole in my misconceptions.

NAPA officially kicked off the project in February, but it was born at a dinner table. NAPA president Jenna Dorn had just pushed back after a pleasant meal with old friend Kip Hawley, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, when Hawley said he had one word for her, ala "The Graduate." "Wiki," he said, and Dorn was off. "He’s always been cutting edge," says Dorn. "I read everything I could about it."

As the 53-year-old editor chiefly responsible for the controversial photograph of a young woman with a nose piercing on the December 2006 cover of Government Executive magazine, I straddle the workplace generational divide. My gray hair gives me street cred among aging boomers. My regular use of YouTube videos on my blog, my Facebook page and my Second Life avatar give me cache among those born after 1980.

So I feel comfortable saying to those of you in my demographic and older: Millennials are here. They're wired. Get over it.

Especially in matters technological, millennials are changing the workplace whether boomers approve or not. And often, we don't. Take last week's story here on NextGov about millennials as computer security risks. You can almost see the raised eyebrows through the lines in Symantec's finding that millennials pose a risk to network security. Just about all the IT managers interviewed grumped about millennials' freewheeling Internet practices, such as checking their personal email and Facebook pages and banking online while at work.

But while the tech czars grumble, those who manage millennials or struggle to lure them into government, are mellowing. They are finding young digital natives to be an asset, not a pain. The Army, for example, was an early adapter with its computer game recruiting tool America's Army. In late 2006, the CIA's National Clandestine Service set up a Facebook group to recruit new employees. NASA, NOAA the CDC and other agencies have entered the virtual world, namely Second Life, in part to meet milennials where they live.

And in a January white paper, "On Learning: The Future of Air Force Education and Training," the Air Education and Training Command proposed creating a virtual base, called MyBase, an obvious allusion to the so-five-minutes-ago millennial hang-out MySpace.

What's fun about MyBase is that it originated in Boomer angst. The paper is based in part on research about millennials done by Art Fritzson, a Booz Allen vice president. He was commissioned by "a senior officer who had been appalled to discover a number of junior officers using the . . . Facebook Web site for the purpose of organizing their. squadrons" This according to a piece Fritzson wrote along with Lloyd W. Howell Jr., another Booz V.P., and Dov S. Zakheim, a former Defense comptroller now at Booz. Their March 10 report, "Military of Millennials" appears on Booz' Web site, strategy + business. The authors point out that Generation Y, born between 1980 and 2001, is just about as large as the baby boom, lives on the Internet, and views knowledge not as power, but as something that "belongs to everyone and creates a basis for building new relationships and fostering dialogue. . . . They have grown up seeing the thoughts reaction, and even indiscretions of their friends and peers posted on a permanent, universally accessible global record."

Yes, this does call for a more creative approach to security and the need for adult supervision, but it also makes for a multi-tasking, anti-hierarchy, adaptive group that might just be uniquely suited to defeating the loosley organized, highly networked enemies we face, as well as the elusive, multi-faceted challenges we must surmount.

And by the way, the millennials also turn out to be deeply committed to family, community and teamwork; hugely civic-minded, creative and independent and possibly the most tolerant generation on record. So what if all this comes in a wrapping of tattoos, piercings and baggy clothes? We drove our elders nuts in our time, too.

Maybe you are and you don’t know it.

Monster has released a new book: Finding Keepers. It is full of good tips for recruiting and attracting the best candidates. Feds need to change the dynamic when recruiting and consider new ways to gain talent in the organization. Networking and discussion among colleagues is often a terrific source of potential job candidates. In Finding Keepers, Monster reveals that there are many more folks willing to change jobs than have been originally estimated. It has been viewed that about 20 percent of the workforce are actively looking for new opportunities, and 80 percent are passive, or not looking. However, Monster finds this scenario:

About 30 percent of employees are Settled Loyalists - they “claim allegiance to current job and employer” and are “difficult to recruit.”

About 11 percent are Poised Loyalists – they “claim allegiance but have a lower personal barrier to switch.”

And, about 59 percent are Poised Opportunists – they “are clearly open to the next opportunity to change” and “many are actively looking.”

This research clearly impacts traditional agency recruiting techniques.

An article in CIO Insight, states that CIOs, especially those in large companies, are to blame for the IT skills shortage; and if they were serious about ending the shortage they would make more investments in IT training. This correlates with my post, Training Anyone?" which suggests that agency CIOs should invest much more in training for their IT professionals.

The annual CIO survey recently released by ITAA and Grant Thornton again points to some of these very same issues elucidated by the CIO Insight article, but highlights the special concerns found in the federal environment. Agency CIOs are hampered by their lack of funding and agency commitment for training and staffing resources.

The “Blame” article also points out that IT executives are frustrated by the lack of skilled workers coming out of the university system, ill-prepared to function in the business world. In fact, federal agencies are lucky to be able to recruit and hire graduates of the Scholarship for Service Program. This program was designed to prepare students to graduate with specific knowledge and skills in IT Security and Information Assurance that would transfer immediately in the workplace.

