The limits of best practices

Transcription

VO LU M E 25 • N U M B E R 3
S t r at e gy a n d B u s i n e s s M a n ag e m e n t f o r G o v e r n m e n t L e a d e r s | February 14, 2011
FCW.C O M
Reform:
The
limits
of best
practices
Page 17
Workforce:
How to grow
young feds
Page 24
It’s time
for agencies
to hear what
people are
saying through
social media
Page 18
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THE
Edited by John Stein Monroe
Budget
BUZZ
Tomorrow’s spin on today’s news
84 percent increase when you include
the failed stimulus.”
He added, “All of this new government spending was sold as ‘investment.’
Yet after two years, the unemployment
rate remains above 9 percent, and govFiscal 2012 promises to be a lean year man of the House Budget Committee, ernment has added over $3 trillion to
for many agency programs. The pro- delivered the Republican response to our debt.”
With both political parties feeling the
posed budget, influenced in part by a President Barack Obama’s recent State
new emphasis on cutting government of the Union address. Although Ryan heat and the chief executive and legislaspending, has a long way to go before said the federal deficit has grown over tive branch expressing a commitment to
cutting the budget, agencies better
it is final, but no one doubts the
end result will require a great deal
be prepared for much greater scruof belt tightening.
tiny of IT programs, along with
The Obama administration has
everything else. Documenting the
been warning agencies for months
investment, return on investment
— even before the midterm elecand value of IT efforts has never
tions put deficit-hawk Republicans
been more important, if agencies
in charge of the House — that
want to keep them.
Professional and technical servthey’ll have to tighten their belts
ice contracts are on the chopping
to the point of nearly cutting off
block, and lawmakers have already
circulation. (It’s a metaphor.)
called for scaling back the federal
Back in June 2010, Federal
Times reported that the adminworkforce, so agencies can expect
istration expected agencies to have
to have fewer people available,
to trim as much as $75 billion in
whether in-house or outsourced.
discretionary spending. The bulk
However, tight economic times
of the cuts — about $54 billion
can be golden opportunities for
the new chairman of the Budget Committee, Rep. Paul
— were to come from agency pro- As
some technologies. Cloud comRyan (R-Wis.) is a vocal proponent of drastically reducing
grams deemed to be unnecessary government spending.
puting, in particular, stands to
or performing poorly. In particular,
gain ground if its advocates can
Peter Orszag, director of the Office of many years and through various combi- prove that it saves significant money
Management and Budget at the time, nations of Republicans and Democrats while offering the same level of IT
cited programs in science, technology in control of the White House and the performance. Now is a great time for
engineering and mathematics education; two sides of Congress, he eventually laid innovative solutions with demonstrated
youth mentoring; and employment and the blame for the current situation at economic advantages.
training assistance.
Obama’s feet.
Whatever the final budget numbers
In all, Orszag named more than 250
“Unfortunately, instead of restoring might be, there is no doubt that in 2012
programs that fell into those categories, the fundamentals of economic growth, and for many years to come, the federal
according to the Times.
he engaged in a stimulus spending spree government will be expected to operate
Since then, Republicans have come that not only failed to deliver on its with fewer resources. And there’s not
to town with a drive to dramatically cut promise to create jobs but also plunged much talk these days of doing more
spending. They don’t have a majority us even deeper into debt,” Ryan said. with less. Instead, the zeitgeist seems
in the Senate, but they do control the “The facts are clear: Since taking office, to be to do less with less. Get ready,
House, which is where a lot of the bud- President Obama has signed into law America.
get wrangling will take place.
spending increases of nearly 25 percent
TURN TO PAGE 8 FOR MORE BUZZ
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), new chair- for domestic government agencies — an
PAULRYAN.HOUSE.GOV
How to survive
an austere budget
February 14, 2011 FCW.COM
3
Data Center Optimization
Strategic Report
Security Concerns
Linger
Despite the many benefits of
virtualization as a technological
tool to help optimize data centers,
it has some negative security
implications that government
agencies must address.
Amping Up Energy
Efficiency
Survey evidence indicates greater
education and promotion of energy
reduction guidelines may be needed
to help reduce each agency’s carbon
footprint. Agencies must leverage
available tracking tools and measure
SNAPSHOT: KEY HIGHLIGHTS FROM AN 1105 GOVERNMENT INFORMATION GROUP CUSTOM REPORT
to manage power efficiently.
E
xpect greater consolidation of data centers in a
large majority of agencies this year, as federal
oversight intensifies, driving agencies to reduce
costs and streamline IT operations. Data center
optimization maximizes an organization’s technology
resources. Via networking, server and storage
improvements, along with effective power and cooling
upgrades, public sector organizations can achieve
federally mandated goals, and gain greater flexibility.
$
Examples of Data
Center Optimization
Ongoing data center optimization
efforts by the City of Chesapeake,
Va., and Stanly County, N.C., have
achieved a number of efficiencies and
cost reductions for both the city and
county government IT organizations.
Pragmatic Advice
To truly optimize data center
Reforming Federal IT
operations and get the biggest
return on related investments,
The OMB’s 25-point plan to reform federal IT management is designed to
government organizations must
reduce the number of federal data centers and require a ‘cloud-first’ poli-
take a more ‘holistic’ view of the
cy for IT procurements. Industry observers wonder how quickly federal
equipment housed there, say
agencies can adapt to the pace of change.
industry observers.
Full report online Go to fcw.com/DataCenterOptimization.
MAN VS. MACHINE.
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©2011 CDW Government LLC. CDW® , CDWtG ® and PEOPLE WHO GET IT™ are trademarks of CDW LLC.
C O N T E N TS
FCW.COM
F E AT U R E S
18
24
VOLUME 25 • NUMBER 3
PRESIDE NT AND E DITOR-IN- CHI EF
Anne Armstrong
LEARNING TO BE BETTER LISTENERS
| Using online connections to let the public
have its say, too
HOW TO GROW YOUNG FEDS AT YOUR AGENCY
| 5 tips for retaining young talent
E DITOR
M ANAGI NG EDI TO R/ P RI NT
John Stein Monroe
Terri J. Huck
MANAGING E DITOR/
DAILY RE PORT
Michael Hardy
S ENI O R EDI TO RS
Matthew Weigelt
John Zyskowski
E DITOR-AT-L ARGE
Wyatt Kash
D E PA RT M E N T S
3
THE BUZZ
CURRENTS
11
ON THE CIRCUIT
13
BLOG BRIEF
14
HARD COPY
HOME PAGES
30
by Amber Corrin
31
15 How to improve service
contracts
16 Quick! Grab the org
charts!
by Alan Balutis
17 Why best practices won’t
fi x federal IT
CYBERSECURITY:
Cyberattacks on
infrastructure: The
new normal
COMMENTARY
by Steve Kelman
Could
mission specialization
solve DOD’s woes?
INSIDE DOD:
by William Jackson
32
Agencies’
cloud adoption defies
early expectations
TECH BRIEFING:
by John Zyskowski
34 BACK TALK
Agency Index
Congress ............. 3, 10
DOD ............ 10, 24, 30
FCC.......................... 13
GSA ..................... 13, 18
International.... 10, 30, 31
NASA ................ 18, 24
NSF ......................... 18
OMB ....................... 32
State & local... 13, 14, 32
VA ............................ 18
White
House ...... 3, 8, 10, 16, 17
by Dennis D.
McDonald
STAFF W RITE RS
Amber Corrin, Henry Kenyon, Alyah Khan,
Alice Lipowicz, Dan Rowinski
CONTRIBUTING W RITE RS
Alan Joch, John Moore, Brian Robinson
COLUMNISTS
Chris Bronk, Steve Kelman
CRE ATIVE DIRECTOR
DI RECTO R O F O P ERATI O NS
Jeff Langkau
Michael Protos
ART DIRECTOR
ASS I STANT ART DI RECTO R
Sam Votsis
Dragutin Cvijanovic
COPY E DITORS
Whitt Flora, Donald White
W E B DESIGN
Biswarup Bhattacharjee, Martin Peace
E DITOR-IN- CHIE F/ONL INE
Susan Miller
WEB PRODUCERS
Heather Kuldell, Alysha Sideman, Natalie Willis
VP/GROUP PUBL ISHE R
Jennifer Weiss
PUBL ISHE R
ED I TO R’S NOT E
Larry Fishbein
DIRECTOR OF MARKE TING
Mark J. Feldman
HARD WORK AHEAD. Social media seemed so easy at first.
Agencies would sign up for a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account and
begin letting it rip. It had never been so easy to get the news out or generate
some buzz about an event. So far, so good.
But here’s the catch: People are looking for more. By design, social media is
intended to facilitate dialogues, not monologues. People are not looking for yet
another source of press releases but for an opportunity to exchange information
and ideas.
As contributing writer John Moore explains in our cover story, a few agencies
are making strides in this area and are developing strategies for encouraging
and acting on feedback. But for most federal officials, the learning curve will be
steep. Check out the article, beginning on Page 18.
The Obama administration got people talking earlier this year by introducing
two new programs aimed at rebuilding the federal workforce. Those initiatives,
admirable though they might be, stirred up some long-standing concerns about
how agencies manage young workers. In recent years, we have heard numerous
stories about new recruits who show up to work only to discover that no one
knows what to do with them. Their lofty visions of public service slowly give
way to the reality of drudge work.
With that in mind, Federal Computer Week reporter Alyah Khan asked
management experts to share their thoughts on how to nurture young feds so
that employees and employers end up happy. There are no easy answers, but it’s
worth the difficult work. You’ll find the story on Page 24.
And columnist Steve Kelman has a bold proposal. He says the best way to
save money in federal procurement could be to invest more resources into managing services contracts — not just incrementally more, but double or perhaps
triple the resources. Will it work? The only way to find out is to identify some
contracts with which to experiment. Read more about his idea on Page 15.
— John Monroe
[email protected]
6
PRESIDE NT AND CHIE F E XECUT I VE O FFI CER
Neal Vitale
SE NIOR VICE PRESIDE NT AND CHI EF FI NANCI AL O FFI CER
Richard Vitale
E XECUTIVE VICE PRESIDE NT
Michael J. Valenti
SE NIOR VICE PRESIDE NT, AUDIENCE DEVELO P M ENT
& DIGITAL ME DIA
Abraham M. Langer
VICE PRESIDE NT, FINANCE & ADM I NI STRATI O N
Christopher M. Coates
VICE PRESIDE NT, INFORMATION TECHNO LO GY&
APPL ICATION DE VE LOPME NT
Erik A. Lindgren
VICE PRESIDE NT, ATTE NDE E MARKETI NG
Carmel McDonagh
VICE PRESIDE NT, E VE NT OPE RATI O NS
David F. Myers
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
Jeffrey S. Klein
HOW TO REACH THE STAFF
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THE BUZZ (Continued from Page 3)
BUZZ FACTOR
TITLE
These were the most-read stories on FCW.com during the past two weeks.
Edited by Michael Hardy
SUMMARY
OUTLOOK
1.
2.
3.
