Government Executive - Authors - Andrew Noyes

Senate aide says cybersecurity bill is moving

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Legislation to help the government and private sector better prepare for and respond to high-tech attacks against communications infrastructure has a shot at Senate passage this year despite the crowded calendar and potential turf wars, a top Senate aide said on Monday.

"Between health care, climate change and a number of huge issues of the day, it can't be lost that this is a critically important issue," said Senate Commerce Committee General Counsel Bruce Andrews at a briefing sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. "We've got to focus and do it."

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, introduced a broad cybersecurity bill in April, but it underwent major changes during the August recess and is being fine-tuned.

Andrews said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee leaders have been crafting proposals as Rockefeller and Snowe have focused on the healthcare debate. The issue requires "real cooperation" among committees, he said.

An August e-mail from Andrews to outside groups said the Commerce Committee was aiming for a hearing and a markup in September or October. Some industry players were told last month that the panel hoped to circulate a fresh draft and vote on the bill before the end of October. But Andrews said Monday he did not want to set arbitrary deadlines, adding that Rockefeller had instructed him to "move it when we get it right."

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, will soon unveil a measure that would give the Homeland Security Department, rather than a White House czar, primary authority to protect federal civilian and private computer networks. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., plans to outline his bill at a Chamber of Commerce speech on Oct. 30, but he and Collins will likely work out a compromise.

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Health Hazard

Andrew Noyes — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Warning: Patient privacy could complicate the blueprint for an electronic medical records system.

Implementing a nationwide system of electronic medical records as prescribed by President Obama's economic stimulus package is a herculean task that will require a complex new matrix of policies and standards. Two Health and Human Services Department advisory committees are hard at work on blueprints for both, but some worry privacy safeguards will be an afterthought.

Such a system would link doctors' offices, hospitals and other health care entities electronically so paper records eventually would become obsolete. The Obama administration and leaders on Capitol Hill endeavored to craft a bill that would bring down costs for everyone in the health care food chain-from providers to insurers to patients-while simultaneously curbing medical errors through more integrated information sharing. Obama's stated goal is for all U.S. residents to have e-health records within five years.

Much of the early work is being done by the HHS health IT policy and certification panels, which were created by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The committees aim to send an array of recommendations to the agency's top brass-from guidelines for acceptable methodologies and technologies for protecting sensitive data to parameters for a network of regional health information exchanges and extension centers. Under the statute, HHS is required by Dec. 31 to adopt an initial set of health IT standards. About $17 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentives will start flowing to doctors and hospitals in 2011 to encourage adoption of electronic records.

Members of the panels-chosen by the Government Accountability Office, HHS secretary and congressional leaders-represent health care providers, consumers, insurance carriers, technology and security vendors, researchers and agency officials.

Roger Baker, chief information officer at the Veterans Affairs Department, called attention to privacy risks at a summer meeting of the health IT policy committee to discuss what constitutes "meaningful use" of electronic medical records. Baker registered his concern that the debate glossed over the issue of patient privacy. The issue not only is critical to the group's mission, it's the "key to adoption," he told members.

"Sometimes you can recognize something is a key issue, but if you don't make it plainly and bluntly obvious, you'll lose the momentum to convince people," Baker said in an interview after the meeting. Agencies hold "an incredible amount of personally private information" and have gotten much better at protecting that data in recent years, he adds. Under the new, networked health care system the Obama administration envisions, their efforts will need to be redoubled, Baker said.

Privacy Perils

As pieces of the health IT puzzle come together, agencies will have to be keenly aware of situations that, at first blush, might not seem to put privacy at risk. "From a medical standpoint, we have to recognize that people's medical records are perhaps the most sensitive information anybody has left that they get to protect," Baker says. VA has been particularly vigilant against unintended disclosures since the 2006 theft of an agency computer that jeopardized the personal information of 26.5 million veterans.

"Since the laptop breach, we're taking a fastidious approach to seeing, disclosing, understanding and correcting any incident that could disclose information about an individual," Baker says. As part of that effort, he is on a mission to remove Social Security numbers everywhere possible and, when unavoidable, to only use the last four digits as an identifier.

"The amount of time we have to decide whether something is a breach of privacy or medically necessary is very small and the amount of information that can be gathered with a few keystrokes is very large," he says. "There's got to be a balance between individual control and medical necessity." In the context of a national health information exchange, Baker is looking to HHS for guidance on what responsibilities a provider like VA should have in deciding an entity's authority to obtain and protect data.

The Key Players

The man responsible for transmitting extensive guidelines to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is Boston physician David Blumenthal. He was named national coordinator for health IT in March and since that time has been working with the policy and standards committees to draft a framework for a nationwide infrastructure, including parameters for the exchange of patient medical information.

While he would not speculate about solutions to specific privacy issues that might arise during that process, Blumenthal told Government Executive he is acutely aware of the topic. "Our focus will be staying constantly alert to what those issues might be and reacting to them as fast as we can . . . whether it's through statistical techniques . . . or technologies to keep patient information secure," he says.

Blumenthal says he did not see any problems on the horizon that hadn't been flagged by privacy advocates and vetted in Congress during debate on the stimulus package. Much of the discussion concerned the inclusion of provisions that would ensure individuals could control use of their medical records and protect them from what consumer privacy watchdogs believe is a thriving industry of firms that share and sell medical data. "Congress has given us sufficient new authority and sufficient funding so we can substantially improve the security and privacy of existing systems and technology will give us more control and more power to protect privacy going forward," he says.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will administer the health IT program and will communicate with Blumenthal's team as well as the HHS Office for Civil Rights, which helps administer the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The law specifies administrative, technical and physical security procedures for managing patient information. Privacy advocates, including Deven McGraw director of the health privacy project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, hope openness and transparency will be hallmarks of that relationship.

In August, Health and Human Services transferred HIPAA oversight duties from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to the Office for Civil Rights. The move was intended to eliminate duplication and increase efficiencies in protecting health data. It stemmed from a mandate in the stimulus package to make improvements to HIPAA.

"It's arguably a good move to consolidate all enforcement of HIPAA in one place, since security and privacy are arguably two sides to the same coin. But it will only be useful if it means at least the same level of resources for enforcement overall and not a diminishment," McGraw says. It remains to be seen whether the CMS employees who worked on security enforcement will move to the civil rights office or will be detailed elsewhere within the agency.

Todd Park, who was named chief technology officer at HHS in August, will work with offices across the agency on health IT. A co-founder of electronic health systems firm Athena Health, Park most recently served as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on health IT and broader health reform issues. "He'll bring some much needed technical expertise and new ideas about how to more rapidly advance the adoption of health IT," McGraw says.

Building Harmony

The implementation of health IT involves myriad agencies and programs. Another key player is the Food and Drug Administration, which is developing a system known as Sentinel that will communicate with various drug databases to detect higher-than-expected rates of adverse outcomes.

McGraw, who serves on the HHS health IT policy panel, says it will be important to harmonize the FDA project and public health surveillance efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the broader health privacy regime. Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration and CDC declined interview requests. Officials at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which conducts health services research, already are thinking through some of the adjustments that will come as programs designed to facilitate health IT are rolled out. For starters, the topics that health care research analysts examine likely will change, according to Jon White, the agency's health IT director. "Hypothetically, if all doctors have electronic medical records, that brings up different types of questions," he says.

AHRQ initiatives include millions of dollars in grants and contracts in a number of states to support and stimulate investment in health IT, especially in rural and underserved areas. The agency works with hospitals and clinicians to provide research and information to government and the private sector organizations.

The scope of the research agency's work likely will shift from a focus on policymakers at the national, state, and local levels to individual doctors, hospitals and practices that would benefit from solid data from a trusted source, White says. Since February, the agency has been working closely with Blumenthal's staff and colleagues at CMS on creating a blueprint for how various offices will share, compare and protect potentially sensitive data. "It has affected the things we planned to do with those sister agencies and it has affected the kinds of questions we're asking," says White, who declined to provide specific examples.

"Privacy and security are the bedrocks of a well-functioning health care system," he says. Making sure not only that information is secure but that only the right people have access to it is a hurdle agencies, health care facilities and third-party providers alike will face, he adds. On the flip side, stakeholders must ensure critical data to keep patients healthy and safe reaches the right people in a timely, beneficial way. "Right now, there's lot of information trapped in paper charts and it doesn't get to where it needs to go," White says.

Andrew Noyes is a reporter for National Journal's CongressDaily.

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Groups hail nomination of IP coordinator

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

When President Obama tapped Victoria Espinel as the first White House intellectual property enforcement coordinator on Friday, lawmakers and industry stakeholders let out a collective sigh of relief. The announcement was months in the making, and Espinel, who previously served as assistant trade representative for IP, had been considered the top candidate for the job for some time.

One reason for the delay was that administration officials were conflicted over where to put the IP czar. Eventually they settled on OMB, after ruling out the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, USTR and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, sources said. OMB oversees strategic planning, interagency coordination and budgeting, and it is seen as a successful coordinator of programs that span multiple agencies.

Espinel, who is expected to easily win Senate confirmation, is highly regarded on Capitol Hill and within the IP community. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said her time as USTR's chief IP negotiator and her role advising key congressional committees will prove valuable.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., said he had "no doubt that she will do a first-rate job," and House Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, urged the Senate to confirm her quickly.

The Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, Copyright Alliance, Business Software Alliance, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other IP industry stakeholders hailed the nomination. Even Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn, who frequently finds herself at odds with the content community, said she believes Espinel will be fair in her approach to IP issues.

Former Trade Representative Susan Schwab, who selected Espinel for USTR's top IP post, said the set of issues she will deal with are rapidly evolving. Among the most pressing is her role in unifying the government's IP message as it prepares for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Countries like China and India might push for compulsory licensing carve-outs by arguing they cannot meet emission requirements without free or discounted access to green technology developed in the United States. General Electric and other companies, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have been putting pressure on the administration to take a stand.

