November 17th, 2009

Do former CEOs make better politicians than career diplomats?

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ November 17, 2009 @ 5:48 AM

Categories: Congress, Elections, Open government, Senate, State & Local Govt, White House, california, politics

Tags: Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, President, Politics, Theodore Roosevelt, Professional Development, Career, Doug Hanchard

Both Meg Whitman (E-Bay) and Carly Fiorina (HP) are entering U.S. politics in California where anything is possible. Both were high tech corridor heavyweights managing two of the largest ICT corporations in the world. Ross Perot (EDS) tried to run for President - twice. Some considered his chances weak in the beginning, yet he almost pulled it off, some analyst suggest. Former Vice President Cheney while CEO of Halliburton between 1995 and 2000, has always been in politics starting in 1969 until his retirement last year.

U.S. Governments generally elect career politicians, rising through the ranks from town councils, state legislatures and finally federal institutions. Many have careers spanning 40+ years. Congressman John Dingell of Michigan has served in office since 1955 and is the longest serving elected House member in history.

There are two other sources of diplomats. One is not too far distant from the political spectrum, the other is. The first is the military, Gen Eisenhower (President) , Gen Colin Powell (Secretary of State), and several generals since the civil war went into politics at various levels. One of the surprises in the 20th century was General Douglas MacArthur’s decision not to enter politics despite many who felt he would have won a Presidential race in 1952. Theodore Roosevelt has the distinction of serving first in politics, leaving to enter the military (1898 Spanish-American War) and reenter politics eventually becoming the 26th U.S. President from 1901 to 1909.

The other source is actors such as former President Regan, Fred Thompson (Senator), Clint Eastwood (Mayor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Gov of California) and many others. The track records of each are likely to be debated forever.

The corporate world has not had significant leadership roles in recent U.S. elections. The question often arises as to why. The answers vary from scrutiny, pay, and general consensus; it’s easier to influence change from outside the political arena than from within. Should be an interesting news cycle watching Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina’s attempts getting elected in California. Silicon Valley may not be the safe haven they think it is. Fiorina is challenging three-term Senator Barbara Boxer (who’s been in federal politics since 1983) while Whitman is going up against the Terminator who’s been Governor since 2003.

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November 13th, 2009

Life insurance may prove difficult to get if you contract H1N1

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ November 13, 2009 @ 11:06 AM

Categories: Canada, Congress, Databases, E-government, Healthcare, Obama, Privacy, Public health, Regulations, State & Local Govt, White House

Tags: Insurance Company, Health Care, Life Insurance, H1N1 Flu, Insurance, Benefits, Vertical Industries, Healthcare, Financial Planning, Personal Finance

President Obama wants to ensure health insurance companies cannot deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition. This has key component of the President’s health care reform package going through the U.S. Congress.  He may have another challenge lying ahead - life insurance.  Already some insurance carriers in Canada, because of the pandemic H1N1 Virus, are asking on application forms if they have contracted it. In a Sun Media / Peterborough Examiner news article, this could lead to future profiling of consumers health and may eliminate the ability to get life insurance for some.

This may also force strict guidelines on health information privacy that a health insurance provider has in its database and ensuring that life insurance companies do not have access to it. It is legal to ask about a consumers current health and personal lifestyle habits such as smoking, but it does not bar you from getting coverage, only that it may have affect on what your monthly or yearly premiums will cost.

The debate this opens up is more than a few simple questions and no easy answers.

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October 30th, 2009

ZDNet Government version of Throw out the Trash Day

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 30, 2009 @ 1:12 PM

Categories: Blogs, Congress, E-government, FCC, Government 2.0, Government technology, Journalism, Open government, State & Local Govt, Telecom, UK, White House

Tags: FCC, Web Site, Wired Magazine, Web Site Development, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Web Technology, Federal Government, Internet, Government, Doug Hanchard

Friday is always an interesting day to report news. In the hit political drama series produced and written by Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing, he came up with how the White House Press Secretary got into a routine with staffers in the Communications office to gather up all the news that should be announced, but prayed nobody read about it. Well guess what, covering the news on Government issues can be the same! So every Friday, it will be Take out the Trash Day .

Here’s my take on some news that isn’t all that interesting but still made it online somewhere….

Throw out the trash day

From the New York Times - Governor of California sends secret code message (this too was a story line in one of the episode of  The West Wing) - Arnold got some pretty good writers!

Wired Magazine says an ISP owner still under gag order by the FBI. Wonder if the ISP had any other news to report, like are customer connections still working?

The BBC found thieves who think copper is still worth stealing from British Telecom - an entire Kilometer ripped out from a conduit by truck!

Minister of Environment for Australia jumps onto the smart grid energy bandwagon.  Soon the entire world will have governments and utility companies capable of remotely shutting off your electricity and you won’t have a choice.

Also included on the last Friday of each month, I will blog my take on the best and worst government websites. Send me an email if you find ones that I should rate. At the end of the year I’ll announce the ‘awards’ of each category.

Best Website for month of October for Content

City of Los Angeles

Best Website - Organization of Content

Whitehouse, Washington D.C.

