Government Executive - Authors - Mark Micheli

5 Factors That Reduce Cloud Complexity (While Increasing Security)

Mark Micheli — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 17:00:00 -0400

There is little disagreement among federal CIOs that leveraging cloud services can offer agencies a flexible and scalable way to deliver high-performance digital services, save money, and comply with initiatives like the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative. But getting there requires moving beyond the “low-hanging fruit” to the data infrastructure critical to their operations while maintaining focus on security and interoperability as top priorities.

Download this GBC Issue Brief to learn:

How FedRAMP is changing the game when it comes to securing cloud services
Why private and hybrid cloud models are taking up a bigger part of the federal portfolio
Five ways to streamline your agency’s transition to the cloud

]]>

Reducing Complexity, Ensuring Security: Toward Better Information Management

Mark Micheli — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:00:00 -0400

With the explosive growth of data in the last two years alone, the complexity of information management is quickly becoming a challenge for federal IT managers. As agencies move to expand the use of data analysis (especially big data) in everyday operations, the need to store, secure, and eliminate redundancies in that data -- as well as to ensure that it’s available at a moment’s notice -- will put a premium on services like virtualization and deduplication.

Download this GBC Issue Brief to learn:

Why your agency is swimming in data that didn’t even exist two years ago
Which technologies can reduce the size of your agency’s data footprint by 10-30 times
Why automated data recovery operations are actually security operations

]]>

Understanding Insider Threats Through Data Loss Prevention

Mark Micheli — Wed, 07 May 2014 09:00:00 -0400

Between Edward Snowden's leaks and rapid growth in internal data breaches, federal agencies will surely remember 2013 as the year of the insider threat. Organizations no longer wonder if they will experience a breach, but when. Since insider threat can come from anyone inside the organization’s boundaries—including full-time employees, contractors, business partners, and even advanced persistent threats that have infiltrated the network—a comprehensive strategy is needed.

Download this GBC issue brief to learn:

How insider threats to federal agencies have grown over the last year
Why data loss prevention (DLP) tools are a key component of a comprehensive strategy to combat insider threat
Which agencies are successfully implementing DLP

]]>

Striving for Federated Identity Management in Emergency Management and Healthcare

Mark Micheli — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 16:00:00 -0400

Ensuring access to agency resources by the right people, at the right time, and for the right reasons is a top priority for federal leaders. A number of recent high-level policies, including Homeland Security Presidential Directive 21 and the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace have made sure of it. For the emergency management and healthcare communities, identity and access management (IAM) is vital to fulfilling their life saving missions.

Download this Issue Brief to learn:

Why IAM is essential for effective emergency response management
How improved IAM can help make military healthcare more secure and accessible
How an "Identity Ecosystem" can enhance collaboration across all levels of government

]]>

The Budget Deal: An Okay End to a Very Bad Year for Medical Research

Mark Micheli, The Atlantic — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 14:42:50 -0500

Two-thousand thirteen will go down as one of the least predictable—and most political—years in history for American medical research.

In the spring, sequestration—across-the-board budget cuts—wiped out more than 5 percent of fiscal-year 2013 budgets of government agencies that fund research and development, with the promise of more cuts over the next decade. The 16-day government shutdown in October wreaked further havoc, as scientists were told to put their work on hold while Congress got its act together. Now, nearing the end of a roller-coaster year, legislators are providing some relief (albeit with a side of whiplash) by swiftly passing a budget deal that heads off another shutdown and reverses many of the impending mandatory budget cuts.

At the National Institutes of Health, the largest provider of federal research money to universities and labs across the country, Director Francis Collins says it has been his most challenging year since taking the post in 2009, describing it as a “paradox.”

“In terms of scientific progress, 2013 has outstripped my expectations,” Collins said. “But in terms of a continued downward spiral of support it has been much worse than I thought it would be at the beginning of the year.”

Given that the NIH’s mission—fighting human disease and prolonging life—not only engenders widespread bipartisan support but also is widely viewed as a major economic engine and job creator, one might expect it to be shielded from appropriators’ red pen. Yet the government closure was the latest blow for NIH, which lost $1.71 billion during sequestration and has seen a 25 percent reduction in overall funding since 2003.

“During the shutdown I got tears in my eyes walking through labs where all the lights were off and the benches were empty,” Collins said. “Just a week before all kinds of great science had been going on and then, because of political stalemate, none of that was allowed to happen.”

But the NIH wasn’t just a passive victim—it became a central player in the shutdown. Reports revealed that the closure was preventing 200 patients, including 30 children, from being admitted to the NIH Clinical Center, often the last hope for people with rare diseases and incurable cancers. With Republicansbearing the brunt of public blame for the shutdown, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor pushed a bill to reopen NIH during the shutdown, daring Democrats and President Obama to be seen as opposing assistance for children with cancer.

If there was an upside to getting caught in the middle of a political boxing match, it was the boost in public recognition of NIH’s importance.

“NIH became the poster child of the government shutdown in a lot of ways,” said Carrie Wolinetz, president of United for Medical Research, a coalition of universities and advocacy groups. “But a very positive poster child in that it just highlighted what was already a pretty strong level of bipartisan support in Congress for this very critical agency.”

Prior to the shutdown, Collins felt NIH’s “brand was not seen as important as it should be.”

“If there was a tiny silver lining in the shutdown it was that NIH was seen as one of the harmed government agencies that people were most troubled by,” Collins said. “No matter what you think politically, the idea that a kid with a bad disease is being turned away from a research trial at the Clinical Center is not something you wanna look at and say 'well, it doesn’t matter.' So we got a bit of a bump in visibility but I don’t advocate that it was worth it.”

The bruising House Republicans received from the shutdown helped ease the passage of the budget deal, which passed the House on December 12 and the Senate on Wednesday. The budget calls for an increase in discretionary spending to $1.012 trillion in FY14 and $1.014 trillion in FY15. At the NIH, that’s equivalent to potentially reducing the sequester cuts for 2014 by half and the cuts for 2015 by a quarter, according to Science magazine. But for now, the precise effect on NIH awaits the decision of the Appropriations committees, which are to decide specific funding allocations by January 15.