Domestically, the IP coordinator will oversee the law enforcement efforts of the Homeland Security, State, and Justice departments as well as work with the Commerce Department and Patent and Trademark Office.

Chris Israel, who spearheaded interagency and international IP work from a post within the Commerce Department in the Bush administration, said Espinel might be asked to weigh in on the IP implications of key domestic priorities. Those could include the FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration's plans for expanding broadband access and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's strategy for broadening his agency's network neutrality guidelines and strengthening their enforcement.

Schwab said Espinel's disposition will lessen the chance that the White House will try to duplicate efforts of agencies that work daily on IP issues, which was one of the concerns raised as the position was debated on Capitol Hill last year.

One of the first orders of business for the IP czar is drafting a strategic plan that, as prescribed by Congress, must identify "structural weaknesses, systemic flaws or other unjustified impediments" to cracking down on IP crime. It will also flag duplicative efforts among departments and articulate how effective information-sharing can occur within the United States and with other countries.

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Impact of Kennedy loss on health care debated

Andrew Noyes — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., each talked about the importance of enacting health care reform in their statements about Kennedy.

"Ted Kennedy's dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration," Pelosi predicted.

Hoyer noted that "throughout his final illness, Sen. Kennedy was privileged to have the best doctors and the best treatment. But he never forgot, in this as in all cases, those who were not similarly privileged" like countless uninsured Americans. "For their sake, health care reform was the cause of Ted Kennedy's life. For their sake, and his, it must be the cause of ours," he concluded.

President Jimmy Carter, whom Kennedy challenged for the 1980 presidential nomination, also called for a renewed push to pass health care legislation.

"That's my hope, and I believe that would really be the culmination for the Kennedy family of acknowledging the great contribution that he's made to our country," he said during an appearance on CNN.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who carried the health care reform torch for Kennedy during his prolonged absence, said on Wednesday he would decide in the coming days whether he wants to replace the legendary lawmaker as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Dodd said he would confer with Senate leaders about his potential switch but said so far he had not "given that a second's worth of thought."

During a call with reporters, Dodd reaffirmed that he will be "deeply involved" in the health care debate moving forward. "One way or another I'm staying on this committee," he said, noting that he wants Kennedy's health care aides to continue their work on the panel.

"It's going to be hard to go back to the Senate. It's going to be hard not to see that phone ring and see that area code pop up," Dodd said, recalling Kennedy's continued involvement in the bill even while battling brain cancer.

National Jewish Democratic Council Chairman Marc Stanley said "the greatest tribute that we can bestow is to thoughtfully, but urgently, enact comprehensive health insurance reform."

Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern said "Congress stands closer now than ever before to achieving what Kennedy called the cause of his life. Let us continue his cause. Let us take action this year to pass health care reform."

Kennedy "was America's health care champion [and] his contribution to health care policy is unmatched," added Karen Ignagni, CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans.

But several of Kennedy's colleagues said they feared that his absence, even in the months before his death, may have made the task too difficult.

"With great respect to all of my colleagues, there is no one right now in the Senate that would have the unique position that Ted Kennedy did," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during an appearance on CBS's Early Show this morning.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., speaking on the same program, said Kennedy's absence had already hurt reform efforts "because Ted was so immensely knowledgeable."

"Ted wanted to really drill down and say, 'OK, how are we going to get costs down? How are we going to make sure everybody has access to coverage? How are we going to pay for this thing?' Those are the sorts of things he was a master at resolving," said Bayh.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., called Kennedy "one of the more practical members of the Senate" and added that "had his own health allowed him to fully participate, we would be far closer to consensus today on a path to health care in America whose quality provides better outcomes, whose cost is more affordable, and whose access is more broad."

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Federal CIOs are key to Obama's change agenda

Andrew Noyes — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: This article is from the June 15 special issue of Government Executive, "Racing To Innovate," which addresses the challenges facing federal chief information officers.

When White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stepped up to the podium in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room for the first time, just two days after President Obama's historic inauguration, a hungry White House press corps had much to ask. The war in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay detainees, and Cabinet appointments were the usual topics Gibbs could expect reporters to bring up. But the story that made headlines days, weeks and even months later began when Gibbs uttered five little words: "The president has a BlackBerry."

The super-secure handheld device engineered by the National Security Agency that Obama uses to communicate with his wife and top aides quickly became the symbol of his intent to use information technology to drive policy and change in government. It's also a sign that the influence of chief information officers is on the rise, much like the president's "Day One" transparency memos instructing his administration to operate under principles of openness and to spur citizen engagement online, and the use of technology to provide details on pressing topics such as his stimulus package and swine flu. "IT is vital to bringing about the change he is calling for," says Vivek Kundra, whom Obama appointed in March as the first federal chief information officer. "The role of the CIO is central to the agenda."

Kundra, whose title includes e-government and IT administrator at the Office of Management and Budget, plans to work closely with his colleagues through the interagency Chief Information Officers Council. He's already created a panel to explore how government can embrace cloud computing and other innovations. "It's vital they have a high degree of engagement from the business perspective and also from the technology side of the house," he says. "This will be very important, especially when we look at the performance agenda of this administration how IT maps to that."

In the June 15 issue of Government Executive, Andrew Noyes explores the growing authority and influence chief information officers. Click here to read the full story.

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Racing To Innovate

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama's technology-focused policies stand to infuse chief information officers with more authority and influence.

One of Kundra's key goals is to convince agencies to pursue IT projects that directly support their missions rather than employ technology for technology's sake. He also wants to avoid "faceless accountability" when it comes to technology spending.

Kundra and agency CIOs have a chance to play a bigger role in government management, but they also must work hard to keep up with Obama's demanding administration, a depressed economy, budgetary belt-tightening, and an evolving IT and data management landscape. Department CIOs, whom Kundra believes have been fearful of innovation and have learned to survive by avoiding risk, could now report to the top executive and have a seat at the table with agency heads. In short, it's a new day for CIOs and the federal IT workforce. But there are possible traps they will have to avoid.

Growing Pains

For starters, CIOs will have to have their feet firmly planted in two worlds-one where cutting-edge technologies are encouraged and another focused on running the day-to-day business of government. The former is shaped by an eagerness to embrace the latest and greatest applications; in the latter innovation is viewed as a headache and a potential vulnerability. "The challenge will be working in both worlds and making those two worlds work together," says Ed Meagher, former deputy CIO at the Interior and Veterans Affairs departments. "There's going to be lot of pressure on the CIO community to help this administration do the things it wants to do, like making government more efficient, more accessible to citizens and more transparent." Meagher is now director of strategy for health affairs for SRA International's global health sector.

The old government world has CIOs hamstrung. They know their lumbering legacy systems, some of which are decades old, must be upgraded or replaced and that can be done only at a great cost over time. They also know the expensive task of adopting new technologies eventually will pay for itself, but it has to be done right. And the government doesn't have a good track record of doing IT right, according to Meagher. Systems "have to be bullet-proofed, and they have to be secure," he says. "Privacy has to be taken into account, and they have to be scaled for mass utilization rather than a single user."

Unfortunately, the time it takes to make sure new systems work properly doesn't square with the Web 2.0 world's insatiable demand for information and expectation of instant gratification. Information sharing in the Obama administration is "an irresistible force" and a big part of the CIO's job, Meagher says.

But the formidable task doesn't dampen the spirit of technology chiefs like Andy Blumenthal. As chief technology officer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Blumenthal is confident the role of CIOs and CTOs will carry far more weight in senior strategic management meetings under the Obama administration. But that doesn't mean these chiefs can wait for top executives to come to them; they will have to be proactive. IT leaders in the public and private sectors "are constantly fighting fires when they should be helping organizations align and adapt for the long term and stay focused on the big picture," he says.

The question is whether CIOs' newfound clout can help them solve the decades-old problem government IT has faced-breaking down the stovepiped structure of networks and using standard solutions across an agency and government. "That's going to bring us much more powerful IT for the end user and in a more cost-effective way," Blumenthal says.

One example is Blumenthal's multiyear portal project to merge ATF's old intranet and Internet sites into a new controlled-access clearinghouse. Phase 1 focuses on navigation and functionality. Phase 2 infuses interactive capabilities such as Web conferencing and wikis. Phase 3 will aim to expand it all so ATF stakeholders, from the Justice Department to state and local partners, can participate. "We're balancing the old world with the new world," he says.

More Money, More Influence

John George, senior vice president and CIO of Vangent, an IT management and outsourcing firm, says CIOs will adapt to the new demands. A core competency of a successful CIO is "being adaptable, being able to move when the organization moves, and making sure infrastructure that supports the organization moves with it," he says. "The ones who really get it-and there are a lot of them-will understand what it means to adapt to change."

In this administration, the most proficient CIOs will have their moment to shine, but they'll encounter some pushback, he added. Civilian and noncivilian agencies by necessity have dissimilar approaches to IT and there may be friction between agency chiefs and the White House, according to George. "There will be some resistance, but we've found smart policy changes will always trump legacy thinking," he says.

The economic crisis also heightened CIOs' stature. Slow economic growth pushes organizations to make major IT investments to streamline operations, changing how they interact with the public. Chief information officers and private sector partners have to be at the core of those efforts, George says. The $787 billion economic stimulus plan is an example, in which the Obama administration earmarked $19 billion to continue efforts to build a nationwide system of interoperable electronic medical records. An array of projects within that portfolio are aimed at increasing efficiency, accountability and cost savings within the health care system. Agency CIOs and technology vendors will be integral to the effort, George says.

"There's a lot of money floating around and lots of people jockeying to get some of the money," says IT consultant Laurie Orlov. "Agencies who deal with health care have to be sitting up and taking notice of all those billions."

CIOs should have a hand in determining how the funds are going to be disbursed to IT vendors, health care providers and others, says Orlov. Besides Recovery.gov, the government's main site for monitoring stimulus spending, agencies are standing up their own accountability apparatuses.

