Summaries for April 15, 2009

THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET IS IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND
Remember your first PC? What really got the PC going was the modem. And what really drove broadband was the web.  With every computer connected to the Internet, the emerging divide between regular and leading-edge users is mobile connectivity, that is, whether you have a cell phone or other hand-held device connected to the Internet. -> Read More

NEW GOVERNMENT SEEMS SMITTEN BY NEW MEDIA
Ya gotta love the headlines on a recent General Services Administration press release: “Landmark Agreements Clear Path For Government New Media.” The phrase “new media” actually predates the advent of the web, back to when people found out computers would produce imagery and sound. So the government is really entering the age of new, new media. -> Read More

                                                                            Advertisements

IRMCO 2010
If you missed this year's IRMCO conference, save the date for April 11-14, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay, Cambridge, Maryland.  For details, go to www.irmco.gov.

---

AFFIRM Scholarship Fundraiser
Celebrating the Arts:  A Fine Wine, Food & Art Experience
Join AFFIRM on Thursday, May 14th for an evening of fine wine, food, and original paintings as we Celebrate the Arts and support AFFIRM's scholarship program.

We'll begin our evening with a networking reception as we appreciate art while sampling chardonnay and pinot noir with hor d'oeuvres paired with each wine. Then we'll be seated for small plates paired with a flight of three cabernet and blended red wines.

Join us on May 14th from 6pm to 9pm at the Galleria at Lafayette Center.

Register for the event visit www.AFFIRM.org. Individual ticket costs: $50 for government; $100 for industry.

DEFENSE DEBATES HAVE BARELY GOTTEN UNDERWAY
In the last issue, we said, “With each passing week, the future of the Defense Department becomes a little harder to figure out.”  Well, less so now that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced his choices for major spending programs in the 2010 budget. Large debates loom, but at least we now know the scope of them. -> Read More

UNGLAMOROUS GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS SHOWING MIXED RESULTS
With all of the talk about multi-hundred-billion-dollar weapons programs on one hand, and government-on-Facebook on the other, what about plain old enterprise systems?  That corner of federal IT seems to bounce along as always. Some agency projects have produced real progress after false starts, while some legacy projects are not going so well. -> Read More

• The Future of the Internet Is In the Palm Of Your Hand

  Lee Rainie

  Remember your first PC? It probably had a metal cabinet, twin floppy drives if you are a really early adopter, and all of the excitement of, well, a beige metal box that made strange noises. What really got the PC going was the modem. And what really drove broadband was the web.

  With every computer connected to the Internet, the emerging divide between regular and leading-edge users is mobile connectivity, that is, whether you have a cell phone or other hand-held device connected to the Internet.

  That’s the thesis of Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which describes itself as “a non-profit, non–partisan ‘fact tank’ that studies the social impact of the Internet.”

  Rainie, who will speak Wednesday morning at IRMCO in Cambridge, Md., said he approaches the research and the site with the same values he employed in his journalism career: “We are interested in what is noteworthy and topical, and we’re not advocating for anything.”

  The latest research by the former U.S. News & World Report editor shows “a big divide” between the mobile connected and everyone else. “It you have a cell phone or laptop connected you are different than fixed place users,” Rainie said.

  It turns out, the social networkers – the most connected of all – tend to use their mobile devices to keep right up when they are away from wherever their desks are.

  “The cluster of Web 2.0 tools make a big difference – but not to everybody,” Rainie said. “Some have the connectivity but don’t need it or like to use it.”

  But the aficionados of connectivity and new media have found a resonance in the Obama administration, Rainie said. “Obama hoped to make a hallmark of governance to bring in technology.” Adopting the tools used so successfully in the campaign would lead to governing as a Web 2.0 activity.

  But how can policy makers deal with all that input, a million people weighing in with opinions on some matter? And will a single voice really make any difference?

  Rainie said that’s where the same skills that politicians used in the 19th century come into play.

  “The fundamental political skills that served 19th century politicians – judging which inputs seem real and meaningful and which are contrived – it’s the same with a town meeting with 70 people. There’s a long history of government reforms that were supposed to be broadening, that were used by interest groups — open meeting laws, the Freedom Of Information Act. These new reforms will probably do the same thing. Interest groups are more facile and abundant at using new tools.”

