Summaries for January 15, 2009

THE OBAMA ERA GETS UNDERWAY
"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." That passage came in the middle of President Obama's inaugural speech. It was an interesting choice of words. Any program that doesn't fulfill one of three objectives, will end.  -> Read More

FOR THIS YOUNG FED, JOB AND SOCIAL MEDIA FORM A FABRIC
While the Obama family moved into the White House, I took a tour of Steve Ressler's closet - a virtual tour that is. The video peek is on a fast-growing, somewhat quirky web site that is Ressler's creation, govloop.com. There is a connection between Ressler and Obama: Young federal career employees are looking to the new administration to communicate with them, and with the public, in ways that represent a departure for government. -> Read More

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WEB 2.0 FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT? FOLKS, IT'S ALREADY HERE
At GovLoop, MeriTalk and other sites, it seems, everyone is debating whether so-called Web 2.0 technologies will be used by the government more widely, now that a Blackberry-toting president has moved into the White House. It's ironic - using Web 2.0 to debate Web 2.0. Anyhow, the short answer is, these tools already are being used. -> Read More

STIMULUS PACKAGE IS A BONANZA FOR FEDERAL IT
Ever take out a second mortgage to do those things around the house that seemed too expensive for your current budget. Maybe a new roof and siding and that extra room you always wanted off the kitchen? Well, that in effect is what the federal government is doing with what is shaping up to be an economic stimulus package north of $800 billion. -> Read More

WHAT EXACTLY WILL BE OBAMA'S MANAGEMENT AGENDA?
Let's face it, what one president wants from government workers and their career managers isn't all that different from what another president wants.  For sure, some things will definitely change under the new administration while some things will create tough dilemmas. -> Read More

• The Obama Era Gets Underway

  "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.  Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."

  That passage came in the middle of President Obama's inaugural speech. It was an interesting choice of words. Any program that doesn't fulfill one of those three objectives, will end.

  About the only other place the new president spoke in concrete terms was when he said, "We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.  We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories."

  Shortly after the swearing in, the Obama team launched a new www.whitehouse.gov. There you will find a bit more information about technology and technology policy. This White House has a high interest in wireless broadband and net neutrality.

  He made little reference to the stimulus bill (see story below) and in fact faces a battle in Congress on priorities for spending these hundreds of billions.

  Today, the real work begins.

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• For This Young Fed, Job and Social Media Form a Fabric

  Steve Ressler

  While the Obama family moved from Chicago to the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington , D.C. , then to Blair House, and finally to the White House, I took a tour of Steve Ressler's closet. This included a quick inspection of his made-to-measure Korean suit and a brief look at his necktie collection. In 17 years of covering the federal government market, Ressler's is the first federal wardrobe I've ever seen.

  Okay, it was a virtual tour. I watched a video on a fast-growing, somewhat quirky web site that is Ressler's creation, govloop.com.

  There is a connection between Ressler and Obama: Young federal career employees are looking to the new administration to communicate with them, and with the public, in ways that represent a departure for government.

  And if you want to know what the quintessential, networked young federal worker looks like, take a look at Ressler.

  A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania , Ressler applied for a Department of Homeland Security scholarship. He now has six years of government service under his belt at DHS, where he is an IT project manager. And just what attracts an ivy leaguer to federal service?

  "It's a great mission," Ressler said. "All generations want to contribute to something good. We're at war, there's a fiscal crisis-it's not like selling evaporated cheese."

  And, he added, "it pays better than non-profit work." Yet, he said, it is not money that primarily motivates Ressler or his colleagues.

  "The key is tying work to the mission. I'm an IT guy, but monthly we send people out to the U.S. border with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies to see what they do, why it is important." That experience, he said, makes the IT work seem more real and relevant - and important.

  Ressler said he and other new-generation federal workers hope Obama taps into their passion for service. And for those inspired by current political events to want to join federal service, Ressler said a priority for the government should be to simplify and speed up the job application process.