Rock Stars Needed

CIOs have all sorts of backgrounds and different ways of doing business, but a certain personality type probably felt at ease with Team Obama from the beginning. Orlov describes this executive as "the BlackBerry-toting, Twittering, social networking CIO who gets the populist appeal of technology." Other CIOs, who view their work as more administrative and view IT as a cost rather than as part of an agency's strategic mission, might not be as comfortable.

Nevertheless, the number of technology thought leaders in government likely will increase, she says, as the business world becomes less attractive during the economic crisis. Private sector CIOs and IT experts could defect to more stable government jobs bringing with them industry know-how. "Government can learn a great deal from the private sector," Orlov says. "The most effective CIOs out there understand their role is influencing the business process, not implementing IT systems."

Former Social Security Administration CIO Tom Hughes says the visibility of chief information officers could improve, but for now he's more comfortable holding on to skepticism. "Nothing has changed yet. I haven't seen a single rock star hired and that's disappointing," says Hughes, now a government consultant. "The administration has to hire the right people and position them successfully within agencies and give them the authority."

The federal CIO job, he says, should be a role in which the top technology executive can shepherd good projects and stop bad ones. Guidance should come from the federal CIO Council, which was not utilized effectively under the Bush administration, according to Hughes. The council needs to "re-engage and become a full participant and partner with OMB," he says.

Karen Evans, Kundra's predecessor at OMB, aimed to improve IT management in the government, but she "drove [both organizations] like a trail master," Hughes says. Changing that culture of engagement in the council would require CIOs to become more active in agencies' higher echelons of senior management. But some CIOs will be reluctant to insist they be included, he says.

To encourage the change, agency chiefs must endorse the important strategic role their CIOs play. But time is running out for the Obama administration in making CIOs, and IT, more strategic. "The longer it takes to bring the right people on board the more the die is cast in terms of relegating CIOs to the same positions they have been in," he says.

Congress Takes Notice

Congress has ideas on how CIOs can improve agencies' missions. In April, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, introduced a bill that requires greater accountability for IT cost overruns. It calls for creating a Web site that would be updated quarterly with details about the price, schedule and performance of agencies' priciest projects, and would require CIOs to formulate a strategy for improving technology acquisition, planning and project management.

The bill would call on OMB to prescribe guidelines for agencies, and agency heads would have to submit annual reports to Congress detailing their IT accomplishments. The proposal, which has the backing of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, also would form a tiger team of private sector, nonprofit, and federal research and development experts to oversee IT projects.

Carper unveiled his bill at a hearing where Kundra and Evans testified. At the hearing, Kundra said the White House was planning changes to a pair of OMB technology watch lists that flag projects that need high-level attention. The lists are a legacy of the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, which required agencies to submit business plans for IT investments to OMB. Kundra said he wants to augment the registries to ensure "we're not just looking at lagging indicators but leading indicators." He said after the hearing that his aim is to "understand, dissect and distill what's going on with IT spending."

Evans said the government might have to revise laws that predate the high-tech revolution. "Dragging the 60-year-old Administrative Procedures Act into the Internet age is highlighting the gulf between today's Internet-driven expectation of instant communications and instant response with the purposefully slow-moving and deliberative processes prescribed by the APA," she said.

CIOs, Evans said, must meet all their obligations, from privacy and security to records management: "They should not and cannot pick and choose."

Andrew Noyes is a reporter for National Journal's CongressDaily.

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Group calls for overhaul of privacy regulations

Andrew Noyes — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The United States' 35-year-old federal privacy law and related policies should be updated to reflect the realities of modern technologies and information systems, and account for more advanced threats to privacy and security, according to a report sent on Wednesday to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

In its 40-page paper, the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board calls for Congress to amend the 1974 Privacy Act and provisions of the 2002 E-Government Act to improve federal privacy notices; clearly cover commercial data sources; and update the definition of "system of records" to encompass relational and distributed systems based on government use of records, not just its possession of them. The panel included technology experts from industry and academia.

The panel wants heightened government leadership on privacy and suggests the hiring of a full-time chief privacy officer at OMB and regular Privacy Act guidance updates from the office. Chief privacy officers should be hired at major agencies and a chief privacy officers' council should be created, much like the Chief Information Officers' Council that is chaired by OMB's e-government and IT administrator.

The federal government's cookie policy, which depends on "bureaucratic speed bumps to protect user privacy," should be updated to let visitors to a government Web site decide whether a cookie is set. One option is to employ a "remember me" check box common on many commercial sites, the report said.

Additionally, OMB should issue privacy guidance for non-law enforcement use of location data by agencies; work with the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team to create interagency information on data loss across the government; and adopt a public reporting structure on how the government uses Social Security numbers. "This could help create incentives and accountability by shining a spotlight on which agencies had failed to limit their SSN use," the report states.

Legislation offered by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., to reauthorize the E-Government Act passed his committee last Congress but was blocked from the floor by Republicans. An amendment by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to include new privacy protections caused much of the discontent.

ISPAB Chairman Dan Chenok, who served on President Obama's transition team's technology working group, said his panel's recommendations are consistent with the administration's "forward thinking approach to technology" and will bring privacy law and policy in line with the fast pace of technological change. Chenok will join Center for Democracy and Technology Vice President Art Schwartz, Homeland Security Department Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan, and privacy expert Peter Swire for a Thursday discussion of the report and next steps. The think tank plans to invite public participation in an interactive consultation to craft a legislative proposal based on the board's recommendations.

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Groups want transparency in the spotlight

Andrew Noyes — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

As the Office of Management and Budget, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the General Services Administration prepare to issue recommendations for how agencies can show transparency, public participation and collaboration outlined by President Obama on his first day in office, public interest groups want a chance to weigh in.

They hope the Thursday deadline set by Obama on Jan. 21 will be delayed to permit public consultation and allow for the confirmation of Aneesh Chopra, the nominee for chief technology officer and a key player in the process.

Chopra appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday. If confirmed, he will be an assistant to the president and will hold the formal title of OSTP associate director for technology. Regardless of his official status, Chopra will honor the president's request with a proposal to meet the 120-day target, but it will not be the final product, a White House official told Nextgov.com last week.

Meanwhile, OMB Watch has circulated a sign-on letter among transparency groups urging the administration to "open the open government directive process" to the public.

"You can't talk about public access without the public; that's the bottom line," OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass said on Monday. He wants a formula that involves both "old-school" and "new-school" methods -- a standard 60-day Federal Register notice and comment process and a Web-based platform for sharing, viewing and discussing interested parties' comments.

Bass pointed to several examples of the kind of openness he is looking for, including OSTP's blog-based solicitation for comments on Obama's March memorandum on scientific integrity and OMB's request for recommendations on a new executive order for federal regulatory review that took place on the Web site RegInfo.gov.

One flaw in the OMB process, Bass said, was that comments from agency heads and employees were not made public. He wants that input disclosed as part of the transparency conversation.

Another option is an online dialogue like the one administered last month for how to improve the stimulus Web site Recovery.gov, Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller said.

"It seems nonsensical and absurd to present a recommendation to the president with respect to the open government directive without using some of the new social media tools they have embraced before," she said. "This document is really going to set the stage for how government should use technology so you want to get that right."

Agency and department heads as well as legal, policy and programmatic staffers across the government have been asked to offer comments on the directive. A February memo from OSTP Director John Holdren, OMB Director Peter Orszag and GSA Acting Administrator Paul Prouty instructed them to "propose topics, strategize alternatives, and make suggestions" through an internal information sharing system. It is unclear whether those submissions will be made public.

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Cash-strapped Patent and Trademark Office awaits new leadership

Andrew Noyes — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The Obama administration's selection of a Patent and Trademark Office director cannot come soon enough, according to officials inside the agency. They cite serious cash-flow problems, internal cutbacks and a downturn in the number of applications filed and patents granted amid continued U.S. economic gloom. "We need a new director just as soon as we can get one," Patent Office Professional Association President Robert Budens said Monday.

While the administration and Commerce Department, which houses PTO, have been tight-lipped about the appointment, sources say Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is involved and an announcement could come in the next week or two. Oft-mentioned prospects for the job include Q. Todd Dickinson, who ran the office under former President Bill Clinton, Silicon Valley attorney Jim Pooley and IBM Vice President David Kappos. During his March confirmation hearing, Locke vowed not to let urgent issues like the 2010 census crowd out topics like improving the patent office's productivity. The agency faces a backlog of more than 750,000 applications.

Original patent filings are down to fiscal 2004-fiscal 2005 levels, and preliminary numbers for two of the office's other main sources of revenue -- maintenance fees and late fees -- are also said to have dipped. Maintenance and late fees that stem from approved patents cover almost half of the agency's patent fee income, Budens said, but in recent years, the agency has tried to improve patent quality by approving fewer applications. That has pushed the allowance rate down from 65 percent to about 40 percent, which in turn means less in fees paid to the agency.

If fee collection trends continue, PTO will take in $100 million below its projected year-end amount, according to a memo sent to employees Monday.

The PTO, which has been on track since 2007 to bring on 1,200 patent examiners per year over five years, recently instituted a hiring freeze for virtually all of the agency's divisions, Budens said. Before the stoppage, the agency had signed on about 500 examiners and had extended more than 100 offers to potential new hires. Officials have curtailed bonuses for all noncontractual awards, which affected those who do not belong to bargaining units, and they have slashed paid overtime for examiners starting this week.

Additionally, the patent office ceased its law school tuition reimbursement program, which Budens said represents a $5 million annual expenditure. The PTO has told employees that furloughs and layoffs would be a last resort. The office has also significantly slowed its $250 million per year plan to install servers and energy-efficient equipment. The existing system has not been upgraded in almost a decade, and Budens said some are worried the agency's IT network is "hanging on by bubble gum and bailing wire."

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Behind the Curtain

Andrew Noyes — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

What transparency really means.

