Summaries for February 15, 2010

WITH IPv4 RUNNING OUT, TSERONIS KEEPS WAVING THE v6 FLAG
The news of the Internet never stops. But one recent bit of information from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) carried a warning. ICANN warned that only 10 percent of the Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4, addresses are left. That's about 384 million addresses. At the current rate of address consumption, ICANN figures there is no more than two years to go before IPv4 runs out.  -> Read More

CAN MEANINGFUL USE BE A NEW WAY TO EVALUATE I.T.?
There's an interesting twist when applying for government grants to buy electronic health records systems: Would-be grantees must demonstrate meaningful use of the records in order to receive the money. Industry and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been going back and forth on exactly what "meaningful use" means.  -> Read More

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IRMCO 2010 is fast approaching.
Act now to attend GSA's 49th annual conference for government managers from April 11-14.

The Obama administration has institutionalized better government by establishing Chief Performance Officers. Do your part in building upon this emphasis on program and performance management by attending GSA's IRMCO Conference where you'll learn ways to ensure taxpayers dollars are spent with the critical goal of delivering results, on time and in budget.

GSA's IRMCO conference will take place from April 11-14 at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay in historic Cambridge, Maryland, a short 90 minute drive from Washington. The conference fee of $1,295 includes hotel accommodations, conference fee, and meals from Sunday - Wednesday, April 11-14. Register today at www.irmco.gov.

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Smart Budgeting: Decision Making in a Challenging Budget Climate
No agency in the US government operates alone and neither do you. Attend Smart Budgeting: Decision Making in a Challenging Budget Climate on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:30 AM at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C. where a panel of government officials and industry experts will share ideas for tackling the management of the government budget formulation and execution process.

The expert panel includes Chuck Christopherson, Senior Vice President of Industry Solutions, SAP, and former Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer, Department of Agriculture (USDA), Dennis Taitano, Director, Office of Financial Operations, Assistant Secretary of the Navy , Daniel Fletcher, Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Department of Interior, Thad Juszczak, Director in the Grant Thornton LLP Global Public, and moderator Chris Dorobek, Federal News Radio Co-Anchor, The Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris

To register visit http://www.FedInsider.com/smart-budgeting-2. Smart Budgeting is open to government employees only.

THE 2010s SHAPING UP AS THE DECADE OF DATA
Ever since the first computer was installed by the Army during World War II, the government has been dealing with data -- how to generate it, store it, and use it. The technology and management challenges change over time, but they are always there. Several recent federal projects show that a principal challenge these days is getting value out of data, some old and some new, in a way that the traditional applications-on-database architecture doesn't quite achieve.  -> Read More

A FEDINSIDER CALL FOR BOOSTING TELEWORK
Those gray and gritty parking lot piles of snow in and around Washington look as if they will be there until July. We can say with certainty they will melt by then, but will we be able to say teleworking has established the presence in the federal work domain it needs to so that the government really does operate when interruptions occur?  -> Read More

• With IPv4 Running Out, Tseronis Keeps Waving the v6 Flag

  Peter Tseronis

  The news of the Internet never stops. But one recent bit of information from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) carried a warning. ICANN warned that only 10 percent of the Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4, addresses are left. That's about 384 million addresses. At the current rate of address consumption, ICANN figures there is no more than two years to go before IPv4 runs out.

  The president of ICANN, Rod Beckstrom, used the occasion to remind the world, really, that the time has come for everyone with an interest in the Net to get with the IPv6 program. Because IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, versus 32 bits for v4, IPv6 encompasses enough addresses for pretty much every conceivable requirement, thanks to its practically unimaginable capacity of 300 trillion trillion trillion addresses. Experts say IPv6 also will make the Internet and web applications more secure.

  One guy who has been sounding the IPv6 siren for the federal government is Peter Tseronis, co-chair of the CIO Council's IPv6 working group and senior advisor in the CIO's office at the Energy Department. Although the IPv4 exhaustion has been talked about for years, like the Year 2000 conversion, it has been an abstraction to most IT managers concerned with more immediate problems.

  But "the pending IPv4 depletion is real now, and it's very, very significant," Tseronis said. Not because the Internet would grind to a halt, as people feared computer systems would do in 1999. Without transition, he says, there will be a lack of interoperability among federal applications, and between government and those parts of industry that have gone to IPv6. And the unconverted won't gain the security benefits that come with IPv6. Equally important, many government missions can be enhanced by IPv6 as the unlimited number of addresses enables a worldwide network of objects and sensors that gain the ability to communicate inexpensively.

  There's a long background to the federal government and IPv6. As a December 10 Federal Acquisition Regulation amendment notice points out, the first transition strategy was laid down back in 2005. Three agencies -- General Services Administration, NASA and the Defense Department -- got on board with proposed rules in August of 2006.