Most innovative government website:

Open Internet by the FCC

Worst website for Content

City of New York

Worst website - Organization of content

Federal Communications Commission

October 21st, 2009

Net Neutrality: Hit satire coming to a theatre near you

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 21, 2009 @ 5:49 AM

Categories: Congress, Government technology, Journalism, Net neutrality, Open government, Telecom, White House

Tags: Net Neutrality, Actor, Doug Hanchard

The world is a simple place, until someone wants to tell you what to do.  The realization that not everyone believes in common ground that surrounds each of us seems to be a new discovery to some. The sanctity of individual requirements is wrapping around our lives with a plethora of effects that will have long term consequences. Hey - wake up!! Don’t go to sleep reading this post just yet! Allow me to entertain you. After all, one component of a Internet blog is to entertain, right?

Net Neutrality is a theatre stage play written in Washington D.C. and this is a glimpse of what’s happening behind the scenes. There’s a pile of actors dancing around ready to be heard by you in the audience. What you don’t know is that the audience is about to watch chaos in motion amongst the actors and not realize that many simply turn around and walk out before they even get to their seats. The show is the story about Net Neutrality that never settles down. Right off the bat, the writer has lost control of the script because of all the request for rewrites. The producer doesn’t even remember what the storyline is. I’m usually asleep by Act II if it’s Opera and if this play doesn’t figure out what it IS soon, I won’t even finish writing this blog! The story…right….about Net Neutrality, I think.

The players are the same ones we’ve become used to. Government, Corporations, and Consumers. Mixed in with those groups are the supporting actors; lobbyist, agents and the commentators. All the players described are going to make money, except one. You do know which group that is, right? Read the rest of this entry »

October 20th, 2009

Electronic voting: Changing the world faster than a Windows upgrade

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 20, 2009 @ 10:07 AM

Categories: Blogs, Canada, E-government, Elections, Government 2.0, Government technology, International, Microsoft, Open government, Social networks, Twitter, Web services, White House

Tags: Microsoft Windows, Web Site, Whitehouse, Government, Internet, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Vertical Industries, Portals, E-voting

The world changes every day and often our lives get impacted every second by outcomes out of our domain or control.  Government institutions and the leaders we elected change political behaviors at a slower pace. Lawmakers react along party lines and tout change as the promised path to improvements. They have four years, sometimes longer, in office to create change.  It can take decades for policies and laws to actually happen in many parts of the world. The Internet world is pushing to shorten those time lines.

Computers, smart phones, and applications are now a part of the social fabric that we all use. It seems we are a very vocal bunch. No longer is it about having your own website or voice on a newsgroup posting — that’s old stuff. Today, it’s being a part of a social network both as an individual and a group or business. You join different clubs and organizations, sign virtual petitions and speak out on issues and still talk to your lost long family, friends and make new ones.

Who would have ever thought that 300 million users would be on Facebook in such a short time? Language translation of a web page now takes place in a nanosecond. Nobody should to be left out if they are connected to the Internet. The world access to the Internet is now approximately 1.6 billion people — roughly 25% of the population.

The recent global financial crisis was predictable by computer modeling, some argue — if the regulators around the world had integrated laws and data sharing. That’s unlikely, given the reality of how much risk people were simply willing to take and given the lax rules that existed.  It’s true, some blogs and information about the crisis that occurred exploded on the internet and published on many of the social websites we visit every day. Publishing articles about the disaster are global since it impacted so many people’s lives. Governments have reacted, this time quickly. Financial reforms and bailouts are happening around the world at lightning speed compared to normal government day-to-day ramblings. Government is listening, making fundamental changes in how they govern when they link to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and many others and update almost daily. The White House is linked to all of them!

Are the changes in direction about faces to implementation of such web portals? Is this truly going to change governments and how they create law? As technology, security solutions and applications improve and become trusted, I would not be surprised to see certified referendums, municipal and federal government level voting on specific issues be made available and counted on web sites or portals, a reality within a year in some parts of the world. Some countries are already doing limited online voting (U.K., Canada, Switzerland) for elections. In the U.S., it has been used for primaries. Read the rest of this entry »

July 27th, 2009

Delays, delays on White House cyber positions.

Posted by Richard Koman @ July 27, 2009 @ 3:53 PM

Categories: White House

Tags: Job, White House, Recruitment & Selection, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Richard Koman

Where is the cybersecurity czar? And the White House intellectual property coordinator? The folks for those important federal tech positions have been chosen but there is no sign of announcements being made, NextGov says.

The likely nominees for cyberczar: Howard Schmidt, former White House special adviser for cyberspace security, and Frank Kramer, an assistant Defense secretary under President Bill Clinton. But other names are still being floated: Microsoft Vice President Scott Charney; Obama transition team technology adviser Paul Kurtz; and former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

Davis said he doesn’t want the job and his reasons may have something to do with the delay. He said the job was too ambiguous, what with a reporting structure that leads both to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.

The cyberczar jobs include setting up a framework for interagency collaboration; initiating a national public awareness campaign; developing public-private partnerships; and preparing an incident response plan.

