Ideas
More on the CTO
It's looking more like the chief technology officer whom Barack Obama says he plans to appoint will be more involved in technology policy and public outreach than government operations.
Ideas
Bye-Bye TSAT
The Air Force today killed off its over-budget and long delayed $16 billion Transformational Satellite Communications program, but promised a slimmed-down reincarnation minus some expensive and challenging technologies.
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One Rosy IT Spending Outlook
If you want to feel better about the prospects for information technology spending, CompassIntelligence.com is the place you want to go. <a href="http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/572700">They say federal IT spending</a> will hit nearly $100 billion by 2012. They also report that federal IT spending in 2008 increased 5.3 percent and they forecast 2009 spending will jump 5.5 percent again.
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The Chief Technology Outreacher
It's not exactly clear exactly what the responsibilities will be for Obama's new chief technology officer, but Carolyn Brubaker, head of business development for civilian agencies at Microsoft Federal, has some general thoughts. Brubaker, who last month was assigned the extra duty as the company's new chief transition officer (the first of its kind as far as we can tell), told Nextgov on Friday in a sit-down interview that the CTO might focus less on government operations and more on outreach to the public. According to talks she and her team at Microsoft have had with Obama's transition team, it's likely social networking technologies are going to be the CTO's main responsibility.
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Cerf on the New CTO
The Tech Daily Dose blog, published by Nextgov sister publication CongressDaily, has a short post on what Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf thinks Obama's chief technology officer can do. Here's an excerpt form the post written by National Journal's Theresa Poulson (Tech Daily Dose is only available through subscription):
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The Empty Vessel of Transparency
Nextgov <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20081212_4966.php">reported</a> on Friday that the Office of Management and Budget updated its <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/vue-it/index.html#path5/path5.json|path2/path2.json">Visualization for Understanding Expenditures in Information Technology</a>, which monitors federal information technology investments. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said he was disappointed that "OMB still won't provide the American taxpayers with all the information necessary to determine whether their money is being spent wisely." He added that he's "starting to think OMB isn't properly collecting this information."
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Alliant Small Biz Awards Coming
GSA just sent out a release saying they will announce the selection of vendors for the Alliant Small Business contract on Thursday. The release also included some basic questions and answers about Alliant Small Business, such as when task orders will be placed
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Needed: The Innovation Agency
The Industry Advisory Council, a group of federal IT contractors, recently met with the Obama Transition Team to talk about technology policy and management. The group gave Team Obama four reports. One of the more interesting <a href="http://www.actgov.org/actiac/documents/pdfs/Returning_Innovation_to_Gov_with_IT_final_draft.pdf">reports is on innovation</a>, which praises the incoming Obama administration for saying it will appoint a chief technology officer. But IAC says Obama:
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Before Pocket Calculators
Before there were pocket calculators there were nuclear-age slide rules. These circular cardboard calculators, shown on the <a href="http://www.orau.org/">Oak Ridge Associated Universities Web site</a>, measure all kinds of things related to nuclear blasts -- and, presumably, government officials needed dozens of special slide rules to measure them.
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How Useful, Really, is Google Flu Trends?
Two doctors, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2206516/pagenum/all/#p2">writing for Slate</a>, ask the question: Is <a href="http://www.google.org/flutrends/">Google's Flu Trends</a>, which is meant to show as early as two weeks in advance, useful enough to stave off the spread of influenza?
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