It’s a step in the right direction, research advocates say, but still far from enough.

“Sequestration is not gone,” Wolinetz said. “It’s sort of put on hold for the next couple of years until 2016 .... It really depends on how the appropriators decide to divvy up the money and that's just unknowable at the moment. I remain optimistic though that NIH will, relatively speaking, fare fairly well.”

Even if funding were restored to pre-sequester levels, the budget deal does very little to reverse what many fear is America’s dwindling role as the world leader in biomedical research. While the U.S. continues to debate how much to cut from the NIH and other scientific institutions like the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control, other nations are increasing funding. China, which Collins said is preparing to increase research spending by 15 to 20 percent per year*, is aiming to outspend the U.S. in the next five years—not as a percentage of GDP but in absolute dollars.

“Across the board we need to turn this around,” Collins said. “You look at what a country invests in research and development as part of GDP as an indicator of the health of the [nation’s seriousness]. Right now we are at 2.6 percent. Many other countries are at 3 percent or above—they’re basically out to eat our lunch.”

Still, the budget deal represents the first decent news NIH has gotten in a long time. As for the science? Collins says that, in his 30-year career, including his time leading the team that mapped the human genome, the promise of medical research is greater now than ever.

“Whether it’s in figuring out what to do about cancer, developing a universal vaccine for influenza, or coming up with the strategies to teach us what to do to prevent and cure Alzheimer’s disease, we’re on the brink of all those things,” Collins said. “We could transform the future for all of us who care about health .... Anybody who cares about their family, their friends, and their own health should know we’re the best hope for a future where people don’t have their lives cut short by illness or chronic disease.”

For now, they’ll take what they can get.

]]>

The Best Way to Fix HealthCare.gov? Scrap It and Start Over.

Ross Gianfortune and Mark Micheli — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

It's been almost a month since major issues emerged during the launch of HealthCare.gov, the website for Americans looking to sign up for a medical plan in the health insurance marketplace. And the problems remain in headlines. A key component of the president's signature policy initiative, the site has been over budget, delayed and dysfunctional, bringing technology contractors and federal managers under fire.

Noble Ackerson has worked on both sides of that divide. As a former official in the Virginia governor's office, he worked on technology policy. And in private industry, he's worked as a consultant and, most recently, founded Byte an Atom Research. Ackerson told Government Executive's Mark Micheli that some of the issues with HealthCare.gov stem from a lack of testing and a project schedule that was unnecessarily rushed. Unfortunately, that means a lot of work is going into hastily fixing the site, according to Ackerson.

“That’s where we are today,” he said. ”A lot of people are trying to either patch-fix or undo mistakes made during the rollout.

Ackerson contends the issues with the project are basically unsolvable. When asked how he would fix HealthCare.gov, Ackerson said he would simply start over by slimming down the code base and rebuilding the entire site. Unfortunately, that’s not an option for an already beleaguered Obama administration.

“I would scrap the project and start from scratch,” Ackerson said. “That would be disastrous for the administration, so that won’t happen.”

]]>

What NASA Can Teach the Rest of Government About Using Social Media

Mark Micheli — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 20:56:00 -0500

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

To learn more about how technology is changing the way government interacts with citizens, register for free to attend NextGov Prime Nov. 20 – 21 in Washington, DC.

On Aug. 6, 2012 a robot that had for months been quietly hurtling through space blasted out a triumphant communiqué:

The message, which followed the now famous “ Seven Minutes of Terror ,” was quickly retweeted nearly 70,000 times. Of course the message didn’t come from the robot itself, it came from the social media team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manning its Twitter account. Not only did the tweet announce that Mars Curiosity had arrived on Mars—it announced NASA’s stature as the model for how government can engage citizens through social media.

Social media’s story is now an old one. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have changed the game, altering the way people share information and interact with brands. The press release, once the gold standard for getting your message out, is now antiquated—as is the notion of the “press” to whom that information is released. Organizations that had once relied on media outlets to tell their stories are now themselves the media outlet, taking their message straight to their target audience. Nowhere is this more true than the federal government. A point hammered home by President Obama at the 2013 White House Correspondents Dinner during a good-natured joke…that cut like a knife for journalists in the audience worried that the new paradigm means gaining access is harder than ever:

“[I’ve] found a new favorite source for political news -- these guys are great,” said Obama. “I think everybody here should check it out, they tell it like it is. It’s called whitehouse.gov. I cannot get enough of it.”

As the filter between government and the public continues to permeate, government organizations are taking advantage. Leading the way for how social media empowers citizen communications is Veronica McGregor, Manager of the News and Social Media Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as the voice behind two of the government’s most popular Twitter accounts: @MarsCuriosity and @AsteroidWatch . The Mars Curiosity account has 1.4 million followers and Asteroid Watch has over 1 million. While both of these accounts were put on hiatus during the government shutdown, so strong was their following that a community of dedicated users posted more than 8,000 tweets, using the hashtag #ThingsNasaMightTweet , to pick up the slack while McGregor and her team were legally barred from updating the accounts.

“This to me validates all of the work that we have done in the last several years in social media,” said McGregor on the Excllence in Government Podcast last month. “We first went online and invited [people] to follow us, but not just follow us, to have a conversation with us.”

At the heart of that conversation is an effort by McGregor and her team to give voice to NASA’s projects and speak directly to the public’s intense interest in NASA missions.

“We try to make it a lot of fun and interesting enough that people are going to click on our links,” said McGregor. “There's always something there that we're asking them to look at or read more about.”

Getting citizens to engage with government through social media requires two things.

First, personality (of which @MarsCuriosity has plenty):

“We call it ‘bravada,’” said McGregor of the personality her team gave Curiosity via its Twitter account. “She's a big bad rover and she knows it—she has a laser on her head.”

On the other hand, Mars Phoenix, the Mars lander that preceded Curiosity in 2008 , had an entirely different voice—complete with a healthy dose of gallows humor.

