Weekly Round-up - January 14, 2011

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

• The New York Times reports that our current privacy laws are being obsolesced by the web.  Along those lines, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has launched a site that details administration's plans for trusted online identities.
• Everyone loves talking about the weather.  Now NOAA helps us visualize it. And if you want more, NOAA's National Weather Service helps us analyze snowfall. 
• Finally, this article is nearly a year old, but it's worth reading as agencies increasingly turn to crowdsourcing: "Crowdsourcing is Broken: How to Fix It"  Author Scott Belsky rightly asks what's so great about a business model in which many people work for free in the small hopes that some of them will get paid?  He points out that this is not a fully sustainable approach.

John Kamensky

• New Performance Bill Adds Consequences for Missed Goals. In a radio interview with Federal News Radio reporter Frances Rose, John Kamensky discusses the new GPRA Modernization Act of 2010. Also, here is a link to a blog series describing the key provisions in the new law, along with a short video clip (which we are experimenting with as a new feature of our weekly “Roundup!”

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• Rulemaking 2.0. Federal Computer Week’s Alice Lipowicz highlights a new report from the Cornell Law School that says Web 2.0 tools could increase citizen engagement and transparency into the federal rulemaking process. “Public participation in online rulemaking is hurt by ignorance of the process, lack of awareness of specific rulemaking formats and schedules and information overload and complexity,” wrote authors Clair Cardie, Dan Cosley, Cynthia Farina and Mary Newhart.

• Cloud Computing: Implementation Issues. A NextGov article by Katherine Peters, “Security Isn’t the Only Barrier to Cloud Computing” describes how software licensing issues must also be addressed in order to move to their computing from their servers to “the cloud.” Not insurmountable, but an issue that must be managed in implementation.

Dan Chenok

• Fed leaders say that cloud computing requires innovative licensing approach 
• Senate leadership raising the security and privacy stakes
• Administration moves out on privacy leadership 
• Expertnet -- a new tool to for government to leverage the best that is thought and known.

Business of Government Radio Show: Julie Paradis

The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The executives discuss their careers and the management challenges facing their organizations. Past government executives include Administrators, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Commissioners, Controllers, Directors, and Undersecretaries.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack said of Ms. Paradis, "For more than three decades, Paradis has worked to improve national food and nutrition programs and she will now be able to hit the ground running to enhance how these programs are delivered to the American people."  Julie Paradis is the Administrator for the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C.

Each week, The Business of Government Hour interviews government executive who are changing the way government does business. The show airs four times a week on two radio stations in the DC Metro Area. If you can't wait, though, we also put it online. You can also search our audio archives for your favorite interview.