  And yet..."I'm still evangelizing," Tseronis said. "I don't see the sense of urgency there." On a scale of 1 through 10, he rated the government a 7 on preparatory steps to transition to IPv6, but a 2-3 on implementation.

  The Office of Management and Budget ordered government network backbones to be capable of moving to IPv6 traffic by June 30, 2008. That's likely to have occurred, since commercial switches, routers and other gear have had that capability for several years. Workarounds exist that put off the acute need for IPv6, but using them doesn't let agencies benefit from IPv6 in their applications. Plus it is inefficient to run workarounds.

  His advice remains as it always was, and that is to take the transition step by step in discrete steps. "Have a goal, for example, getting the e-mail servers transitioned."

  If the tub of IPv4 addresses was to drain away tomorrow, the Internet would not come to a halt, nor would every IPv4 device or application fail. It would simply mean that LANs and wide area LANs would have to keep operating in dual-stack mode, which can slow performance. Agencies can find IPv6 services via GSA's Networx contracts. Both the National Institute of Standards and Technology and DOD have testing guidance and facilities for IPv6 applications. Tseronis said it's mainly a matter of OMB keeping up the pressure and CIOs having operational and e-government application goals tied into their enterprise architectures.

  The federal government is actually not that far behind other large organizations with long legacies of IT and the IPv4 applications that underlie them. Like the COBOL applications developed in the 1960s, legacy systems can run indefinitely. But the price is paid in agility and the ability to offer the latest online services.

  Said Tseronis, "We need to get to the world of native 'v6." 

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• Can Meaningful Use Be a New Way To Evaluate I.T.?

  There's an interesting twist when applying for government grants to buy electronic health records systems: Would-be grantees must demonstrate meaningful use of the records in order to receive the money. Industry and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been going back and forth on exactly what "meaningful use" means. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in December proposed a definition, the most recent try. The layman's version is found in this press release.

  Imagine if the deployment of all new technologies was contingent on demonstrating meaningful use. It could be a differentiator in evaluating projects, sort of like the smart/no smart line on the television ads for CarMax.

  Lately I've noticed some federal applications of technology that, if a meaningful use definition existed, would certainly fit the bill. I point them out because meaningful use is applicable to agencies and contractors alike as a possible new slant on improving missions and making the case for one's products and services.

  One example of a meaningful use scenario comes from HHS itself, where the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information is using cloud computing to better manage the process of -- you guessed it -- grants follow-up for electronic health records. The ONC is establishing six offices it called Regional Extension Centers to help grantees select an EHR vendor, then get the records system up and running. ONC is using Acumen Solutions, a value added reseller of Salesforce.com, for a cloud version of the customer relationship management function it needs to handle the grantees.

  You don't have to look far in government to find customer call centers and processing facilities that are woefully backed up with backlogged applications for everything from veterans' health benefits to patents. But cloud computing, the concept of which initially made people scratch their heads, is being put to meaningful use throughout government. The last thing HHS would want is for its EHR gatekeeper function to cause long virtual lines in a signature program.

  Sometimes you can have meaningful new uses for a contract. Take Networx, for example, the big General Services Administration vehicle for networking and telecommunications services. So far it has had only tepid uptake from federal agencies. Although it would require a law from Congress, the Federal Communication Commission is recommending opening Networx to state and local government for building out broadband access in parts of the country where it is spotty or nonexistent. The suggestion is buried on slide 32 of this presentation from a February 18 meeting of the commission. 

  My favorite example comes from the Army, which is using virtual reality in the hope that it can be effective against post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) where other therapies have not. The idea -- which actually goes back several years and is also being used by the Air Force -- is that exposure to the combat conditions which produced the PTSD in the first place can help an individual confront it and thereby lessen its power. The technique is called Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET). Soldiers enter computer-generated, 360-degree environments in which the gun battle or the improvised explosive device is recreated. Three health-related units of the Army are collaborating in a controlled study of VRET taking place at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Ft. Lewis, Wash.

  Virtual reality has always seemed like a technology in search of an application outside of technical simulations such as pilot training. What could be a more meaningful use than helping psychologically injured soldiers return to wholeness?

  Using a meaningful use criterion for a variety of technologies, contracts or services, the federal government could make progress on a lot of longstanding challenges.

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• The 2010s Shaping Up As the Decade of Data

  Ever since the first computer was installed by the Army during World War II, the government has been dealing with data -- how to generate it, store it, and use it. The technology and management challenges change over time, but they are always there. Several recent federal projects show that a principal challenge these days is getting value out of data, some old and some new, in a way that the traditional applications-on-database architecture doesn't quite achieve.

