TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
06/30/09 04:58 pm ET
The House Appropriations Committee eliminated the requirement that the Defense Department fund half the cost of the new National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) in its version of the Commerce Department's fiscal 2010 appropriations bill passed on June 25.>>
06/30/09 02:45 pm ET
In a familiar refrain, a top military leader on June 26 said, "We should fashion our military structure not for the wars of the last century, but for the real wars of today.">>
06/29/09 05:21 pm ET
In the case of Siemens Medical, the answer comes out to at least $267 million, the value of the three-year contract the Defense Department awarded the company in March for radiology systems.>>
06/26/09 04:11 pm ET
At the Thursday hearing hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Economic Opportunity Subcommittee on the post-9/11 GI bill, Mark Krause, a Veterans Affairs Department program manager who works at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic, said he is eyeing the use of cloud computing to host a spiffy new claims processing system for education benefit claims.>>
06/25/09 02:22 pm ET
The Veterans Affairs Department has hired Peter Levin, a White House fellow in the Clinton administration, as its new chief technology officer in the office of the secretary and senior advisor to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Press Secretary Katie Roberts told me.>>
06/25/09 02:18 pm ET
On Monday I suggested that Dr. Stephen Ondra, an Army Gulf War vet who is a professor of neurological surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, had the inside track for appointment as under secretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration.>>
06/24/09 05:24 pm ET
Some of my military public affairs contacts tell me that the Pentagon really, really wanted to take a low-key approach to the establishment of a new Cyber Command.>>
06/24/09 05:19 pm ET
Since the United States started operations in Iraq, a small group of military women, known as Lionesses, has provided support to combat units, and the House Armed Services Committee thinks its time they received recognition and support from both the Defense Department and the Veterans Affairs Department.>>
06/23/09 04:31 pm ET
In April, I reported that Dr. Stephen Ondra, professor of neurological surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, had emerged as the likely candidate for under secretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration.>>
06/22/09 05:28 pm ET
Way back in 1994 when twitter described only the high pitched sounds made by birds, some smart folks at the Defense Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA figured out they could save a lot of money by developing a weather satellite system to satisfy both Defense and civilian requirements, rather than building separate systems for both.>>
06/22/09 05:11 pm ET
Military spouses spend much of their lives wandering from post to post for 20 years, a situation not exactly conducive to landing and holding on to a good job.>>
06/19/09 05:33 pm ET
The $106 billion 2009 war supplemental appropriations bill passed by the Senate yesterday sure looks like a piggybank for a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with supporting troops operating in Afghanistan and Iraq.>>
06/18/09 04:57 pm ET
Waaaay back in 2004, the Veterans Health Administration kicked of a bar code project to label patients' specimens and blood intended for transfusion, a rather nifty use of technology to ensure, for example, that a patient with type O blood instead of type A.>>
06/17/09 04:50 pm ET
The House Armed Services Committee in its version of the 2010 Defense authorization says in a summary that it plans to provide the Defense Department with the authority to establish 10 pilot programs to "rapidly acquire" information technology capabilities under an alternative acquisition process.>>
06/16/09 05:04 pm ET
At a meeting held by the Health IT policy committee on Tuesday, Roger Baker, the Veterans Affairs Department's new chief information officer, injected a dose of practical reality to the very wonkish discussion of what "meaningful use" of electronic health record systems means -- as required by the 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act.>>
06/16/09 04:56 pm ET
The House Armed Services Committee decided to tinker around with Defense Department cyber stuff in its version of the fiscal 2010 Defense authorization bill and inserted language calling for the department to establish "a joint program office for cyber operations capabilities.">>
06/16/09 04:05 pm ET
I've been poking around a pile of fiscal 2010 budget justification documents that recently surfaced on the Defense Department Comptroller Web site. I found a rather yummy item in the proposed procurement budget for the Defense Information Systems Agency.>>
06/15/09 04:01 pm ET
As the Defense Department slowly moves toward development of a cyber command (see previous blog item), it sure looks like the United States needs some kind of defense against cyber aggression from China, even though no one in the Pentagon, quite diplomatically, pins such cyberattacks directly on the Chinese government.>>
06/15/09 03:55 pm ET
Though my colleagues in the chattering classes have pumped out megabytes of copy on formation of a new Defense Department cyber command over the past couple of days -- it's not happened yet.>>
06/12/09 05:09 pm ET
The Obama administration came up with a loopy plan to save a grand total of $36 million out of the proposed $3.5 trillion federal budget by canceling funding for the Coast-Guard-operated terrestrial Long Range Navigation system (Loran). A lot of folks (except the bean counters) view Loran as the only viable backup to the satellite based GPS system used for position, navigation and timing worldwide.>>
06/11/09 05:43 pm ET
Although "hooah" is an Army term not used by the Air Force, in the case of Tech. Sgt. Darrell DeMotta, an Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controller I had the pleasure to meet this week at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., the term definitely applies.>>
06/10/09 04:38 pm ET
Here in Whatsland we try to keep track of all the personnel changes at the office of the assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration (a.k.a. the chief information officer shop). I note that yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed Prabha Kumar, as the chief innovation and technology officer for ASD/NII.>>
06/09/09 06:09 pm ET
EDS, which runs the Navy Marine Corps Intranet under a 10 year, $10 billon contract, serves about 650,000 folks. Users turn in, on an annual basis, about 120,000 old computers for new ones. The company failed to magnetically wipe (the technical term is degaussing) at least 12 hard drives containing secret information, according to a snippet from a Navy inspector general report, which made its way here to Whats central in Las Vegas, N.M.>>
06/08/09 05:47 pm ET
Last month I kicked off a contest for the best definition of AHLTA, the Defense Department's electronic health record system that used to stand for the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application.>>
06/05/09 03:41 pm ET
The Veterans Affairs Department has an instruction in place that all information technology purchases go through the governmentwide Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP), managed by NASA.>>
06/05/09 03:28 pm ET
One of the key tasks the VA IT shop has assigned to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center is the development of a claims processing system for the new GI Bill, formally known as the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act.>>
06/05/09 03:26 pm ET
I have complained in the past about my queries to the VA going into as black hole. No more, thanks to Katie Roberts, the new VA press secretary.>>
06/04/09 06:19 pm ET
At least four major industry teams submitted bids on Wednesday for the Navy's Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) contract.>>
06/03/09 04:28 pm ET
The National Park Service plans to accommodate veterans and active duty troops who shine the base of the flagpole at the Vietnam Memorial. But it has asked the polishers to wait until it changes the patina from its original dark brown to a brighter finish, Stephen Lorenzetti, deputy superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, told me.>>
06/02/09 06:13 pm ET
No one seems to think it's a good idea for the National Park Service to bust a couple of veterans for polishing the brass on the base of the flagpole at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, based on the comments I received on an item I wrote on Monday.>>
06/02/09 01:41 pm ET
Microsoft's Bing search engine went live today, and I decided to test it against Google with my all-time favorite search term, "Bob Brewin.">>
06/01/09 05:23 pm ET
This bit goes under the heading of "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.">>