  The challenge for this government and future ones will be to cater to all constituencies, and not merely the digitally adept. “I feel enormous sympathy for those trying to serve citizens. The world is complex. Some people want to telephone. Some want printed material. Some want to sit at a desk and talk. And others don’t want any of those old things.”

  And so mistakes can get made, as they say. Rainie points to Medicaid Part B applications being online, even though senior citizens are the least likely group to be online.

  In the meantime, Rainie praises the Obama administration’s seeming willingness to try things. “The old presumption was, you had to wait for the value of the net to be proven before deploying.” What’s new is “encouraging civil servants to experiment.”

  Return to top

---

• New Government Seems Smitten By New Media

  Ya gotta love the headlines on a recent General Services Administration press release: “Landmark Agreements Clear Path For Government New Media.” This was back in March, when GSA managed to negotiate federal-specific terms and conditions with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv. Last week this was followed up by an agreement with Facebook that GSA must still release officially.

  The phrase “new media” predates the crashing forth of the web, to when people found out computers would produce imagery and sound. So now the government is entering the age of new, new media.

  Now that these tools are koshered for their use, what can government agencies usefully do with them? When you examine it, use of new media looks like a capability looking for a requirement. This is not to knock GSA for inking these agreements. It is GSA’s job to provide contracting vehicles for services the government wants, and that’s what it has done.

  The State Department is enlarging its use of new media that was started during the Bush administration. You find videos of Secretary Hillary Clinton and some of the appointees’ speeches. Although at close to 21 minutes, Secretary Clinton is really pushing the attention span of those outside the diplomacy-wonk community with her speech at the Haiti Donors Conference. The Dipnote (for diplomacy—get it?) blog is expanded. And State is using Twitter to send out, well, tweets about itself.

  The AP, in one of its typically breathless paeans, quoted Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, thus: “New media is critical in the new era of diplomacy, where smart power and expanded dialogues are essential to achieving our foreign policy goals.”

  If the State Department is typical, then the federal efforts at new media are about what one would expect from the government. It’s all basically a public relations channel. For example, the blog entry about the Obama administration’s new policies for Cuba simply pasted in the same bullet points found in a White House-issued summary. The whole affair has a bloodless quality.

  The Homeland Security Department’s Leadership Journal, its moniker for its new media site, is not a lot more enlightening. The other day it featured a video of Michelle Obama’s visit to the department. But nothing about Secretary Janet Napolitano’s important activity of the same day – her national alert to the law enforcement community about right wing extremists.

  The irony here is that federal managers and worker bees alike, like people in all sectors, have an active and vibrant new media life outside of the official channels. The GovLoop and Meritalk sites, which we’ve written about before, are just two examples. Why this dual life? Because web sites of government agencies share many attributes with those of corporations, this attribute above all others: They are official. They are not intended for dissidents, disgruntled employees, revolting shareholders or whistle-blowers to display their thoughts.

  For interactive media to work for government, the efforts must be focused on particular initiatives or within narrow communities. A wiki for a rule proposal affecting an industry with a defined base of companies; a social network for Cuban-Americans with severed commercial ties to old Cuba; an informal request for information on an engineering challenge to experts who know what they are talking about – these are the kinds of activities where new media, or Web 2.0, or social media or whatever it is called, can excel.

  I would caution the administration against the possibility of its new media efforts producing a backlash of cynicism among visitors or participants. Let’s face it: On a topic like health care reform or taxing carbon dioxide, how realistic is it to expect the sanctum sanctorum of the Obama administration, or any administration, to alter its policy direction based on comments made via a Web site?

  Return to top

---

• Defense Debates Have Barely Gotten Underway

  In the last issue, we said, “With each passing week, the future of the Defense Department becomes a little harder to figure out.”

  Well, less so now that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced his choices for major spending programs in the 2010 budget. Large debates loom, but at least we now know the scope of them. After Gate’s announcement, the first words out of the mouth of House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) were what a fine public servant Gates is. The second words were, but Congress is in charge. Numerous legislators have already chimed in against the proposals.

