Management Archives

Defense Department Secretary Robert Gates gave a talk leadership to ROTC cadets at Duke University on Wednesday in which he said good leaders need both integrity and a sense of humor about themselves.

He passed on what he tells

all the new generals and civilian executives that I meet with at the Pentagon. It is a leadership quality that is really quite basic and quite simple, but it's so basic and so simple that too often it's forgotten. And that is the importance, as you lead, of doing so with common decency and respect towards your subordinates.

Harry Truman had it right when he observed that one of the surest ways to judge someone is how well or poorly he treats those who can't talk back.

Gates said the second fundamental quality of leadership

is doing the right thing when it's the hard thing. In other words, integrity. Too often we read about examples in business and government of leaders who start out with the best of intentions and, somehow, go astray.

I found that, more often than not, what gets people into trouble is not the obvious case of malfeasance, taking the big bribe or cheating on an exam. Often, it's the less direct but no less damaging temptation to look away or pretend something didn't happen or that certain things must be OK because other people are doing them.

Gates also told the students that as they rise through the ranks,

it's important to have irreverent people around you. People who aren't afraid to poke a little fun. People who can criticize.

I think it's very dangerous to surround yourself with people who tell you what a wonderful person you are because that -- I've seen too many people go down that road, and it's always disastrous because you're not, and, sooner or later, you're going to find that out.

Gates then told an irreverent anecdote about himself:

One of my lines is that when I was a brand-new [Air Force] second lieutenant, I did what my sergeant told me. And between the two of us, we did my job pretty well.

In July, the Veterans Affairs Department awarded IBM a $9.1 million contract to develop within three months a system to process claims for Vietnam veterans suffering from diseases stemming from exposure to the Agent Orange defoliant sprayed in that country by the Air Force. (The service's units had the motto: "Only you can prevent forests.")

VA presumes all 2.6 million veterans who served in Vietnam had exposure to Agent Orange. If veterans have one of 15 diseases -- including hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson's and ischemic heart disease, which were added
to the list on Aug. 31 -- they don't have to prove they were in an area where the defoliant was sprayed and their diseases resulted from military service.

The new approach to Agent Orange will add 240,000 claims to its case load, which is why it tapped IBM to build a separate system to process machine readable claims that veterans submit electronically.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki hailed the approach as "a new way of doing business and a major step forward in how we process the presumptive claims we expect to receive over the next two years."

But after spending a month chasing rumors and tips, I'm told IBM quickly ran into problems trying to build, by the end of this year, a system that would process 30,000 claims.

I have confirmed with multiple sources that an angry Shinseki last month personally called top IBM management to express his dissatisfaction with the lack of progress on the system. I'm also told VA officials followed up Shinseki's call with a formal letter to IBM telling it to get its act together.

This probably explains why early this month VA issued a notice that it would like to find a second contractor to develop an Agent Orange claims processing system, with the ability to start within 15 days of award.

IBM officials did not respond to multiple calls placed during the past month about the status of the Agent Orange claims processing system. VA spokeswoman Katie Roberts declined to comment on whether or not a piqued Shinseki called IBM.

The Senate Appropriations Committee added $13.4 billion to the fiscal 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Bill this to foot the bill for the Agent Orange claims.

But Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a Marine Vietnam veteran, doubts everyone who served in Vietnam was exposed to Agent Orange, and he wants Shinseki to explain his case at a hearing of the Senate VA committee scheduled for 9:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday.

The Congressional Review Act gives Congress 60 days to review regulations before they go into effect, which means Congress could derail the new Agent Orange rules between now and the end of October.

(Full disclosure: I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, and have been in the VA Agent Orange Registry since the mid-1970s.)

If everything goes to plan, by the end of September the Coast Guard will award a contract for a spanking new commercial electronic health record system that will replace a network based on an ancient version of the Defense Department's electronic medical system.

The Coast Guard emphasized in its requirements for the new system it wanted a commercial product, and if such a product did not meet all its needs, then the system needed to be enhanced to meet the requirements before delivery.

Such an approach saves the humongous costs that result when federal customers ask vendors to bolt stuff on after they win a contract.