Why you can quit worrying
about cloud security
Experts provide tips to ensure that cloud computing efforts
are secure.
Cloud computing has slowly grown in acceptance, but questions
about security will persist for a long time.
From fed to private sector:
How to make the move
As policy-makers put the squeeze on the federal workforce,
some employees might choose to move to the private sector.
The noose is only beginning to tighten, so expect more
defections.
Federal furloughs: Would
you check e-mail? Would
you have a choice?
The FCW Insider wondered how many feds would still work if
Congress passes a proposal to force them to take unpaid leave.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Don’t laugh — it’s a serious question. Although many of the
readers who responded said they would not work if forced to
take unpaid leave, we still think some people would try to at
least keep up with e-mail to avoid facing a backlog of work on
their return.
Budget proposes cuts to
some service contracts
The White House’s fiscal 2012 budget request includes a 10
percent cut for professional and technical service contracts.
This is just the tip of the cost-cutting iceberg. (See related story,
Page 3.)
8.
House panel proposes steep Double-digit budget cuts could be on the horizon for several
Expect the fiscal 2012 budget to be hard fought.
funding cuts for agencies
federal agencies under the proposed spending limits released by
the House Appropriations Committee.
Government reorganization After promising a major reorganization of government in his
taking first steps
State of the Union address, President Barack Obama set the
process in motion.
There is no firm plan yet, so watch for developments and
specifics to emerge.
How the federal government is missing the bus
with its telework strategy
Blogger and cartoonist John Klossner critiques the federal
telework policy.
The government’s timid steps toward encouraging telework will
likely pay off slowly and in small ways.
TSA’s Blogger Bob and the
many angry comments
In a Transportation Security Administration blog post, the
author wrote about criminal charges against a passenger without noting that the passenger had been acquitted. The blog’s
commenters made it clear that they found that deceptive.
The FCW Insider shared the story as a lesson in federal blogging:
Never forget that you’re writing for an unknown and potentially
skeptical audience.
International
White House’s bad e-mail luck
A series of unusual events made the
executive branch’s e-mail system a hot
topic last week.
First, the White House system experienced an outage. Then there were
reports in Europe of a global cyberattack
linked to e-mail messages purported to
be from the White House. But then it
seemed those messages were part of a
hoax that originated in China.
Presidential staff members had no
e-mail access for about eight hours Feb.
3 while the unclassified e-mail system in
the White House and Executive Office
Building ceased operation.
It was the second time in two years
that the e-mail system had shut down.
The last failure was in January 2009.
The latest e-mail failure was resolved
by late afternoon. The following day,
there was talk at a cybersecurity conference in Munich, Germany, of alleged
White House e-mail messages that contained malware.
8
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary William Hague said messages
that appeared to be from the White
House were sent to several U.K. officials in December 2010. The messages
contained links that, if opened, would
download a virus onto the user’s computer.
Initially, it was unclear whether the
attack came from authentic White
House e-mail accounts that had been
hacked or from fake e-mail accounts
made to resemble W hite House
accounts. Subsequent reports indicated that the messages most likely
were faked.
“In late December, a spoof e-mail
purporting to be from the White House
was sent to a large number of international recipients who were directed to
click on a link that then downloaded a
variant of Zeus,” Hague said, according
to an article in the Guardian .
U.K. officials are now saying the
cyberattack likely originated in China
and the perpetrator used a hoax e-mail
address that resembled a White House
account, the Guardian article states.
FED 100 WINNERS
ANNOUNCED
Federal Computer Week and the
1105 Government Information
Group have announced the winners
of the 2011 Federal 100 awards.
The winners will be highlighted
in our March 28 issue, and they will
be honored that same day at the
Federal 100 Awards Gala at the
Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C.
To read the list of winners and
learn more about the event, go to
fcw.com/fed100.
THE BUZZ (Continued from Page 8)
Defense
Future of Navy, DOD debated at AFCEA West
The widely discussed, departmentwide
measures to rein in defense spending
have forced the Defense Department
into a holding pattern while its finances
and operations are sorted out, and that
uncertain future spurred much debate
at the AFCEA West conference in San
Diego in January.
Top DOD officials, many from the
Navy and Marine Corps, talked about a
range of issues that included force structure, spending priorities, changes in policy,
business operations, and the rise of electronic and asymmetric warfare.
Navy Undersecretary Robert Work
outlined plans to reallocate $35 billion
in the Navy budget, which would include
canceling some high-profile weapons
programs that have proved too costly.
One controversial move is the termination of the Marine Corps’ $12 billion
Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which
Work said “would consume 100 percent of
historical spending on all ground combat
vehicles. We simply cannot afford it. The
opportunity costs on the Marine Corps
are too high.”
Work also said the Navy would be moving its spending from tail to tooth — a
shift he said might be inevitable, but is
nonetheless disconcerting.
“We’ve been in the midst of the largest military buildup since World War
II,” Work said. “The tide will recede; it’s
a question of how much and how fast. policy piece…is something that has to
be worked out. Cyber operations are as
That keeps me up at night.”
Other speakers discussed a new war politically and diplomatically a weapon
front: cyberspace. During a panel discus- as [they are] militarily.”
sion on cyber warfare, top DOD officials
Despite those challenges, DOD is looknoted that such nontraditional warfare is ing to streamline, and a big part of that
unlike any other the military has faced. effort revolves around the way it does
Thus, it requires a new approach, a deeper business, which could help with broader
understanding and extensive resources — efficiency efforts.
a tough proposition given the
Elizabeth McGrath,
demands of ongoing military
DOD’s deputy chief manconflicts.
agement officer, discussed
“Unlike the physical
her office’s plans for reducing red tape and overhauling
domain, achieving domiDOD’s numerous business
nance may be impossible,”
operations systems, processsaid Rear Adm. William
Leigher, deputy commander
es and policies. Her strategies
of Navy Fleet Cyber Cominclude using the Lean Six
mand. “Cyber warfare necesSigma business methodolsitates considerable demand
ogy to re-engineer business
on intelligence and resources. Terry Halvorsen
processes, she said.
We need to know our tarThe effort to transform
business operations could be
gets and vulnerabilities and
understand the relationship between a boon for other areas of DOD as it seeks
to maximize technology and increase
them.”
The policy aspects also present hurdles transparency — tenets the Obama adminfor cyber operations because the military istration has promoted.
must deal with a Congress that is under
“This is the first time we’re looking at
mounting pressure to reduce govern- end-to-end business processes in DOD,”
said Dave Wennergren, DOD’s assistant
ment spending.
“We have a challenge as a nation,” said deputy chief management officer, who
Terry Halvorsen, the Navy’s CIO. “We also spoke at AFCEA West. “We need
have the capabilities to [execute offen- to look at optimal processes and how to
sive measures] in cyberspace…but the insert IT” as a strategy.
Security
Does the recent Egyptian communications blackout tell us anything about proposed security legislation in the United
States that critics say would give the
president an Internet kill switch?
In a word, not really. OK, two words.
There is a superficial similarity:
Egypt’s dictatorial regime shut down
the Internet and mobile phone service
by ordering carriers to disconnect.
The security legislation, which Sens.
Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Tom Carper
(D-Del.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine)
introduced unsuccessfully last year and
10
are planning to try again, would give the
U.S. president the power to order the
shutdown of some portions of the Internet during a declared cyber emergency.
However, there are some critical differences. First, whatever you think of
the policies of the president — current,
past or future — the president is not a
dictator. He is bound by the law.
Second, the law in this case permits
the shutdown only under specific circumstances and only in a limited way.
A Google search can turn up many
links breathlessly warning of a kill switch
that would give the president the power
to take over and shut down the Internet.
The reality is much more sober. Under
the proposed legislation, the president
would have limited power to require the
disconnection of a targeted critical infrastructure system only when there was a
credible threat and only with notification
to Congress and the owners and operators of the affected critical infrastructure.
And any measures taken would have to
be the least disruptive possible.
That is quite a bit less than a kill
switch.
PUBLIC.NAVY.MIL
Egypt, the protests and the kill switch
O N T H E CI R CU IT
COMMUNITY
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) is leaving Congress to take over as president and director of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars in Washington, D.C., according to published reports. Her departure will
necessitate a special election in her Southern
California district.
Before last fall’s elections gave Republicans
a majority in the House, Harman served as
chairwoman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Intelligence, Information Sharing and
Terrorism Risk Assessment Subcommittee.
Harman will take over leadership of the
Woodrow Wilson center from Lee Hamilton, former Democratic representative from
Indiana.
Overheard
The following comments were
overheard at the recent AFCEA
West conference in San Diego.
Rep. Jane Harman
Bajinder Paul
distribution of the funding to providers who
meaningfully use the new health IT systems,
including collecting clinical and public health
data for exchange and research. He also led
efforts to develop the Nationwide Health
Information Network to share health data
and create local and regional health exchange
networks.
President Barack Obama has chosen Jef-
Bajinder Paul has joined the General Services
frey Zients, chief performance officer at the
Administration as senior IT adviser to the
associate administrator for citizen services
and innovative technologies.
“Paul is in charge of providing and managing technology services and solutions used to
support [the Office of Citizen Services and
Innovative Technologies’] citizen-centric and
agency-facing programs and services,” said
Dave McClure, GSA’s associate administrator for citizen services and Paul’s new boss.
Paul moved from his position as CIO at the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency at
the Treasury Department to GSA this month.
In his new job, Paul will lead the modernization and implementation of an agile
IT infrastructure, using cloud computing
to enable the delivery of mission capabilities.
Office of Management and Budget, to lead
the development of a plan to reorganize the
federal government.
The administration will first tackle restructuring the agencies that work on trade and
exports to help U.S. companies get ahead
in the global economy, wrote Dan Pfeiffer,
White House communications director, on
the White House’s blog.
“The president believes that we need to
reform our government to make it better
organized and better equipped to support
American competitiveness,” Pfeiffer wrote.
“We want to ensure that we’re aligning all of
the resources we have.”
Zients was announced as the leader of the
reorganization effort in a White House blog
post dated Jan. 29.
Dr. David Blumenthal has submitted his
resignation as national coordinator for health
IT at the Health and Human Services Department. He plans to leave government in the
spring to return to Harvard University.
Blumenthal has been leading the federal
strategy for electronic health records, including
the nearly $20 billion in incentive payments
to doctor’s offices and hospitals that buy and
deploy EHR systems. Congress authorized
the program under the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Blumenthal spearheaded the release of
HHS regulations in 2009 and 2010 to oversee
Kathy Dillaman,
the official in charge of
improving the security clearance process at
the Office of Personnel Management, has
retired after 35 years of government service.
However, she will serve as a senior policy
adviser to OPM Director John Berry for
the next year or two in areas such as security
clearance reform and implementing a new
financial management system, according to
an e-mail message she wrote announcing
her departure.
Dillaman, associate director of OPM’s
Federal Investigative Services (FIS), told
Vice Adm. Richard Hunt, commander of the Navy’s 3rd Fleet,
discussing the Navy’s evolving
challenges:
“Ships, planes,
operations, planning —
they all need to adapt to
a changing environment.