  Beyond that, "I hope the technology of the campaign, they'll bring into the government. Now there is a lot of regulation. People are not quite ready to make the first move," Ressler said. That technology means reaching people wirelessly, using social networks, and spreading the word via video - as video emerges as one of the most important applications on the Internet.

  Ressler's GovLoop is a case in point for the new norms of communication. It is not a federally operated or officially sanctioned site, but Ressler, in aiming to build a place where young feds feel comfortable joining and interacting, has stuck to the theme of government community. There's no politics, no snarkiness, no place for people to complain about their boss. It does mix the personal with the pride in jobs people do. The link to one recent post is typical. It read: Want to hear how EPA mixed Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 for Earth Day?

  There is also the absurdly serious, as in this discussion started by one Dr. D.C. Misra: How much carbon dioxide does a typical Google search on a desktop computer produce?

  Ressler acknowledged that during the Bush administration some departments started blogs and other ways of interacting with the public. Of his own department's blog, he said, "It's good, but it has a standard PR tone, not the conversational tone people want to have in a blog." And he said no one has really figured out whether there is a good way for an official site to harbor posts that dissent from official opinion.

  In the meantime, Ressler is involved in other social endeavors including Young Government Leaders, which has a social networking committee, and in the Social Media Club's Washington chapter.

  Get the picture? The commitment to government service intersects with a desire to share and communicate. It seems like transparency in government has a good future.

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• Web 2.0 for the Federal Government? Folks, It's Already Here

  At GovLoop, MeriTalk and other sites, it seems, everyone is debating whether so-called Web 2.0 technologies will be used by the government more widely now that a Blackberry-toting president has moved into the White House. Ironic - using Web 2.0 to debate Web 2.0.

  A digression: For purposes of discussion, let's define Web 2.0 as interactive applications centered around common interests of individuals who may or may not be professionally affiliated.

  Anyhow, the short answer is, these tools already are being used. Former Environmental Protection Agency CIO Molly O'Neill, for example, has used wiki sites to support certain projects. Transportation, State and Homeland Security officials are blogging regularly. State has also been trying video postings and has launched a contest for work that isn't, let's say, your grandfather's propaganda films. (Interesting that the deadline is the end of this January. Will Hillary Clinton go ahead with the contest?)

  Meanwhile, as noted in the story above, federal workers are creating their own social media web sites. Some are even anti sites, such as this blog site which is critical of the Coast Guard. As the Project On Government Oversight, or POGO, reported, such blogging can get you into a heap of trouble.

  Then there is FEMA's foray into the rapidly expanding world of Twitter.

  It may be a sign of the political bias of the many people hoping that the Obama team will bring these tools to governing, and not noticing or acknowledging what is going on already. But that's okay, because by no means have all the creative ideas been exhausted.

  A more important question is whether this kind of stuff will take the administration's eye of the real IT ball. Too many agencies don't have effective internal financial controls. There are major modernizations of critical systems underway but far from finished. So there will be big IT issues for the agencies to undertake.

  What good is a wiki or a social network site without these prerequisite answers:

  • What is the requirement? Why are we doing this? What mission is it serving?

  • Have we worked through a clear notion of the outcome, the metrics for success?

  • Do we have the resources lined up to sustain this? You don't just start a wiki without a plan for maintaining it and ending it, if that's what the plan calls for.

  • Have we planned for security and privacy, especially if citizens will need to provide personally identifiable information in order to join, post, or react? Hey, wasn't Obama's own Twitter site hacked into?

  • Is this more than vanity, or is it more like Congress' YouTube efforts?

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• Stimulus Package Is a Bonanza For Federal IT

  Ever take out a second mortgage to do those things around the house that seemed too expensive for your current budget. Maybe a new roof and siding and that extra room you always wanted off the kitchen?

  Well, that in effect is what the federal government is doing with what is shaping up to be an economic stimulus package north of $800 billion.