The Coast Guard's strategy might be a good one for the Military Health System to follow as it seeks a commercial replacement for its AHLTA electronic health record system.

But at the glacial pace MHS operates, the Coast Guard will have deployed its new system to its 500 medical personnel while MHS is still buffing and polishing requirements.

The leaders at the Defense Logistic Agency's Disposition Services outfit, which sells or finds a way to reuse surplus or outmoded military property, has such poor employee communications that it decided it needed some outside help to develop a management transformation thingy.

Employee surveys have shown poor and/or misleading communication is the root cause in the failure of the organization to improve rapidly, Disposition Services said, even though its management has tried mightily to improve.

Past efforts have included directing supervisors to speak with their employees more openly and effectively, and use contractors to provide short one-time inspirational speeches on the importance of communication. (If DLA wants an inspirational speech, I'd be happy to do it gratis - and throw in some humor too.)

Now Disposition Services has decided it "needs to holistically address the communications shortcomings of the organization" and wants an outfit to help it with communications seminar training, group facilitation, coaching, teaching, mentoring and printed material.

Disposition Services hopes this will help "foster honest, open effective communications processes coupled with leadership and management strategies focused on developing a consistent enterprisewide leadership environment that embodies the principles and core values of the organization, reflective of the performance-based leadership system."

If nothing else, the above sentence should win a Buzzword Bingo prize.

I think the whole Disposition Services gang should go bowling together one night a week.

Today the Veterans Affairs Department started posting online its monthly data breach reports as part of its ongoing transparency thing, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told a press briefing this morning. He said the latest report (for July) might not make it to the Web until Thursday.

The reports include not only lost, misplaced or stolen computers and BlackBerries, but also misaddressed prescriptions sent out by the VA mail-order pharmacy operation, Baker said. Those packages contain sensitive veterans health information coupled with personal identifiers.

VA mailed out 5.6 million prescriptions last month, and a statically infinitesimal amount -- just 10 -- ended up in the wrong hands. If someone calls VA about receiving a misaddressed Rx, Baker said he or she is instructed to throw it away.

Nelson Grubbs in Pickering, Ohio, received an erroneously mailed Rx from VA earlier this month and following policy was told by VA to throw it away. Grubs told the Columbus, Ohio, NBC TV affiliate he had a hard time understanding the instruction because a local pharmacist valued the 90-day supply of a dementia drug he erroneously received at $700.

The TV station wanted to show the pill bottle on air, which resulted in the VA hospital in Columbus working with the station to blur out the label to keep from identifying a dementia patient, Baker said.

While it may seem wasteful to throw away $700 worth of drugs, the policy is enforce to ensure patient safety, because the "chain of custody" had been broken between VA and the intended recipient, he said.

Baker also said employees continue to lose BlackBerry gizmos -- 13 in July, 24 in June and 13 in May. That's something I have a hard time comprehending. He promised to supply me next month with a cumulative total for the number lost in 2010.

I asked if folks who lose their BlackBerrys are subject to a timeout before they are issued a new one. No, Baker said, because the low cost of the gadgets (a couple of hundred bucks) does not equal the loss in productivity that would result from a BlackBerry-less employee.

I live and work in a BlackBerry-free zone, and I believe my productivity is enhanced by not having one.

This is one of those, "Where's the Beef?" bits . . .

The Veterans Affairs Department issued a press release on Thursday that said the department will test a new system in its Providence, R.I., regional office in November for paperless processing of veterans disability claims. Those claims are expected to top 1.2 million this year, the first time in history VA has faced more than a million claims. In the release, departmental Secretary Eric Shinseki said the Providence test "marks a major milestone in VA's move to paperless processing."

But on closer examination, it appears to be part of a claims automation plan detailed last month at a House VA Committee hearing. At that hearing, Michael Walcoff, VA acting undersecretary for benefits, highlighted various components of the overall VA claims automation plan, with the first field deployment planned for November, and the start of deployment of a nationwide paperless claims processing system in fiscal 2012.