And the Administration has no idea where to put the IP coordinator - Rahm Emanuel has ruled out placement within the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council or National Security Council - that job won’t be filled until a decision is made. Possibilities: The Trade Representative, OMB or the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

OSTP officials previously took pro-tech viewpoints that clashed with the Hollywood crowd, so putting the job there is a nonstarter. OMB isn’t exactly a policy center. The U.S. Trade Representative makes sense, but Congress assigned the coordinator to over see USTR.

May 3rd, 2009

White House 2.0?

Posted by Richard Koman @ May 3, 2009 @ 7:09 PM

Categories: White House

Tags:

Nice snide headline from VentureBeat - Meet White House 2.0, same as White House 1.0 (but on Twitter!) - on the Administration’s bold claim of White House 2.0.

And what do these bold new plans for “White House 2.0″ (the title of the blog post) entail? Basically, creating accounts on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

There is some real potential firepower in a wired presidency - basically the ability to call in millions of supporters to pressure Congress to get in line with the president’s program. But with the Republicans in Congress (such as they are) digging in their heels on the program, the object of said pressure is more likely to be centrist-to-conservative Democrats who have a problem, with say massive deficit spending.

But what really be useful is not so much White House 2.0 as HHS 2.0, BLM 2.0 and Consumer Protection 2.0. So check out the Center for Disease Control’s Swine Flu (er, I mean H1N1) Widgets page, for spreading flu information via everyone’s websites. Not exactly up-to-the-minute flu data but a nice step at exploiting the way the Web works this decade, compared to what we have been seeing.

February 10th, 2009

In move to consolidate cybersecurity, Obama taps Hathaway to lead review

Posted by Richard Koman @ February 10, 2009 @ 5:07 PM

Categories: Security, White House

Tags: White House, Cybersecurity, Melissa Hathaway, Security, Richard Koman

The White House has ordered an immediate, 60-day review of all
cybersecurity activities, to be headed by the woman who will likely be
appointed permanent cyberczar. The review is being led by Melissa
Hathaway, who will serve as Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for
the National Security and Homeland Security Councils during the review
period, the White House says. That has tongues awagging that she will
be the permanent cyberczar after the review period has ended.

According to the official statement:

This 60-day interagency review will develop a strategic framework to ensure that U.S. Government cyber security initiatives are appropriately integrated, resourced and coordinated with Congress and the private sector.

“The national security and economic health of the United States depend on the security, stability, and integrity of our Nation’s cyberspace, both in the public and private sectors. The President is confident that we can protect our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure while at the same time adhering to the rule of law and
safeguarding privacy rights and civil liberties,” said Assistant to
the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan.

The
Wall Street Journal reports that White House plans to create a central
cybersecurity office, with Hathaway at the helm. The 60-day review is
preliminary to the creation of that office.

National Security Adviser James Jones, however, wanted more study of the issue and ordered an independent review, which resulted in the appointment of Ms. Hathaway to the White House post to conduct the review, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Hathaway’s position is a few rungs down from the president, which disappointed Clinton-era security pro Roger Cressey: “They need a nationally known person to run cyber from the White House,” he said. “Otherwise it’s just old wine in a new bottle.”

Hathaway designed a cybersecurity plan for the Bush Administration and previously worked in cybersecurity at Booz Allen.

January 26th, 2009

Tech stimulus: $20b for health care records

Posted by Richard Koman @ January 26, 2009 @ 7:32 PM

Categories: Budget, Healthcare, White House

Tags: Health Care, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, Software, Human Resources, Richard Koman

That $825 billion stimulus package contains a mere $37 billion for tech in three main areas: $20 billion to computerize medical records, $11 billion to create smarter electrical grids and $6 billion to expand high-speed Internet access in rural and underserved communities, The New York Times reports.
The tech requests could result in 900,000 jobs in 2009, according to a study produced for the transition team by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“The appeal of these kinds of investments is that you not only get the stimulative effect but also build a platform for productivity gains and long-term growth,” said Blair Levin, a former senior official at the Federal Communications Commission who was a technology policy adviser on the Obama transition team.

You’ll notice that these three areas don’t really scream out, “Silicon Valley.” Indeed, aside from the scientific/engineering design work at the top, these jobs are pretty much spread out around the country.

“There is a huge implementation phase to the adoption and use of these kinds of technologies locally,” said John Irons, an economist and research director at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “The jobs involved do tend to span the spectrum of skills and income levels. And they are not going to be outsourced offshore.”

The investment in health records may be a wedge towards health industry reform as well as an important infrastructure improvement.

“Paying to put computer hardware and software in physicians’ offices isn’t going to do anything unless you change the incentives in the system,” said Dr. David J. Brailer, former national health information technology coordinator in the Bush administration.

Those incentives could change rapidly. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced HR 676 for universal health care.

All individuals residing in the United States (including any territory of the United States) are covered under the USNHI Program entitling them to a universal, best quality standard of care. Each such individual shall receive a card with a unique number in the mail. An individual’s social security number shall not be used for purposes of registration under this section.