  Here are two recent examples:

  Unmanned aircraft, or drones, have become almost too effective. The surveillance capabilities of these craft improve continuously. Where they now carry 10 video cameras, in the next year they will begin carrying 30. The sheer volume of video downloads is beyond the ability of the Air Force, or any organization, to watch and act upon. The Air Force has a $500 million contract with Raytheon to build the Distributed Common Ground System to help process the information and also to share it worldwide among military services and the intelligence community.

  In another domain, the General Services Administration wants to get more value out of information that resides in nine separate database systems relating to procurement and contractors, hopefully solving the longstanding problem of the government. Namely, not having a complete picture of the complex of activities with which the federal government spends some $500 billion per year, and making life easier for acquisition people in both DOD and civilian agencies with an integrated environment in which to work. It's not a huge contract, $75 million over eight years to IBM U.S. Federal, but it is significant. GSA wants to consolidate the Central Contractor Registry, Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System, Excluded Parties List System, Federal Agency Registration, Federal Business Opportunities, Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, Online Representations and Certifications Application, Past Performance Information Retrieval System, and Wage Determinations OnLine. Each has a specific function, but at some level they all relate.

  Two very different domains, but there is a common thread of getting greater value out of data and improving mission delivery. The whole represents a huge opportunity.

  Business intelligence is also changing as a result of integrative technologies. After a two year effort, the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, specifically the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) has completed installation of a platform that pulls information from a variety of disparate databases. The system gives two disparate groups -- finance and engineering -- more useful insight gathered from all that stovepiped information.

  But it is in the area of mass data, such as the sum of packets passing through an enterprise IP network in a given period of time, that might be the most interesting technically. Whereas a few years ago firewalls and other network edge appliance sampled packets looking for anomalies as a security measure, today -- thanks to falling storage prices -- all of the traffic can be saved offline for analysis. Emerging tools can examine terabytes not only for cyber security clues, but also for mission intelligence. A promising area is collecting the flow of finance or trading information such as federal regulators that look for systemic threats, or unlawful conduct. A future generator of this level of information volume is the still-nascent smart grid, electrical distribution system as it will be after intelligence and communications capabilities are added to it. Imagine the information that could result from the data on consumption and performance of millions of eletricity-using devices.

  Federal agencies are among the early adopters of these niche technologies, but a caveat: Many of the vendors are small, so check their capitalization and cash flow before committing.

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• A FedInsider Call For Boosting Telework

  Those gray and gritty parking lot piles of snow in and around Washington look as if they will be there until July. We can say with certainty they will melt by then, but will we be able to say teleworking has established the presence in the federal work domain it needs to so that the government really does operate when interruptions occur?

  It's not just a snow issue, but also a continuity of operations issue. And it's a public confidence issue. One look at the comments sections of news stories dealing with the federal leave policy during the early February blasts will show that constituents think federal employees are a bunch of slackers who enjoyed a week off. Most federal workers would have preferred going to work, and many did in fact telework.

  But no one really knows how many, not agency administrators, not the Office of Personnel Management.

  So as I see it, the government really has two tasks. One is to gather the data necessary to make the case that closed buildings don't equate to closed government. The other is to get serious about meeting the teleworking goals that have been called for over several years by lawmakers, the Office of Management and Budget and other leaders, including OPM Director John Berry.

  From a technology standpoint, telework is a part of mobility. Users require not just web access to e-mail and a home DSL or cable broadband connection. Many agencies already provide virtual private network access to the enterprise network, but even within VPNs there are levels of access depending on the VPN technique the IT shop deploys. A more recent technology approach that complements the VPN is desktop virtualization. It keeps a user's profile -- including applications, data, even desktop settings -- on the network and independent of the device used to access them. Deployed correctly, desktop virtualization can keep an employee on the go fully equipped whether he's carrying a lightweight netbook on a train or plane, or using a desktop PC in a fixed location. And there’s no worry about which files someone remembered to bring, or whether it’s the latest version, or whether she remembered to copy it to a USB drive.

  With agencies actively exploring the many forms of cloud computing, telework and cloud seem made for one another. In fact with the network itself virtualized in the cloud, the computing setup in the office and outside of the office would be identical, except possibly for the wiring type.

  From a public image standpoint, the government's challenge is the close association the public has between the name of an agency and the building it occupies. Looking at a dark and empty landmark, it's easy to imagine nothing is going on. But some small things can help correct this perception. Forwarding office phones to cell phones, for example. And then making sure people answer them. But OPM should also revamp its terminology. When schools are closed, they are closed. No education takes place. When federal buildings are inaccessible, the announcement should make it clear that only the buildings are closed.

  Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) has called for greater telework incentives, more investment in telework and more money for the Metro system that seems to shut down with alarming regularity. And OPM Director John Berry, in the aftermath of the back-to-back blizzards, promised to recalculate the purported $100 million per day it costs the government to be closed during storms.

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