When President Obama issued his Day One memos instructing members of his administration to operate under principles of openness to spur citizen engagement, government watchdogs cheered. They hailed the call-a nod to his campaign promise to make government more transparent-as unprecedented and said it was a welcome change from the past eight years.

But in the weeks since Obama's pledge that transparency would be a touchstone of his presidency, policy watchers have turned their attention to the details. What exactly is government transparency? How is it interpreted by those inside government who need to execute it? How will it be measured? What will it look like to the public?

Those questions are hard to answer, and the responses depend largely on who you are. Academics and good government advocates believe agencies should provide their raw data and internal evaluations of policies so the public can dig into the information to find answers to their own questions. Others believe agencies must impose order to the data so the public can easily draw conclusions. Still others believe the Obama administration should choose to show the results of programs and initiatives, and not provide the supporting data, documents or internal discussions on the thinking behind their decisions or what led to a particular outcome.

Most government managers fall into the last group. According to a survey of 452 federal managers that Government Executive conducted from Feb. 25 through March 2, nearly 90 percent said they viewed transparency as providing facts and figures on project results and findings. About 74 percent said open government also included providing information such as policy rationales on how agencies went about making the decisions that they did, and 67 percent said open government also included making data ready for analysis from nongovernmental groups. What managers said was not part of their definition of transparency was supplying names of those involved in top-level policy decisions (only 45 percent said those should be made public) and minutes from meetings (26 percent). The survey was jointly conducted by Government Executive's sister research organization, the Government Business Council.

How transparency plays out will have significant political ramifications for Obama, say academics and government technology specialists. If the administration gets transparency right, which means it succeeds in opening the policymaking process and government operations in a way that the public perceives as credible and holds agencies accountable, it will forever change standard operating procedure in Washington. That could lead to a resurgence in the belief that government can solve problems and serve the common good. But if it fails, the president's infectious expressions of hope and change that got him elected could in hindsight be perceived as mere political rhetoric and he and the Democratic party will suffer at the polls.

Expectations are high, as is the enthusiasm among the advocacy groups that push for open government. "They understand the enormous gravity of this effort," says Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. "Compared to the last eight years, he honestly wouldn't have to do that much more than he's already done to roll the ball back, but he has promised to go even further to be the most transparent administration in history."

Formulating a Definition

In his first full day as president, Obama gave some clues about what he means by transparency. He issued a memo on Jan. 21, the day after taking the oath of office, stipulating that the heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration, as well as his yet-to-be-named chief technology officer, craft an open government directive by May 21 that laid out actions to support his campaign promise to make government open and accountable. The guidance also stated that agencies should favor disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act rather than withholding information. That means putting out information in a timely fashion and not waiting for specific requests from the public. Attorney General Eric Holder issued guidelines to agencies in March saying they should "readily and systematically post information online in advance of any public request."

Such instructions are a clear message to federal managers that Obama is breaking from the policy set by the Bush administration. His position is an about-face from a directive that former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served under President Bush from 2001 to 2005, issued to agencies instructing them to withhold information when possible.

How the Obama administration de-fines transparency can be pieced together by a few projects the White House has initiated. As Congress fought over how hundreds of billions in economic stimulus dollars should be spent, the White House launched Recovery.gov, a Web site that lets the public monitor how the government spends and distributes the money. Franklin Reeder, an Obama transition team member and former director of the White House Office of Administration, said the site was "ready to roll" weeks before lawmakers approved the $787 billion package. After its launch, however, critics panned Recovery.gov for its lack of interactive applications. In addition, Obama's stimulus overseer, Earl Devaney, told a group of state recovery representatives on March 12 that building a database on the site so the public can analyze the spending could take more than a year.

Agencies are steadily populating the site with data and its utility is expected to grow as more information is posted. OMB Director Peter R. Orszag issued preliminary guidance to agencies in February directing them to administer and account for stimulus funds and to submit spending and performance data to Recovery.gov. On March 3, agencies began handing in weekly reports. By May 1, they must offer individual plans that outline broad recovery goals and coordination efforts. Monthly financial reports are due starting May 8, according to Orszag's 62-page memo.

But some open government advocates have pointed to at least one transparency letdown. When Obama signed into law an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in February, he took a major step toward his pledge to "require that all children have health care coverage." The president signed the bill the same afternoon the House passed it, breaking a promise he made during a campaign speech more than a year and a half ago in Manchester, N.H. "When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it," he said at the time.

The wording of that pledge has since been amended to refer only to nonemergency measures, but neither the health insurance law nor the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act he also signed shortly after taking office meets that test, argued Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer at the Washington-based privacy advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology, at a briefing at the center's office on Feb. 17.

House Republicans began to poke at perceived shortcomings in the administration's reporting for the stimulus funds. In a March 12 letter to Devaney, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking member on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, questioned whether the White House would make the data on spending easily accessible and searchable. "Full transparency requires attention to not just what is posted online, but also how the information is posted," Issa wrote. "Information about how the taxpayers' money is distributed must be disclosed in a structured, open, and searchable format."

The Open-Your-Data View

President Obama's Web team is one of the best that has ever been assembled, says David G. Robinson, associate director of Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. But on their way from the campaign trail to transition work at the White House, the gang seemed to lose some of their high-tech mojo. Mere days after Obama's historic swearing in, complaints surfaced about the redesigned White House Web site. Internet specialists and social networking advocates said the site lacked interactivity and was sluggish in updating content. Whitehouse.gov appeared to suffer from the same syndrome that plagues a range of government sites.

What happened? "They have faced an increasingly stringent and burdensome array of regulations as they have become progressively more official," Robinson wrote recently, pointing to the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act and a number of other pre-Internet statutory obligations. "If the next presidential administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet- enabled government transparency, then it should follow a counterintuitive but ultimately compelling strategy: reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens."

In a 2008 paper titled "Government Data and the Invisible Hand," Robinson and his Princeton colleagues Harlan Yu, William P. Zeller and Edward W. Felten argued that agencies mistakenly consider their public face as presented on their Web sites to be their highest priority. They argue agencies should focus on opening their data so others can manipulate, restructure and pick it apart to conduct research with the goal of discovering answers to the problems public officials face.

The authors call on government to provide reusable data as the core of its online publishing responsibility. That could lead to innovations such as mash-ups (combining related but different data from various sources) to put information in context and create deeper and more nuanced results; discussion fora and wikis, where the public can add to a growing knowledge base; and visualization tools to find patterns in complex data sets. Exactly which features to use in which case and how to combine them is an open question.

A few agencies already have begun doing this, Robinson says. The Patent and Trademark Office makes much of its data available in an XML format, which can be easily shared, as well as in plain image format for bulk download. Third-party tools like Google Patent Search rely on that data to provide more advanced search functions. PTO also has embraced third-party innovation through Peer-to-Patent, a pilot project that allows the patent community to help review patent applications. In that case, the office is working with nongovernmental groups to allow individuals to collaborate with patent examiners.

A seasonally relevant example is the Internal Revenue Service, which has de-ployed systems that let tax preparers and software developers compete to offer electronic tax-filing options to the public. Another inspired initiative is the Securities and Exchange Commission's requirement that certain companies use XBRL, or ex-tensible business reporting language. The commission is phasing in bar code-like electronic tags during the next few years to enable a new wave of insight and analysis of publicly traded firms.

The Structured Data View

Increasing federal transparency means making information that is relevant for citizens to take part in their government available in an easier to consume format, says Aneesh Chopra, Virginia's secretary of technology. It also involves a more measured approach than a so-called data dump, in which an agency posts raw information on its Web site without structuring it or providing some context. By imposing some structure on the data, agencies can begin to help citizens provide deep analysis that would inform them and policymakers.

Transparency that looks like this, Chopra says, leads to increased participation from the public in its democratic institutions. That means "taking information and empowering citizens to incorporate that information into their own private activities-to do something with it that allows them to create something of greater value from content that the government makes available," he says. Alan Balutis, director of the business solutions group at Cisco Systems' global consulting arm, says such transparency could improve government's credibility. "There's not a lot of faith in our institutions, and I think part of that is due to the transparency element," he says. "People do want a lot more information and want to put it together in their own ways."

Is It Transparency's Time?

Balutis, whose 27-year federal career included serving as the first CIO at the Commerce Department, says this form of transparency might not necessarily be the kind of open government the Obama administration has in mind. Balutis believes transparency is in the eye of the beholder and says this administration probably will focus more on making available-in sweeping, searchable terms-the outcomes of internal government deliberations rather than opening up the internal processes themselves.

Changing the information policy paradigm within the federal government will be a challenge. Dan Chenok, senior vice president and general manager of IT services provider Pragmatics Inc. and a former technology policy executive at OMB, says he learned while working at the White House under presidents Clinton and Bush that trying to change the way agencies manage information is difficult at best.

To get there, agencies will have to clear big hurdles. In the Government Executive and Government Business Council transparency survey, nearly eight out of 10 federal managers said the key to a more open government was a heightened interest from top leadership, who get their marching orders from the White House. That was followed by about two-thirds of the executives citing a need for new technology platforms and more personnel to support them.

In addition, 57 percent said the biggest obstacle to sharing information was the security of government computer networks. That was followed by 32 percent of managers saying they were worried that allowing greater access to government information would lead to a loss of control over the agency's message.

Still, Chenok and others remain optimistic about the administration's chances. "The appetite of the country is at a different place now and will welcome changes," he says. "The environment to innovate is something that is somewhat different under the Obama administration."

That's because the president's transparency goals and broader government reform come at a time of economic crisis, when massive change and huge government programs are being rolled out quickly. Chenok says the public, and federal agencies, could be more comfortable now with the change transparency brings than they might have been otherwise. "There should be a broad understanding and agreement in terms of answering the question of how we know it's working," he says. "Because it's being done for the benefit of the citizenry, there's a popular response such that the actions around transparency feed on themselves."