Thursday's press release lacks details on what kind of systems will be installed in Providence and how they will speed up processing. Based on Walcoff's July testimony, the system will include one of those voguish "IT dashboards" that will allow claims examiners to eyeball relevant information about an individual claim, and hence speed processing.

But Joseph Violante, national legislative director for Disabled American Veterans, told the House hearing in July he was concerned VA did not plan to add rules-based processing used by the insurance industry to speed processing until years after the deployment of the Veterans Benefit Management System.

He urged VA to reassess its stance on rules-based processing while the automation project is still in early development.

I'd sure like to find out where VA stands on rules-based processing today.

Two years ago, I observed that the second level ramp at Washington's Dulles International Airport seems to serve as a parking lot for the privileged, despite signs about every 50 feet warning "No Parking, No Stopping, No Standing."

The situation has not changed, as I learned on April 25 while waiting for the Washington Flyer shuttle bus to the West Falls Church metro stop. I counted at least 16 Masters Of The Universe sitting blissfully behind the wheels of their Beamers, Lexi and other high-end iron for more than 15 minutes without one law enforcement official telling them to move on.

Evidently the folks who run the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority do not view this unofficial parking lot for the high rollers at Dulles as a security issue. But how do we know that a Beamer driver is not an employee of a contractor working for the Homeland Security Department and is not a bad actor who wants to do in homeland security, starting with Dulles Airport?

Given the possibilities, I hope I'll never find out the answer to that question.

Shh, the National Security Agency has developed a software tool that detects thumb drives or other flash media connected to a network, and any federal agency can get a copy free -- no box tops or coupons required.

The NSA provided a brief tantalizing description of its USBDetect 3.0 Computer Network Defense Tool in the unclassified part of its fiscal 2011 budget request.

The software, the NSA said, provides "network administrators and system security officials with an automated capability to detect the introduction of USB storage devices into their networks. This tool closes potential security vulnerabilities; a definite success story in the pursuit of the [Defense Department] and NSA protect information technology system strategic goals."

I figured the NSA might like to tell a digit-stained wretch more about this success story, but alas, the agency declined to unburden itself. An image therapist up at Fort Meade, Md., told me what I found in the budget documents about the detection tool is all the info NSA cares to share with me -- or the rest of the world.

USBDetect evidently has been around for almost two years and has been successfully used by the Homeland Security Department to sniff out flash media gizmos, according to a report on the use of thumb drives and similar gadgets on DHS networks.

The Defense Information Systems Agency makes a brief mention of the USB detection software on its information assurance Web page but buries the details behind a firewall.

I have a hunch that a bunch of other agencies use the detection software, and so before you stick a thumb drive into your government computer to copy a 100 slide PowerPoint brief, beware that Software Big Brother may be watching.

I'm picking up five-by-five signals - that's "loud and clear" in radio speak -- that the Veterans Affairs Department's $600 million financial and asset management system may never take wing.

Although VA, according to the Government Accountability Office () has already spent $90 million on the Financial and Logistics Integrated Technology Enterprise program -- mostly for program management support -- I hear that top managers and some folks on the Hill would like to see the project go away.

If it does, this will be the second VA financial management program not able to get off the ground this decade. VA's first attempt at an integrated financial management system, the $472 million Core Financial and Logistics System, was killed after it failed miserably in its initial deployment at a VA hospital in Bay Pines, Fla.

Maybe VA should try a bite-sized approach to financial management, instead of trying to develop one humongous system.

Does this sound like an all too familiar news story?

A series of botched IT projects has left taxpayers with a bill of more than $37 billion for computer systems that have suffered severe delays, run millions of dollars over budget or have been canceled altogether.

Substitute pounds for dollars, and you've got the top story on Monday in The Independent of London, which catalogues a list of U.K. IT horror shows.

Leading the list is the $18.2 billion project to develop an electronic health record system in Britain. This project started in 2002 and to date, The Independent reported, has signed up a mere 150 health organizations out of the 9,000 in operation in the United Kingdom.

Maybe we ought to pay attention, as we have a $20 billion health IT project designed to sign up every doc and hospital in this country.