Finally, “Blame” advises that many companies treat employees as disposable and fewer than half of large companies are successful in creating specific career paths. Again, federal agencies may have an advantage. The CIO Council’s IT Workforce Committee has created an IT Career Development Roadmap to assist IT Professionals in government to build long-term career progression plans.

Over the past year, an increasing number of federal employees have set up blogs -- some officially sanctioned and some not. It's hard to gauge exactly how the blogs (especially the unsanctioned ones) are being received in government's top executive offices, but for one blogger, it may have not been received well.

Michael McGrath, a 26-year veteran of the Coast Guard and until recently employed by a contractor working for the Coast Guard, wrote that he was fired last week. McGrath says he was fired for expressing his views on CGBlog.org, the Unofficial Coast Guard, which he contributes to, that were not received well. In a March 17 post for the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog:

My fellow blogger, Alan Balutis, expressed significant insight when commenting that organizations should continue to employ strategic human resource planning in spite of the impending retirement tsunami that has not yet really developed. Ongoing workforce planning is critical to determine an organization’s targeted needs to meet mission goals. And, as the exodus builds, year by year, agencies must be prepared.

I was privileged to head up the IT community’s Workforce Capability Assessment for several years and realized the value of the governmentwide information that it produced. The assessment, recently released, (late partly due to my retirement) provides a macro look at the bench strength of the IT workforce and hones in on competency and skill gaps that should be addressed in critical job areas. In addition, agency-specific data can be and is used to inform analysis at various levels in individual departments and agencies.

Other communities have adopted the IT assessment model, including the Acquisitions Community, discussed in a FAI newsletter. This example of workforce planning allows agencies and functional communities to be strategically positioned for the future.

The new president, coming into office Jan. 20, 2009, will face what the current head of the Office of Personnel Management has called a “retirement tsunami." According to many experts, 60 percent of the federal government’s rank and file workforce and 90 percent of its top managers will be eligible to retire in the next decade. OPM projections show that nearly 61,000 full-time permanent federal employees will retire in fiscal 2008 and that the number of retirements will peak between 2008 and 2010 – just as an incoming president seeks to launch her or his new administration.

Over the next five years, the federal government will lose more than 550,000 employees. But the market for recruits has never been more competitive and government employees are locked in a fierce contest with the private sector.

Over the last several weeks in Government Executive and elsewhere one has seen articles playing off the phrase coined by Office of Personnel Management Director Linda Springer of a pending "retirement tsunami." Brian Friel of Government Executive probably put it best: "Since the beginning of the decade, federal human resources watchers have been predicting a tsunami of baby boomer retirements that would empty government offices, leaving a handful of ill-prepared Generation Xers to handle all of Uncle Sam's work. How many times have we been told that half the federal workforce and 80 percent of senior executives would soon be out the door?"

The answer clearly is "too many times." I've discussed the matter with Human Resource experts in government and here is what I would come out with as a bottom line:

• The yearly increases in retirements projected by OPM were clearly too high;


• Retirements have increased, but not as much as expected;


• Lots of speculation on the reasons for the above, but no one seems to really know;


• Regardless, certain agencies -- Friel notes the Social Security Administration, others include the Federal Aviation Administration -- and certain occupations -- Federal Times has highlighted IT and medical
  personnel -- do seem to be getting hit harder; and finally,


• Strategic planning for Human Resources is still badly needed.

I think the last bullet may be key. This is a matter that has not gotten the proper attention in government. It took the "scare" of a retirement tsunami for the Government Accountability Office to put the issue on its high-risk list and for the Office of Management and Budget to add it to the President's Management Agenda. While the tsunami has yet to break -- and perhaps as a governmentwide issue or wave, it never will -- there is still a need for strategic HR planning. The real strategic thinker will look below the surface. She or he will see where the retirements are really coming and the needs really exist.

In other areas, in certain occupations, the government may actually want to encourage departures. Such positions may no longer be needed in the same numbers as in the past. In other cases, the losses can and will be devastating. Perhaps we can put the alarmist language aside. But if we do, let's not undermine efforts to strengthen government's HR planning capacities and the need for strategic thinking there.

What say you?

U.S. News & World Report outlines in an article posted today five ways you use your PC can get you fired. Of course, there's the viewing of inappropriate content and playing games like Solitaire. (New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired an employee after seeing the game on his computer monitor.) But also included on the list are some not-so-obvious uses, such as blogging, posting photos on your social network site and writing inappropriate or offensive emails. These offenses happen more than you may think: "Nearly one third of bosses have fired workers for misusing the Internet, according to a recent study by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute," U.S. News reports.

My friend and former colleague, Darren Ash, chief information officer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, writes in Federal Times about using new tools to conduct work, retain staff and transfer knowledge to keep pace with today’s environment and changing workforce, and to meet emerging agency needs. Darren provides an excellent overview on key strategies for agency CIOs to consider to move forward technologically with an edge for the future.

Wired's Danger Room blog posted an item this morning about a memo issued by the Coast Guard's leadership forbidding its employees from posting messages concerning agency business on outside blogs. "The Coast Guard headquarters Communication Center (HQ COMCEN) is designated as the only authorized CG organization to post messages to the Internet," the message read.