“Phoenix had this really happy go lucky, eternal optimist point of view of being on Mars because it was going to…freeze to death,” said McGregor. On the other hand “Curiosity is the biggest rover that we have ever sent to another planet. If you compare the size with previous rovers she towers over them, so it was pretty easy to come up with that personality.”

Second, talk back:

“What people appreciated the most was that we didn't just push out information to them,” said McGregor. “Anytime we post a tweet we know that we're going to have somebody sit and watch that account and respond to the questions that come in. People love being able to get a response from NASA very quickly…We learned a lot about what people didn't understand about our missions. We learned what we had taken for granted.”

By using social media to be accessible and listen, NASA has extended its social media prowess beyond Twitter. By making NASA experts available to field crowdsourced questions in Reddit AMA's , the space agency has found a medium to engage thousands (or a few hundred in certain subreddits) simultaneously in deep, thoughtful conversations about their work and the science underlying it.

“We find [Reddit] to be an incredibly effective way for people to get some direct information from NASA,” said McGregor. “We know that our stories on Reddit are very popular.”

Some of the top NASA AMA’s have included the scientists and engineers on NASA’s Voyager mission , the Mars Curiosity mission team , a team of Asteroid experts and Mason Peck, NASA’s Chief Technologist .

“It's amazing to me to think that prior to 2008 we didn't have this method of communicating directly with the public,” McGregor said of social media. “Our office only used to be able to do the news releases—but we didn't get that direct feedback. As soon as we opened up [to social media] we got feedback, we discovered that people loved to hear about our missions and that they wanted more information—not less.”

To learn more about how technology is changing the way government interacts with citizens, register for free to attend NextGov Prime Nov. 20 – 21 in Washington, DC.

]]>

Watch All Six Moon Landings in One Video

Mark Micheli — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:34:00 -0400

When people think of the Moon landings, usually Apollo 11 gets all the attention for being the first success (and Apollo 13 for being the first failure). But let’s not forget that NASA made the trip to the moon six times between 1969 and 1972, with increasingly sophisticated equipment on each visit.

In all, Apollo 11 (July 20, 1969), Apollo 12 (Nov. 19, 1969), Apollo 14 (Feb. 5, 1971), Apollo 15 (July 30, 1971), Apollo 16 (April 21, 1972) and Apollo 17 (Dec. 11, 1972) all successfully made it to the lunar surface.

And now, for the first time, you can watch all six landings in one take. YouTube user “lunarmodule5” realigned the original landing videos to 45 degree angles to show you what the astronauts saw during descent. Be sure to listen to the audio to hear how excited the astronauts and mission control get during touchdown:

]]>

Infographic: Visualizing the Shutdown's Real-Time Impact on Federal Employees

Mark Micheli — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 13:11:00 -0400

It’s hard to really process the effect of the government shutdown. Rattling off that 97 percent of NASA is furloughed, that national parks are closed and that sad kids in bear costumes can’t go to the zoo doesn’t really capture the impact of what we’re currently witnessing happen to the public sector. With something this broad, complex and, frankly, bleak, a picture is more helpful. This picture.

Dan Delany at Enigma.io took it upon himself to compile all the lapse planning data submitted to OMB into one spreadsheet and process it into a striking interactive showing the real time cost of the shutdown ($1.8 billion in unpaid salaries and rising), the number of employees furloughed and the percentage breakdown of furloughs by department.

It’s well worth a look: Government Shutdown 2013 Visualized

[h/t Gizmodo]

]]>

After the Retirement Wave Crests, Who’s Left?

Mark Micheli — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 17:00:00 -0400

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

There are roughly 600,000 federal workers currently in their 50s, which means thousands of government employees are quickly approaching retirement. With slow hiring of new workers to take older workers places, this exodus of experienced employees is often referred to as the retirement wave.

These departures from the federal workforce, combined with factors that have made federal service appear less attractive, or less feasible, to young workers, pose large challenges to operational continuity.

To talk about this looming workforce imbalance, Adam Cole , Senior Director at CEB, recently spoke with us on the Excellence in Government Podcast to discuss what comes next—what happens after the retirement wave and how can you prepare now?

“So many individuals across the federal workforce will depart their organizations in the next several years,” said Cole. “It’s never been more important to have a succession plan.”

To learn more about the retirement wave and succession planning, listen to the Excellence in Government podcast.

For more, read Cole’s recent article in GovExec: “ The Retirement Wave You Didn’t See Coming .”

]]>

Shutdown Continues Dark Days for Medical Research

Mark Micheli — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 15:04:00 -0400

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health, the federal agency with a $30 billion budget responsible for funding medical research across the country, probably woke up Tuesday morning with, at best, audible sighs.

First, in the spring, there was sequestration—the automatic, across the board spending cuts that lopped off 5.5 percent of their budget. Now, thanks to the government shutdown, 73 percent of NIH staff is sitting at home, furloughed—among them, some of the most brilliant scientists and medical researchers in the world—and, thanks to a Congress whose mental health is open to debate, they've been put in the untenable position of turning away 200 patients to the NIH Clinical Center, including 30 children, many of them cancer patients.

The person tasked with leading this besieged organization is Dr. Francis Collins. Before he was director of the NIH, Collins made headlines around the world in 2000 for leading the Human Genome Project, the global effort that unlocked the secrets of human DNA—a paradigm-shifting advance that firmly established him as one of the most significant scientists of our generation. In 2009, President Obama tapped him to become NIH director, ostensibly becoming dean of the nation’s health and leading the largest biomedical research agency in the world—all in the midst of a recession.

“When I started I did not imagine it would get this bad, to be truthful,” Collins said. “I don't think anyone imagined when the concept of the sequester was laid on the table that it would happen. It was supposed to be this poison pill that was so painful, so destructive that it would never come to pass and yet, well, the Congress swallowed it and we all got poisoned.” With the government shutdown, Congress has decided to double the dosage.

Bursts of Productivity Are Key to Getting Things Done

Mark Micheli — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 09:00:00 -0400

There’s a reason people find email to be such a drag on their productivity. It is. More to the point, it’s a treasure trove of distractions. Each new email represents an escape point, an entreaty to deviate from the task at hand. We accept this burden, thankful for email’s “convenience,” and slog on--oscillating between suspecting it might cause our ADD and outright knowing it.

