Summaries for September 15, 2008

WHY VA STILL HAS ITS OWN SOFTWARE PROGRAMMERS
Ask Dr. Paul Tibbits why VA still employs in-house software programmers, and he gives what might sound like a rather obvious answer: “Because it's been very successful, especially in the health care environment.”  But in-house programming isn't the only tool in the VA's IT toolbox.  It's a variety of approaches that enable the VA to meet their IT goals.
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FOR MANY INITIATIVES, THE BALL'S ON 3RD AND LONG
It's the fourth quarter for the Bush administration, less than 50 days until the election, and now there's no choice but to punt some initiatives into the next administration.  While some initiatives have made it over the line, there are many projects that are simply running out of time.
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Early bird registration for IRMCO 2009 opens September 15! Plan now to attend IRMCO 2009 on April 19-22, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay in Cambridge, Maryland. Federal Travel Regulation; Conference Planning-Prepayment of Registration Fee, FTR Amendment 2006-02 allows for the reimbursement of the prepayment of early bird discounted registration fees to attend a conference, so take advantage of the IRMCO 2009 early bird rates. The 48th annual government-only gathering of agency career and political leaders is the premier place to network and discuss the government's challenges.

IRMCO, GSA's Interagency Resources Management Conference, has been produced by GSA since 1961 to serve the needs of the government's senior executives. The three-day retreat provides these leaders the opportunity for dialogue with experts in organizational change, peer-to-peer discussion of strategies to transform their agencies, and insightful keynotes from industry and government visionaries.

Bookmark www.irmco.gov to register early for government's management conference. To register call 202-237-0300.

DOES YOUR AGENCY USE A SLICE OF DATA SHARING?
Two recent developments in the consumer computing field have important implications for government IT. Back when Microsoft was pushing Internet Explorer and gaining on Netscape Communications for dominance in web browsing software, the popular word for this struggle was “browser wars.” Now new browsers from both Google and Microsoft are poised to rekindle the fight. -> Read More

INTELLIGENCE CIO IS A JOB OF PERSUASION, NOT POWER
Dale Meyerrose, who will shortly retire as the CIO in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been rather amazing in that job. With the backing of Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, Meyerrose moved the consolidated intelligence community to a mode of thinking in terms of need-to-share. Only a strong personality will be able to keep Meyerrose's initiatives going after his January retirement. -> Read More

• Why VA Still Has its Own Software Programmers
  

  Dr. Paul Tibbits

  Ask Dr. Paul Tibbits why VA still employs in-house software programmers, and he gives what might sound like a rather obvious answer: “Because it's been very successful, especially in the health care environment.”

  Tibbits, Deputy CIO for the Office of Enterprise Development at VA since September, 2006, says that VA's long history in programming what used to be known as the MUMPS language has, over the years, given VA a system “well tuned to workflow in healthcare delivery.” The IT environment, known as Vista, has given doctors an online tool perfectly suited to the tasks they perform in clinical settings.

  “And it is very fast. And also not difficult to learn,” Tibbits added.

  Agency-employed programmers are nearly a thing of the past in the government as a whole. No longer do coding languages unique to government domains even exist in any meaningful way. Anyone remember DOD's Ada mandate? With applications employed in web browser environments, industry-standard languages are used predominantly where the government contracts for custom programming. Otherwise, agencies use commercial applications where they can.

  Tibbits points out that starting back in 2005, the department faced a series of investigations and reports which showed that its programming efforts lacked sufficient engineering and project management discipline, even with the success of Vista. As a result, the medical environment — poorly documented in the first place — was getting costly to maintain. Moreover, VA has been planning as far back as 2001 to move to a self-service, online e-government approach to deliver services to veterans. And Vista is not suited to that, technically or architecturally.

  In the meantime, VA has consolidated its IT management. “But we now have a broad spectrum of approaches,” said Tibbits.

  He says Vista maintenance and enhancements will continue to be done with in-house programmers. But VA will use contractors to develop its e-government component Health e Vet , the portal by which recipients of VA benefits can schedule visits, view health records and pay for medicines. And, Tibbits said, VA has acquired a commercial solution for laboratory management “without any in-house development for new code.” So the department uses all three approaches.

  Health e Vet will also take VA's systems from being largely facility based to being veteran-centered, or one record, one veteran. As things stand now a veteran that receives care at multiple facilities will generate multiple records, since Vista more or less runs stovepiped in each VA hospital.
  Health e Vet gives each veteran a single logical record no matter where he or she receives care. That is a new paradigm for VA, Tibbits said.

  Tibbits said his organization is spending a lot of energy changing the culture of the IT workforce to more strongly address the need for data and information security, and for delivering software on time and within budget.

  “Development has all been under IT central control for one year. But we're still in the second, third and fifth order of consequences of that structure.” More recently, 900 people in the VA development organization were reorganized internally, Tibbits said, so they could focus on getting to best practices in software. That will be evident when the group can answer yes to the question, “Are we delivering high quality software on schedule? It's still a work in progress.”

  One manifestation of the attempt to change culture is the use of coaching and mentoring for VA IT staff. Drawing on contractor ICOR Partners LLC for program management training and on the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command for systems engineering, Tibbits is bringing fresh thinking to his staff. He wants ICOR to also help VA construct contracting approaches that will lead to a successful migration from Vista to Health e Vet, while preserving the good qualities of Vista.

  His group is also developing an executive dashboard, that is, a set of applications that give managers a view into the workings of software development itself. “So we can do analysis of the root causes of defects.” Such analysis can lead not only to more efficient coding, but to better design and even setting of requirements in the first place.