The message was issued in response to the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog -- which Danger Room has called "awesome" -- which at times posts unclassified messages from the Guard's internal network. Danger Room wonders if this is a crackdown or something else. Peter Stinson of the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog says, "We'll just have to wait and see."

We’ve all heard about the $435 hammer, $640 toilet seat, and $7,600 coffee pot. These were some of the government purchases highlighted in the 1980s to show that the federal acquisition system was broken. Even before these embarrassing revelations, Sen. William Proxmire, R-Wis., established the Golden Fleece Award to focus on examples of an acquisition system gone haywire.

Concerned citizens have worried about what is now called acquisition reform since the time that George Washington led America’s Continental army. The combined forces of complexity, bureaucracy, incompetence and corruption have led to an environment where government has had a tough time getting value for the goods and services it has bought. While most of the steps undertaken to reform the system have made good sense, the results of these efforts have been consistently disappointing.

What about this notion of generational identification? Does it have legs? Can you identify with it? Government Executive's Alyssa Rosenberg writes about a discussion of generational stereotyping at a recent conference.

I have known that I am a baby boomer for a really long time – perhaps from the age of two! Just kidding, I was not that precocious; but my generation has been clearly tagged and marked and chronicled forever. It hasn’t particularly bothered me, but I know some folks who clearly take offense about being pushed into a particular category or grouping - just because of their birth year.

Bottom line – all folks are unique and bring individual characteristics, traits and work habits into the workforce, and they should be treated as individuals in all aspects of daily work life.

The San Francisco Chronicle posted a story late yesterday about a contract employee at the NASA Ames Research Center pleading guilty to storing child pornography on his government computer. The odd thing about this story, as the paper points out, is that it is the third time in a little more than two years that an Ames employee has been caught with child pornography on a government computer. The paper makes it a point to say that the latest infraction is "at least" the third time.

The idea that government should not be in the business of business was first articulated by the Bureau of the Budget during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. BOB was the predecessor to the Office of Management and Budget, which was created in 1970 during the Nixon administration.

Government should not be in the business of business. What this principle means is that there are broad areas of business activity that should lie outside the domain of government effort, e.g., providing food service, manufacturing, advertising, and offering medical services.

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, one of his top priorities was to shrink government. He believed that many of the activities carried out by civil servants could best be executed by the private sector. So he instructed the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) to aggressively implement OMB Circular A-76, a government directive geared toward privatizing government activities.

So yesterday I got two letters from BENEFEDS (the company that administers the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Programs, also known as FEDVIP). Each letter explained that I had an "outstanding balance" on my insurance programs (I have both Dental and Vision) and that my monthly annuity would be adjusted to cover the deficit.

Reasonable enough, until you learn that one balance was 2 cents and the other was 7 cents!

Now it cost BENEFEDS something to print and mail each of those letters, and it cost the Office of Personnel and Management something to send me two letters explaining that my annuity would be adjusted downward by 9 cents. (They will send me two more next month giving me the good news that my annuity has skyrocketed 9 cents.)

Surely, it would make more sense for someone in there simply to write off the amount (or wait until an account was out of balance by more than the cost of collecting it).

Or do you think auditors would identify such reasonableness as inadequately circumspect?

First, it was the scare that electro-magnetic radiation emitted by computer monitors may cause skin rashes and abnormal pregnancies. Now you have to worry about catching a virus or staph infection from your computer keyboard or mouse (the pointing device).

But have no fear, a newsletter -- Washable Keyboard News -- just announced that it will "keep industry stakeholders abreast of current information that will help them to equip their home or work environments with appropriate technology for mitigating the transmission of these germs."

Unotron's Washable Corded Standard Keyboard

The newsletter is published by Unotron, "an emerging company that designs and manufactures high quality, washable data input and security devices that can be easily cleaned and disinfected to maximize user safety and minimize risk in nearly any environment," according to its Web site. Unotron tells us this unsettling factoid: "PC keyboards harbor more than 3,000 microbes per square inch - as compared to toilet seats' 49."

The site also has individual sections for health care, education, commercial and government. Seems as if viruses are sector specific, although the copy for each section is identical. Although we learn that the company will soon introduce smart card readers and fingerprint readers will soon use the company's SpillSeal® technology. Just in time for HSPD-12.

There is increasing evidence that management of the federal government may actually become a key issue in the candidates' debates and the upcoming presidential election. The most recent issue of The Economist features Sen. Obama on the cover and asks “But could he deliver?” Of course, for different reasons, Sens. Clinton and McCain are asking a very similar question. Government Executive's own Tom Shoop noted in a recent article, “the debate is shaping up to be not just a battle of sound bites, but a genuine discussion about how to improve the government's underlying capability to address the challenges facing the country.” So it may be useful to take a look at the top candidates as they have begun to lay out their plans for “reforming government” and “cleaning up Washington.”