  One of the most astonishing documents I've read recently is the House summary of the stimulus bill, grandly dubbed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009. The summary was issued by David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

  This bill provides money for everything, from battery research to bridge repair. For IT in federal agencies, the package offers much. To wit:

  • $245 million for the Farm Service Agency for IT improvements;
  • $150 million to NASA (not FAA) for " research, development, and demonstration to improve aviation safety and Next Generation air traffic control."
  • $400 million for Social Security to replace its National Computer Center .
  • $276 million to the State Department for upgrading and modernizing IT.
  • $200 million to U.S. Geological Survey to improve facilities, including computing capacity.

  There are billions more for agencies, so probably IT is buried throughout the stimulus bill. For example, the bill specifies an eye-popping $20 billion "to jumpstart efforts to computerize health records to cut costs and reduce medical errors." Plus another $1 billion for community health centers for renovation and IT improvements, to say nothing of $550 million for Indian Health Services facilities. There's another $1 billion for the 2010 census.

  Still other big ticket items with IT content are $400 million through the National Science Foundation for grants for new facilities; $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control to "complete its facilities master plan"; $11 billion to develop a so-called smart electrical grid; $10 billion for otherwise unspecified science facilities, research and instrumentation; $6 billion to expand broadband Internet access.

  The bill summary, parts of which read like the Communist Manifesto, also promises strict oversight of the spending that will rain down on agencies like candy from a piñata. It promises a "historic level of transparency, oversight and accountability." This will take several forms. It will require, for instance, detailed, publicly disclosed descriptions of investments receiving money, including personal certification by governors and mayors that the money their jurisdictions receive will be well spent. Plus at the federal level there will be something called the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, comprised of deputy cabinet secretaries and inspectors general (who will get extra money to expand their activities).

  Of particular interest, though, is that the bill calls for a new web site created by the President's office. It will list program managers receiving money ("so the public knows who to hold accountable") and all grant or contract competitions and awards.

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• What Exactly Will Obama's Management Agenda Be?

  Let's face it, what one president wants from government workers and their career managers isn't all that different from what another president wants.

  Results orientation, transparency, aligning budgets with missions - according to policy, of course. Who could disagree with those?

  Last week, Karen Evans retired from federal service, having been for the last five years of her career a political appointee in the Bush Office of Management and Budget (see Dec. 15 edition of FedInsider). At her retirement luncheon a former career fed, now in industry, had high praise for Evans. He said whatever strides in agency management skill and transparency would be made under the new administration, would be made by people standing on Evans' shoulders.

  High praise, indeed. Whatever Evans and, for that matter, any Bush appointees, felt about the war in Iraq or Vice President Cheney's alleged torturing, you never heard it publicly, of course. In private, it was extremely rare. For one thing, it is bad form for appointees to comment outside of their assigned policy areas. And for another, those working in management issues have brought fairly consistent objectives to their work in successive administrations.

  In other words, management objectives are about as non-partisan as you can get in policy. FCW this week, in its prediction of the management agenda, stated, "Everything you know is about to be outdated." That's a huge overstatement.

  Nancy Killefer, the new OMB Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer, once told lawmakers to create a performance rating system that would periodically report to Congress and the public about how agencies were doing. Sound familiar?

  For sure, some things will definitely change.

  The Bush OMB's emphasis on outsourcing that has soured so many career managers will be sharply reduced, notwithstanding how tight dollars will be to increase agency employment rolls.

  Shorter leashes on contractors are coming. Not only from the administration but also from Congress, where the first thing out of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolpus Towns' (D-N.Y.) mouth was oversight of contractors.

  Initiatives close to the president's heart will change. Health IT will likely get more emphasis, especially boosted with $20 billion in the stimulus package (see story above). Ditto for FAA air traffic modernization.

  Some things will create tough dilemmas for the new administration. How to back away from the Bush-era pay for performance initiative, yet still have, well, pay for performance as well as happy unions?

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