Accepting that distraction is part of modern work life, the “Deep Immersion” approach posits that the antidote to constant distraction is long, uninterrupted bursts of productivity.

Deep Immersion hinges on reducing the cost paid each time we start--or restart--a task. If you spend 10 - 15 hours at once on a project, rather than stretching that time out in 1 hour chunks over several weeks, you streamline your thinking. Rather than starting and stopping every few hours or days and having to actively remember how to get back into it, or where you left off, deep immersion only requires you “get started” once--affording you a flow-like period of uninterrupted productivity.

Writing on his blog Study Hacks, Georgetown Professor Cal Newport sees the benefits of the time allocation technique as twofold:

1. It reduces overhead. When you put aside only a couple hours to go deep on a problem, you lose a fair fraction of this time to remembering where you left off and getting your mind ready to concentrate. It’s also easy, when the required time is short, to fall into the least minimal progress trap, where you do just enough thinking that you can avoid breaking your deep work chain, but end up making little real progress. When you focus on a specific deep work goal for 10 – 15 hours, on the other hand, you pay the overhead cost just once, and it’s impossible to get away with minimal progress. In other words, two days immersed in deep work might produce more results than two months of scheduling an hour a day for such efforts.

2. It better matches our rhythms. There’s an increasing understanding that the human body works in cycles. Some parts of the week/month/year are better for certain types of work than others. [A] professor’s approach of spending the fall thinking and discussing ideas, and then the spring and summer actually executing, probably yields better results than trying to mix everything together throughout the whole year. During the fall, he rests the part of his mind required to tease out and write up results. During the spring and summer he rests the part of his mind responsible for having original thoughts and making new connections.

What we’re really talking about here is focus. And this complements the theory offered by Gary Keller and co-author Jay Papasan in their book The One Thing—that the most successful people are known for just one thing, passion or skill.

Quartz staff writer Vickie Elmer notes that this theory comes from Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto’s principle, “which showed that 80 percent of wealth was held by 20 percent of the people. This works elsewhere as the 80/20 principle, where a small portion of effort leads to oversized results. ‘Things don’t matter equally. …The smaller I make my life, the bigger it gets,’ says Keller, the co-founder and chairman of Keller Williams Real Estate. Great bosses understand that businesses will succeed when staff are encouraged to excel in one domain.”

All this raises the question, does multi-tasking work? More importantly, is the North Star of government leaders (“do more with less”) actually something to aspire to? Might it instead be creating an environment where, people torn between innumerable tasks, are less productive than if they, perhaps, did less with less?

What’d you think?

Read more about Deep Immersion at Study Hacks.

Image via Varijanta/Shutterstock.com

]]>

Why You Should Stress Your Employees Out

Mark Micheli — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 09:00:00 -0400

When was the last time you felt truly accountable for something? A quick look at the old Merriam-Webster dictionary shows that accountability, by definition, means “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility…for one’s actions.” It’s shocking how often we’re part of projects for which, by virtue of being in a group, we feel only marginal levels of accountability.

Good managers drive employees to a state of self-aware vigilance, a state where each person takes responsibility not only for their actions, but how their actions translate into the success—or failure—of a project.

How can you tell if employees are actually accountable? Stress (aka anxiety).

Mark Murphy, founder of Leadership IQ, writes there are four steps people go through on their journey to accountability: Denial, blame, excuses and anxiety:

Each stage looks and sounds a little different. In denial, the boss tends to be the last one to get bad news. With blame there’s a lot of name-calling: “It’s not my fault; it’s Bob’s.” Excuses tend to get assigned to forces beyond the employee’s control, like a new process or broken equipment. And anxiety is where we hear folks sounding panicked: “This is too much” or “How are we supposed to accomplish all this?” or “We’ll never pull it off; we’ve tried it before and it didn’t work.”

According to Murphy, when you hear people freaking out it might actually be a good thing. It means they’re scared, which isn’t as bad as it sounds:

Anxiety can sound terrible, but it’s actually a good indicator that your people are showing signs of ownership. They’re acknowledging there’s an issue and they’re not falling back on blame or excuses. And with a little help you can quickly move them past “total freak out” mode to “I’ve got it all handled.”

A leader’s job is to move people along the four steps and help them push beyond anxiety and become accountable. So the next time you hear your team freaking out—giving voice to their fears and doubts—don’t react with anger. Recognize what may sound like resistance or a lack of confidence actually means they’re on the right track. It’s not an excuse to go stressing your employees out intentionally, but know anxiety might be an indicator your team is on the cusp of becoming a well-oiled machine.

Read more of Murphy’s advice on helping others push through anxiety to reach accountability at Leadership IQ.

Image via prodakszyn/Shutterstock.com

]]>

The Simple Reason Perfectionism Is So Dangerous

Mark Micheli — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 09:00:00 -0400

A little advice from the late David Foster Wallace:

"If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything."

Watch the beginning of the above video for his short, but excellent, take on the pitfalls of perfectionism. Keep watching for insight into the author’s life and his perspective on ambition and growing older.

Now, stop trying to be perfect and go do something.

]]>

The Cool Tool Helping Everyday Citizens Track Cyber Attacks in Real Time

Mark Micheli, Excellence in Government — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

Recent leaks revealing NSA surveillance tactics by former Booz Allen contractor Edward Snowden have drawn renewed attention to cybersecurity. As more and more of our lives become dependent on, and connected through, the Internet, the US government and regular citizens are in ever increasing need of tools to help them understand the threat.

Enter: Threatwatch , a regularly updated online catalog of data breaches affecting every sector of society around the world. Combining real time monitoring of data breaches with information gathered from published accounts of cyber attacks, Threatwatch is designed to help visitors grasp the scope of cyber threats as well as understand how they can better protect themselves.

(Look: Watch cyber attacks as they happen in real time via Threatwatch )

Aliya Sternstein, NextGov senior correspondent and Threatwatch curator, recently spoke with us on the Excellence in Government Podcast about how the need for a tool like Threatwatch has never been greater.

