GovernmentExecutive.com

Snow

Over the past two weeks a number of outdoor enthusiasts tested their equipment against the elements in the mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. But for one couple who was out snowboarding that test turned dangerous when they got lost in the mountains near Santa Fe. The couple did have a cell phone with them, which allowed search teams to narrow down their location by triangulating with nearby cell towers.

But because the couple did not have a compass, they told searchers they were north of their starting point rather than five miles south, where they eventually were found by a New Mexico National Guard helicopter crew after the couple spent three days and nights awaiting rescue in often near-whiteout blizzard conditions.

Handheld GPS receivers and cell phones with location capabilities were big sellers this holiday season, but they work best in the hands of cautious folks who hit the trails outfitted with old-fashioned tools such as a compass and a paper map.

Trains

Earlier this month a computer technician from California working in a suburb north of New York City faithfully followed the directions of his GPS satellite navigation system, which, unfortunately, directed him to turn directly onto the train tracks of the Metro-North Railroad -- where his car got stuck.

The driver abandoned his car, which was then stuck by a train, stranding 500 passengers for a couple of hours, causing the cancellation of three other trains and 90-minute delays for 10 other trains on the main route from New York City's Grand Central Terminal to the northern suburbs.

Metro-North spokesman Dan Brucker described the freak incident as "one computer brain listening to another" and said the driver will be held liable for the damage to the train, track and lost revenues.

TSAT Headed for Limbo?

The Air Force awarded this week to Boeing and Lockheed Martin six-month extensions to the Transformational Communication Satellite Space Segment Risk Reduction and System Definition contract, valued at $75 million each. The contracts reflect the new budget realities of a project whose estimated costs continue to spiral upward -- $16 billion and counting at the moment.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are getting the extra bucks and an extension in the risk reduction contract from January to July to cover "contract closeout review" and ensure that laser cross-link technologies and next-generation processor router technologies are maintained at a "technology readiness level 6" until the award of the development and production phase of the program.

Hmmm, exactly what does "contract closeout review" mean, and what does keeping technologies at readiness level 6 mean?

I asked the Air Force for a plain English explanation of these. But instead, I received two paragraphs of gobbledygook from the Space and Missile Systems Center, which made no sense at all, and one that did, sort of.

The TSAT bottom line is that Congress whacked 2008 TSAT funding by $150 million and SMC said it is "now refining its FY08 execution plan. It would be inappropriate at this time to discuss budgetary actions and decisions involving the president's budget request for fiscal year 2009, which will be formally delivered to Congress in February."

I'm told TSAT funds will be cut way back in the 2009 budget, with the program placed in caretaker status. That explains why Boeing and Lockheed Martin received the extra bucks now to maintain the laser cross-links and space-based router in some sort of techno-limbo.

Attaboy for VA Health IT Systems

The Congressional Budget Office sent the Veterans Affairs Department what amounts to a year-end love note in its "Health Care System for Veterans" report, which was released in December.

The CBO said while the number of patients seen in VA hospitals and clinics has increased dramatically over the past few years, so has patient satisfaction and overall rating for quality of care.

These improvements, the CBO report said, stem from organizational management shifts designed to share decision making between central offices, regional managers and hospitals and clinics, and performance measurements targeted to improve the quality of care, and extensive use of health information technology systems.

The CBO report held up VA health IT systems - especially the VistA electronic health record -- as worthy of imitation.

So, why, oh why, does the VA want to replace VistA?