On the Democratic side of the spectrum, Sen. Clinton co-sponsored legislation to create a U.S. Public Service Academy -- the equivalent of West Point or the Naval Academy -- for civil servants. The measure would dedicate $205 million to fund a 5,000 student institution aimed at producing high-quality federal employees. Last spring, she delivered a major policy address at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, where she laid out a 10 point agenda for government reform. One of those drew most of the attention: cutting back the government's contract workforce by 500,000 people. But there is much more in the speech, including making it possible for virtually every government service and transaction to be paperless. Sen. Obama has outlined an aggressive technology agenda to make government more transparent, place much more government information online and to create a government chief technology officer with real authority over government services and infrastructures.

Republican presidential contender John McCain delivered a speech in Oklahoma City, Okla. -- also last spring -- where he outlined a comprehensive platform for government management reforms, describing steps he would take to boost federal pay, speed firings, tie program funding to yearly evaluations and toughen acquisition rules.

All of these positions and speeches can be found on the candidates' Web sites. One can also look at the site created by Professor Donald Kettl of the University of Pennsylvania to track management issues in the 2008 campaign.

In the last month, SRA International has lost two top executives with deep government information technology experience. Dan Chenok, formerly branch chief for Information Policy and Technology at the Office of Management and Budget, considered one of the top IT management posts in the White House, announced he was leaving his senior vice president position at SRA to join Pragmatics Inc., which works with federal agencies to provide integration and information security solutions. Chenok was instrumental in creating OMB's IT and e-government policy and budget.

In January, Mary Ellen Condon, a former director of information management and security for the Justice Department working on information security, left her post at SRA to join federal consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as a principal in the Assurance and Resilience Service. At SRA, Condon was vice president and director of strategic services. Condon also held senior-level IT positions at the Agriculture Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of the Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Homeland Security Department), and the Energy Department. She also is a founding member of the federal Chief Information Officers Council.

IT Manager to IT employee: “I just cannot send you to training right now; I can’t afford your time away from the project. And, our training budget has been cut. ”

Sound familiar? Several issues – scarce training dollars (always the first budget to cut), can’t spare the worker, schedules and deadlines too tight, etc. Agency IT managers and executives are often caught up in this quandary. Take notice, this is short-sighted thinking. It is time to become more strategic and consider the long-term benefits of making sure your employees obtain timely training germane to their current duties.

A study a few years back indicated that top performing companies often had a higher percentage of payroll spent on training. This model should be considered by federal agencies.

Last Thursday was IT Job Shadow Day in federal government, with 475 students trailing IT staff at 36 agencies. Two of those students shadowed Karen Evans, administrator for e-government and information technology at the Office of Management and Budget, and Tim Young, deputy administrator for e-government and information technology, during a press briefing about the IT budget. The hope, Evans said, is that the effort will attract young talent to computer science, which would in turn help deal with ongoing workforce issues. “We’re one of many competing here to attract these students,” she said.

I'd like to draw your attention to -- if you haven't already seen it (and by the looks of it, many of you have) -- my colleague Tom Shoop's blog post on former presidential candidate Mitt Romney's withdrawal announcement. You can read the excerpt in Fedblog, but the gist is that government bureaucrats make too much money compared to their private-sector counterparts and that Americans should stand up to federal unions. Romney's comments have sparked a lot of heated responses from the federal workforce, to put it mildly. Please join the discussion and offer your viewpoint from an IT perspective.

As for the IT angle here? Federal IT executives and managers make far less than their private-sector counterparts. Top federal CIOs make in the neighborhood of $135,000. Private-sector CIOs running companies that rival the size of federal agencies make in the high-six-figure range, sometimes seven figures if they perform well enough to receive incentives. Differentials exist for lower level federal IT managers and their private-sector counterparts. Some CIOs in the private sector left their high-paying jobs to join the federal IT workforce out of a sense of duty, to serve the public. By doing so, they took huge salary cuts.

Update: This post was recently updated to correct an editing error, which appears below as a strike through. Our apologies for the confusion.

Due to an editing error, the It's called a talent-management system and many large American companies are suing using them. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the systems:

are designed to provide insight into an employer's recruiting and succession-planning needs. By tracking the number of employees that come in and out of a company, the programs can identify thinning areas along the organizational chart. Furthermore, they can pinpoint internal talent that might qualify or have the potential to qualify for expected vacancies and see from employee profiles whether a person is willing to relocate or aspires to work in a different area.

Look for them coming to government – if they haven’t already.

In my last (modestly named) “What’s Brewin” column, I suggested a way to honor the troops this season: Anyone lucky enough to fly in one of those big, cushy first-class seats should think about giving it up to someone in uniform – especially troops wearing their desert fatigues and on home leave from Iraq or Afghanistan.

Several well-intentioned, but definitely Pecksniffian, folks wrote in to say any service member who accepted such a seat would be in violation of various government regulations, which for the most part consign federal employees to steerage class.

But, according to Eric Rishel, a senior Defense Department attorney, that’s not exactly the case. The Office of Government Ethics does bar federal employees from accepting gifts due to their position from “prohibited sources,” which means folks doing business with the government, Rishel said.