“[Cyber attacks are] hitting people regardless of how much money they have or how powerful they are,” said Sternstein, citing an increased awareness of the indiscriminate nature of cyber breaches among government organizations and everyday citizens alike. “As you’re reading the incidents [on Threatwatch], you can see how the hackers got into these systems and, knowing how the trick was pulled off, reverse engineer the hack so you can better protect yourself.”

To hear the entire interview, listen or subscribe to the Excellence in Government Podcast.

Learn more about Threatwatch .

]]>

Why You’re Failing to Change Your Organization (And How to Do It Better)

Mark Micheli — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 17:24:00 -0400

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

According to author Gregory Shea, 75 percent of change initiatives fail. It’s seeking to understand why change fails--and how it can be done better--that drove Shea and co-author Cassie Solomon to write their new book Leading Successful Change .

Shea recently talked with us on the Excellence in Government Podcast and discussed just why so many organizations fail to change their culture and get the results they want. The reason, he said? Behavior.

Shea argues that change lives at the behavioral level, not the 30,000 foot view of organizations where so many conversations occur. When leaders talk about cultural change, what they’re really talking about is people change--specifically, the behaviors and actions people exhibit changing.

“One of the things that’s been particularly striking [about organizations over the years] is the absence of conversational time,” said Shea. “Actually coming up with blocks of time where...you get off the river to talk about what you’re going to do on the river. To actually create the time where you can say, ‘What are we trying to create here?’”

According to Shea, change begins with a vision. Painting a picture (sometimes literally) of actions that would occur if things were running in an ideal fashion. For instance, it’s not enough to say you want people to be proactive. Shea argues you need to get more specific, literally writing out scenes--like in a play--that you hope to see occuring in your organization.

“What would a scene that, if it unfolded, [your team] would say, ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about! That’s it!’”

Listen to the Excellence in Government Podcast to hear more of Shea’s advice on how to lead successful change.

]]>

Watch Curiosity’s First Year on Mars in This Hypnotic Two Minute Time-lapse

Mark Micheli — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:13:00 -0400

Hard to believe it’s almost been one year since Curiosity Rover, “Mohawk Guy” and “7 Minutes of Terror” all became part of the vocabulary we immediately associate with NASA.

On Aug. 6, 2012 Curiosity touched down in Mars’ Gale Crater, marking a significant achievement in unmanned interplanetary exploration. To commemorate the rover’s year meandering the red planet, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a series of 548 images captured from a fisheye camera mounted on Curiosity’s underbelly. Strung together, the two minute time-lapse shows Curiosity exploring the Martian surface, collecting soil samples and drilling rocks, all while the background scenery hypnotically changes from alien landscape to alien landscape.

Congrats to Curiosity on your year away from home! Share your reflections on Curiosity’s year with the JPL team on Twitter via the hastag #1yearonmars

See the time-lapse below:

]]>

USDA Paid $36 Million to a Lot of Dead People

Mark Micheli — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:59:00 -0400

The title of the GAO report really says it all: “USDA Needs to Do More to Prevent Improper Payments to Deceased Individuals.”

That stark pronouncement comes after a recent GAO audit discovered that three USDA agencies had made $36 million in improper payments to 6,336 dead people between 2008 and 2012.

The USDA spends $20 billion annually on programs that support 1 million participants through income assistance, crop insurance and disaster relief. “Over the course of time, farmers who are enrolled in these programs may pass away,” GAO official Daniel Garcia-Diaz said on GAO’s Watchdog Report podcast. “If nobody notifies USDA or the agency doesn’t have any particular steps to identify deceased farmers, it’s possible that payments or other benefits may accrue to deceased individuals.”

Of the three agencies GAO scrutinized, only one had procedures in place to prevent improper payments to the dead. The Farm Service Agency (FSA) used a procedure that compared program participants against the Social Security Administration’s death rolls. This procedure allowed FSA to flag 28,613 deceased individuals, of which six percent, or 1,799 individuals, improperly received $3.3 million over two years—but $1 million has been recovered.

Two other agencies, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Risk Management Agency (RMA) didn’t fair as well. Neither agency had any procedure in place. The GAO audit found that, between 2008 and 2012, NRCS made $10.6 million in payments to individuals who had been dead for one year or more. Over the same period of time, RMA paid $22 million to the dead.

In the GAO’s report, the agency recommended that the three USDA agencies either tighten or, better yet, develop data-mining procedures that ensure payments aren’t being made to the deceased.

See the full report here.

]]>

Sequestration Got You Down? Embrace It, Says Defense Leader

Mark Micheli — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 18:20:00 -0400

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

Looking for more defense news? Introducing Defense One , delivering the news, analysis and ideas that will define the future of U.S. national security. Visit DefenseOne.com

Sequestration is here and, by the looks of things, it’s not going anywhere. Welcome to reality. At the Defense Department, this reality has set in and leaders are moving forward. Beth McGrath, Defense’s Deputy Chief Management Officer, is one such leader tasked with making sure her behemoth organization does just that.

“On any given day we’re not sure what is…going to hit us,” McGrath says of the current budgetary and managerial environment. “It really is about optimizing what we do today but ensuring that we have capacity for the next thing that we may or may not be aware of.”

While things aren’t easy, more so than any other organization it’s the Defense Department’s job to be agile enough to respond to and support any contingency, says McGrath. Sequestration has come and its time to make the most of the opportunities it presents, she says.

“I think with the fiscal environment being the way it is, now is the time to put those new, different ideas on the table,” she advises rising leaders. “We’re all looking for [innovative ideas].”

“People have a terrific opportunity everyday to lead,” she says, more so than at any other time “they should take it.”

To hear the entire interview, listen or subscribe to the Excellence in Government Podcast.

Looking for more defense news? Introducing Defense One , delivering the news, analysis and ideas that will define the future of U.S. national security. Visit DefenseOne.com

]]>

How The States Got Their Names

Mark Micheli — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 16:00:00 -0400

Among the many things I take for granted while exploring new places are names. I recently took a trip that had me hit up Wyoming, Utah and Idaho (really, the best tri-state combination there is) and never stopped to ponder, where did these states get their names?

