Summaries for July 1, 2009

MR. BAKER RETURNS TO WASHINGTON
Roger Baker waited a long time to come back into government. Inspired by the Obama campaign, he has now joined the Obama administration as CIO of the Veterans Affairs Department. Once there, he wasted no time in rearranging things. Backed by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Baker wants to bring way more accountability and predictability to the IT development and acquisition processes at VA. -> Read More

NET GOVERNANCE SECURITY, USES ARE ALL IN FLUX
If the federal government IT community and the politicians thought the Internet was a settled thing, recent events have blown that notion away. In many ways the future of the Internet in terms of use, governance and security has clouded up. On the governance front, there is news since the last issue of FedInsider that Rod Beckstrom was named to head the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. -> Read More

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MR. ZIENTS COMES TO WASHINGTON
Well, actually Jeffrey Zients, who started work last week as the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, is already a Washingtonian. More accurately, he comes to the Obama administration. And, as is this administration's wont, he has an extra title: Chief Performance Officer. Zients has a background in effective business methodologies and use of data to manage performance and results. Well, then, what will Zients measure? -> Read More

GSA GIVES GLIMPSE OF FUTURE WITH FEWER GWACS
At last week's Washington Technology Top 100 conference, a seemingly astonishing revelation occurred, one that quickly got picked up outside the publication itself. Ed O'Hare, an assistant commissioner in the General Services Administration's Federal Acquisition Service, said that GSA's governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs) would start disappearing and not be replaced. The agency will support the newly awarded Alliant and Alliant Small Business GWACs, and perhaps some other vehicles aimed at companies in socioeconomic categories. But he spoke too soon. -> Read More

• Mr. Baker Returns To Washington

  Robert Baker

  Roger Baker waited a long time to come back into government. The one-time Commerce Department CIO has held a variety of corporate stints since leaving the Clinton administration. These included being president and CEO of Dataline LLC and CIO at General Dynamics Information Technology. Inspired by the Obama campaign, he has now joined the Obama administration as CIO of the Veterans Affairs Department.

  Once there, he wasted no time in rearranging things. Backed by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Baker wants to bring way more accountability and predictability to the IT development and acquisition processes at VA. The effort is called the Project Management Accountability System, or PMAS. In some ways VA has set itself up to operate much like the recently passed Defense Department acquisition overhaul bill will force DOD to operate. At its heart, PMAS imposes a three-strikes-and-you're-out approach. Projects that miss three milestones on budget or cost will be stopped and either terminated or restructured such that they can meet their requirements within the time and dollars allotted.

  I've spoken to Baker during the campaign and its aftermath, and also interviewed him on Federal News Radio, and he always strikes me as the type of guy who really likes the challenges of government, with its big budgets and big problems. And, as others before him, he is drawn to VA in part because of its crucial mission. He called VA "the largest consolidated IT organization in government" involving some 7,000 people and a budget approaching $3.3 billion for 2010. And, "Everything we do is about the veterans."

  Both Baker and Shinseki walked into a VA that was dealing with a project that not only was failing, but failing in an embarrassingly visible way, clearly observable to VA stakeholder groups -- health care providers and veterans themselves. It was the replacement scheduling application, and it was described as on the verge of collapse in published stories, amplified by groups such as VAWatch.org. But Baker said that of the nearly 280 IT projects going on at VA, too many others besides the scheduling system were over budget or significantly late--as in a year behind schedule.

  The result? A decision to move away from long, ambitious developments that, with luck, would be delivered "tied in a bow" to customers at some point down the road. The new approach favors incremental development. Once again, this mirrors at least one DOD component: The Army, in starting over with its Future Combat Systems, is also restarting with an incremental approach. Develop easily specifiable and digestible modules, while keeping the overall architecture and end goal in mind. Baker said he envisions a six-month delivery cycle, followed by testing and signoff by the receiving organization.

  And, in reviewing programs that go stray under the three-strikes system -- more accurately the incremental development and milestone management stricture -- Baker said individuals, whether government or contractor, will be moved along if necessary.

  One irony Baker noted concerns the arrangement with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center to develop the IT underpinnings for delivery of the new GI educational benefits enacted last year. The program got dinged by the VA inspector general for the cost of the arrangement and VA's seeming abdication of oversight, and yet Baker said the project has been consistently within schedule and budget (with a module set to be delivered this weekend).