This means that a service member flying out to test a new plane, gadget or gizmo, should not accept a first-class seat from a contractor program manager whose company paid for that cushy seat (on the grounds that this might be an attempt to gain some influence with the service member).

But, if a service member is offered a seat from someone who does not fall into the dreaded “prohibited sources” category offers a big cushy seat, it can be accepted – with some additional caveats, Rishel said.

It probably would not be a good idea for a three star in uniform to accept the upgrade because it would provide the impression of some “fat cat deal going on,” Rishel said. He added that the Air Force has regulations that say no one in the Air Force should fly in first class in uniform, a hard rule to adhere to as a “practical matter” if the cushy seat is offered on the plane.

The bottom line is anyone who does not fall into the dread “prohibited source” category can give away their first-class seat to a service member this holiday season reasonably sure the E4 or E5 will not end up standing at attention at the Office of Government Ethics.

Reporters are sometimes called all kinds of names by folks in uniform, but Rishel assured me that we scribes are not labeled “prohibited sources,” so I look forward to giving up my big, cushy seat once again when I fly to Washington next week.

Merry Christmas

It's official: The Senate confirmed four new leaders at the Homeland Security Department last night, one of which could play a key role in cybersecurity efforts.

Robert Jamison was appointed under secretary for the National Protection & Programs Directorate. The office is charged with minimizing the department's risk through an integrated approach of physical and virtual threats. Previously, Jamison served as deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, leading a transit security program and Lower Manhattan transportation recovery operation, which was established after 9/11.

Other confirmations included Julie Myers as assistant secretary of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Jeffrey Runge as chief medical officer and assistant secretary for the Office of Health Affairs, and Ross Ashley as assistant administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff released a statement on the confirmations this morning.

We think you, the technology manager in the federal government and industry, have a pretty good insight into just what are the hot issues and events that will unfold in 2008 for the federal IT market. Over the past few weeks we've invited you to take an online survey to let us know what you think; we just want to take this opportunity to invite you to take the survey again, if you haven’t.

We are conducting the survey in conjunction with our friends at Government Futures, which is also offering readers a chance to place bets on what’s going to happen in the federal IT community using the prediction markets on Government Future's Web site.

If you have taken the survey and placed your bets, thank you. If you haven't, please visit the site and give us your opinions. The questions cover a number of hot areas, including information security, the next-generation Internet and federal information technology spending.

In January, we’ll host a webinar to discuss the results of the survey and present an analysis of the predictions.

In the December issue of Government Executive, we discuss some trends that IT experts told us would be important. Now, we want your opinion. So, please take the survey and join the government futures market to help us figure it out.

To reach more job seekers, the Office of Personnel Management announced last week that it has made job vacancies in the federal government more accessible to Internet search engines, like Google and Yahoo. Before job vacancies could only be searched by keyword from on the federal government’s USAJOBS Web site. Now, a job seeker “who types in a job title on Google or other engines, such as "IT Specialist" or "Electrical Engineer,” will now also see links to federal vacancy announcements in those fields,” according to the OPM announcement.

That should make the 60,000 openings on USAJOBS a bit more accessible, although the site already gets 10 million visitors a month.

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 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.

The following item was posted by Government Executive's Jill Aitoro.

AmeriCorps, a network of local, state, and national service programs, is considering jumping into social networking. According to Matt Harmon, Webmaster for the Corporation for National and Community Service, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are perfect venues for recruitment and awareness, with social networking members typically ranging in their late teens to mid-20s. While still only in the idea stage, Harmon hopes to develop a Web page or pages that would bring service alums together to talk about their experiences and provide first-hand knowledge to those interested in getting involved in AmeriCorps. At the risk of shameless self promotion, recruits could download from the page necessary forms, link to the agency’s Web site, write blogs, and so on.

News that a special agent with the Commerce Department's Office of Export Enforcement was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury for accessing a government database to track the travels of a former girlfriend raises the question: Just how often do federal employees misuse government computers? For sure, the case of Benjamin Robinson, a 40-year-old special agent for Commerce who had been with the department for 10 years is rather extreme. He accessed the database 163 times, lied to his supervisors and threatened his former girlfriend's life. It’s not the only one. Another extreme case of improper use of a government computer was posted in Tech Insider here. (I urge you to read the comments that accompany the item to get a complete picture.)

Discussing the former case with a source who has spent nearly 30 years working and consulting on federal IT projects here in Washington, D.C., tells me that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, we hear about the more egregious, yet infrequent, abuses. But this source says less serious misuse, such as accessing private information for purely prurient interests and using powerful government applications for personal use is, if not common, widespread. In an upcoming "Managing Technology" column in Government Executive Magazine, a long-time General Services Administration employee says that the GSA has a well-publicized policy of monitoring Internet and network use, but it is widely known among employees that the logs are rarely scanned, leaving no check against misuse. I'll post a link to this story when it is published.

What's your experience at your agency or contractor's office of employees improperly using or accessing government databases or applications? Is it widespread? Let us know by clicking the comment link below.