Groups like the Sunlight Foundation and OMB Watch will weigh in routinely and will be tough critics if the transparency agenda isn't made real, he adds.

While much of the benchmarking will be anecdotal, measuring how much government information is available now and what is available in six months or a year could provide insight, he says. The backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests could be a valuable metric. "If government is more successful at putting things online, you should see fewer FOIA requests and the length of time it takes to resolve them may decrease," Chenok says. Another gauge is whether search engines can find information on government sites, a feature that is now lacking and widely criticized.

The Sunlight Foundation's Miller says transparency can start out simple-as in no more paper records. "I'm talking about real information in real time," she says. "I'm talking about timeliness of information."

OMB could start that process by ordering agencies to develop audits of information they collect and how they can make it available electronically, she offers. The highest priority should be opening up filings that deal with the "influence industry," including government contracts and personal financial disclosures.

As is the case with most big government initiative's, getting the technology right won't be the driver for success; making transparency work will depend on good management, says Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a media-funded coalition promoting access to government. "This is not just a technology problem, it's about managing one of our most valuable national resources: information, which helps inform the public and increase public trust," he says. "When you increase public trust in a system, the sky's the limit."

Andrew Noyes is a reporter for National Journal's CongressDaily.

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FBI chief: Mortgage fraud caseload is overwhelming agency

Andrew Noyes — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The FBI's mortgage fraud caseload has more than doubled in the past three years, and the surge shows no sign of subsiding, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

The additional cases are straining the agency's resources, he added. Agents have more than 2,000 active mortgage fraud investigations, up from 700 several years ago, and are pursuing more than 560 corporate fraud cases, including probes directly related to the financial turmoil, the FBI director said. To handle the uptick, Mueller said he had shifted personnel and employed new analytical techniques to root out wrongdoers.

But the bureau lost the flexibility to direct agents to emerging threats after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mueller said, pointing out that about 2,000 agents had been moved to national security projects from criminal casework. While the FBI has begun to repopulate the criminal division, "we still have a substantial way to go," he said. The agency wants to hire 2,800 new employees in fiscal 2009, including intelligence analysts, technology and language specialists, and 850 new agents.

Although Mueller stressed that fighting public corruption is the FBI's top criminal priority, he would not answer questions by Judiciary Comittee ranking member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., about alleged improprieties by federal prosecutors and FBI agents in the case of former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. The FBI chief said ongoing post-trial motions prevented him from responding in detail. Stevens was convicted on seven felony corruption charges in October and lost his race against now Democratic Sen. Mark Begich. Suggesting that prosecutors were anxious for publicity, Specter said he plans to ask Attorney General Eric Holder about the case when he appears before the committee. Specter said Holder was personally reviewing alleged misdeeds, adding that the Judiciary Committee should examine the case once it is closed "or perhaps sooner."

Mueller defended two sections of the USA Patriot Act set to sunset Dec. 31. A provision that lets agents access library and business records has been used more than 223 times since 2004, and a "roving wiretap" provision -- allowing the government to bug not only the suspect's phone but phones used by or near to the suspect -- was used 147 times, according to Mueller. The FBI director also defended the so-called lone wolf amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act making it easier for the government to monitor noncitizens suspected of terrorist activity but not connected to international terrorist groups. Although the amendment had not resulted in any indictments, it had been "tremendously helpful," Mueller said. The FBI chief said he had not discussed the three provisions with the Obama administration but he hoped the White House would support their reenactment.

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Holder shifts rules on Freedom of Information Act requests

Andrew Noyes — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday sent a memo to the heads of all executive branch departments and agencies telling them to apply a presumption of openness when fielding Freedom of Information Act requests.

The proclamation, which government transparency watchdogs anticipated would come this week, rescinds controversial guidelines issued in 2001 by former Attorney General John Ashcroft that told agencies to withhold documents by using exemptions if an argument could be made to do so.

Holder's memo was timed for release during Sunshine Week. It builds on principles announced by President Obama on his first full day in office when he issued a presidential directive on FOIA that urged agencies to "usher in a new era of open government."

At that time, Obama told Holder to issue new FOIA guidelines. "By restoring the presumption of disclosure ... we are making a critical change that will restore the public's ability to access information in a timely manner," Holder said.

Sunlight Foundation policy director John Wonderlich said Holder has demonstrated Obama's commitment to openness and reaffirmed his vision for "a digitally empowered citizenry."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, who reintroduced a bill Tuesday with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that would require Congress to clearly state its intention when including FOIA exemptions in proposed legislation, called the guidance "a fresh and welcomed start to the new era of government responsibility." His FOIA bill stalled last Congress but passed the Senate in the 109th Congress.

The memo directs agencies not to withhold records simply because they can and encourages them to release documents in part whenever they cannot be released in full. Holder also established a new standard by which the Justice Department will only defend a FOIA denial if an agency can prove disclosure would harm an interest protected by a statutory exemption or if disclosure is unlawful.

Additionally, Holder's memo emphasizes agencies must have in place effective systems for responding to FOIA requests including the designation of a chief FOIA officer who will be required to report annually to the Justice Department. The new regime directs FOIA professionals to work cooperatively with those who request documents and to anticipate interest in potentially popular records before requests are made.

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Archives officials urge caution on declassification policy

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

A forthcoming executive order from President Obama on declassification of government information will probably revert to the Clinton administration's policies rather than overhaul the practices under former President George W. Bush, a National Archives and Records Administration official said on Monday.

Speaking at a conference kicking off Sunshine Week, NARA Information Security Oversight Office Director William Bosanko said if Obama truly wants to reverse his predecessor's "policy of secrecy," he could follow through on his campaign pledge to create a National Declassification Center as a starting point. Bosanko added that an executive announcment may be "imminent."

Steven Garfinkel, who ran NARA's information security office for more than 20 years, said the Obama administration might be following former President Jimmy Carter's approach in its wish to "change things radically." Former President Richard Nixon instituted a 30-year automatic declassification order, which Carter changed to six years. Garfinkel warned that every classification executive order issued since Nixon has proven problematic for a variety of reasons, and he urged Obama officials to move carefully.

"Our system of classifying and declassifying information, while rightly criticized, is still a model throughout the world," Garfinkel said. Bosanko took a similar line, arguing that overclassification is never going to go away. Legislation to address that concern -- by altering the "controlled unclassified information" designation created by Bush in 2008 -- passed the House last month and awaits Senate action. The category was created to cover most information previously referred to as sensitive but unclassified.

Speakers also addressed how to overhaul the Freedom of Information Act. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he, along with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, will reintroduce a bill this week requiring Congress to explicitly state its intention when writing statutory FOIA exemptions into new legislation. FOIA "is the power cord that connects the American people to their government," said Leahy. "The growing use of legislation to carve out new exemptions to FOIA poses a danger to the ideals of open government."

Leahy added that Attorney General Eric Holder will release new FOIA guidance for federal agencies "in the very near future." Justice Department officials declined to comment, but speakers at the conference said they expect the announcement later this week. The senator also lauded the inclusion of $1 million to fund a first-ever NARA ombudsman to mediate FOIA disputes in the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill. Legislation that he and Cornyn introduced last Congress authorized the creation of the new office.

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Lieberman renews push for easier access to CRS reports

Andrew Noyes — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., on Wednesday resumed a perennial attempt by some lawmakers and open government advocates to make reports produced by the Congressional Research Service more easily accessible to the public.

In a letter to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., he called for a sanctioned, automatically updated clearinghouse for the documents so "those with power and those without have equal access to this important resource."

Over the past decade, a series of bills requiring public access to CRS reports has made little progress, including a 2007 measure introduced by former Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. Under the chairmanship of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., last Congress, the Rules Committee authorized CRS to create software to let senators place individual reports on their Web sites. That did not go far enough, Lieberman wrote. Last Congress, he introduced a resolution with Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, and others that called for a more accessible system.

"A more effective system would provide constituents with tools similar to those used by congressional staff, with material presented by topic and the capability to search across all reports and issue briefs," he told Schumer.

In addition to piecemeal disclosures by lawmakers, CRS reports are made available through pay services and more intermittently at OpenCRS.com, a free Web database offered by the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Demand for the reports is so great that this month, thousands of documents -- representing several years' worth of work by CRS analysts -- were placed on the Wikileaks.org site, Lieberman noted. ShowUsTheData.org, a site launched by CDT and Open the Government last month on the heels of President Obama's Day One transparency directive, lists CRS reports as the top priority. Efforts like OpenCRS and Wikileaks allow more reports to enter the public domain but do not ensure the most accurate and up-to-date information is available, Lieberman wrote.

CRS has been resistant to change.

"They don't want to become politicized and feel that by being more open, they could face potential criticism," CDT Vice President Ari Schwartz said.

But with White House and Hill leadership emphasizing transparency, Lieberman's effort could gain traction, Schwartz said.

A CRS official could not be reached for comment.

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Obama's FOIA directive brings praise, bit of skepticism

Andrew Noyes — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In a nod to his campaign promise to facilitate government transparency, President Obama issued a Freedom of Information Act memorandum as one of his first official orders Wednesday. In it, he instructed all members of his administration to operate under principles of openness, transparency and of engaging citizens.

The heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration, as well as his yet-to-be-named chief technology officer, will write an open government directive within 120 days directing actions to implement the principles. Obama also instructed the attorney general to issue guidelines to federal agencies within the same time frame.

Obama "is turning the page and moving away from the secrecy of the last administration," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement. Leahy and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced a bill last year to strengthen FOIA by adding transparency and accountability standards when Congress considers adding new exemptions to withhold documents.

"It's wonderful that priority one on day one for this administration is transparency and it is the first of many steps to strengthen transparency in government," Sunshine in Government Initiative coordinator Rick Blum said, adding that agencies lack the resources and policies to keep data and documents open to the public.

Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation also lauded the move.

But Miller said the devil will be in the details and that it was ironic that several hours after the announcement, the memo was not on the White House Web site.