The below infographic from designer Alfonso Moreno will settle that question once and for all. Being from Illinois, I knew its etymology was Native American, but it might surprise you to know that:

54 percent of the state’s names have Native American origins
Followed by English (16 percent)
Spanish (14 percent)
and French (12 percent)

Explore all the information below and let us know if anything surprised you in the comments below.

The Names Behind The States infographic by Fonx .

Image via Yui/Shutterstock

]]>

How the Defense Department Communicates

Mark Micheli — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:15:00 -0400

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

Looking for more defense news? Introducing Defense One , delivering the news, analysis and ideas that will define the future of U.S. national security. Visit DefenseOne.com

Thanks to sequestration and the excellent timing of the GSA conference scandal, travel restrictions have made in-person collaboration difficult in 2013.

At the Defense Department, where civilian and military personnel are located all over the world, technology is essential for bringing people together. John Hale, the chief of enterprise applications at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is tasked with providing the tech tools to help Defense personnel around the world communicate, collaborate and more effectively executive their mission.

Hale and his team manage three major enterprise systems:

DoD Enterprise Mail – A secure cloud-based email service.
DoD Enterprise Portal Service – Cloud-based collaboration suite (think SharePoint)
Defense Connect Online – Everything from file sharing and screen shares to instant messaging and video teleconferencing

Due to budget constraints, these tools have been more important than ever. In a three month period of time, demand on Defense Connect Online grew by 33 percent, Hale recently told us on the Excellence in Government Podcast. “It’s just that sharp this year.”

Hale joined us to discuss how DISA is helping connect the military, the challenges of developing and maintaining tools that serve more than 850,000 users around the globe and how federal managers looking to implement new technology can take that first step.

To hear the entire interview, listen or subscribe to the Excellence in Government Podcast.

Looking for more defense news? Introducing Defense One , delivering the news, analysis and ideas that will define the future of U.S. national security. Visit DefenseOne.com

]]>

Infographic: The Benefits of Biking to Work

Mark Micheli — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:00:00 -0400

If you live anywhere along the eastern seaboard, biking to work may not be up your alley this week—with high humidity and scorching heat projected through most of the week. But if you’re willing to sweat a little (or a lot), the benefits of biking to work are pretty significant.

According to the below infographic from Fitness for Weight Loss , a health and wellness website, people who bike to work have better blood pressure, insulin and triglyceride levels as well as greater sense of wellbeing and higher tolerance for stress. And it can be a great way to lose weight, with the potential to burn 200 – 300 calories on your 30 minute commute. What’s more, the average person loses about 13 lbs. in their first year of biking to work.

Government employees are no stranger to pedaling instead of driving. In an effort to cut green house gas emissions and increase employee wellness, each May kicks off the Federal Bike to Work Challenge .

Though it may be hot as heck this summer, biking to work might be just the thing you need to mix up your morning grind. Just be sure to grab a water bottle before you head out the door.

Source: FitnessforWeightLoss

Image via Arek_malang/Shutterstock.com

]]>

The Doctor Is In

Mark Micheli — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0400

I’m a little underslept today,” Dr. Francis Collins laughs, sitting in his office in the historic Building 1 of the National Institutes of Health’s sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md., where he presides as the dean of the nation’s health.

They say Collins is indefatigable. He has accomplished so much in his career—from sequencing the human genome to running the largest biomedical research agency in the world—he must not need much sleep.

But on this sunny April afternoon Collins looks as if he could use a nap. Not because of the weightiness of NIH’s mission to prevent disease and prolong human life, but because the previous night he stayed up late to appear on Comedy Central’s talk show The Colbert Report to discuss the BRAIN Initiative, NIH’s audacious project to map the human brain.

It’s possible no public servant is better equipped than Collins to go toe to toe with the bombastic faux-conservative Stephen Colbert. Defying the caricature of a buttoned-up scientist, the 6-foot-4, 63-year-old NIH chief plays guitar in a rock-and-roll band and rides a Harley on weekends. He actually got his start in theater. Home-schooled in rural Virginia, Collins’ father was a drama professor and his mother a playwright. “I was shoved onto the stage by the time I was 5 years old,” he says.

Many officials are explicitly warned not to subject themselves to one of Colbert’s unpredictable interviews, but it was Collins’ fourth appearance on the show.

“He does like medical research,” Collins says of Colbert, whose late father had been a renowned medical doctor and served as associate director for extramural programs at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases— one of the 27 institutes and centers Collins oversees. It turns out Colbert, like a majority of Americans—54 percent of whom, according to the nonprofit Research!America, would pay $1 more in taxes each week to support medical research—believes in the work of NIH.

Collins subjects himself to the madness for the same reason every other guest does: the exposure. One of his many objectives as NIH director is public education, to inspire the next generation of scientists. “Any opportunity to do that seems like it’s worth taking some risks,” he says.

The agency, he says, is “the rock upon which American biomedical research excellence and success has been placed.” With a budget of more than $30 billion—83 percent of which funds extramural, or outside, research—NIH supports more than 300,000 scientists at more than 2,500 universities and institutions across all 50 states. Another 10 percent goes to intramural research performed by 6,000 NIH scientists.

But Collins must preserve NIH’s scientific mission after a decade of flat or declining budgets and now sequestration. Because of the perilous budget outlook, many of the young people he is trying to reach might never find employment in the field he hopes will capture their imagination. The current period of political dysfunction has resulted in real hardship for the federal sector and the biomedical research community particularly, according to Collins, who says he never imagined it would get this bad.

Sequestration “was supposed to be this poison pill that was so painful, so destructive that it would never come to pass and yet the Congress swallowed it and we all get poisoned,” he says. “It’s unimaginable that our country, which prides itself on science, technology, innovation and reason, would have allowed this outcome to occur. But here we are.”