For decades, studies of income levels have shown that the more education you have, the more money you earn. Now, add computer literacy to that relationship, according to a study conducted by the Centre for the Economics of Education in London. "The authors found the rate of return on computer use is between 3 percent and 10 percent, with the actual percentage dependent on 'unobserved differences and individual unobserved ability,'" according to an article posted by ComputerWeekly.com.

Those workers who have mastered word processing, email and programming tend to earn more than those who haven't, according to the study. Also, workers who completed more tasks that required a computer tended to earn more money. I guess the future looks bright for the just-graduated college students, most of whom have easily mastered those skills, as well as many other ones. Wonder how much knowing how to text message is worth.

Scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are suing NASA and the California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL, over what they say are unwarranted and overly personal background checks under the governmentwide access cards required under Homeland Security Presidential Directive - 12, according to an article by the Associated Press.

The lawsuit was filed by 28 plaintiffs, many of whom “have worked on such projects as the Mars rovers, the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn, but none are involved in classified work, according to the suit,” AP reports. “It seeks class-action status to represent similar JPL employees.”

The Department of Commerce also has been named in the suit because the department promulgates federal identification standards. To obtain an identification card, which will give employees access to federal buildings and computers, employees must fill out a form asking them about employment history, past residences and any illegal drug use.

More from the article:

The suit claims the directive was concerned "exclusively with the establishment of a common identification standard" and "contemplates no additional background investigation or suitability determination beyond that already required by law."

But according to the lawsuit, the Commerce Department and NASA instituted requirements that employees and contractors permit sweeping background checks to qualify for credentials and refusal would mean the loss of their jobs.

NASA calls on employees to permit investigators to delve into medical, financial and past employment records, and to question friends and acquaintances about everything from their finances to sex lives, according to the suit. The requirements apply to everyone from janitors to visiting professors.

The suit is structured so that it can become a class action suit. Could this just be the tip of the iceberg?

Jared Sandberg, author of the “Cubicle Culture” column in The Wall Street Journal, writes today about how purchasing agents, supply managers or any lower level manager in charge of a process that is elemental to the smooth working of an organization can capriciously exact his or her power to slow down work needlessly.

While the examples in the column are mostly from private-sector firms (although Sandberg offers up one, and a rather funny one at that, from the Navy), one doesn’t need to work too hard to see the parallels to the federal government. What comes quickly to mind are political appointees who hit resistance from career bureaucrats who work with the knowledge that the appointee will be gone in two years anyway, so why change? Also, entrenched IT managers resist consolidating infrastructure and IT processes. The Department of Homeland Security comes to mind as an example.

A quote from the column that is relevant to the government workplace: "'You might have the keys to the kingdom,' human-resources executive Mike Farrell notes, 'but if you don't have the keys to the gate, you're shafted.'"

It shouldn't be surprising that 60 percent of IRS employees fell for a social engineering test scam, in which the employees gave up sensitive computer information to a caller posing as someone from the help desk, according to a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and reported by The Associated Press. This kind of social engineering "attack" is particularly hard to guard against because 1) someone is contacting you (either by phone or email) who knows your name and other personal information about you and 2) is posing as a representative of a legitimate office in your organization.

The only real way to fight this kind of spoof is through education, as Government Executive magazine reports in the upcoming Aug. 15 issue. Look for the issue in your mailbox soon. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from the article, which appears in the Managing Technology column:

The most effective defense [against social engineering attacks] is education, security experts say. Agencies must train computer users to spot fraudulent e-mails [and phone calls] and resist replying to them. Educating includes “inoculation,” intentionally setting a spear phishing trap by sending out a false e-mail to a group of employees to see who takes the bait, according to Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute of Bethesda, Md., which manages the Internet Storm Center and tracks cyberthreats. IT managers contact employees who replied or opened an attachment and teach them what to look for in a fake e-mail. Mistakes sometimes are the best teachers, Paller says. He estimates that spear phishing attacks on government number only in the low hundreds, but says the threat should not be taken lightly. It takes only one successful attempt to create a lot of damage.

In its report, the Treasury IG office recommends the same course of action:

The Chief, Mission Assurance and Security Services, should continue security awareness activities to remind employees of the potential for social engineering attempts and the need to report these incidents to the IRS computer security organization, conduct internal social engineering tests on a periodic basis to increase employees’ security awareness and the need to protect usernames and passwords, and coordinate with business units to emphasize the need to discipline employees for security violations resulting from negligence or carelessness.

What's disconcerting about this particular approach is that training rarely gets the attention it needs to be effective. It's almost always one of the first line items to be cut from a tight budget, and agency IT budgets are tighter than they ever have been. Training also gets shortchanged when staffing is low, which means employees have little time to take off form regular work to attend training classes or even to read training materials. But training is the only defense. Firewalls and intrusion detection systems don't defend against social engineering attempts.

Do you see any efforts to increase information security training in your agencies?

The Inspector General's Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs has recommended that the department take "appropriate administrative action" against top managers, as well as an information technology specialist, at a VA medical center because of poor information security practices that led to the loss of an external hard drive containing personal information on veterans and medical providers, according to a report the IG office recently released.

