Author Archive
Tom Temin
Digital Government
Tom Temin | Dear readers
GCN's editor for the last 15 years takes with him a wealth of friendships and an appreciation for the 'talented and selfless' people in government IT.
Digital Government
Tom Temin | Editor's Desk: When less means more
You might have read about professor-media thinker-consultant NicholasNegroponte's project to get governments of poor countries to buy $100 computersfor their children. He described the project when speaking at the recent Management of Change conference of the American Council for Technology.
Digital Government
U.S. Visit's Williams to become commissioner of FAS
Jim Williams, a veteran of some of the government's toughest programs, will be leaving the Homeland Security Department to join the General Services Administration as commissioner of the new Federal Acquisition Service.
Digital Government
Editor's Desk | Fight the Slack
The recent annual Information Processing Interagency Conference featured an astronaut as a speaker. Seeing that on the agenda, I thought, do they still have astronauts? The astronauts' heyday ended with 8-track tapes, or thereabouts. But this guy was different. Mike Mullane, retired Space Shuttle crewmember, was critical of NASA, frank, profane and direct.
Digital Government
EDITOR'S DESK: When to pull the plug
People hate to write off major expenditures that bought little in return.
Digital Government
EDITOR'S DESK: Where governance can help in a crisis
You hear a lot about governance these days.
Digital Government
Redesign needed under the hood, too
A press release last week from a PC manufacturer extolled the company's new desktop machine. It has a cooler-running chassis, uses new Intel technology for better networking and management, and sports numerous hardware innovations.
Digital Government
EDITOR'S DESK: The best way to share intelligence
The debates over renewal of the U.S. Patriot Act, the reorganization of the Homeland Security Department and the brick-by-brick makeover of the FBI have at least one common element.
Infrastructure
EDITOR'S DESK: The fallacy of limits on municipal WiFi
Let's hope that Rep. Jim Sessions' latest legislative gambit goes nowhere.
Cybersecurity
Tectonic forces at the FBI
Only a couple of weeks after the Mark-Felt-was-Deep-Throat revelation came news of far more pressing im- portance to the FBI: The FBI director had agreed to share the selection of the bur- eau's intelligence chief with the director of national intelligence, currently John Negroponte.
Featured eBooks
Digital Government
A fine line on LOB
Agency CIOs face a broad array of issues and concerns in adapting the Office of Management and Budget's Lines-of-Business initiatives into their enterprise architectures.
Infrastructure
EDITOR'S DESK: BRAC plans should look further East
One thing always amazes me about the periodic DOD recommendations to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission: No matter how many places the Defense Department shuttered or threatened the last time around, there are always more outdated or redundant locations.
Digital Government
EDITOR'S DESK: Procurement shift could go too far
In the Offenbach opera 'Tales of Hoffmann,' the protagonist falls in love with a life-size mechanical doll that sings arias.
Digital Government
EDITOR'S DESK: 'He did his job'
It's a wonder Steve Cooper stayed as long as he did.
Digital Government
EDITOR'S DESK: Time to confront the elephant in the room
At a recent conference, an industry executive made a surprisingly frank comment about the state of systems development under federal contracts.
Digital Government
New study: Earlier IRS modernization efforts not a total waste
Remember the failed, multibillion-dollar Tax Systems Modernization effort of the early 1990s'the one that got lawmakers so incensed? Turns out some of the money was well spent.
Digital Government
Reece: 2002 is watershed for IRS modernization
Vowing to maintain a barrage of on-schedule releases of systems and software, IRS CIO John Reece said 2002 will be a 'make-or-break year for IRS modernization.'
Digital Government
More of the same
Our unsurprising election results ensure that the next two years are going to look a lot like the last two. What does this mean? For one thing, agency systems people should batten down the hatches for some rough weather. If recent congressional persecutions of the Agriculture Department and IRS are any indication, agencies are in for a wave of hard-nosed oversight of information systems projects. One Washington lawyer familiar with Hill proclivities predicted the oversight
Digital Government
What's their game?
Buried in bills recently passed by the House and Senate is a provision to "privatize" the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not surprisingly, SEC systems officials are scratching their heads over the meaning of this provision, because most work for EDGAR already is done by contractors.