Seizing the Moment

The one thing Collins’ mother told him not to do was become a federal employee. The pay isn’t great and the bureaucracy is even worse, she told him. Yet 20 years later, perhaps as a latent form of rebellion, he remains. For 15 years he was head of the National Human Genome Research Institute—the outgrowth of the famous Human Genome Project, which culminated in 2000 at the White House with Collins, alongside President Clinton, announcing the first full mapping of human DNA. After briefly leaving NIH in 2008, Collins was asked to join the Obama transition team, which he says was “sort of a temporary dedication.” That was, until President Obama asked him to become NIH director.

“It clearly didn’t seem like this was going to be an easy time,” says Collins, who assumed the role during the depths of the recession in August 2009. “And it has not been, just in terms of the resources that are continually being whittled away . . . But even in difficult fiscal times there are things that need to happen, and I’m determined to push that agenda as far as I can.”

Despite the air of austerity, Collins’ colleagues say his strength as a communicator and ability to seize the moment have driven significant achievements at NIH—both bureaucratic and scientific.

As some solace to his mother, perhaps it was those formative years on stage that molded him into what his associates call a masterful communicator. Collins is known to bust out his guitar and parody science via song at NIH functions. “It breaks down barriers,” Collins says, noting that by making himself the most vulnerable and silliest person in the room, he can make stuffy scientific forums more human. “If you get everybody to sing together, [the dynamic] is totally different from that point forward.”

Michael Stitzel, a postdoctoral fellow, has worked in Collins’ lab for seven years (yes, he still manages a lab at NIH). “The beauty of his communications style is that it doesn’t matter what level he’s talking to, he can convey his ideas very clearly—he’s a very clear thinker,” says Stitzel. “He can turn [the technical jargon] up or turn it down as need be.”

Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman, a geneticist and former postdoctoral researcher at NIH, says Collins has a remarkable ability to explain complex scientific issues in language anyone can understand. “He doesn’t talk down to his audiences, but what he does is make sure he brings them along,” she says, “And I think that’s a very powerful quality in a leader.”

From the Human Genome Project to NIH, Collins has a record of harnessing complex organizations in a town where getting things done tends to be a foreign concept.

In December 2011, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences was established at his behest, something that caused quite a stir. It required the dissolution of the National Center for Research Resources, as well as approval from the scientific community and, most tricky of all, Congress.

There are some 7,000 diseases that affect humans, fewer than 500 of which have any treatment. Translational science seeks to close that gap by turning basic science into treatments that directly improve human health. On average, it takes 13 years before a discovery in a lab produces a new drug or therapy to treat an illness. Along the way, 95 percent of translations fail, and those that succeed can ultimately cost more than $1 billion. The Center for Translational Sciences, still in its infancy and its effectiveness unknown, was designed to be different—bringing together industry, leveraging data and focusing on deliverables to speed the process up and keep the costs down.

“Many people really thought we were moving too fast,” says Collins. “I take that as a badge of courage. If you’re in the government and somebody says you’re moving too fast, maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

His next area of focus was on what Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, considers the next frontier of scientific exploration: mapping the human brain.

“Once Francis looked at the breadth and depth and wealth of exciting research in the brain sciences, he began to think seriously about a major initiative,” says Landis. The BRAIN Initiative, which stands for brain research through advancing innovative neurotechnologies, is a $100 million public-private partnership between NIH, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and several nonprofits to unlock the secrets of the human brain. “Making progress on the burden of neurological disorders, if you think of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, is going to require a much better understanding than we currently have,” says Landis.

President Obama previewed the BRAIN Initiative, which is styled after the Human Genome Project, in his 2013 State of the Union address, noting its scientific and economic importance. “Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy—every dollar,” Obama said.

Biomedical research returns about $2 in economic activity for every $1 in taxpayer investment, Collins says, which is why so many in the field are bewildered by the budget situation they are in.

A Bad Year

The five years between 1998 and 2003 is known in the scientific community as “the doubling”—a period in which biomedical research, with bipartisan support, was made a top national priority and NIH’s budget spiked from $13.6 billion to $27.1 billion. Budgets have been flat or declining ever since, with inflation eating away at NIH’s real purchasing power by 22 percent over the past 10 years.

For a scientist seeking funding for a great idea, the chances have decreased. In fact, they’ve been cut by almost half. In 2000, the chance of an investigator’s grant application being approved was on average 32 percent; in 2012, the odds were 18 percent. Depending on which center a researcher applies to, the approval rate can be as low as 10 percent.

“It’s a bad year to have a good idea,” says Mary Wolley, president of Research!America, which is pushing to make health research a national priority.

As a result of sequestration, the life sciences are projected to lose 20,500 jobs this year. NIH’s fiscal 2013 budget fell by $1.71 billion, or 5.5 percent, compared with fiscal 2012. “That’s the size of my whole budget for a year,” says Landis, referring to the $1.6 billion budget for the Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. If sequestration is not reversed, NIH could lose $19 billion over the next 10 years.

A recent Research!America poll showed a majority of Americans, 83 percent, believe that investing in medical innovation has a role in creating jobs and fueling the economy. In addition, an ABC News/Washington Post poll published in May reported 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the sequester. That sentiment is echoed on both sides of the aisle, particularly when it comes to cutting NIH funding.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is no fan of government spending and was recently named the 12th most conservative senator by National Journal, a sister publication of Government Executive. But when it comes to cutting medical research, he is firmly against it. “We shouldn’t be cutting back on that at all,” says Coburn, who is also a doctor. “We’re almost at a new frontier in terms of medical research and scientific discovery . . . We have so much waste in other areas of the government that we shouldn’t have to cut NIH at all—as matter of fact, we should be doubling it again.”

Accounting for the sequester, Collins recently told Congress that NIH intends to award 700 fewer grants, compared with 2012, any number of which he contends could have led to a significant discovery.

“The thing about funding research is that it’s not like a light switch,” says Chris Hansen, president of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. “You can’t just turn it on and off. When you turn the switch off you’re not only losing the benefit of the research that would go on now, you’re losing the benefit of the research that led up to that point.”

Workforce Woes

In the science world, telling someone you’re pursuing a doctoral degree in biomedical research is like saying you’re majoring in theater—you might make it, but the odds aren’t good.