In January, an unidentified IT specialist working at the Research Enhancement Award Program at the Birmingham, Ala., VA Medical Center reported a lost external hard drive, on which was stored personal information that included Social Security numbers and identifiable health information for as many as 535,000 veterans, and information from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Department of Health and Human Services, and from more than 1.3 million medical providers.

The IG concluded the IT specialist tried to cover up his actions during the investigation that immediately followed the loss of the hard drive. The IT specialist "encrypted and/or deleted multiple files from his computer shortly after he reported the data missing, making it more difficult to determine what was stored on his desktop computer," according to IG report. "Initially, he denied deleting and encrypting files to criminal investigators. However, after being confronted with the results of the OIG computer forensic analysis, he stated that he panicked and admitted deleting and encrypting the files in an attempt to hide the extent, magnitude, and impact of the missing data."

The IG also blamed the director and assistant director at the Research Enhancement Award Program for not developing appropriate policies for securing and handling data on external hard drives within the center and making sure those policies were properly followed. IT rules required specialists to encrypt all data on external hard drives, but that policy was not followed. In addition, external hard drives were supposed to be locked in a safe, but not all hard drives were stored in the safe and one IT specialist took home an unencrypted hard drive containing veterans' personal information.

The IG did not specify what the "appropriate administrative action" should be. The VA's undersecretary of health will decide what action the department will take.

Birmingham's VA medical center is not a unique situation when it comes to not encrypting hard drives or other removable storage devices. Only 33 percent of all organizations worldwide (private and public sector) encrypt stored data, according to CIO Magazine. Only 30 percent of government organizations worldwide encrypt stored data.

Hat tip: ComputerWorld

The General Services Administration announced Tuesday that Casey Coleman, chief information officer of the new Federal Acquisition Service, will serve as the acting chief information officer until the position can be filled permanently.

Coleman replaces Mike Carleton, who is leaving GSA to fill the Health and Human Services Department's open CIO position.

Coleman has been serving as the first CIO of the Federal Acquisition Service since it was created in October 2006. Previously she served for two years as the CIO of the now defunct Federal Technology Service and also headed GSA's Office of Citizen Services from 2002 to 2004.

We have received a number of comments on the Tech Insider post "The Importance of Computer Training." Half a dozen readers have posted comments giving their opinions about computer training, especially the importance of being able to analyze the data that networks are capable of producing. We invite you to keep the discussion going.

The acting deputy commissioner at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service has been given the fulltime job, according to an agency news release.

Barney Brasseux, a longtime GSA employee and member of the Senior Executive Service, will serve as the FAS deputy commissioner under Jim Williams, the FAS commissioner. Brasseux previously served concurrently as acting deputy commissioner and assistant commissioner for travel, motor vehicles, and card services.

“The skills, knowledge, and energy that Barney has already demonstrated as acting deputy commissioner give me great confidence in his ability to lead the Federal Acquisition Service in this role," Williams said in a news release.

Brasseux joined GSA’s old Federal Supply Service in 1993 serving in a variety of positions in the travel and transportation, services acquisition, and automotive organizations. He also had a stint as the organization's chief of staff.

Brasseux joined the government in 1982 as assistant to the director of the White House Travel Office. He arranged travel arrangements for the White House press corps in conjunction with President Reagan's domestic and international travel.

Brasseux worked in resolving the disagreements between the agency and the National Federation of Federal Employees union as one of the final hurdles in combining the old Federal Supply Service and Federal Technology Service.

In one of its recent reports on the U.S. workforce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology workers don't work the long hours that the media and, well, the IT industry have portrayed. The average computer professional works 42 hours and 24 minutes a week, according to the BLS. That's the lightest work week of any professional group save one -- that would be educators, trainers and librarians, who average 41 hours and 18 minutes a week, blogger Eric Chabrow of CIO Insight journal wrote in his blog.

To top it off, Chabrow points out, IT workers as a group had the fewest portion of workers working the insane 60-plus hours a week: 7 percent of IT professionals say they work those long hours. Legal professionals have the largest percentage of workers (15 percent) who say they work more than 60 hours a week.

Another interesting fact in the BLS survey, Chabrow points out: The number of women working in the IT field dropped by 75,000 from 2000 to 2006. Chabrow, using that statistic, busts another myth: Women are leaving the IT field because of the long hours, which leaves less time for family. If that is not the case, then what gives?

As expected, many readers questioned BLS' stats when Chabrow first wrote about the survey findings in April.

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."

A group of former and current State Department employees is calling into question the merits of an award-winning computer system designed to speed up the process of conducting security clearances, calling it "garbage in, garbage out."

The Concerned Foreign Service Officers, a group formed in 2005 by State Department employees who are concerned about abuses of the security clearance process, issued a press release Friday questioning the recognition that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security has received for developing a computer system that decreases the time it takes to issue security clearances. The security-clearance process has strained under an increased demand since 9/11, with the backlog of security clearances remaining at more than 100,000 and taking more than a year to complete.