Former President George W. Bush signed a bill in late 2007 that Leahy and Cornyn shepherded, which made the first changes to FOIA in a decade. That bill restored deadlines for agency action under FOIA and imposed consequences for agencies that missed the law's 20-day statutory time limit.

The memo, which quotes Justice Louis Brandeis' line that "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants," states that all agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure in FOIA decisions.

That means agencies should make information public in a timely fashion and not wait for specific requests from the public.

The memo also instructs agencies to use technology to help citizens keep tabs on government activity. The announcement was an about-face from a directive by former Attorney General John Ashcroft instructing agencies to withhold information by using exemptions if an argument could be made to do so.

The order reversed a 1993 policy by former Attorney General Janet Reno that directed agencies to disclose information unless it resulted in "foreseeable harm."

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Obama names science and technology team

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday nominated John Holdren, a Harvard University physicist whose research has focused on global environmental change and energy technologies, as his science adviser.

Holdren will dually serve as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

In his weekly radio address, Obama also announced Nobel prize winning scientist Harold Varmus, who ran the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton administration, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Eric Lander as the other co-chairs of the advisory panel.

Additionally, Obama nominated Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to be head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology," Obama said. "It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient."

President Bush has been accused by some in the research community for suppressing or distorting scientific analysis from federal agencies to reflect administration policy. In response to that criticism, Bush pledged during his 2006 State of the Union to promote scientific research and education and vowed to double the federal commitment to basic research programs in the physical sciences over 10 years.

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Chamber report proposes fixes to patent review process

Andrew Noyes — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The Patent and Trademark Office is "an agency in crisis" that will face significant challenges in the Obama administration due to a 750,000-application backlog and other internal inefficiencies, a report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned Friday.

The paper, written by former PTO chiefs and patent experts, warns that the incoming Congress might assign even more responsibilities to the 9,000-employee agency. Among proposed fixes for the backlog, the report recommended revising U.S. law so the agency can keep the money it generates from application fees instead of having it diverted to unrelated projects.

In recent years, appropriators have granted that wish on a provisional basis, but stakeholders believe a permanent solution would give the PTO more certainty in longer-term budgeting. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., saw that such language was included in a bill sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., this session that almost reached the Senate floor. Leahy plans to reintroduce the legislation early in 2009.

The Chamber report suggests the PTO be re-established as a government corporation -- an idea supported by groups like the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the American Bar Association and the National Association of Manufacturers as well as other tech trade groups.

The House passed legislation in the late 1990s to make the change, but the bill ran into opposition from PTO labor unions, which argued that corporatizing the agency would weaken employee rights. Other stakeholders criticized the idea as being good for multinationals, but not for universities, independent inventors or small businesses.

In addition, the report proposes that applicants may defer patent examination, which in other countries has effectively scaled back the number of applications processed. Depending on the model used, deferred examination may allow an applicant's competitors to demand earlier examination by paying a fee.

Those with applications on file could be offered a partial refund of fees to opt to defer examination for several years so the PTO could focus on those who want immediate consideration. However, the report notes that such a system could create additional uncertainty because rivals would wait longer before deciding whether they could safely market new products.

It might also be unfair to shift to competitors, as some deferred programs do, the burden to pay for and initiate a proceeding for someone else's application. Furthermore, the proposal could increase patent lawsuits because parties who have invested in new products may be more willing to litigate, the report states.

Former PTO Deputy Director Stephen Pinkos said some of the report's ideas are being implemented or considered at the agency. He said deferred examination is worthy of serious discussion, and that running the PTO as a government corporation "would possess enhanced budget and personnel flexibilities that would allow for better business planning."

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Future of Obama's Web communications debated

Andrew Noyes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

When President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20, the trailblazing, tech-savvy way his camp communicated with supporters and the public at large will change drastically due to federal regulations like the Presidential Records Act, which puts the commander-in-chief's correspondence in the official record.

A former deputy assistant to President Bill Clinton said Friday that shift will be a major challenge for a politician who revolutionized Internet outreach and organizing.

"You have such immense freedom in a campaign -- in both speed and how you can move information -- that gets unbelievably throttled down the day you set foot in a government bureaucracy," said Jeff Eller, who is now president of Public Strategies.

Although Clinton served during the Internet's early days, his advisers found their ability to be creative "took far longer to ramp up and scale up" due to long-standing technological and regulatory restrictions, Eller said at an open government discussion hosted by Google. He advised Obama to fight for openness when in office. After the event, he told CongressDaily the White House counsel will be the toughest nut to crack.

That individual must be convinced "to go from a 'we can't do that' mindset to a 'we can do that in a way that's transparent and productive' one," he said.

Another speaker at the event, Republican National Committee eCampaign Director Cyrus Krohn, argued there has already been a behavioral change within Obama's camp. Videos they posted on YouTube during the campaign allowed user comments and ratings, while those produced by the president-elect's office do not. "It's a fundamental change in behavior of how the Web has been used that flipped overnight," he said.

But Sam Graham-Felsen, who served on Obama's new media team, said the Change.gov transition site has a community-oriented framework similar to the campaign site, www.BarackObama.com. "While you'll see differences in terms of the technical area and execution, the tone has stayed," he said.

Meanwhile, government transparency will continue to be a hot topic on Capitol Hill, speakers said. Chris Barkley, an aide for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., predicted that a bill Coburn introduced with Obama this session to improve USASpending.gov will resurface in 2009. The proposal would deepen the amount of information available on the database of federal awards and make the site easier to search. Meanwhile, Karina Newton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's new media director, said a growing number of bills -- including the $700 billion financial services bailout -- have had requirements for high-quality and timely disclosures of information.

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Groups ask Obama to reverse policies restricting access to information

Andrew Noyes — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Officials at the Center for Democracy and Technology and OMB Watch said they could meet with transition team members as early as next week. They believe Obama has demonstrated his commitment to open government by posting transition-related information at Change.gov, and by adding a "Your Seat at the Table" section, under which proceedings of meetings and documents shared between Obama's aides and outside groups are posted online and available for comment.

Over the last eight years, the federal government has become less open and less accountable, CDT Vice President Ari Schwartz said Tuesday.

FOIA requests have been granted at a dropping rate and agencies are taking advantage of exemptions to withhold documents, he said.

The catalyst was a 2001 memo by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft instructing agencies to withhold information by using such exemptions if an argument could be made to do so.

The order reversed a policy in place since 1993 when then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed agencies to disclose information unless it resulted in "foreseeable harm." A 2002 memo from former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, which focused on the development of weapons of mass destruction, created a category of "sensitive but unclassified" information to be withheld.

OMB Watch founder Gary Bass said reversing such policies is "totally consistent with the way the Obama team has operated."

Bass joined with more than 200 other individuals and organizations to submit a 112-page "right-to-know" agenda to the transition team last month.

"We want agencies to have a proactive, affirmative responsibility to disseminate," he said, adding, "FOIA requests should become the vehicle of last resort, not first resort."

Overturning the Card memo could be a "Day 1 activity" for Obama, Bass said, adding that the policy implemented by Ashcroft would require action by the new attorney general. That, he said, could easily occur in the first 100 days of the administration.

In March, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced a bill to add transparency and accountability standards when Congress considers adding new FOIA exemptions to the law.

The bill, which has stalled, would require Congress to state its intention to provide for statutory FOIA exemptions in legislation.

The bill followed Bush's signing of a Leahy-Cornyn e-government bill that made the first changes to FOIA in more than a decade.

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who has introduced legislation to speed up FOIA request processing, said Tuesday the Bush administration's policies have been "an affront to open, democratic government."

"The 'foreseeable harm' standard served this country quite well before John Ashcroft became attorney general," he said. With respect to the Card memo, he believes policymakers must be careful to ensure that no information is released that is potentially useful to those trying to construct WMDs.

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Hearing on attorney general nominee set for January

Dan Friedman and Andrew Noyes — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Monday he plans to hold a confirmation hearing for Eric Holder, President-elect Obama's pick for attorney general, during the week of Jan. 5.

Leahy strongly backs Holder and wants to move fast on his nomination despite criticism by some Republicans of Holder's failure as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton to block the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.

In a briefing Monday after a meeting with Holder, Leahy slammed former White House adviser Karl Rove for giving Republicans "marching orders" to raise concerns about Holder's role in the pardon.

Leahy said his opinion on Rich, who fled the country rather than face tax-evasion charges, would not have mattered because Clinton was going to grant the pardon even if Holder "had tried to grab the pen out of his hand." Holder will address the topic during his confirmation hearings, but Leahy urged his GOP colleagues to focus on "rebuilding the public's trust in our justice system."

Leahy said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, a Republican, called him Monday to offer his support for Holder.

With confirmation hearings complete, the committee could vote immediately on Holder and other Justice Department nominees once Obama takes office. Holder met Monday with Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter. Holder declined to comment on the Rich issue after meeting with Specter for about an hour.

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Waxman may push committee's oversight role

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Under the leadership of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to increase emphasis on government accountability and pursue a transparency agenda. To start that off, high-tech and telecommunications industry insiders are pointing to an investigation into the FCC the panel initiated in January. The FCC probe, which was led by Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., is complete and a report will be issued in the coming weeks, an aide said.

"To the extent that Dingell started this FCC inquiry, I think Waxman will finish it," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said, adding the agency is "overripe for reform."

More broadly, Waxman's California connection means strong ties to the high-tech sector, Information Technology Industry Council Government Relations Director Kara Calvert said. But others worry that Waxman, whose district includes parts of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, could help movie studios and record labels that want Congress to pass stronger intellectual property protection laws.

"To the extent that Hollywood wants to mix copyright with commerce, I hope [Waxman] understands the place for reforming copyright is in the Judiciary Committee," Sohn said.