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• For Many Initiatives, the Ball’s on 3rd and Long

  It's the fourth quarter for the Bush administration, less than 50 days until the election, and now there's no choice but to punt some initiatives into the next administration.

  In recent months, to be sure, some initiatives have gone over the line. The Office of Management and Budget has made the General Services Administration's Networx program mandatory for agencies modernizing their communications and e-government capabilities, inserting the “shall” word in the latest memo. According to Input Inc., the Homeland Security Department's Eagle program is proving quite popular.

  But some large projects are simply running out of time. This is the second of three weeks that Congress is meeting before recessing so members can go home and campaign. Only one of a dozen spending bills is passed, and you can expect none of the rest to make it to the President's desk. So the first item to be punted is the budget itself. Given that the Democrats on the hill are likely to tie the offshore oil drilling debate to the continuing resolution bill, it's entirely possible even the CR will stall or face veto. Government shutdowns are rare but not unprecedented.

  Also to be punted:

  Procurement: A variety of procurement reform bills are going nowhere, although GovExec.com reported last week that some of the provisions may get attached to other bills. But legislation creating a contractor wrongdoing database, requiring officers of contracting companies to disclose their compensation, and prohibiting contractors who are delinquent in their taxes from getting more government work, are stuck. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) spoke last week on Federal News Radio about several topics. He described Congress this way: “This place right now is in complete gridlock; it's a complete partisan shutdown.”

  Technology policy: The Justice Department has hired über-lawyer Sanford Litvak to help ponder whether to bring an antitrust suit against Google. An online advertising deal between Google and Yahoo is what prompted the possible suit. The bigger question is how the incoming administration will view business, and in particular, the IT industry. It was under Democratic administrations that high-profile suits were initiated against IBM, tech monopoly of the 1960s, and Microsoft, tech monopoly of the 1990s

  Tanker: Defense Secretary Robert Gates — partly thanks to a threat from Boeing to pull out of the competition altogether — decided to scrap the Air Force's aerial refueling tanker replacement program and let the next administration deal with it. Here again, the larger question is whether buy-American sentiment will prevail. Driven by unions and those members of Congress whose districts happen to benefit from the tanker acquisition, the buy-American element really has little meaning in this particular context. But so bollixed has the acquisition become, that perhaps Gates was the only one still looking at it objectively.

  IT-intensive projects: The 2010 decennial count will occur, but precisely how will the Census Bureau get it done with the funding it has? That answer, too, will have to wait, as will the final technology approach. Uncertainty over the Yucca Mountain, Nev. nuclear waste storage facility, on the burner for close to 20 years, will survive another administration. On Sept. 7, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the Energy Department's application to build the dump 90 miles from Las Vegas. Review will take up to four years. One reason: The application is 8,600 pages long. The plan is opposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada. 2020 anyone?

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• Does Your Agency Use a Slice of Data Sharing?

  Two recent developments in the consumer computing field have important implications for government IT.

  Back when Microsoft was pushing Internet Explorer and gaining on Netscape Communications for dominance in web browsing software, the popular word for this struggle was “browser wars.”

  Microsoft won that campaign — but maybe not the war.

  That's because Google has launched, in beta as is typical for Google, a new browser of its own called Chrome. The nerdy, articulate kids who developed Chrome remind you of Microsoftees, circa 1985.

  Microsoft isn't sitting on its hands. It has made available a beta version of its new browser, IE 8. The new browser evidences a world view that isn't so far from that of Google.

  Both companies understand that, 17 years since the popularization of the browser first began, applications and interactivity are increasingly what happen within browsers. No longer does anyone merely view static HTML pages.

  Both companies also understand that they must dominate the browser market in order to dominate the context and search-related advertising market on the Web. Still, there are some features coming in these new browsers that benefit agencies needs for security and information sharing.

  For example, in the IE 8 favorites bar, a user can bookmark a dynamically changing section of a given site, not the whole site. Microsoft dubs these widget-like subsets of sites “slices.” Both new browsers isolate side-by-side tabs for cross information and crash protection. Both claim to be lighter and less processing intensive.

  Many of the new browsers' features will require programming updates at web sites. That means federal web developers will have to stay on their toes and monitor browser use trends in the public should Chrome take off.

  So even something as seemingly settled as which browser the world used is up for grabs.

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• Intelligence CIO is a Job of Persuasion, Not Power

  Dale Meyerrose, who will shortly retire as the CIO in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been rather amazing in that job. The reason: A man who spent the bulk of his career moving up the highly–defined pecking order of the military managed to make a deep imprint on intelligence--a world of ad hoc organizations, shifting alliances, and no clear pecking order.

  Meyerrose, with the backing of Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, moved the consolidated intelligence community to a mode of thinking in terms of need-to-share. He managed to get the information group within the intelligence community to meet and talk to one another. He has great credibility throughout DOD, being a former major general in the Air Force.

  Only a strong personality will be able to keep Meyerrose's initiatives going after his January retirement, especially in light of the Aug. 7 memo from McConnell defining the duties and responsibilities of the ODNI CIO. The responsibilities include key phrases such as providing advice for promoting, monitoring, and facilitating. Those aren't power responsibilities. They make the CIO the consiglieri of the director, but not the Don of the component CIOs.

  Those specific duties assigned to the CIO, such as developing an enterprise architecture, directing IT procurements, and establishing common IT standards and protocols are to be done “in coordination with other CIOs within the [intelligence community].”

  There is some real authority in the job though. For example, the ODNI CIO has say over any purchase related to enterprise architecture that a specific intelligence agency might undertake.

  But primarily, the job is one of persuasion and getting buy-in. Whomever is tapped to succeed Meyerrose, and hopes to have equal impact, will need to keep this in mind.

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