Our bureaucratic process
sometimes puts us at
risk.”
Gen. Melvin Spiese, deputy commanding general of 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force:
“The U.S. Marine Corps
has never met the
nation’s needs by being
conventional in its
approach.”
Rear Adm. Patrick Brady, commander of the Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Command, on
today’s young sailors:
“Having an iPad or
iPhone doesn’t make
them IT experts. They
still need training and
rigor of operations.”
Navy Undersecretary Robert
Work:
“We have been in the
midst of the largest
military build-up
since World War II. The
tide will recede; it’s a
question of how much
and how fast. That keeps
me up at night, and it
should keep you up at
night, too.”
11
ON THE CIRCUIT
lawmakers in December 2010 that OPM’s
advanced use of IT and modernization of its
suite of automated tools had helped reduce
the time it takes to complete federal personnel security clearances.
In fiscal 2010, OPM completed more than
620,000 initial security clearance investigations, and 90 percent of those clearances were
completed in an average of 39 days, compared
with 115 days in fiscal 2007, Dillaman said.
Merton Miller, deputy associate director
for external affairs at FIS, will take over for
Dillaman.
Actor and director Ron Howard is lending his
voice to an animated video that introduces the
new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The bureau was created by the Dodd-Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
Act, which President Barack Obama signed
in July 2010. Elizabeth Warren leads the
bureau, which is part of the Treasury Department. It will not have any legal authority in
financial matters until July 21, 2011, but in the
meantime, it has launched its website, ConsumerFinance.gov, as announced by Warren
in a post at Treasury’s blog, “Treasury Notes.”
“We wanted to launch the website NOW
for one very important reason: It’s our first
step in a conversation with you,” Warren
wrote. “We’ve even created this video, with
the help of our friend Ron Howard, to introduce ourselves.”
Howard has plenty of narration experience. He narrated the TV show “Arrested
Development” from 2003 to 2006. He also
starred as Fonzie’s best friend Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days” and appeared on
“The Andy Griffith Show” as Opie Taylor
from 1960 to 1968. He has directed many
movies, including “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful
Mind” and “Cocoon.”
The Transportation Security Administration’s
Blogger Bob learned a lesson about public
perception with an entry he wrote Jan. 28
about a criminal case. A traveler named Phillip
Mocek allegedly refused to cooperate with
TSA screeners in the Albuquerque airport
and ended up in court on four charges: trespassing, disorderly conduct, refusing to obey
an officer and concealing identity. A jury later
acquitted him on all charges.
Blogger Bob neglected to mention the
acquittal in the initial entry when he recounted the incident that led to Mocek’s arrest. That
entry evoked a firestorm of comments. One
anonymous commenter quoted a paragraph
recounting the allegations and said: “The jury
did not see it that way. That is why he was
found NOT GUILTY on all four charges.
Why do you lie about this? It only puts you
in the same company as the Information
Ministers of other tyrants.”
Another asked: “Why are you repeating
the allegations as if they were fact, when in
reality he was found not guilty? You are misleading your readers into believing that Mr.
Mocek’s behavior was illegal. A jury found
that it was not.”
Blogger Bob amended the original post
Jan. 30 to acknowledge Mocek’s acquittal
but insisted that the legal charges were not
the point — TSA’s procedures are.
“Insofar as Mr. Mocek wants to fly in the
future, like other passengers, he will still need
to produce ID or work cooperatively with
[transportation security officers] to confirm his identity,” he wrote. “TSA verification processes must proceed quickly and
without interference. Any passenger holding
a camera in the face of TSOs as they try [to]
verify identification should not be surprised if
asked to step aside so that other passengers in
line can be processed expeditiously without
further disruption.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
March 10: Input will host a webinar to dis-
cuss the government’s fiscal 2012 budget
and Input’s report “FY 2012 Federal Budget Request: Insights and Implications.”
The event will provide insight into the
Obama administration’s budget request
and prevailing IT trends to create a more
complete picture of federal spending in
fiscal 2012.
OUR EVENTS
The FOSE Institute is now live at foseinstitute.org. The new venture from 1105 Media — which publishes Federal Computer
Week, Government Computer News, Washington Technology and Defense Systems — already has a full calendar. Coming up:
■ Knowledge Management Conference and Exposition, set for May 24, will examine agencies’ efforts to gather and share
information in support of agency missions.
■ FOSE, the venerable federal technology trade show, is set for July 19-21. As always, it will bring together government and
industry thought leaders and show off the latest technologies. Areas of focus this year include enabling the mobile
workforce, cybersecurity, information assurance and infrastructure strategies.
■ Geospatial Summit, Sept. 13-14, will address the growing desire by nontechnical managers to tap the power of location-
enabled and place-based information streams to improve decision-making processes.
■ Cloud Computing and Virtualization Conference and Exposition, Oct. 18-20, provides a national forum for showcasing
agencies’ models for developing cloud infrastructure and software services.
■ Enterprise Architecture Conference and Exposition, Nov. 8-10, will cover mission-critical issues, emerging technologies, and
best practices for implementing and making the most of enterprise architecture.
■ Cybersecurity Conference and Exposition, Dec. 8-9, provides the latest practices and ideas for reducing the risks of
cyberattacks, mitigating their impact when they do occur and developing a workforce that is better prepared to handle
ever-evolving cyber threats.
12
C U R R E N TS
The best from the blogosphere this week
BLOG BRIEF
Don’t get hijacked
Utah’s Dave Fletcher
CDN.VENTUREBEAT.COM
davidfletcher.blogspot.com
Jan. 25, 2011
The news that a hacker was offering to
sell administrative control to a number
of government websites, including Utah.
gov, got Utah’s CIO — and blogger
— Dave Fletcher wondering how that
would work.
“Problem is, Utah.gov is not a simple construct with an administrative
console that controls it all, so what
exactly is this hacker selling for $99?”
he writes. “The Utah.gov domain consists of about 6 million pages, over 950
services, dynamic feeds, all somewhat
linked together with a central portal,
which itself is an entire suite of applications built to support the complex
array of interactions between citizens
and government. It appears that the
hacker gained access to a lightly used
subdomain that is not even managed
by the state’s central IT so this was
reviewed, patched, etc.”
Although the risk of some anonymous buyer getting control of the state’s
website appears remote, the incident
highlights a vulnerability that Web
administrators need to be vigilant about,
Fletcher writes. It’s possible for hackers
to gain access to parts of sites through
such weak points and use them to post
ads for erectile dysfunction drugs or
other items commonly sold through
spam ads. The goal is to increase the
number of links from external pages
back to the disreputable merchant’s site
so that it rises in search engine rankings.
“Even organizations with wellstructure[d] standards and deployment
policies and procedures fall prey to
this,” Fletcher writes. “With government
being as diverse as it is, someone in each
organization needs to remain vigilant
and aware of these kinds of activities.”
DOMO ARIGATO,
MR. ROBOTO
General Services Administration
innovation.gsa.gov
Jan. 12, 2011
General Services Administration CIO
Casey Coleman recently got a demonstration of Anybots’ robot, which can
stand in for a person who controls it
remotely via the Web.
“You can be home and view activity in
your office or warehouse as well as talk
to employees and visitors,” she writes.
“You can see and be seen! Anybot was
very cool!”
The demonstration was part of a
larger presentation on emerging technologies. Although Coleman does not
identify the event, robotic technology
was apparently a major aspect of it.
She also writes about robots that can
protect soldiers or increase mobility for elderly people and those with
disabilities.
“I was surprised to see that Microsoft
even has robotics developer software,”
Coleman writes. “Who knew?”
The speed
of the crowd
Federal Communications
Commission
reboot.fcc.gov
Jan. 25, 2011
The Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer Broadband Test
tool, which launched in spring 2010,
has been gathering data on the Internet connection speeds of more than a
million users. Now FCC has released
an application programming interface
to the developer community to enable
others to use the data.
There’s already enough information
to demonstrate some practical uses,
writes Michael Byrne, FCC’s geographic
information officer, in recounting an
FCC presentation at the ESRI Federal
User Conference in January.
“The particularly exciting part of
this presentation was the ability to
display projected speeds at different
geographies within standard error, all
extrapolated out from the speed test
data points that were input by users,”
he writes. “By using the 1 million-plus
records submitted by users, we were
able to display a map that shows the
probability of a certain level of mobile
broadband speed at any given spot in
the U.S.”
13
C U R R E N TS
Recent articles and resources on technolog y and government
HARD COPY
Advice for embracing change
Source: The Art of Project
Management blog
Whatever you think of the Obama administration’s various efforts to overhaul federal technology spending and management, all those new orders eventually
fall to administrators, project managers
and other employees whose job it is to
transform edicts into actions.
It’s rarely an easy task, and the way
our brains are wired to respond to — or,
more accurately, resist change — doesn’t
help matters much, even for those who
agree with the new directions.
However, there are some simple techniques that teams can use to be more
creative and therefore successful when
making changes mandated from above,
writes Jeff Richardson on the “The Art
of Project Management” blog.
For example, brainstorming is an
important tool for overcoming the anxiety that arises in response to impending
change. But the exercise can easily get
short-circuited if it’s run as a free-for-all
in which only the loudest and quickest
thinkers dominate.
A technique as simple as giving the
team a few minutes to jot down ideas on
their own in silence can work wonders
for increasing the quantity and diversity
of ideas, Richardson writes.
New fuel sources for data centers
Source: Computerworld
“If there is a golden rule for data center
managers, it is this: Don’t mess with your
power source,” writes John Brandon at
Computerworld. However, the potential
payback of alternative power sources is
encouraging some managers to break
that rule.
Brandon profiles several organizations
that are testing innovative ways to generate
and use power at their data centers. For
example, at Syracuse University, natural
gas-fired microturbines “drive two 15014
F I R E S I D E
R E A D I N G
IT worker shortage: No end in sight
Source: National Association of State CIOs
State governments are facing a critical shortage of IT professionals, according to a recent report by the National Association of State CIOs. And many of
the causes that NASCIO identified are similar to measures being proposed for
the federal workforce.
“A wave of state layoffs, furloughs, hiring freezes and lack of salary increases
has exacerbated this situation,” the
report states. And the worst might
be yet to come because many older
workers have postponed their retirements until the economy improves.
Here are some of the key findings in
the report, titled “State IT Workforce:
Under Pressure.”
■ Hiring freezes and eliminating vacant
positions continue to be the greatest
problem for state CIOs when developing, supporting and maintaining IT
services for state government.
■ Consistent with results from the
2007 State IT Workforce survey, nearly
a quarter of state CIOs predict that
between 21 percent and 30 percent
of state IT employees will be eligible
for retirement in the next five years.
■ A majority of the state CIOs reported that the recession has caused
many state workers to postpone
retirement.
■ Slightly more than half of the states
continue to have difficulty recruiting
new employees to fill vacant IT posi-
ton absorption chillers that turn the heat
exhaust from the turbines into chilled
water that cools the data center,” he writes.