She is concerned that calls for a "broadcast flag," which would require digital television tuners to include content protection technologies, will resurface. A federal court struck down such an FCC mandate in 2005 after Sohn's group and others complained the proposal would unfairly restrict a viewer's ability to use digital video recorders and other devices.

Competitive Enterprise Institute Vice President Wayne Crews said Waxman could offer a mixed bag of legislation, but he is most concerned about the panel's direction on network neutrality, a proposal to ban discrimination of Internet content by broadband firms. Although he is not a member of the Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee and has a spotty record of attending high-tech oriented hearings, Waxman supports the proposal and is expected to work with the Obama administration on legislation, sources said. Crews also said he anticipates the return of the "fairness doctrine," a defunct FCC policy requiring broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing views. Aides to President-elect Obama have said he does not want to reinstitute it despite recent reports that some House Democrats want to revive it.

Many have wondered whether Waxman's chairmanship will lead to a changing of the guard on key subcommittees. One high-tech industry source indicated ousted panel chairman Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., may yearn for a larger role on the subcommittees for Telecommunications and the Internet, led in the 110th Congress by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.; the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.; or Health, led by Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.

"Dingell can have whatever he wants," the official said, noting that energy and health care are presumably among Waxman's top agenda items. A committee spokeswoman did not immediately respond to inquiries about plans for Dingell, now chairman emeritus.

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Patent office cites progress in breaking application logjam

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The Patent and Trademark Office for the first time in fiscal 2008 met all of its objectives under the Government Performance and Results Act, a 1993 law designed to improve federal project management by requiring agencies to set goals, measure results, and report progress, the agency's chief told CongressDaily last week.

"For a long time, PTO was hitting below 50 percent of its goals," PTO Director Jon Dudas said. "If you have a high performing organization, it gives you more clarity in terms of focusing on where to change the system."

The PTO's year-end numbers indicate the office met and in some cases exceeded its targets for patent pendency, production, and quality.

Dudas, appointed to head the agency in July 2004, has made streamlining the organization's work a priority as pressure to address the growing backlog of patent applications has increased in Congress. This time last year, more than 760,000 applications were waiting to be reviewed, and the average time it took to address those filings ranged from 25 months to more than 32 months.

The delays were a focus of an oversight hearing by a House subcommittee in February. At the hearing, House Judiciary Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., said a patent's value is tied to the creator's ability to exclude others from using the invention and the time it takes examiners to act "cuts into the time the inventor has to make commercial use of the invention."

Subcommittee ranking member Howard Coble, R-N.C., said the backlog is a perennial challenge for the office that needs to be fixed. While the logjam exists, some progress has been made, PTO officials said. Patent production increased by 14 percent over fiscal 2007 with examiners tackling 448,003 applications, the highest number in history. The quality of patents coming out of the PTO is also at a high point and the agency's error rate is the lowest ever, Dudas said.

In fiscal 2008, more than 1,700 patent applications were submitted through an accelerated examination program, 173 percent more than in the initiative's introductory year of fiscal 2007. A 12-month or less pendency rate was maintained for each application reviewed under the pilot program, with an average time to final action or allowance of 186 days, according to agency statistics. To qualify, applicants must file electronically; conduct a search of "prior art" and submit all prior art that is close to their invention; include only 20 claims; and agree to an interview with an examiner, among other prerequisites.

The PTO continued to lead in the telework arena, with about 54 percent of its employees eligible to participate. Dudas said telework participants typically get 10 percent more work done, receive higher bonuses and report being happier with their jobs.

Pressure for further enhancements to the PTO and U.S. patent system as a whole is expected in the new Congress, and President-elect Obama's choice for an intellectual property expert to head the agency has prompted considerable chatter. Names circulating include Q. Todd Dickinson, who ran the PTO under former President Clinton; Eli Lilly general counsel Robert Armitage; 3M IP counsel Gary Griswold; patent attorneys Ray Millien and James Pooley; and law professors Mark Lemley of Stanford and Arti Rai of Duke, a classmate of Obama's at Harvard Law School. Some possible picks were on the front lines of the congressional patent reform battle this year, which could be a disadvantage, said former PTO official Stephen Pinkos, who works with Millien. "It's going to be tough to pick someone who is clearly on one side or another of that debate."

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Getting in Line

Andrew Noyes — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Most agencies (and companies) still don't align information technology with business strategies, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has started to.

In Steven Spielberg's 2002 science fiction film Minority Report, police chief John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) stands before a giant glowing wall of computer screens and uses his hands to nimbly manipulate a vast repository of electronic data. The system speedily rearranges the results of queries Anderton makes about criminals, based on the nature of his requests. As he drills deep into the database, Anderton is able to grab, drag and drop interactive components of his search into a comprehensive suspect dossier. The research is fast, effortless and effective. The police chief is cool, calm and collected.

This is business intelligence in 2054. Although it seems far-fetched, its framework is an indication of what tomorrow might hold. Some companies, and a handful of federal agencies, invest in technologies to advance their missions and to make the most out of the data they collect, store and share-without Hollywood superstars and a suspenseful soundtrack.

It's called IT alignment-matching technology spending to what the agency was formed to accomplish, so it can do it more efficiently. But IT alignment re-mains elusive for most agencies, and even for most companies, which have struggled to figure out exactly how to do it or to find time to do it effectively. But it can be done, as it is at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency was jerked into a harsh reality by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, forced to shift its mission from reducing the chance of accidental contamination to the possibility that terrorists obtaining everyday devices could use radio-active material to make dirty bombs. NRC's information technology shop and its top executives had to work quickly on a solution.

The chief information officer, the head of NRC's program to ensure the safe use of radioactive material and other agency executives worked with manufacturers of the material, states and other outside stakeholders to create the National Source Tracking System. NRC plans to turn on the system in December to track radioactive material from the point it is manufactured to its disposal in a proper facility. The NSTS will become part of the agency's core systems to meet its goal of keeping radioactive material out of the hands of terrorists.

To get there took foresight and flexibility, and it required CIO Darren B. Ash on the leadership team looking for solutions. "Having a shared, mutual goal will always help," Ash says. "What helps with alignment is having a shared goal and an agreement about the high priority and sensitivity of the work. This is for all stakeholders within the agency whose systems touch the core."

Finding a Balance

The quest for alignment begins and ends with solid IT management, Craig Symons, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, wrote in a 2005 report titled "IT and Business Alignment: Are We There Yet?" Alignment "is a byproduct of strong IT governance structures and processes that have matured to the point of being part of an organization's culture," he said. "More importantly, alignment must be monitored and measured, and management must be held accountable for results."

A metric some use is the percentage of the agency's IT budget spent on initiatives compared with how much of it funds the status quo, also known as "sustaining the business," Symons wrote. Research by Forrester and other analytical firms has demonstrated that on average, companies spend only 30 percent of their IT budget on initiatives, while best-of-class firms-those that lead their business sectors-spend as much as 50 percent.

A 2007 Forrester report,"Debunking Alignment Nirvana," by former vice president and principal analyst Laurie Orlov, warned that achieving 100 percent alignment will no longer be possible, if it ever was, as firms evolve during the next five years toward business technology-the kind that specifically drives results. "IT business alignment will be replaced with BT synchronization-a continuous balancing of an enterprise level of focus, a networked balance of supply, and a change agent role in the business strategy and processes of the enterprise," wrote Orlov, who is now a consultant. "Today's CIOs should calibrate their current status and work with their CEOs to achieve BT synchronization."

All this might sound obvious and be something that every organization should be doing. But few are. Only 15 percent of senior IT executives said they have fully aligned their IT investments with the core business, according to a Forrester survey. Respondents ranked themselves a 3.7 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being fully aligned.

Orlov concluded that CIOs are perpetually insecure about their degree of alignment because of a high demand for response to business needs. They find themselves in an IT tug of war over the small percentage of resources available for new work, she wrote. Deciding what to focus on-operations, maintenance requests or driving business process change-is another dilemma, as is the quicker pace of change outside IT. "People are not clueless about [alignment]," she said. "They simply cannot flex IT resources quickly enough to match the demand across all parts of an enterprise."

Post-9/11 Needs

For many federal agencies, Sept. 11 presented a huge change in direction. One of those agencies was NRC, which was able to quickly shift its IT spending priorities to align it with a new strategy-keeping radioactive material from falling into terrorists' hands.

The agency's mission is to regulate the use of radioactive material for beneficial purposes while ensuring that people and the environment are protected from radiation hazards. Before terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the commission focused on industrial security, ensuring that materials did not inadvertently get into the wrong hands and cause damage.

Several incidents in the 1980s and 1990s showed the importance of that job. In Goiânia, a city in central Brazil, children playing in an abandoned health clinic found a medical device containing caesium-137. They took apart the device to get at the radioactive material, which emitted a blue glow (as well as gamma radiation). Nearly two dozen residents were sickened and four died. In another incident, nuclear material was mistakenly dumped in a scrap yard and the radiation ruined a machine that recycles metal, known as a smelter.

Occasions like these prompted the International Atomic Energy Agency to establish principles creating registries for radioactive isotopes, which play an important role in the development of medical and health technologies. They are found in everything from cancer screening tools to diagnostics for heart disease. The United States was a key player in developing a code of conduct. But then Sept. 11 occurred, and NRC's focus changed from inadvertent slip-ups to making sure terrorists didn't steal radio-active material to make dirty bombs.

Within a matter of months, NRC started to shift its strategy from containing isolated incidents of contamination to the unthinkable-a terrorist obtaining radioactive isotopes from everyday products. Within a few weeks, the agency shut down its Web site to rethink what information to post and how its mission could change.

It took years for Congress to catch up to what NRC executives had been thinking. In 2005, the Hill passed the Energy Policy Act, which required NRC to establish a Web-based system to register sources of isotopes that present the greatest risks, known as Category 1 and Category 2 materials, such as those used in weapons grade uranium and plutonium.