  While lamenting the Metro commute to inner Washington, D.C. Baker said he doesn't mind the long hours and is particularly pleased with his Vermont Ave. office overlooking the White House. As for the job, said Baker, "I absolutely love it. This is the kind of job I am cut out for."

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• Net Governance, Security, Uses Are All In Flux

  If the federal government IT community and the politicians thought the Internet was a settled thing, recent events have blown that notion away. In many ways the future of the Internet in terms of use, governance and security has clouded up.

  On the governance front, there is news since the last issue of FedInsider that Rod Beckstrom was named to head the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. That's the same Beckstrom who quit the Homeland Security Department's National Cyber Security Center over turf battles with the National Security Agency (NSA) and what he describes as a lack of resources. Perhaps it was because the federal government, large as it may be, does not operate anything like the decentralized -- and more pointedly, leaderless -- organizations Beckstrom has described in his writings.

  This philosophy at the top of ICANN could prove difficult as the Commerce Department seeks to renew its contract with ICANN. ICANN oversees the most basic Internet functions. A group called the Internet Governance Project has pointed out an important question the government and ICANN will face in its Joint Project Agreement (JPA) process: If ICANN is privatized, what will the implications be for Internet stakeholders, when ICANN no longer answers to the U.S. federal government? The European Union would love nothing more than for ICANN to have what it has called "multilateral accountability." Imagine China or Russia having more say over Internet governance. Beckstrom has reportedly said the JPA should be renewed because, in effect, it isn't broken. An unverified account of Beckstrom's comments can be found here.

  On the security front, as ICANN and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, as earlier reported, work on a way to standardize security of the crucial root servers, a New York Times story details a growing dispute over Internet security between the U.S. and Russia. Both sides see the growing Internet "arms race": Witness the new cyber command announced, after a long wait, by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week. It will likely be headed by NSA director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander (who would gain a fourth star).

  The creation of the cyber command is some ways clarifies roles that were unclear when President Obama last month released the administration's cyber security plan -- for which the president has still not named the crucial coordinator. Gates made it clear that the cyber command would cover only military networks, and not those of civilian agencies. The Homeland Security Department, simultaneously, has popped back onto the radar as a locus for governmentwide cyber security after all, and for the administration's work with private sector security products implementations. This will take place primarily via the Directorate for Science and Technology.

  In fact, funding for new technologies and research will triple, under the department's 2010 budget plan. Besides biometrics related to various transportation-related programs, DHS will also get a role in regulating cyber security for the electric grid.

  This all happens as the government itself is extending its own use of the net for intelligence and diplomacy. The State Department's Twitter gambit in the turmoil following Iran's disputed national elections is an example. The Washington Post had reported State was able to persuade Twitter to delay a scheduled maintenance downtime so as not to interrupt whatever Twitter communications were going on in Iran. State itself is encouraging a wider diplomatic effort via social networking, the complications of which were nicely spelled out in this NextGov article. During the Iran turmoil, the administration as a whole lacked information on goings on in that country, after the regime confined reporters to their hotel rooms and slowed the Internet to a crawl by doing deep packet inspection on all communications. The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 1979.

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• Mr. Zients Comes To Washington

  Jeffrey Zients, who started work last week as the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, is already a Washingtonian. More accurately, he comes to the Obama administration. And, as is this administration's wont, he has an extra title: Chief Performance Officer. In a radio interview, Robert Shea, who headed government performance efforts for Clay Johnson, President Bush's Deputy Director for Management, noted Zients' background in effective business methodologies and use of data to manage performance and results. Check here for an unauthorized but illuminating bio of Zients. His work at the legendary Advisory Group coincided with Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra's tenure there.

  Well, then, what will Zients measure? You can't tell from his confirmation hearings because he spoke mostly in generalities, which is to be expected given that he'd never worked in government before. In its blog OMB Watch pulled this quote from the hearing, and it is the crucial one: "The test of a performance management system is, is it being used to make important resource allocation and budget decisions. I'm looking forward, if confirmed, to taking a collaborative approach, working with all the stakeholders, to develop a system."