“In the winter, the university uses cold
outside air for data center cooling, and
hot water generated by the turbines is
used to heat an adjacent building.”
The First Bank of Omaha chose hydro-
tions, but data suggests the continuing
high unemployment rate has reduced
the burden for filling entry-level
positions.
■ An overwhelming 78.6 percent of
state CIOs confirmed that state salary
rates and pay grade structures present
a problem in attracting and retaining
skilled IT talent.
gen fuel cells for its data center. The technology is prohibitively expensive for most
organizations but highly valued for its
reliability.
The bank had a big motivator in its
credit card processing: “Just one hour
of downtime could result in a loss of as
much as $6 million,” Brandon writes.
CO MM ENTA RY
By Steve Kelman
HOW TO IMPROVE
SERVICE CONTRACTS
The government spends more than $500 billion
each year on contracts — an enormous sum. So
deriving savings from better contracting practices
is an obvious target for deficit-cutting efforts.
Like the business leaders two centuries ago
who dreamed about how rich they would be if
they could sell only one of their products to each
person in China, it is tempting to make a statement such as, “If we could save only 5 percent
from better contracting, that would cut $25 billion from the deficit.”
We all know anecdotally about unnecessary
work performed under service contracts and
insufficient cost controls, even if the popular
belief that the government spends $600 on a
hammer is ludicrous.
The problem is not with the claim that better
contracting could save 5 percent. The challenge is
figuring out how to do that, particularly in service contracting. For commercial products, there
are straightforward ways, such as strategic sourcing and reverse auctions. But achieving such
savings in services is the public management
equivalent of house-to-house fighting in war: It is
not a question of grand strategy or magical directives from the top but lots of individual battles
down in the trenches.
To help us make progress on that house-tohouse fighting, I propose that we provide more
resources to the people doing the fighting — the
contracting officers and program officials who
manage the contracts.
Many contracting professionals believe that
providing more contract management employees can pay for itself — perhaps many times
over — in cost savings and, ideally, performance
improvement. I am inclined to agree, but nobody
knows whether that assumption is correct.
How can we determine whether such a claim
is true? We can run experiments. And that’s what
I propose we do with the idea of providing more
resources to contract management.
Let’s choose some number of service contracts
— let’s say 20, so we have some chance of having a large enough sample from which to draw
conclusions. They should not be IT application
development contracts, which have special issues
that are already the object of scrutiny by the
Office of Management and Budget and others.
They should be contracts that cover an ongoing service and have been around for a while,
long enough to have established a track record of
cost and performance. They should be cost-type
contracts. I think an ideal dollar value would be
$5 million to $10 million a year — large enough
for cost savings to make a difference but not so
large that it would become too expensive to provide them with more management resources.
We should experiment by doubling or tripling
the level of contract management resources
currently provided. With only 20 contracts in
the experimental group, it would be difficult to
have too many variations on how the additional
Steve Kelman is professor of public management at
Harvard University’s Kennedy
School of Government and
former administrator of the
Office of Federal Procurement
Policy.
Experts believe we can save money by
devoting more resources to contract
management. It’s time to test that idea.
resources are used or whether resources are
doubled, tripled or quadrupled. But we should
think about whether there are specific techniques
we’d like to test beyond simply providing more
people.
We should then follow those experimental contracts for two years and compare what happens
to their costs — and satisfaction with contractor performance or performance metrics, if they
exist — with 20 similar contracts that receive no
additional resources. If costs go down and/or
performance goes up on the contracts receiving
additional resources, we should use that approach
more broadly in the future.
If there is no improvement, we will need to
re-examine assumptions about the impact of
adding resources and how easy it might be to cut
contracting costs through better management.
Obviously, many details of the experiment
would still need to be worked out. But if we’re
serious about saving money on contracting, it is
an experiment worth trying.
15
By Alan Balutis
CO MM ENTA RY
QUICK! GRAB THE
ORG CHARTS!
In his State of the Union address, President Barack
Obama said winning the future will take doing what
we can do now to prepare the United States to compete in the global economy for decades. That entails
education, innovation, competition, fiscal responsibility, deficit reduction, and reforms in our government to make it more effective, efficient and open
to the people. As Obama put it, “We cannot win the
future with a government of the past.”
The president’s statement and his call “to merge,
consolidate and reorganize the federal government in
a way that will…meet the challenges of the 21st century” seemed to catch some in the White House by
surprise. The day after the speech, former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs wasn’t able to come up with any
details or say who would lead the effort. However, by
the following Sunday, the White House had rallied,
and Deputy Director for Management/Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients was named to lead
the reorganization effort. Lisa Brown, assistant to the
president and staff secretary, will work with Zients.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the White
House is considering combining a set of agencies
involved in trade and exports. It noted a report by
the Center for American Progress, a Democratic
think tank, that suggested creating a Department of
Business, Trade and Technology that would include
much of the Commerce Department. Folded in
would be the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative,
the Small Business Administration and the ExportImport Bank.
But if the effort merely involves moving boxes,
redrawing lines, or consolidating overlapping or
duplicative programs, then Paul Light of New York
University would have hit the nail on the head when
he said, “We will have missed a once-in-a-generation
opportunity for comprehensive reform.”
The federal government is undergoing tremendous changes on many levels, driven by a number of
forces.
■ The complexities of government operations
and the problems the nation faces have evolved
faster than government’s ability to solve them.
■ The federal workforce is about to undergo a
radical change. The workforce, especially its top
leadership, is rapidly graying, and many employees are eligible for retirement.
16
■ More than 500,000 new workers will enter the
federal workforce in the next five years, bringing
with them new perspectives and expectations as
digital natives.
■ Innovative technologies will allow this future
workforce to communicate, interact and collaborate effectively via virtual networks.
■ Heavily in debt and increasingly broke, the government is searching for a new model. That might
mean doing less with less, reducing the role of
government, vesting communities and individuals with fresh powers, and peddling a new era of
volunteerism.
Any one of those factors would be a major driver
Alan Balutis is senior
director and distinguished
fellow at Cisco Systems’
Internet Business Solutions
Group.
The president’s call for a sweeping
reorganization of the government creates
a rare opportunity for real progress.
for government. But their convergence creates a
unique opportunity for our nation.
No new model has yet emerged for that “Fortune
One” company, the federal government. This much,
though, is clear: It will need to be flexible, agile,
able to quickly adjust and ruthless in reallocating
resources. Power and decision-making will need to
be pushed down the organization as much as possible rather than concentrated at the top.
Traditional bureaucratic structures will need to be
replaced by ad hoc teams of peers who come together to tackle projects and then disband. Information
gathering will be broader and more inclusive. New
mechanisms will be necessary to harness the wisdom of crowds. Feedback loops will need to be built
that allow services to constantly evolve in response
to new information.
Change, innovation and adaptability all have to
become the norm. Such comprehensive reform
thinking would more likely produce the 21stcentury government that Obama called for in his
address to the nation. Although the state of the
union might be strong, I don’t think we can say the
same about our government.
CO MM ENTA RY
By Dennis D. McDonald
BEST PRACTICES NOT
A FIX FOR FEDERAL IT
In December 2010, federal CIO Vivek Kundra
released an ambitious “25-Point Implementation
Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology
Management.” No. 10 on that list is: “Launch a
best practices collaboration platform.”
As Kundra explains: “Within six months, the
federal CIO Council will develop a collaboration
portal to exchange best practices, case studies, and allow for real-time problem solving. To
institutionalize this best practice sharing, agency
[program managers] will submit post-implementation reviews of their major program deliveries to the portal. These reviews will populate a
searchable database of synthesized and codified
program management best practices that all PMs
can access.”
Of those three proposed elements, I put my
money on real-time problem-solving as having
the best short-term potential for improving IT.
Documenting best practices would be a waste of
time and money.
The reason is simple. By the time you document a best practice — assuming you can
convince time-pressed employees to document
completed projects and their effects — the problem, event, process or solution will have changed.
Yes, the resulting archive might have training,
education and planning value. But will it really
contribute to solving a serious existing problem,
such as how best to use technology to provide
more services with fewer resources?
A more attainable short-term goal would be
to make the expertise of knowledgeable people
discoverable and available — regardless of where,
organizationally, that expertise resides. After all,
when you have a problem, wouldn’t it be better
if you could identify an experienced expert and
contact him or her directly rather than search
through a database of outdated documents?
My career has included many projects that
involved building electronic documentation
and retrieval systems. But times have changed.
In recent years, we’ve seen a rapid growth in the
availability of cloud-based IT services, along
with the rising use of social networking services,
such as Facebook and Twitter. When adapted to
satisfy security and privacy requirements, such
systems can greatly simplify making and managing relationships and using them to exchange
information in near-real time.
The speed with which information can now
be exchanged through established relationships,
even those as lightweight as a Facebook friend,
far exceeds what’s possible through constructing, maintaining and using a formally structured
database that references past experience. The
beneficial aspects of social networks could, to
some extent, replace some of our old-fashioned
ideas about the need for centralized, highly structured, and expensive knowledge and document
management systems.
The power of professional networking over
our old systems is the difference between talk-
Dennis D. McDonald is
an independent management
consultant in Alexandria, Va.
Would you rather search through
a database of outdated documents
or contact an expert directly?
ing with an expert and finding a document that
expert wrote six months ago.
However, for such networking to take place in
the context of federal IT operations, serious barriers will need to be confronted and dismantled.
It’s still common to encounter resistance to doing
things in new ways or consulting people from
outside one’s office, agency or program.
Those barriers are not trivial, and you’ll often
find passionate explanations for why they exist.
But, as the song says, the times they are a-changing, and the Deficit Monster is demanding that
we cut government spending while doing more.
We should start by making it easier for federal
employees to take advantage of technologyenabled systems that facilitate collaboration,
sharing and problem solving.
17
COVER STORY
Learning
to be better
listeners
As agencies
find their
voices with
new media,
the next
step is to use
those online
connections
to let people
have their
say, too
BY JOHN MOORE
18
rs
B
randon Friedman’s first order
of business when he arrived at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2009 was
establishing a consistent voice for VA in
social media.
As the department’s director of new
media, Friedman helped launch its first
Facebook page and Twitter feed. Next
came a YouTube channel and a Flickr
photo site. In 2010, VA Medical Centers
began adding Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. A department blog, “VAntage
Point,” launched in November.
As VA continues to hone its communication channels, it is now entering
a second phase of social media deployment that involves obtaining feedback
and acting on it.
“VA really hasn’t had a mechanism by
which we could get feedback from the
veteran and really incorporate that in
our decision-making,” Friedman said.
The goal is to cultivate a two-way
relationship between VA and veterans
and make social media such an integral
part of the department’s culture that it
becomes routine and unremarkable.
“We want to get this to the point
where it is not even newsworthy,” Friedman said.
Other agencies also seek to make
Gov 2.0 more than an exercise in checking off items on a social media to-do list.
Jana Hrdinová, program associate at the
University at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government, said agencies
are taking a more thoughtful approach
to social media than they did a year
ago. The center offers classes on how to
manage social media.