State Department employee Donald Reid "recently received an IT Leadership Award from Government Computer News, for innovation in the use of automation to facilitate the security clearance process," according to the press release. The security clearance system also received the Guardian Award from the Office of Personnel Management, according to the press release.

The Concerned Foreign Service Officers group agrees the system is an undeniable improvement over the paper-based system and reduces the time necessary to gather information for security clearance adjudications, but:

It is important to understand that the speed of information gathering is the ... least important aspect of the security clearance process. Two other aspects are considerably more important: the quality of investigative reports and the quality of adjudications. Like medicine or science, a security clearance adjudication is a qualitative function. To focus on the speed of the process is a bit like focusing on speed of intake, rather than diagnostic or treatment abilities, in a hospital.

In its press release, Concerned Foreign Service Officers congratulate the Bureau of Diplomatic Security on increasing the speed of its security clearance process, but "we only lament that the primary result of this improvement is that DS now makes bad determinations faster."

The State Department public affairs office declined to comment.

The following item was posted by Bob Brewin.

It’s time to put into perspective this kerfuffle over the Defense Department barring access to MySpace, YouTube and other video and social networking sites.

Yes, "War Is Hell," and that means troops in an all-volunteer military sometimes just don’t get everything they want or what is readily available to people in civilian life. Or, to update the best recruiting slogan ever hatched by my branch of service, the U.S. Marine Corps, “We Never Promised You a Rose Garden or Internet Access.”

The firestorm over DOD barring access to Web sites was kicked off by a tear-jerker of a lead in an Associated Press article carried by us and newspapers around the world from London to Perth, which said that a change in DOD policy barring soldiers’ access to social networking and video-streaming sites meant “soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home."

Somewhat true, but balderdash.

We have the most connected fighting force in the world. Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen today can communicate with their loved ones by email, cell phones, regular phones and computers in Internet cafes not hooked up to military networks. They also can go the old fashioned route: Write a letter via snail mail.

The only thing they can’t use as of this week are bandwidth hogging sites for the simple reason that no one, even DOD, has an unlimited amount of bandwidth to fritter away on social networking streaming video sites. There is a war on.

This wide range of communications options available to troops today stands in stark contrast to my experience in Vietnam, where a letter took days to reach home, or the experience of my father, who served in the Philippines during The Big One, and who had to wait weeks for his letters to reach home. U.S. military personnel today (including sailors and Marines floating around the bounding main) are far more connected than I or my father ever was.

The caterwauling by the chattering class about DOD and MySpace (The Washington Post declared this week that MySpace was “A Casualty of War”) also ignores one of the real harsh realities of war: The troops who most need access to creature comforts – the grunts who do the dirty work – have the least amount of access. Based on my experience, grunts don’t have high-speed Internet access, let alone access to essentials such as soap, water and hot meals. But, instead of focusing on that, folks such as Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) are beating on DOD about barring access to MySpace over military networks.

Finally, I suggest anyone wasting time blogging or bloviating over DOD and MySpace in the greater Washington area can put their time to much better use by driving to Baltimore Washington International Airport to greet the soldiers coming off the charter flights from Iraq, look the soldiers in the eye, shake their hands and say, “Thank you for your service.”

Shortly after the Army issued rules restricting soldiers' access to certain Web sites and what they can write in personal blogs, a print on demand company awarded a literary prize to a soldier who anonymously blogged about his experiences while serving in Iraq.

Colby Buzzell (View photo) won the second annual Lulu Blooker award for his book My War: Killing Time in Iraq, in which he writes about his experiences as a soldier fighting in the Iraq's Sunni Triangle in 2005. Lulu, which describes itself "as a technology company, not a publisher" and offers services "to publish and sell any kind of digital content," gives the $10,000 Blooker award a book that started out as a blog. The Penguin Group published My War.

According to a Reuters article:

Buzzell ... says he started posting his experiences online from a frontline Internet tent as a way to "kill time." ... His blog allowed him to explain the war to readers back home with an immediacy that he would never have been able to match if he wrote a book after he returned, Buzzell told Reuters by phone from Los Angeles.

"I would come back after missions, my ears still ringing from the firefight, and sit down and write about it," he said. "If you look at prior history and books about war, it's always in retrospect. I've been back two years. If someone told me to write a book about Iraq now, I wouldn't know where to start."

In an interview with Public Radio International's The World, Buzzell read an excerpt from his book, in which he encountered an insurgent who fired an AK-47 at him. He said bullets whizzed within inches of his head and made pinging sounds as they hit the metal around him. A bullet went through the helmet of Buzzell's platoon sergeant, but did not injure him.

Buzzell's blog post describing the fight identified him as the anonymous blogger, and Buzzell's commanding officer ordered him to stop blogging.

Have you ever tried to use your home computer network for a business presentation with a deadline in a matter of hours while the kiddos in the house are all downloading videos from YouTube or checking out their friends on MySpace? You quickly find out it’s difficult for business to compete with pleasure, and you yell at the kids to knock it off.

That’s the situation the Defense Information Systems (DISA) and the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations found themselves in when they assessed the impact that video and social networking sites had on the Defense