IT's Answer

Long before the legislation passed, NRC was hard at work on a solution, according to CIO Ash and Terrence Reis, deputy director for the division of materials safety and state agreements. The two are at the helm of the National Source Tracking System, a pioneering project when it was conceived. Companies that make and use products containing radio-active material (known as licensees) will use NSTS to report how much they manufacture, when a company receives the products, when the used material is sent to a waste site, and when the site receives that material.

By closely monitoring radioactive material, NRC can keep tabs on where it is, what it is being used for and who has access to it. Lockheed Martin Corp., the contractor building the system, is putting the finishing touches on the catalog, and officials hope to flip the switch on in December.

Access to the NSTS will be limited and controlled by the use of smart cards. The data will not be available to the public, and the government will protect the information under the security designation "Sensitive." Manufacturers and users of devices containing radioactive material will have access to information only at their facilities. They are required to report their inventories of material to the NSTS by Jan. 31, 2009. "Our goal is to have a system that is near real-time, that's secure enough and robust enough that it can be updated regularly by us and by licensees," Ash says.

NRC administrators have no way of knowing how many companies will use the tracking system until the program launches. There are more than 1,200 licensees, and the agency expects each to have one or more staff members credentialed and outfitted with access cards. NRC has contracted with a company to train users nationwide.

Two complementary programs under development-a Web-based licensing system and a license verification system-will work in concert with NSTS. Ultimately, NRC will be able to query NSTS to determine the amount of radioactive material on a company's books and then query the license verification database to find out whether the company is allowed to have that material. "Pairing those will give you an answer as to whether a transaction is an appropriate trans-action," Ash says.

NRC designed the system so data can be easily shared, extracted and manipulated, Reis says. But IT solutions are only part of what he views as a much larger mission to improve security for Category 1 and Category 2 sources. "We've also required increased physical controls, fingerprinting and background checks of individuals who have access to material," he says. "It's a much-changed landscape than it was a few years ago."

Officials will launch version 1.0 of NSTS, but plans already are in the works to expand it and incorporate Web 2.0 capabilities. The next-generation NSTS, for example, would provide regulators with immediate feedback if data in the system is flawed, according to Ash and Reis. "We won't have to go into the system and examine the content manually to know if a transaction is appropriate," Reis says. Version 2.0 also will include other players in the business of securing the nation, such as the Homeland Security Department. The updated tracking system is expected to be finished in 2010, he says.

Making It Work

Consultants who specialize in aligning IT with the mission say a key component is top executives who will collaborate frequently on how to meet the organization's strategic goals and remain flexible. Orlov advises her clients to follow four general principles to jump-start IT alignment:

Ensure that the chief information officer sits with the top governing team of an organization.
Maintain good relationships with peers and consider their issues and concerns
Allocate a portion of the IT budget to flexibility, so top priority requests at least can be evaluated.
Separate ongoing operational IT work from peer-focused business change, and put someone in charge of day-to-day systems maintenance, and management of infrastructure and call centers.

Orlov points out that IT alignment in government is no different than the approach in business. The degree of alignment depends on frequent communication among top executives and the ability to react to strategic change, particularly in the IT shop.

Ash, Reis and NRC's other top officials did most of what Orlov prescribed. Because NSTS was so central to the mission, it had to involve numerous executives inside and outside the agency. "The earlier you can start building consensual agreements and a consensual framework, the better," Reis says. The CIO had direct access to executives overseeing NRC's primary functions. Representatives from four offices with expertise in radioactive material safety, contracts, computer security and legal issues have been part of the discussions and deployment of the system.

Leadership meetings were held weekly; project level meetings were held more frequently. Executives briefed NRC about the NSTS annually, and additional updates were provided to individual commissioners. NRC also has kept Congress informed about the project.

From the beginning, Ash and Reis recognized that NRC must work closely with federal and state agencies. To develop the requirements for NSTS, the agency formed committees and working groups to solicit the views of those that would be affected by the system. The panels included members from NRC, the Energy Department, participating states and others who would be involved in NSTS.

NRC also formed an inter-agency coordinating committee consisting of 10 federal agencies and states to provide guidance on interagency issues with development, coordination and implementation of the system. The committee approved the high-level requirements for NSTS, and it continues to meet and make recommendations for improvements. NRC gathered input from outside the agency through the rule-making process that established the regulatory requirements for reporting to the system.

Aligning IT required preparation on the micro-level, too, summed up by Ash and Reis with the adage "Look before you leap." Understanding the scope and goal of a project "at the very beginning of the process, before you start to do any heavy-duty coding," is crucial, Ash says.

The IT staff followed a phased development approach in which data processing capabilities were kept separate from security components, Ash says. Security designs and requirements were part of the overall approach from the beginning of the project, but NRC modified them along the way. "By using a module approach, we were able to effect changes without impacting previously developed code," Ash says.

Ensuring that participants and partners in the initiative worked collaboratively not only benefited the development of the tracking database it also informed NRC's overall planning process.

And that collaboration hasn't stopped. "The best example of that is we're in midst of replacing our core financial system-that's a CFO-led project, but it touches many other parts of the agency," Ash says. "It's timely because we can look back at what we've done with the NSTS and start to apply it in this instance."

Andrew Noyes is a reporter for National Journal's CongressDaily.

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Lawmakers rebut Justice report on attorney firings

Andrew Noyes — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The report singled out Iglesias' dismissal as the most disturbing and said the probe uncovered evidence that politics was a factor in his removal after GOP complaints arose about his handling of allegations of voter fraud and public corruption. The report, written by Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility Director H. Marshall Jarrett, suggested Domenici was unwilling to cooperate with the agency's review.

Domenici's attorney, Lee Blalack, countered that claim in a letter late Monday to the report's authors, stating that Fine rejected the senator's repeated efforts to answer questions in writing. The letter noted the Senate Ethics Committee has investigated and rejected the allegation that Domenici may have obstructed or otherwise interfered with an ongoing criminal investigation and points out that even Iglesias said the senator did not attempt to obstruct his work.

Meanwhile, Wilson said in a release late Monday that Justice had asked for her help and she obliged by providing a written statement, meeting with investigators, and answering their follow-up questions. She also released four letters she wrote to department officials to address the report's claim that her records are "incorrect or incomplete." The letters show she did not discuss Iglesias' job performance "with anyone in the administration before the decision was apparently made to replace him," she said, adding that she never spoke about Iglesias with White House counsel Harriet Miers -- contrary to third-hand references in the report.

Wilson added that a call she placed to Iglesias in the fall of 2006 "was not about any particular case or person, nor was it motivated by politics or partisanship." The House Ethics Committee informed Wilson in July that their informal review of the matter was closed and there would be no ethics investigation. Both Domenici and Wilson are leaving Congress.

The report seems to have sparked just as many questions as it provided answers. The House Judiciary Committee plans to hold a hearing on Friday despite pending adjournment. A spokesman for House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said on Tuesday that Fine was expected to testify and would be asked what his department needs to continue its investigation. Republican participation at the hearing is uncertain.

Meanwhile, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., plans to ask Attorney General Mukasey in a forthcoming letter whether Nora Dannehy, the special prosecutor named Monday to pursue possible criminal charges against those involved in the firings, will have subpoena power to get information from administration officials who previously refused to cooperate.

Whitehouse will also ask whether her authority would be limited to an investigation of criminal conduct or "whether she can cover the whole waterfront of where the initial investigation has led," a Whitehouse spokeswoman said Tuesday. Additionally, he will ask whether she would be barred from sharing evidence she uncovers with the public or Fine and Jarrett's offices.

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Democrats: Report on U.S. attorney firings leaves questions

Andrew Noyes — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Key congressional leaders Monday questioned the comprehensiveness of a long-awaited Justice Department report that largely let former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales off the hook for the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys. The nearly 400-page document, written by Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility Director H. Marshall Jarrett, did not recommend that Gonzales face a federal grand jury for his role. But it did call the process used to remove the attorneys "fundamentally flawed ... unsystematic and arbitrary."

A special prosecutor, Connecticut federal prosecutor Nora Dannahey, has been named to pursue possible criminal charges against individuals involved in the firings.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Monday the report "might have told us even more if the investigation had not been impeded by the Bush administration's refusal to cooperate." The study itself acknowledged gaps in the probe -- investigators were not allowed to interview former White House officials such as Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, William Kelley, and Monica Goodling.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and his chief of staff Steve Bell were also not questioned. The report singled out the removal of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico as the most disturbing. The firings were the topic of several hearings and prompted a lawsuit filed by House Judiciary Democrats.

"The Bush administration's self-serving secrecy has shrouded many of their most controversial policies -- from torture, to investigating the causes of 9/11, to wiretapping," Leahy said at a briefing, adding that the report fails to answer questions about the reasons for the firings and inconsistent and misleading statements from Gonzales and others. Leahy warned the White House that any misuse of pardon power or grant of clemency or immunity would be seen as an admission of wrongdoing. But Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., downplayed that possibility, saying that there is "no indication that President Bush intends to pardon anybody."

According to the report, Gonzales and former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty failed to adequately supervise the removals. Instead, Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff, did much of the work without careful evaluation of the basis for each dismissal. The investigation uncovered substantial evidence that politics was a factor in the removal of several attorneys, particularly Iglesias, who was the target of complaints from Domenici, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and GOP activists about his handling of allegations of voter fraud and public corruption cases. Calls to Domenici's attorney and Wilson's office were not returned by presstime.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said the report "confirmed our very worst suspicions" and repeated his intention to obtain previously withheld White House documents and testimony. He also announced a Friday hearing to examine the report despite Congress's pending adjournment. A Leahy aide said a hearing by his committee had not been planned, but the senator said he intended to "keep on looking until we get all the answers." Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the report "dispelled many of the most disturbing allegations" regarding the removals but still showed that the process was "haphazard, arbitrary and unprofessional." Meanwhile, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., welcomed the appointment of Dannahey but said he planned to write to Mukasey asking for details on what precise authority she would have.

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