Agencies “are going through the
process of actually thinking through the
strategy and planning for a good initiative instead of just being on Facebook
for the sake of being on Facebook,” she
said.
The process can be difficult because
best practices in the government’s use
of social media — particularly cases in
which the emphasis is on processing
feedback — are few and far between.
Basic research into how best to structure
a social media outreach campaign is just
getting under way.
The same is true for quantitative
analyses of the results of such efforts. In
general, industry executives say measuring Gov 2.0’s effectiveness is difficult
because it’s hard to separate the impact
of social media from other messaging
and communications approaches.
Nevertheless, agencies are fine-tuning
their Gov 2.0 efforts in four key areas:
1. Disseminating information, the initial
focus of many social media programs
and an ongoing priority.
2. Obtaining public feedback on policies
and programs.
3. Crowdsourcing in the form of challenges and contests as a way to engage
the public in solving specific problems.
4. Using social media as an important
outreach tool, especially among agencies involved in health and public safety.
Read on for more details about how
agencies are using Gov 2.0 technologies
in those areas.
Outreach score card
We asked the experts interviewed for this story to assess the
opportunities, challenges and track record of government
use of social media for public outreach. We then summarized those views in score cards for four outreach activities,
with a rating system ranging from 1 (lowest) to 4 (highest)
to measure specific dimensions of each effort. An activity’s
game-changing potential refers to the opportunities for the
social media tools to radically enhance the government’s
two-way interaction with people compared to traditional
communication methods. The degree of difficulty reflects
the technical complexity of the tools and the organizational
process changes they require agencies to make to be effective when using them. Cost includes technology acquisition
expenses, staff time to use the tool, and ongoing operational
costs, such as adding new functionality and prize money for
contests. The maturity level indicates government’s experience level with the tools.
19
GOV 2.0
1. Getting the word out
The most basic use of social media in government falls in the
broad category of information dissemination. Government
and industry executives say the most widely used tools in this
field are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the Flickr photo-sharing
site and the WordPress site for blogs.
narrative. A recent Transportation Security Administration
blog post noted that 11-inch MacBook Air models can be left
in passengers’ bags during security checks. But airport agents
need to know that as well, Beal added.
“There needs to be congruence in the messaging,” he said.
“Otherwise, you are going to create friction.”
NEXT STEPS
WHO’S DOING IT?
Agencies that have mastered the mechanics of social media
Many agencies use social media to broadcast information. should focus on polishing the content.
Public affairs offices frequently use the technology, with staff
Mark Drapeau, director of innovative social engagement
members often doubling as their agency’s social media officers. at Microsoft, said one common problem is failing to create
At NASA’s Public Affairs Office, social media hasn’t replaced valuable, interesting content that connects with an audience.
press releases but instead is used to supplement traditional He said people can become overly concerned with the technicalities of live tweeting at events when they should be focused
communications methods.
“We are all charged with integrating social media into our on storytelling.
“It’s easy to set up a Twitter feed or a YouTube channel,”
communications efforts overall,” said Stephanie Schierholz,
public affairs specialist and social media manager at NASA. Drapeau said. “But, overall, does it tell some kind of a meta
story that people want to be involved in?”
“We don’t look at it as an either/or.”
In January, Schierholz used Twitter to announce that NASA
has assigned a backup commander for the STS-134 space shuttle
mission, due to launch in April. The shuttle’s commander, 2. Receiving and acting
Mark Kelly, is married to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), on feedback
who was critically injured in a shooting incident earlier that Most social media is designed for two-way traffic: Agencies
post Facebook items, blog entries and
month. Moments after relaying the
YouTube videos, and visitors respond.
message, Schierholz walked down the
Getting the word out
hall to another NASA office and heard
However, agencies are still working to
CNN read the tweet on the air.
improve their ability to deal with those
Tools: Facebook, Flickr, Fourcomments. Some are now developing
“Social media allows us to get inforsquare, Twitter, WordPress,
mation out there that much more quicksystems that incorporate feedback into
YouTube
ly,” she said, noting that the agency’s
their business processes.
Twitter followers have grown from
Approaches to the feedback issue
Game-changing potential: 2
range from manually perusing responses
1,000 in January 2009 to 750,000.
to using tools that automatically moniDegree of difficulty: 1
MATURITY LEVEL
tor social media.
Cost: 2
Communication enjoys the longest run
WHO’S DOING IT?
in the government’s short social media
Maturity level: 3
history. But that’s not to say that the
In the next year, VA plans to formalize
application is fully mature. Indeed, agenthe process of organizing feedback and
cies continue to adjust their approaches.
directing it to the appropriate office,
The National Science Foundation, for instance, tweaked its Friedman said. The department already toils to answer quesTwitter strategy as it acquired more followers.
tions that arrive via social media.
“We have waded into it and try to answer as many questions
Paul Filmer, NSF’s program director of geosciences and
Twitter administrator, said the agency has diversified its Twit- and concerns as we can,” he said.
ter feeds. In addition to its main feed, NSF now maintains
Friedman said Facebook entries generate the most comsubfeeds for program announcements and other items of a ments but noted that a recent blog post on tips for filing dishighly technical nature.
ability claims attracted about 300 comments. The VA deputy
undersecretary who wrote the post dove in to answer quesTHE HARD PART
tions, Friedman added.
Maintaining a consistent voice soon becomes the critical chore
The General Services Administration and its Federal Acquisifor agencies with a bevy of social media platforms.
tion Service also aim to encourage and use feedback in its Gov
Andy Beal, CEO of social media monitoring vendor Trackur 2.0 efforts. GSA’s Interact site, launched last year, includes secand co-author of “Radically Transparent,” said an agency needs tions for group discussions, blogs and other social media tools.
to make sure the story it tells the public matches the in-house
A Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) group is among the first
20
communities participating in Interact.
because Interact provides a single social
Receiving and acting
The group includes agency contracting
media location where all parties —
on feedback
personnel and private-sector vendors.
internal and external to GSA — can
Other groups are in the process of formexchange ideas, he said.
Tools: Facebook, blogs,
ing, including one that will help users
“If these Federal Acquisition Servicesocial media monitoring/
related discussions surfaced within nonresolve issues on how to use schedreputation management
ules more effectively, said D.J. Caulfield,
GSA social media sites, like Facebook or
tools
branch chief of GSA’s Communications
GovLoop, we’d have to dedicate more
and Portal Services.
resources to monitoring those non-FAS
sites,” Caulfield said.
George Price, director of customer
outreach at GSA, said FAS has been
Degree of difficulty: 3
MATURITY LEVEL
using training, e-mail and other traFew agencies can call themselves feedditional outreach methods. But social
Cost: 3
back pros, but some are successfully
media fosters interactive discussions
Maturity level: 1
moving to more efficiently address
rather than one-way communication,
public comments.
he added.
In developing its own platform, GSA
“Agencies, in some cases, integrate
is better equipped to deal with feedback, Caulfield, said. That’s the feedback from social media into their processes,” said Lena
‘Can I make a point?’
In a Congressional Management Foundation survey of 138 legislative senior managers and communications
staff members, respondents said social media is more important for communicating lawmakers’ views than
understanding those of their constituents.
Facebook
Communicating lawmaker’s views
20
Understanding constituents’ views
YouTube
MySpace
20
4
Member’s
blog
56
Twitter
8
4
4
1
39
38
10
3
52
30
12
54
31
6
29
Somewhat
important
Very important
8
21
GOV 2.0
The goal is to cultivate a two-way
relationship between VA and veterans and make social media such an
Trudeau, vice president of the National Academy of Public
WHO’S DOING IT?
Administration.
The Labor Department is a case in point. Its ePolicyWorks NASA recently kicked off its NASA Tournament Lab
uses Web technology and Microsoft’s SharePoint to create a (NTL), a three-year collaboration with Harvard University
and TopCoder. The idea is to encourage software developvirtual workspace for policy-makers.
The project focuses on policies related to employment, ers to compete, or in some cases band together, to create
disability and health care. Constituent groups such as govern- code for NASA systems. Harvard will lend its crowdsourcment agencies, disability advocacy organizations and health ing knowledge, while TopCoder provides what it bills as the
care provider associations can submit comments on pending world’s largest competitive software development commupolicies and view what others have written via ePolicyWorks, nity — some 279,923 coders as of January.
Jason Crusan, chief technologist of space operations at NASA
said Michael Reardon, supervisory policy adviser at Labor’s
Office of Disability Employment Policy.
and the agency’s NTL lead, said plans
The objective is to cultivate a policycall for at least 20 software competitions
making process that’s more inclusive and
during the next three years. He describes
Solving problems
efficient. The ePolicyWorks platform
NTL as a “long-term pilot [program]
lets Labor obtain feedback early in the
to see how we can utilize these kinds
Tools: Challenge.gov, Ideapolicy process, which helps build conof platforms to get real results.”
Scale, NASA Tournament Lab
sensus around proposals, Reardon said.
Meanwhile, Challenge.gov launched
“By the time you are ready to
last year with sponsorship from GSA
and the support of the Office of Science
announce in the Federal Register, you
and Technology Policy. ChallengePost
have a good deal of buy-in,” he added.
provides the technology and offers help
Cost: 3
THE HARD PART
to agencies that want to launch chalOnline collaboration marks a culture
lenges on the site. Brandon Kessler,
Maturity level: 1
change for some agencies and commuChallengePost’s CEO, said more than 30
nities. Price said the greatest challenge
agencies have conducted competitions
with GSA’s Interact “has been to get
on Challenge.gov. Examples include the
people to understand this is a shift, a change in the way people Health and Human Services Department’s Healthy People
can access their government.”
2020 initiative and the Transportation Department’s Connected Vehicle Technology Challenge.
NEXT STEPS
Integrating social media into government operations will
likely require an ample dose of education and training for
agency employees and participating communities. Look for
agencies to bolster their social media outreach efforts with
more outreach efforts.
3. Solving problems
Crowdsourcing — the notion of reaching outside an organization’s walls to solve problems and take on projects — is
arguably one of the most tantalizing opportunities in Gov
2.0. Agencies have started using crowdsourcing platforms to
conduct competitions that invite people to submit their best
ideas. Winners receive cash or other prizes.
Dozens of platforms exist, often focusing on specific industries
or communities. In the government, TopCoder and Challenge.
gov appear to be making the most headway.
22
MATURITY LEVEL
The challenge concept has been around for a while, but many
agencies had lacked a legal framework for issuing prizes, which
inhibited wider use. However, the America Competes Act,
which Congress passed last year, gives agencies the authority
to conduct prize competitions.
“The America Competes Act will let all agencies use challenges and prizes as an everyday part of their toolkit,” Kessler said.
THE HARD PART
One of the biggest challenges is structuring a contest in a way
that addresses an agency’s needs but doesn’t bewilder outsiders.
Crusan said the key is to frame problems so that people can
tackle them without needing expertise in a particular area. For
example, a NASA challenge involving orbital mechanics could
be distilled into a physics or mathematics problem that the
broader community could solve, he said, adding that NASA’s
integral part of the department’s
culture that it becomes routine
and unremarkable.
software community is quickly learning how to write better
problem statements.
