Federal CIO turns attention to troubled technology projects

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra is holding three to four meetings a week with agency CIOs to assess whether troubled technology projects should be halted, terminated or restarted.

The so-called TechStat sessions will increase in 2011, Kundra said Feb. 9 during a conference call with reporters to discuss the administration's proposed fiscal 2011 budget released last week.

The budget requests $50 million in IT spending for the Office of Management and Budget, $20 million of which would be for the TechStat sessions, Kundra said.

"The TechStat sessions are a big part of what we're going to do — review all these investments and take decisive action so we can terminate projects that are not benefiting the American people," he said.

Kundra said he and other officials met recently with the Environmental Protection Agency's CIO to discuss a project that's $30 million over budget and a year behind schedule. After the meeting, Kundra gave the CIO a detailed memo on how to get the project back on course, and he said the EPA agreed to try Kundra's suggestions.

"Part of the 2011 budget looks to increase the velocity and frequency of these sessions," he said.

He said he also invites CIOs and other IT professionals from other agencies to sit in on the TechStat sessions.

"We want to be able to create an environment where CIOs across the federal government feel comfortable sharing best practices," Kundra said.

Kundra's office also plans Web innovations to create a more transparent and mobile government. The administration will relaunch the IT dashboard in the next few months, providing more detail and transparency on the status of federal IT projects, Kundra said.

"You'll see from inception to completion the lifecycle of IT projects," he said.

He also plans dashboards for other government operations, including research and development and procurement.

"We're going to make the operations of the government far more transparent than you've ever seen before," he said.

At National Weather Service, there are no snow days

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors in the Washington area are at home today due to the blizzard. But there's no rest yet for the 25 meteorologists, technicians and other employees at the National Weather Service's Baltimore-Washington forecast office.

Chris Strong, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Weather Service's Sterling, Va., office, said Tuesday afternoon that some employees have camped out at work or stayed in nearby hotels since the snow started Feb. 5. NWS also sent its four-wheel-drive trucks to pick up some employees who couldn't make it out of their neighborhoods Saturday, Strong said.

"Being a 24-hour operation, getting people in and out is important," Strong said. "We've gotten to the point [today] where the main roads are pretty good. Now we're just waiting for the next batch and what that might do." That next batch is expected to begin Tuesday afternoon and run through most of the day Wednesday.

Strong said there were about 11 staffers Tuesday afternoon monitoring the impending snowstorm — Washington's second in less than a week. Weather Service employees are counted as emergency employees, who are exempted from the snow days and half days the Office of Personnel Management declared Feb. 5, 8 and 9.

OPM said employees with telework agreements may have to work from home. National Weather Service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan said she was working from home using the same Blackberry she uses to answer weekend or after-hours calls.

But Strong said most forecast office employees need their work computers and can't telework.

"There are a lot of computer systems we use to produce forecasts that are self-contained due to net security," Strong said.

He said managers began serious preparations for the first storm Feb. 3, and said the office had a staffing plan in place 12 hours before the snow began.

Some employees in the forecast office have had to work overtime, Strong said.

Strong said that despite the bad weather, morale remains high in the forecast office. He said the meteorologists view it as their time to shine.

"Most of us enjoy big winter storms and the challenge of forecasting and getting information out to the public," Strong said. "This is why the Weather Service is here, to protect people from big weather events."

Some employees are bringing food into the office and cooking dinners for themselves and others, he said. And managers haven't had to remind employees to bring a toothbrush or change of clothes in case they get stuck in the office.

"Being tied into the weather, most people know that without us having to tell them," Strong said.

Teleworkers keep DISA humming despite snow

Winter storms may have idled much of the Washington-based federal workforce, but not at the Defense Information Systems Agency, which manages the Defense Department's expansive telecommunications network.

Working remotely is commonplace at DISA, where most employees are outfitted with agency-issued laptops with secure linkups and a suite of collaboration software — such as videoconferencing — to enable teleworking.

So, despite impassable roads and a government shutdown, DISA is "pretty much business as usual," said John Garing, the agency's strategic planning and information director, interviewed from his home in northern Virginia. "It's our culture to be always on — that means us, not just our networks."

Over the last three years, the agency, equipped most headquarters staff with laptops that can securely access DISA's network and myriad collaboration tools. That has allowed approximately 45 percent of DISA's headquarters staff to telework on a normal day, "so in circumstances like this, it's not a big deal," Garing said. Rather than a challenge, teleworking en masse is an opportunity to test continuity of operations plans, he said.

So far, DISA employees have been as productive and effective as they would have been if they were all in the office, Garing said. The agency had a similarly positive teleworking experience during the presidential inauguration last year, he said.

"The fact we have an ingrained teleworking policy does make a difference," Garing said. "It makes it easier for us to adapt and continue to operate."

DISA's networks also continued to operate smoothly despite the snow, he said. Not only are the networks run deep underground to prevent weather-related disruptions, but they're also geographically dispersed and redundant to prevent outages in other circumstances, he said. The dispersed management means that the networks are not dependent on DISA headquarters to run, and any disruption can be quickly resolved, Garing said.

"After 9/11, we've been pretty careful with what we've done," Garing said. "It's always on because it's just too important."

Cybersecurity battle needs ‘sense of urgency,' expert says

The federal government is losing "the sense of urgency" in the cybersecurity battle, says the author of the Obama administration's 2009 cybersecurity report.

Melissa Hathaway, former acting cybersecurity chief, said private and public organizations must work together and take "bold steps forward" to protect vital computer systems and restore that sense of urgency. The discussions over how best to secure the government's networks can't take place just in Washington but should be a national dialogue, she said.

"We need to have a lot more people outside the Beltway talking about what's happening and what they're going to do about it. We need to tell simple stories [about cybersecurity] so everyone can talk about them at the water cooler and dinner table and relate to them," she said.

Hathaway, now a cybersecurity consultant, received the Internet Security Alliance's Dave McCurdy Internet Security Award on Feb. 9, honoring her work in conducting the administration's cyberspace policy review. The review, released last spring, called cyberspace a "strategic national asset" and said more investments in education and technology are needed to protect critical systems.

The review also called for the creation of a White House cybersecurity coordinator, or "czar." Obama named Howard Schmidt, the Bush administration's cybersecurity chief, as the cybersecurity czar in December.

Schmidt is well-qualified for the job, Hathaway said at the award presentation in Washington. She called the cybersecurity czar the "quarterback" harnessing the government's abilities to respond to cyber attacks. Schmidt will need to make himself known around the White House in order to build his influence and secure needed funding, she said.

"The strongest ally that person needs is within the Office of Management and Budget. That's an important partnership to have because that is where all things begin and end with the budget," she said.

Hathaway said interagency communication is crucial to sharing best cybersecurity practices and recognizing possible cyber attack patterns, but some officials may be hesitant to share information for fear of bad publicity.

"How can we be sure sharing vulnerable data from one agency to another will be kept confidential and not appear in news outlets the next day?" she asked.

Hathaway said the U.S. government must work with other countries and with companies to innovate and strengthen security, though information technology managers must keep in mind how different IT solutions would work in different states or countries.

She said a colleague from the Netherlands wasn't able to purchase gas using a credit card in Colorado because he didn't have a ZIP code to enter to validate the card; many gas stations require customers to enter the ZIP code matching their accounts to prevent credit card fraud. She said that example shows an IT solution that didn't meet the needs of a global audience.

"That's an unacceptable innovation, because at the end of the day, they lost the sale. We need to have better innovations," she said.