  But there is much debate ahead.

  The most emblematic debate will be over Gates’ plan to end production of the F-22 Raptor airplane after just four more copies, and to go forward with high volume, long term production of the F-35 Joint Strike Force fighter. The planes aren’t all that comparable. The two-engine F-22 flies faster and farther with a larger payload but has been late and over budget. The one-engine F-35 can, in some configurations, take off vertically. It will be cheaper per unit considering future sales to allies will cut prices for the U.S.

  In his choices, Gates was trying to balance many competing needs with a severe budget. For example, Future Combat Systems wasn’t killed, but Gates proposed eliminating one of its tank-like platforms that critics said was, in effect, too heavy for light, too light for heavy. But for the tech community, the concept of FCS will probably live in the sense that the idea of networked platforms delivering information to whatever platform, lives on.

  Above all, Gates had to answer for the umpteenth Government Accountability Report detailing cost overruns on weapons systems. The latest report put the waste figure at nearly $300 billion. All sorts of reform proposals are afoot, including S 454 that would create powerful positions within DOD, the holders of which could stop programs cold. Basically, forces in the administration and Congress have aligned such that the problem of out-of-control weapons development costs is considered worse than simply doing without certain military capabilities.

  Not everything cut is killed. For example, the new presidential helicopter fleet, another project with ballooning costs, will be recompeted.

  Perhaps the biggest two questions of all are these:

  1. Does Congress have the discipline to look at Gates’ proposals objectively, or will it default to keeping programs alive only because of their economic importance to Congressional districts? The latter is more likely. As a body, Congress has no discipline. And anyhow, large scale programs are designed by contractors to be schmeared across as many districts as possible.
  2. Will Obama back Gates in a fight over, say, the F-22? So far the president has shown little inclination to override powerful congressional Democrats. In his speech at Georgetown earlier this week, Obama praised Gates’ “courageous set of reforms that go right at the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste.” But whether he will back Gates in a fight isn’t clear.

  All of these programs encompass large IT components, both on board and in the long-term support.

  And, it is worth noting, several IT-rich programs were not proposed for cutback. These include $1 billion more for medium- and short-range missile interception and $2 billion more for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

  Return to top

---

• Unglamorous Government Systems Showing Mixed Results

  With all of the talk about multi-hundred-billion-dollar weapons programs on one hand, and government-on-Facebook on the other, what about plain old enterprise systems?

  That corner of federal IT seems to bounce along as always. The GSA finally put its 59-contractor Alliant program over the line. It has a $50 billion ceiling, and is likely to be well subscribed once a notice to proceed is issued.

  Some agency projects have produced real progress after false starts. Notably, FBI Director Robert Mueller recently gave a rosy report on Sentinel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the FBI’s second major effort in the past 10 years to establish a bureau-wide case management system. Mueller said the project is halfway through its six year, $451-million development and that it is on time and schedule. The new CIO, Chad L. Fulgham, will be able to sport a real feather if in fact he can get Sentinel to some sort of conclusion.

  During the presidential campaign, though it wasn’t widely reported, then-candidate Obama recommended accelerating modernization of the air traffic control system, NextGen. More recently, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood predicted the next FAA administration, when he or she is named, will make NextGen the top priority. (Two weeks ago the president nominated Randy Babbitt, former president of the Air Line Pilots Association, just before the congressional recess.) To underscore the interest in aviation, Congress gave $1.3 billion in stimulus money to the FAA to award for airport improvements.

  Not all legacy projects are going so well. NextGov reported that a $167 million project at Veterans Affairs to develop a scheduling application for VA hospitals was irrecoverably off the rails, having failed to produce any useful modules after a 7-year effort. This revelation occurred just as health officials at Defense were up in arms over the performance of the AHLTA medical records system. Not good since both of these departments are supposed to get together on the Obama administration’s push for a unified electronic medical record system.

  Cracks in Grants.gov’s ability to handle the volume of applications stimulated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have prompted the Office of Management and Budget to issue a pass-the-hat request for funds to beef it up. In the meantime, DOD, Education, Homeland Security and Justice will use some other system until that relic of the Bush era can be juiced.

  Return to top