“It is incredibly important…to make the challenge well
crafted so there is a simple, meaningful message that people
understand on their first visit,” Kessler said.
and it seeks to mesh social media and emergency response.
The project’s participants have developed a standard syntax
for Twitter communications that makes the platform more
useful in a crisis.
Iacono said the approach was pressed into service in response
to the devastating earthquake in Haiti a year ago.
NEXT STEPS
“When there are emergencies,…we are finding that taking
The newness of challenges means agencies lack clear insight mashups of different social computing technologies can really
into getting the best results. Research should shed some light help,” she added.
Closer to home, Nation of Neighbors provides a Web-based
on how to run them.
Crusan said a series of social science
neighborhood watch and reporting sysexperiments will be conducted with
tem that taps the two-way nature of
NTL. NASA officials hope to get a sense
social media. The service lets particiPromoting health
of how best to structure challenges,
pants create or join local community
and public safety
gauge the effectiveness of different types
groups. Once registered, users can
of incentives and explore pure compesubmit reports of crime or suspicious
Tools: Facebook, Twitter,
tition versus collaborative approaches.
activity, which are delivered via e-mail
specialized sites such as
In addition, the NASA lab team plans
or text message to other local members
Nation of Neighbors
and law enforcement agencies.
to conduct a quantitative analysis on a
few challenges to determine the return
MATURITY LEVEL
on investment.
Health and safety applications, for the
most part, are just getting under way.
Cost: 2
4. Promoting
Projects receiving seed money now will
health and public
take a while to reach their full potential.
Maturity level: 1
safety
“I think we have barely scratched the
The use of social media in health and
surface,” Iacono said.
public safety represents a natural progression of Gov 2.0 and its outreach mission. Key platforms THE HARD PART
include Twitter and Facebook, but specialized public safety The lack of guidance for building effective systems presents
websites also embed blogs and other elements of social media. a challenge in the fields of public health and safety, as it does
“Health care and community safety,…these are the kinds for other emerging social media applications. Hrdinová
of topics [for which] social media has a potentially huge ben- said examples of government social media use are relatively
eficial impact,” said Ben Shneiderman, a computer sciences easy to find, but best-practice studies are in short supply.
Agencies want to know what makes a social media project
professor at the University of Maryland.
succeed or fail.
WHO’S DOING IT?
“That is what people are asking for,” Hrdinová said. “That
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been using level of research or analysis we haven’t seen yet.”
Facebook and Twitter to get the word out on emergency preparedness and response. Meanwhile, NSF is funding about NEXT STEPS
a dozen projects in which social media tools converge with Research in the field of health and safety is on the way. Shneideremergency information, said Suzi Iacono, senior science adviser man and other University of Maryland researchers have received
at NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science an NSF grant to evaluate Nation of Neighbors, with the goal
and Engineering.
of identifying the “reasons for successes and failures of the
One example is NSF-funded Project EPIC: Empowering community safety system,” according to NSF.
the Public with Information in Crisis. It involves the University
That is just the sort of information agencies are looking
of Colorado at Boulder and University of California at Irvine, for as they take their use of social media to the next level.
23
Experts offer
5 tips for
retaining
young talent
By Alyah Khan
24
When it comes to keeping federal employees in their 20s and early 30s engaged
and thriving in government service, NASA is often cited as an exemplary agency.
Much of NASA’s success in attracting and retaining young feds boils down to its
unquestionably cool mission, its embrace of Web 2.0 technologies and its culture
of respecting smart people, regardless of their age or pay grade.
“When we have young people who are smart, they fit right in,” said Emma
Antunes, Web manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “I don’t care if
you have a 30-year career or a five-year career.”
Antunes, who spearheaded the development of NASA’s internal Facebook-like
application called Spacebook, said she has found that Generation Y employees want
to be trusted with responsibility, respected by their co-workers and appreciated for
performing well — all of which are reasonable requests for any employee to make.
But the government’s ability to hold onto this new generation of federal employees varies greatly from agency to agency, experts say. In an analysis of recently hired
feds from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2008, the Partnership for Public Service discovered
that 24.2 percent left their jobs within two years, according to a report released
in November 2010.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced that it was establishing
clearer pathways to recruit students and recent graduates to government service,
which means agencies must begin adapting to the needs of these Generation Y
employees or watch hard-won, newly minted feds jump ship after only a couple
of years.
Faced with a growing budget deficit, a two-year pay freeze for federal employees
and potential workforce cuts in the legislative pipeline, retaining young talent is
the government’s smartest and most cost-effective option to ensure it is able to
achieve its mission — and keep all its employees happy.
Here are some of the best ideas from experts inside and outside the government on how to help young feds flourish at your agency.
STAN BAROUH
How to
grow young feds
at your agency
Young feds in government:
Make of it
what you will
PHOTO CREDIT HERE
One young fed says how
much a person gains from
government employment
depends on what he or she
makes of the experience
Government service lends itself to a young person’s
desire to help his or her fellow citizens, but how
much a person gains from government employment
depends on what he or she makes of the experience.
That’s the view of Chris Crawford, a 26-year-old
computer scientist at the Defense Department. He
came to government work through a scholarship
program and said he takes the initiative to make
and build important contacts.
“The best way to put it is that the ball is really in
your court,” Crawford said. “Your experience with
[professional development and mentoring] programs
tends to be what you make out of it.”
Robert Carey, DOD’s deputy CIO, expressed a
similar perspective. “Opportunities are what [young
people] want to make them in public service,” Carey
said. He added that if young feds want to excel,
federal managers are willing to help them.
Although formal training and development programs are important at federal agencies, Crawford
said some of his best mentoring experiences have
been the informal relationships he has established
outside recognized programs.
He credits his outgoing personality and said he
considers himself fortunate to have had those learning opportunities. He added that he has never had
a problem speaking to a higher-level official at DOD
and noted that the department hosts networking
events and online forums that give young feds the
chance to join the broader DOD community.
However, about 10 young people with whom
Crawford worked have left the government in the
past couple of years for various reasons, he said.
He participated in DOD’s Information Assurance
Scholarship Program while earning a master’s degree
from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
The program pays for students to attend graduate
school in exchange for a two-year commitment to
government service.
As he nears the end of his required two years at
DOD, Crawford said he sees a future for himself in
the government but doesn’t want to rule out other
possibilities yet.
— Alyah Khan
Month XX, 2010 FCW.COM
25
“When we see that as
a business decision
and not as some cool
toy, that’s when we
know we’re mature.”
E M M A AN T UNES , NASA
26
1. Link young
employees’ work
to the agency’s
mission.
Not surprisingly, many people say
they joined the federal government
because they wanted to make a difference. Generation Y, or Millennials — people born in the 1980s and
1990s — are no different.
“A lot of folks coming out of college want work that has meaning,”
said Steve Ressler, founder and president of government social network
GovLoop.
Ressler, formerly an IT specialist at the Homeland Security
Department, said managers must
tie employees’ work to the agency’s overall mission so young feds
can understand the value of their
contributions.
Instead of leaving employees holed
up in their Washington offices all the
time, Ressler suggested that agencies
send workers out into the field to talk
with the people who are benefiting from
their efforts — for instance, by giving a
young fed employed at the Agriculture
Department an opportunity to meet
farmers affected by his or her work.
Such an approach would help young
feds feel that the work they do on a daily
basis matters, and it prevents newer
employees from feeling lost in the belly
of a big bureaucratic agency, he added.
Tim McManus, vice president of
education and outreach at the Partnership for Public Service, agreed that
young people are motivated to work for
the government based on an agency’s
mission, not monetary compensation.
Therefore, agencies must clearly equate
what individuals are doing with how
ZAID HAMID
GROWING YOUNG FEDS
ZAID HAMID
they are helping an agency achieve its
goals, he said.
Enabling young feds to see how
important their jobs are also means
empowering them to be able to make
decisions on their own. McManus said
federal managers must set expectations
and then allow employees a level of
independence so that they have room
to grow.
Enabling young employees to participate in rotation programs can also
keep things fresh and interesting. The
agencies that successfully retain young
feds often have those types of programs,
which give employees the chance to
work in a mix of areas, Ressler said.
Rotations or details to other agencies let employees try new things and
give them a variety of opportunities
as they develop their careers, which
is seen as a huge perk.
2. Be a mentor
and give young
feds greater
responsibility.
Agency leaders must be willing to
coach young feds while recognizing
the technical skills young employees
bring to the table.
“To the extent that agencies expect
young employees to be just like the
employees they are replacing — that’s
a huge pitfall,” said Dave Uejio, vice
president of Young Government Leaders, a professional organization with
more than 1,800 members.
Uejio said that without buy-in from
agency leaders, retention strategies
aren’t going to succeed. Leaders must
create the kind of culture that is welcoming to young government employees but benefits everybody because it
permits open conversations and shar-
“It’s up to our
organization, our
team to decide
how to deploy the
talents of these
young workers.”
ROB E RT CA RE Y, DE F E NSE DE PA RT M E NT
27
GROWING YOUNG FEDS
ing, he added. One way to get the dis- retary on a regular basis — or maybe
cussion rolling is to allow tech-savvy even ever. It’s up to the young fed
young feds to help others at the agency and his or her supervisor to foster a
understand new IT trends.
relationship between the two of them.
Robert Carey, deputy CIO at the But managers are the ones who need
Defense Department, stressed how to ensure that they are taking a proimportant it is for young feds to feel active approach to overseeing their
as though they can have an honest young employees.
dialogue with their bosses. He also
said it’s up to leaders to define the 3. Establish clear, consistent performance
environment at their agency.
“In reality, the agency head sets the measures.
tone of the organization,” Carey said. Young employees should be clearly told
Then “it’s up to our organization, our what’s expected of them and how they
team to decide how to deploy the tal- will be evaluated. Therefore, managers
ents of these young workers.”
must develop performance measures
He said he meets with young that are understandable and conducive
employees every few months and talks to a healthy work/life balance.
with them about where they are in
Managers must also consider the diftheir careers, where they want to go ferences between young workers and
and how to get there. He helps them baby boomers and manage their own
chart a course toward their objectives expectations accordingly.
by getting them to tell him, essenDesenberg said people under 30 want
tially, what they want to be when they constant feedback, which they often don’t
grow up.
get when they work for the government.
He added that some
Jon Desenberg, a
agencies do not do
senior policy direca good job of protor at the Perfor- “When you’re
viding consistent
mance Institute, in your 20s, it’s
evaluations or linksaid federal maning performance with
agers should also not about how
recognition or pay.
co n s i d e r g i v i ng much money
Antunes said
young employees
young feds are
a leg up by assign- [you make]
sometimes frusing them greater but how much
trated because they
responsibility.
feel their hard work
“When you’re in responsibility
isn’t noticed. “It can
your 20s, it’s not you’re given.”
be tough for some
about how much
young folks when
money [you make] J O N D ES E N B E RG ,
b u t h ow m u c h PERFORMANCE INSTITUTE they are getting startresponsibility you’re
ed,” she said.
given,” he said. “Your first manager
They need to hear that their work is
can be a huge influence on your career appreciated, and they might even need
and point you in the right direction.” an extra pat on the back for their input,
Desenberg said his first boss in gov- she added.
ernment gave him the work of a GS-9
Another way agencies can hold onto
even though he was a GS-6. He said young employees is by hiring the person
federal managers shouldn’t pay atten- who is best suited to a job in the first place.
tion to formal titles and instead should To do that, agencies must adequately
allow young employees the chance to describe what the job entails and what
do something beyond their assigned their performance expectations are at
duties and see how well they do.
the outset, McManus said.