  This, of course, is the same question that vexed the Bush administration. Because there is one stakeholder that counts more than all others. More accurately, there are 535 of them. Not that Congress never makes budget allocation decisions based on performance. For example, just this week the House Appropriations Committee axed $42.2 million from the Justice Department's 2010 request for its Litigation Case Management System. That project was flagged by the Justice inspector general as late and over budget. And in passing in May a comprehensive procurement reform bill for the Defense Department, Congress gave DOD internal watchdogs the power to kill out-of-control developments.

  But Zients must know -- he wasn't born yesterday -- that government programs are as politically driven as they are performance driven. He said as much in his confirmation hearing.

  Now here's the rub. Measuring performance in a system like that of the government is really measuring people. Yet the grand pay for performance system in the Defense Department initiated by the Bush administration, the National Security Personnel System (NSPS,) is going down in flames, with the unions throwing on gasoline. Both the House and Senate 2010 authorization bills essentially write NSPS out of existence. The Obama administration has expressed uneasiness about this. It is looking, though, to the 2011 budget to really get at the issue of people in government.

  This was made clear in the June 11 memo from OMB telling agencies to pick their performance goals carefully and to start on steps to reform federal hiring. And now Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry is elaborating on the hiring overhaul effort in a more recent memo, pointing out that the 80-day hiring cycle was first promulgated back in September of last year. He wants agencies to have their plans for revving up hiring done now. At least, by the end of July, the so-called SWAT teams for hiring reform are supposed to be in place. Beyond that, Berry has vowed to undertake an overhaul of the whole federal civil service system in order to bring more accountability and to reward performance.

  To bring this full cycle, see OMB Director Peter Orszag's recent blog entry, in which he says Zients' portfolio will include the government workforce. Zients would be wise to workclosely with Berry, who probably has the best credibility with public employee unions, who have uniformly hated NSPS.

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• GSA Gives Glimpse of Future With Fewer GWACs

  At last week's Washington Technology Top 100 conference, a seemingly astonishing revelation occurred, one that quickly got picked up outside the publication itself. Ed O'Hare, an assistant commissioner in the General Services Administration's Federal Acquisition Service, said that GSA's governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs), as they start disappearing through expiration, would not be replaced. The agency will support the newly awarded Alliant and Alliant Small Business GWACs, and perhaps some other vehicles aimed at companies in socioeconomic categories.

  Perhaps this should not be a surprise. With some 200 GWACs to be found throughout the government, contracting experts have been saying for a while there are just too many. True, the GWACs can offer a wider range of types of contracts than can be executed via the schedules, but they are costly to create and administer. Some, like the formerly Commerce Department-operated Commerce Information Technology Solutions-NextGen (COMMITS) are not popular enough to be worth the effort. And anyhow, GSA already has its massive schedules program.

  But O'Hare's predictions of shriveling GWACs and a deepening merger of the Federal Acquisition Service pieces turned out to be premature. In subsequent print and broadcast interviews, O'Hare said the agency remained committed to the GWAC program and to both it and the schedules as separate but allied entities.

  Still, it's likely GSA will streamline. The agency is getting a raft of new initiatives as it becomes something of a deputized operational force for IT initiatives originating in the Office of Management and Budget. Its cloud computing assignment from OMB CIO Vivek Kundra was only the beginning. And it partly reflects that when it comes to acquisition, nothing is really off the table these days. And that in turn has contractors skittish about what's ahead.

  When the Office of Management and Budget hosted a meeting earlier this month to get input from industry on buying overhaul, agency officials got an earful from contractors and contractor groups concerned about a clarification and guidance memo on contracting due out from the Obama administration via OMB in September. In particular, contractors are worried about an increasing bias for fixed-price contracts. They argue that the Federal Acquisition Regulation is already complete in its guidance about when to use what type of contract. Not to be outdone, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement had a hearing about procurement reform. It, too, heard a gamut of opinions.

  Meanwhile, some of the guidance can seem a little, well, basic, like this checklist put out by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. It contains nine pre-award and nine post-award questions, which when read in aggregate make it seem nearly impossible to ever issue a contract that is satisfactory in the world view of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

  In the end, all of the smoke and heat will amount to little if there is not an increase in the size of the acquisition workforce not simply to fulfill all of the reporting and checklists, but to really use its skill to get good deals for the government.

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