“There are times I think I’m crazy for continuing in this with shrinking budgets and much higher competition,” says Stitzel, 35, the postdoctoral fellow in Collins’ lab who is looking for a faculty position. “[Young scientists] are all writing grants, we’re trying to get funding, we’re thinking of starting labs—but it’s so discouraging.”

Scientists seeking NIH funding spend more time writing grants than doing science, says Collins. With success rates for new research grants as low as one in 10, many researchers who received the green light are now seeing their projects frozen due to sequestration. And those who succeed in getting funding likely have a saint’s patience. The average age of a researcher winning his first independent NIH grant last year was 44, up from 36 in 1980.

As countries like Germany, Singapore, India and China increase their investments in biomedical research, the United States stands out with its spending cuts. Many scientists consider leaving the country or moving to industry, where the pay and occupational stability are much higher, says Tilghman, who co-led an NIH-commissioned task force to study the biomedical workforce. Once they leave the field they rarely come back.

The starting salary for NIH-funded postdoctorates is about $39,000 a year. After spending seven or more years in postdoctoral training, those who get tenured positions as new associate professors of biomedical research can expect to make $68,000. In industry, starting pay for Ph.D.s can be closer to $80,000 to $100,000 a year.

In the private sector, the focus is short-term and profit-driven research. It can take years for government-funded basic research to pay off. It’s a process of trial and error that is the backbone of scientific progress, and something industry shareholders have little patience for, according to Collins.

He and others worry the already difficult environment, made worse by sequestration, will result in a lost generation of scientists—an impact that won’t be felt for decades.

“It is hard to prove a negative,” says Collins. “We will not know what grant that was going to lead to the next breakthrough in cancer research didn’t quite make the cut. We will not know what brilliant scientists, who were going to win a Nobel Prize, basically gave up because of the failure to get support from the current system and decided to do something else or move to another country. We won’t know. That is the sad tale that is wrapped up in all of this.”

Spreading Hope

If the success of NIH leadership were judged in dollars and cents, Collins would not fare well. “I certainly can’t claim that I’ve been able to turn the tide here in terms of support for research,” he says. “Under my particular directorship the support for NIH has sunk to the lowest level, proportionally, than it’s been in years. That’s not something to feel very proud about.”

But few in the field would categorize Collins’ tenure that way.

“I would be the first person to be critical, honestly,” says Hansen, who’s American Cancer Society is the largest nongovernmental funder of cancer research in the United States. “I think he’s doing the best job anybody can humanly do under these circumstances. Partly because of Dr. Collins, people understand how stupid and mindless the [sequester is].”

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, says Collins is masterful at explaining the promise of biomedical research. “I’ve never ended a conversation with him without feeling smarter and more hopeful for the future,” he says.

Collins seeks to spread that hope—to share the stories of progress at NIH—from Congress to Colbert to the families affected by diseases that he and his team strive to defeat. Challenges and all, Collins’ passion for the job is reflected in his vision for the future.

“This is just an amazing time in terms of science,” he says. “The ability to unravel mysteries that have stumped us for all of human history—and here we have the talented people working on this and the tools to do this. How could you not be inspired by being able to stand at the helm of this ship and try and steer it in the right direction?”

Notable NIH Research Programs

BRAIN Initiative Announced by President Obama in April, the BRAIN Initiative is a $100 million effort to develop brain-mapping technologies that can observe neural activity in real time, helping treat diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (tcga)TCGA has sequenced the DNA of more than 20 types of cancer. By observing molecular changes in cancer cells,scientists are identifying commonalities between cancers and developing treatments that cater to patients’ unique genetic profiles.

Universal Flu Vaccine Recent advances in understanding proteins common in all strains of flu have put NIH researchers within striking distance of a universal flu vaccine—one that would eliminate the need for yearly flu shots, saving lives and reducing costs.

Human Microbiome (HMP) Fungus, bacteria and other microbes live all over our bodies, outnumbering human cells 10 to 1. HMP studies these microbial communities to better understand their connection to development, immunity and nutrition.

]]>

The One Question The Best Federal Leaders Ask Themselves

Mark Micheli — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 17:44:00 -0400

Listen to the story:

Download this episode | Subscribe on iTunes

Shelly Metzenbaum, the Office of Management and Budget’s former Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management, recently joined us on the Excellence in Government Podcast to reflect on her time with OMB and share what she’s seen separate high performing agencies from the rest.

High performing government leaders ask themselves this simple question—and have a clear answer:

“What are we trying to accomplish?”

Metzenbaum says the key to becoming a high performing government organization lies in leadership, at all levels, asking that one question.

“It’s a commitment to being clear about what you’re trying to accomplish,” says Metzenbaum. “[To figuring] out how you’re going to measure and know whether or not you’re going to make a difference.”

After four years with the administration, Metzenbaum says she saw countless examples where government agencies got clear about their goals—what they were trying to accomplish—and that performance improvements were never far behind.

According to Metzenbaum, having outcome focused goals enabled:

The Department of Education to make progress in turning around low performing schools.
The Department of the Interior to increase the amount of renewable energy being produced on public lands.
And the IRS to improve electronic tax filing rates.

“There are incredibly exciting things happening in government performance,” she said. “I think people are starting to appreciate the power of a goal, the power of measurement . . . seeing these things as real power tools that improve government performance.”

Hear Metzenbaum’s full interview by listening or subscribing to the Excellence in Government Podcast on iTunes.

]]>

We’ve Been Whining About ‘Modern’ Life for Over 100 Years

Mark Micheli — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:45:00 -0400

Do you think, thanks to technology, that modern life moves too fast? That email is too fast and frequent, overwhelming the senses and cheapening our correspondence? Or that we’ve forgotten how to relax (especially in cities) and that we spend too much “family time” staring into our own personal devices, rather than talking or going on long walks?

If so, you’re not alone. In fact, as cartoonist Randall Munroe demonstrates in the comic series xkcd , we’ve been complaining about the exact same stuff for more than 100 years. Munroe assembled a series of excerpts dating back to 1871 in which authors of the time bemoaned the pace of modern life, pined for days gone by and lamented the decline of human social interaction.

See below:

What's old is new. Has "modern life" ever not been a pain to the generation living through it?

]]>