For their part, young employees
“What you’re selling on the front
must understand that they’re not going end has to match up with what you’re
to be briefing the department’s sec- delivering,” he said.
28
4. Develop
strong training
programs.
Young feds want to grow by learning
new things, which means agencies must
invest in robust training programs, particularly if they want to retain their IT
employees.
Generally, young employees like to
know how their current experience
is going to contribute to their overall
professional development. Training
employees in burgeoning technologies, for example, allows them to flex
new muscles and use their brains in a
variety of ways to stay engaged.
Terri Cinnamon, director of IT workforce development at the Veterans Affairs
Department, said she sees the creation
of challenging training programs as the
most important factor in retaining young
feds, especially in the IT field.
She said her team primarily looks for
ways young employees can contribute to
different projects throughout the agency
and ensures that they are getting Microsoft certifications, for example.
Agencies should provide a variety
of opportunities for young employees
to use the latest IT and Web 2.0 tools
to communicate about and work on
projects, she added. And agency leaders
should focus on allocating more money
for training — not only for retention
purposes but also for recruiting other
young employees.
“The challenge for us is to be able
to make sure that when [people] leave
college or other IT-savvy jobs, we can
compete and have IT-savvy jobs in the
government also,” Cinnamon said.
Ressler said young feds are also more
likely to stay at an agency that pays for
graduate school or helps them repay
existing student loans, which shows
that the agency is committed to its
employees.
Michael Gelles, a director at Deloitte
Consulting, said training and development programs will help the government create the kind of environment in
which young feds can be successful by
offering managers the opportunity to
improve their own skills.
“Agencies today, even though constrained by budgets, need to continue to
invest in developing leaders who understand the challenges and nuances of this
[new] generation,” he said.
MATTHEW BORKOSKI
5. Use modern IT
and social networks
to collaborate,
communicate and
coordinate.
The federal workforce will eventually be led
by Generation Y, and therefore it is imperative for the government to structure work
around the latest technology, Gelles said.
“If the government wants to attract and
retain the best talent, there need to be
changes across the government and not
just in specific agencies,” he added.
The Pew Research Center summed
up the importance of technology to the
Millennial Generation in a report dated
December 2009. “They are the first generation in human history who regard behaviors like tweeting and texting, along with
websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google
and Wikipedia, not as astonishing innovations of the digital era but as everyday
parts of their social lives and their search
for understanding,” Scott Keeter and Paul
Taylor wrote in the report.
Antunes agreed that young feds expect
information to be available online so that
they can participate and collaborate from
anywhere. In response to some agencies’
resistance to Web 2.0 tools, Antunes said,
young people often wonder, “Why be so
old school?”
Interestingly, after the launch of NASA’s
Spacebook, Antunes said she found that
the collaboration part of the Facebooklike application was more popular than
the networking features.
“The networking and chatting [are] not
as useful as the intranet,” she said. “People
loved being able to share files easier, communicate with their peers and build ad
hoc groups.”
Antunes said every agency needs access
to modern tools to be successful in its
mission. “When we see that as a business
decision and not as some cool toy, that’s
when we know we’re mature,” she said
about the government.
Ressler similarly said internal social networks make it possible for more experienced employees to share their institutional knowledge and encourage new
employees to collaborate.
“It’s not fun when you’re stuck on Windows 95 with a 15-pound laptop and every
site is blocked,” Ressler said about government’s outdated IT. He suggested that
agencies modernize and take advantage
of the opportunity to move their intranets
to the next level.
Antunes said making emerging IT available for young feds is similar to complying
with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act,
which requires that federal agencies make
their electronic information accessible to
people with disabilities.
When you ensure that a website complies with Section 508, the site is easier
for everyone to use, she said, adding that
adopting strategies that support young feds
will improve retention overall.
“We will have an amazingly empowered
workforce,” Antunes said. “Those things
that encourage [young employees] to stay
are actually good for the workforce as a
whole.”
“A lot of folks
coming out of
college want
work that has
meaning.”
STE VE RESSL E R,
GOVLO O P
29
HOME PAGES:INSIDE DOD
By AMBER CORRIN
Could mission specialization
solve DOD’s woes?
Some experts question whether the
military can save money by having each
service focus on what it does best
T
he news coming out of the Defense Department rarely seems good these days. In the
face of profound budget struggles and two
ongoing wars in Southwest Asia, the entire department is feeling the pressure to find new ways to operate.
But in an organization in which a $553 billion budget is barely
enough to get by, where does one military service, agency, division, team or individual begin when it’s time to do more with less?
Possible answers — and there are many — are further complicated by a rapidly evolving landscape of war, politics and
technology.
Violent extremism and mitigating factors such as globalization,
increased interdependency and the explosion of technological
advancements all make solutions much tougher to come by,
said Vice Adm. Richard Hunt, commander of the Navy’s 3rd
Fleet, at the AFCEA West conference in San Diego in January.
However, Hunt floated an idea for addressing the complex
challenges his service, like the rest of DOD, faces: specialization.
“We need to focus on what only the Navy can do,” Hunt
said. “We have to play to our strength.” He offered a number
of examples that involved securing the maritime domain and
building up the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command and its cyber
warfare capabilities.
The idea of specialization isn’t new. European officials have
considered pooling specialized missions together for broader
European Union and NATO defense, and last month, Gen.
David Richards, chief of the British defense staff, said during a
U.S. briefing that mission specialization could be a solution to
budget problems in Europe.
“I don’t see great appetite for that among most of our nations’
political leaders, but it could be that we, the military, have to
be very wise on this one and generous-hearted and force the
pace” of specialization, Richards said in January at an Atlantic
Council briefing in Washington, as quoted on DODBuzz.com.
Mission specialization among the various international partners would allow for focused investment of precious defense
30
funding. In essence, the whole would be greater than the sum
of its parts.
Specialization in the U.S. military would probably differ from
that of the European Union and NATO, but could it be done?
Furthermore, would it solve any of the multifaceted problems
DOD faces?
According to some experts, the answer to the second question is probably not.
As John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, points out, the
overlap between the Navy and Army and between the Navy and
Air Force is minimal and small potatoes in the grand scheme
of DOD operations.
Furthermore, the overlap that does exist allows for healthy
competition among the services, said Michael O’Hanlon, director of research and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“Having the Marines and the Army in Iraq on the same
mission led to greater experimentation, like the Sunni Awakening in 2006,” a key U.S. strategy in which tribal leaders began
cooperating with the United States in the fight against al Qaeda,
O’Hanlon said.
As for the United States partnering with international allies
under a specialization strategy, it’s not a realistic approach, he
added.
“Defense specialization may work within the EU, but it’s not
a luxury the U.S. has since we never know which partners will
be willing to help us in a given contingency,” he said. “We don’t
choose the wars we end up in.”
Although narrowing the U.S. military’s operations could
reduce what needs to be bought, it ultimately wouldn’t be enough
to save much money or protect the country, said Maren Leed,
a senior fellow and director of the New Defense Approaches
Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Fundamentally, what costs the U.S. is a very expensive strategy, and until we change strategies, we’re going to have a hard
time achieving substantive savings,” Leed said. “We’re going
to have a mismatch that we can’t economize our way out of.”
Maj. Gen. Melvin Spiese, deputy commanding general of the
1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said Marines do specialize in
some of their missions, but he still believes we need a holistic
U.S. military.
“We have identified gaps in the nation’s arsenal of capabilities
not easily filled by others,” Spiese said at AFCEA West. However,
“we need a flexible, responsible force that is an enabler of joint
and interagency capabilities deployed around the world.”
Amber Corrin writes the “Inside DOD” blog on FCW.com.
HOME PAGES:CYBERSECURITY
By WILLIAM JACKSON
Cyberattacks on infrastructure:
The new normal
services at Securicon, pointed out during a presentation at
Black Hat Federal, “The fact that we are talking about it now
shows that the developers failed to some extent.” Stuxnet was
apparently never intended to circulate in the wild where it
could be captured and analyzed.
The worm is sophisticated. Its creators aren’t known, but
the consensus among analysts is that it was the work of a team
with considerable resources. The effort involved would need
to be measured in man-years. It required access to expensive
and regulated hardware as a test bed, and it apparently took
y its nature, critical infrastructure should be advantage of detailed intelligence about its target.
resilient. It should be able to withstand disasOn the one hand, the news is alarming. We don’t know
trous events, mitigate their effects, fail grace- who made Stuxnet, but nobody wants them crafting another
fully and recover quickly. But in a new era in which cyber worm to attack us. On the other hand, there is some comfort
war is a reality, resiliency is becoming a strategic necessity. not only in the fallibility of the developers but also the appar“The critical infrastructure is in
ent complexity and expense of the
play,” Black Hat Director Jeff Moss
attack. Nobody pretends to know
said in opening the annual Black
what Stuxnet cost to develop, but
it was not a trivial exercise. And
Hat Federal cybersecurity confuture attackers would need to
ference in January. “If your assets
consider the return on investment
are in play, you’d better be able to
before unleashing such a worm.
respond and recover faster.”
What put these assets into play
That is where resiliency comes
— or at least gave notice of the
in.
Hardening the country’s power
fact — was the Stuxnet worm,
grid or control systems for critical
which Moss called the topic that
won’t die. The worm was publicly
utilities and services to the point
revealed in July 2010 and since
that they are invulnerable to attack
found to be targeted against a spewould be cost prohibitive, if that
cific process control system. It is
were even possible. But being able
believed to have been designed to
to mitigate the effects of an attack,
disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment Many believe the sophisticated Stuxnet worm was designed fail gracefully and recover quickly
program, which it might well have to disable Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
— that is, be resilient — could
done. However, 60,000 other infecserve as an effective deterrent
tions have been identified around the world.
because launching a Stuxnet-like attack might make little
Stuxnet is merely one example of a new reality, Moss said. economic sense for the attackers.
“I don’t believe this is the first one,” he said of a worm
The country’s critical infrastructure is far from what it
that appears to cross the line between cyber and traditional should be. But past failures, such as the massive Northeast
warfare. “I believe it’s the first public one. This is the new Blackout of 2003 that affected about 55 million people from
the Hudson Bay to the Chesapeake Bay, show that we can
normal. This is the new world we will be living in.”
Moss, best known as the founder of the Black Hat and recover from catastrophic failures without catastrophic damDEF CON hacker conferences, is also a security consultant age. Improving the infrastructure’s ability to defend against
and member of the government’s Homeland Security Advi- and respond to such failures will be an important strategic
deterrent to attack.
sory Council.
