TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
03/31/09 06:27 pm ET
I reported today on the suspension of a botched, eight-year effort to develop a new patient appointment scheduling application at the Veterans Affairs Department, and I have a hunch that is just one of potentially many VA IT projects in real trouble.>>
03/30/09 03:57 pm ET
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. - Reporters are known as cynics and cranks (that's what my friends in the public affairs shops in the Pentagon tell me) so I'm going to run against the trend. The folks from the White Sands Missile Range, the New Mexico National Guard and the Reserve Officer Training Corps who ran the Bataan Memorial Death March at the Missile Range did the Army proud.>>
03/27/09 05:43 pm ET
I'm headed down to the White Sands Missile Range this weekend for the annual Bataan Memorial Death March, which commemorates the 1942 event in the Philippines when 10,000 U.S. and Filipino troops were literally marched to death by the Japanese Army en route to Prisoner of War camps. Another 10,000 escaped and 50,000 barely survived the 70 mile jungle slog.>>
03/26/09 04:36 pm ET
Military clinicians really hate the interface for the Defense Department's AHLTA (maybe not a noun) electronic health record system.>>
03/25/09 06:09 pm ET
The Navy will hold an Industry Day on March 31 to discuss how it plans to transition from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet run by EDS to its Next Generation Enterprise Network, a massive deal potentially worth as much as $10 billion.>>
03/24/09 05:46 pm ET
Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., seems as confused as I am on how AHLTA, the name for the Defense Department's electronic health record system, has morphed from an acronym into a noun.>>
03/23/09 05:42 pm ET
I today about an article in the spring 2009 issue of the IANewsletter, published by the Defense Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center. The article made some compelling arguments for the establishment of a fourth service to conduct cyberwarfare.>>
03/22/09 12:10 pm ET
As far as I can determine the reason the taxpayers - that's you and I - have to fund $165 million in bonuses for employees of AIG Financial Products is they came up with the ideas a few years back to create trillions of dollars worth of arcane and cockamamie financial products known as credit default swaps.>>
03/19/09 05:05 pm ET
That's the title of the hearing that the House Armed Service Committee's subcommittee on Joint Military Personnel and Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities plans to hold on March 24. It will be on the Defense Department's AHLTA (remember, not an acronym) electronic health record system.>>
03/19/09 05:00 pm ET
I've learned that Casscells, who told me a year ago that Military Health System clinicians found AHLTA "intolerable" plans to end his tour as the Defense "Top Doc" at the end of April.>>
03/18/09 05:41 pm ET
There's just under 20 generals from all four services testifying on Capitol Hill today, according to a handy list put out by the Defense Department press shop, along with a handful of assistant or under secretaries, which put the number of top Defense managers on the Hill today well above 20.>>
03/17/09 06:02 pm ET
Last week in my item on the Military Health Systems ceremony to honor fallen docs, I said ABC anchor Bob Woodruff, wounded in Iraq, recovered at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. I was, of course, wrong. Woodruff recovered at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.>>
03/17/09 05:08 pm ET
The Government Accountability Office < href=http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09288.pdf>reported on March 12 that the wideband version of the Joint Tactical Radio System will not be ready to support the Army's $159 billion Future Combat System program until 2017 or 2018 -- that's two years after the service starts fielding all FCS vehicles, gadgets, and gizmos.>>
03/16/09 04:11 pm ET
We all know that's not news, but it's good to get an annual reminder from the Government Accountability Office that there are too few people managing too many programs that cost too much.>>
03/13/09 06:28 pm ET
The Government Accountability Office added another $21 billion to the price tag of the Army's Future Combat Systems program, which currently stands at $159 billion, in a report released on Thursday. The Army fired back in press call on Friday with a squad of two and three star generals.>>
03/12/09 02:23 pm ET
That's just some of the items funded by more than 8,000 earmarks worth just short of $8 billion in the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which President Obama signed on Wednesday.>>
03/11/09 06:40 pm ET
That's what Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, told a House VA committee hearing on Tuesday. So, if this is the view of the boss, why, oh why, is VA so intent on ripping out the Gold Standard Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) electronic health record system for a new-fangled deal called Health eVet.>>
03/10/09 05:39 pm ET
I asked Marlin Forbes, regional vice president for Verizon's Federal Defense and International Services division, what kind of high-speed circuits his company will supply the Defense Department users with under the contract, called the Defense Information Systems Network transmission services-Pacific II contract. Forbes answered, "We're going to supply the customers with light.">>
03/09/09 05:15 pm ET
Those of us who have served in combat know there is no more essential member of a field unit than a corpsman or medic, who at the risk of his or her own life, answers without hesitation the call of "Medic Up" or "Corpsman Up.">>
03/06/09 03:32 pm ET
John Burrow, deputy commander of the Marine Corps Systems Command, may have put the brakes on the continued proliferation of the buzz phrase de jour: Service-Oriented Architecture, better known as SOA.>>
03/05/09 12:50 pm ET
Retired Rear Adm. John Gauss, who commanded the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center from 1998 to 2001 and served as chief information officer of the Veterans Affairs Department from 2001 to 2003, will run the acquisition for the Navy's Next Generation Enterprise Network.>>
03/04/09 05:46 pm ET
Since today is Naval IT Day, it's a good idea to look at the overall state of the Navy. And, if you judge by the number of ships it has, the U.S. Navy is in quite sad shape, according to Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.>>
03/03/09 02:51 pm ET
Evidently I have some real eagle-eyed readers in the intelligence community, because I received a note pointing out that I had a slight misspelling when referring to counter-intelligence in my continuing coverage of the thumb-drive ban.>>
03/02/09 05:41 pm ET
In my last post I endorsed the intelligence community's approach to thumb drives - don't ban them but issue warnings about the risks, and then assume end users will take an adult approach to the judicious use of computer technology.>>