People are still debating just what Stuxnet is — and how S
good it is. As Tom Parker, director of security consulting Staff writer William Jackson writes the “CyberEye” blog on GCN.com.
In the wake of Stuxnet, it’s clear that
resiliency is a strategic deterrent to
attacks on our critical infrastructure
AP IMAGES
B
31
HOME PAGES:TECH BRIEFING
By JOHN ZYSKOWSKI
Agencies’ cloud adoption
defies early expectations
on to Google’s cloud-based e-mail service. By going to the cloud,
the state will save about $1 million a year in indirect costs and
wind up with a unified messaging system that improves crossagency communication and collaboration.
And as far as security goes — the issue that government
executives say concerns them most about the cloud — Wyoming
is better off in the cloud than not, von Wolffradt said. Out of
curiosity, his team evaluated a few of the state’s existing messaging systems for compliance with some of the certification and
accreditation requirements in the Federal Information Security
hen you ask technology experts Management Act, a security seal of approval that Google earned
for advice about how agencies can for its cloud applications last year.
“We were going to fill out this checklist for our current e-mail
move from the traditional, owneverything-yourself data processing days to the new cloud operations and certify ourselves, but we couldn’t get halfway
computing model of pay-as-you-go IT services, the most through it,” von Wolffradt said. “That told us [the cloud] would
common tips you hear are to go slow, start small and avoid be a better solution for us.”
Other government agencies are reaching similar conclusions
picking non mission-critical application to test first.
about the benefits of commercial e-mail services,
The General Services Administration, Wyoming and several other government offices apparpart of the cloud category called software as a
The big picture:
ently didn’t get that memo.
service (SaaS).
They are part of a host of government entities Expected federal
But in the long run, many expect infrastructure
taking the first big steps into the cloud by moving spending on
as a service (IaaS) to claim a bigger piece of cloud
their entire enterprises and thousands of employ- cloud services
computing. IaaS includes IT staples such as server
ees to commercial, cloud-based e-mail services.
processing, data storage, networks and desktop
It would be tough to argue that e-mail isn’t 2010: $419 million
computing. It offers great potential benefits but
mission-critical for any organization, let alone 2012: $686 million
can be more difficult to implement, hence the
those as information intensive as most govern- 2015: $1.4 billion
early popularity of more universal SaaS applicament agencies are. So why the big plunge into Source: Input
tions, such as e-mail, said Shawn McCarthy, a
cloud services when conventional wisdom seems
research director at IDC Government Insights.
to advise against it?
OMB officials have latched onto IaaS as an important tool
It turns out that there are many good reasons to use cloud- in their initiative to reduce the number of federal data centers
based e-mail, and early government adopters are hardly daredevils. and slash governmentwide IT costs, said Deniece Peterson,
But their approach underscores the likelihood that the adoption manager of industry analysis at Input.
of cloud computing will not follow any prewritten script, a lesHowever, a potential problem looms. Government agenson that awaits the Office of Management and Budget officials cies have been leaning toward building private clouds for IaaS
who are pushing hard for cloud adoption by requiring agencies rather than using commercial public services so they can keep
to move at least three applications to the cloud in 18 months.
a tighter grip on security and control. Examples include the
In Wyoming, state officials weren’t looking to make any Defense Information Systems Agency’s Rapid Access Computstatements by leading with such a high-profile application. But ing Environment and NASA’s Nebula infrastructure service.
If that trend continues, rising costs for private cloud construccloud-based e-mail had become an opportunity too good to
ignore. Like many jurisdictions, Wyoming is saddled with mul- tion could prompt a response from OMB.
tiple, independently operated e-mail systems, some frustratingly
“I think OMB will push back on that scale tilting too far to
incompatible with one another, many redundant and, as a collec- the private cloud because you might end up with a lot of cloud
tion, costly to maintain, said Bob von Wolffradt, the state’s CIO. stovepipes, and that defeats the purpose,” Peterson said.
In October 2010, Wyoming officials signed a contract to move
the state’s 10,000 employees off internal messaging systems and John Zyskowski writes the “Tech Briefing” blog on FCW.com.
Experts agree that the cloud will
transform government IT, but agencies
refuse to follow a prewritten script
W
32
INDEX OF ADVERTISERS
CDW-G
www.CDWG.com/datacenter . . . . . . . . . . . . .4-5
Dell Computer
Dell.com/StreamlineGovernment . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Federal 100 Awards
www.fcw.com/fed100 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Get Certified and
Take Your IT Career
to the Next Level
Government Training Exchange
www.governmenttrainingexchange.com . . . . . . 33
IBM Corp.
www.ibm.com/power7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Riverbed Technology
riverbed.com/fedgov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
There’s no better time to get certified.
Getting certified can take your IT career to the
next level—including more opportunities, job
security and increased recognition.
• CompTIA Network+ certification
covers managing, maintaining,
troubleshooting, operating and
configuring basic network infrastructure
and is the industry standard for
networking professionals.
Go to governmenttrainingexchange.com to learn more and
take advantage of special discounts of up to 20% off CompTIA IT
certification programs including CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+
and CompTIA Security+.
• CompTIA A+ certification is the
industry standard for computer support
technicians covering installation,
preventative maintenance, networking,
security and troubleshooting.
• CompTIA Security+ certification
designates knowledgeable
professionals in the field of security,
one of the fastest-growing fields in
IT covering system security, network
infrastructure, access control and
organizational security.
Verizon Wireless
verizonwireless.com/govt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does
not assume any liability for errors or omissions.
www.governmenttrainingexchange.com
■ MEDIA CONSULTANT
Debbie Chernoff
(510) 834-4217
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(703) 222-2977
[email protected]
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[email protected]
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(515) 256-0156
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■ VP & GROUP PUBLISHER
Jennifer Weiss
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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
CONTENT SOLUTIONS
Stacy Money
(415) 450-1817
[email protected]
MARKETING DIRECTOR
Mark Feldman
(703) 876-5148
[email protected]
MARKETING MANAGER
Mario Marzette
(703) 876-5067
[email protected]
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Lee Alexander
(818)814-5275
[email protected]
©Copyright 2011 by 1105 Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Reproductions in whole or part prohibited except by written permission. Mail requests
to “Permissions Editor,” c/o Federal Computer Week, 3141 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 777, Falls Church, VA 22042. The information in this magazine has not undergone any formal testing by 1105 Media, Inc. and is distributed without any warranty expressed or implied. Implementation or use of any information contained herein
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33
BACK TALK
SOCIAL MEDIA:
The latest
2.0 heartthrob
Hosted by Andrew Krzmarzick
GovLoop members and social media gurus around the world are falling
for Quora, which offers new possibilities for public engagement.
It’s Valentine’s Day, and I have to admit
that I am getting a bit envious of the
new kid in town. Everyone seems to
be infatuated with a social network
named Quora.
The website first came to my attention in early January when there were
three separate conversations about it
on GovLoop. First, Heather Coleman
asked: “Should agencies and cities be
on Quora?” Because she’s a SharePoint
content manager and social media specialist at the Army Contracting Command, her interest intrigued me. Of
course, the first response to her question was another one: “What’s Quora?”
For those of you who haven’t heard
of it — and fallen head over heels
in love — if you were to encounter
Quora at a virtual speed dating event, it
would introduce itself as “a continually
improving collection of questions and
answers created, edited and organized
by everyone who uses it.”
Or as Jimmy Leach , head of digital
diplomacy at the United Kingdom’s
Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
said in a blog post a day after Coleman’s inquiry: “It’s like a social media
version of Yahoo! Answers.”
Leach said he and his colleagues are
“dabbling in the shallow waters, trying to get to grips with how we’d use
it.” But they’re just not sure about a
long-term relationship. It’s all still a bit
dreamy, like when the Beatles crossed
the pond and found inexplicable mass
adoration.
To be fair, I have flirted with Quora
myself and found the responses to be
34
better and more trustworthy than
Yahoo! Answers. Far from calling
Quora every day, I’m fine with a fiveminute chance encounter as I wander
the Web.
What cannot be easily ignored is
the global nature of the phenomenon.
A couple of weeks after the GovLoop
conversations started, Nick Charney,
a federal public servant in Ottawa,
posted a blog entry that was akin to
a beauty contest between Quora and
GCPEDIA, Canada’s version of the
MAX Federal Community.
Charney wrote that he believes
Quora wins because it has a greater
sense of focus — without being too
prescriptive — better information
management and better search abilities, and it doesn’t require users to
learn how to code.
“I’m not saying that GCPEDIA isn’t
valuable (I still think it is) but only
that it is being pulled by users in a
number of different ways,” he writes.
In fact, one of the questions on
Quora is: “How can Quora help
ExpertNet?” — a new initiative by
the General Services Administration
and White House that seeks to achieve
“next-generation citizen consultation,
namely a governmentwide software
tool and process to elicit expert public
participation,” according to the notice
published in the Federal Register in
December 2010.
Quora can’t be everything to everybody, but it’s worth spending a minute
lingering on its profile or checking it
out over breakfast or coffee.
In the meantime, I’ve got enough
on my plate tr ying to manage
40,000 relationships, which keeps me
from getting too jealous of this new
heartthrob.
INK TANK
Read cartoonist John Klossner’s blog at www.fcw.com/InkTank.
Celebrating
Government Leadership
for 22 Years
22nd Annual
Federal 100 Awards Gala
March 28, 2011
The Federal 100 Awards recognize government and industry
leaders who have played pivotal roles in the federal government
IT community. Professionals from government, industry
and academia will be honored for their efforts in affecting
change, progress, and efficiency in determining how the federal
government acquires, develops and manages IT.
Grand Hyatt
Washington, DC
Join the celebration
Learn about sponsorship opportunities, tickets and more at
www.fcw.com/fed100
The new
industry
standard.
Up until now, many companies have settled for x86 performance with the
mistaken belief that more power equals more money. That equation has
changed. Today, a comparable workload on IBM Power® 730 Express systems
can be as much as 37% less expensive than on HP ProLiant DL380 G7
systems.1 And we haven’t compromised performance to reach that price
point. Power Systems™ are designed to enable you to optimize hundreds
of workloads on a single system, drive up to 90% utilization and reduce
energy costs by up to 80% when consolidating servers. Can systems be
built to do more for less? On a smarter planet they can. ibm.com/power7
Smarter systems for a Smarter Planet.
1. Comparison based on performance and virtualization advantage of two IBM Power 730 Express systems with equivalent throughput of five virtualized HP ProLiant DL380 G7 systems and takes into account the cost of the systems, operating
system, virtualization and middleware software and software support for 3 years. Comparison is based on performance and utilization characteristics in a virtualized environment. Actual performance, system and software savings and environmental
cost savings will vary depending on client actual implementation. Contact IBM to see what we can do for you. For more information, visit www.ibm.com/power7/claims. IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Power, Power Systems, Smarter Planet and the
planet icon are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the
Web at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2011.

The limits of best practices

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