ZDNet Government

April 4th, 2008

US Census: The future is paper

Posted by Richard Koman @ April 4, 2008 @ 10:04 AM

Categories: Commerce

Tags: Harris Corp., Government, Handhelds, Vertical Industries, Strategy, Hardware, Enterprise Software, Software, Management, Richard Koman

So it’s not just elections. Seems that paper is the way to go for the national Census, as well. A $600 million contract to Harris Corp. to design and create handheld computers for the census takers is now just yet another government IT fiasco, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, plans to tell Congress today, according to the NextGov blog (or so it claims to be though it sports no RSS).

“Today I am reporting to this committee that we will move forward with the recommendation to use a paper-based [nonresponse follow-up] in the 2010 decennial census,” according to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez’s testimony he plans to give to the House Appropriations Committee on Commerce, Justice and Science, and which Nextgov has obtained.

US Census photo

Seems a dress rehearsal in May 2007 first identified multitudinous problems; a month ago Gutierrez said there were “significant miscommunication concerning technical requirements between the Census Bureau and Harris.”

That smells like typical weak government IT project management syndrome. And Harris was having none of it.

“The handheld devices are one part of a larger, multifaceted process to move from a ‘paper culture’ to an ‘automation’ culture appropriate for the 21st century. We understand that such a significant cultural shift presents organizational challenges to any organization, and Harris is encouraged that automation is moving forward, even if in a more narrowly focused fashion. The company and its industry partners are committed to helping the Census Bureau make the 2010 census the most complete, secure and accurate in history.”

Making the switch back to paper, though unavoidable at this point, raises the cost of the Census some $3 billion to as much as $14.5 billion.

April 4th, 2008

Cyren Call denies it demanded D block payment

Posted by Richard Koman @ April 4, 2008 @ 9:40 AM

Categories: FCC, Emergency

Tags: Payment, Spectrum, PSST, Operational Accounting, Finance, Richard Koman

Cyren Call – the corporation formed to advise the Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corp. — angrily denied accusations that it or PSST demanded spectrum lease payments. Voices in some quarters have been saying that the alleged demands doomed the efforts of Frontline Wireless to compete for the D block and launch a public-private safety network.

In a statement (PDF), Cyren Call CEO Morgan O’Brien said:

Anyone stating or implying that I or any member of Cyren Call or the
Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation (PSST) ‘demanded’ a spectrum lease payment is lying. Furthermore, anyone suggesting that any spectrum lease payment would be paid to Cyren Call is lying.

In the final Bidder Information Document, the PSST included a statement that it “intends to request” the D block winner make an annual lease payment for use of 10MHz of the D block spectrum. In negotiations with companies, Cyren Call threw around the number $50 million as a likely lease amount PSST would request.

Neither Cyren Call nor the PSST demanded any kind of payment or suggested that this topic would not be subject to negotiation or could not—as expressly stated in the BID—be affected by a variety of other factors.

Frontline was well aware of this expectation at the outset of the process, CC said, asserting:

Whatever caused Frontline to abandon its pursuit of the D Block occurred after it was well aware of and even had endorsed both the PSST’s partnership expectations and the FCC’s reserve price.

April 3rd, 2008

Comcast offers really-broad band

Posted by Richard Koman @ April 3, 2008 @ 2:17 PM

Categories: FCC

Tags: Comcast Corp., Peer To Peer (P2P), Networking, Network Administration, Internet, Richard Koman

Comcast is rolling out high-speed Internet in the Twin Cities. High-speed as in 50Mbps downstream, but only 5Mbps upstream. And they say it can be turned up as high as 160Mbps downstream. Cost is $150 per month and they expect to deploy in 20 percent of markets by the end of the year. For more details,
see the extensive news coverage.

The end of the year is also the time frame for Comcast to switch to a new kinder, gentler form of network management.

But with those speeds, can they just give up on network management? Well, no. For one thing, it’s still only offering 5Mbps upstream – and upstream is what the throttling was all about.

For another, George Ou argued last month, even in Japan where 100Mbps is practically the standard, they have P2P issues. But I’m wondering how much upstream bandwidth they have in Japan?

In any case, a Comcast spokesman says:

“We’re committed to changing our network-management processes from what they are today by the end of the year, and we just need time to work that all out,” Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas said. “We’re going to work not just with BitTorrent, but a lot of other P2P companies, the Internet Engineering Task Force, academics and others to get together and come up with a better way to manage the network.”

As Charles King at Pund-IT told me, as much as Comcast wants the BitTorrent fiasco to go away, “the company’s actions will be closely watched by supporters and opponents alike for a long time to come.”

April 2nd, 2008

EU investigating OOXML vote

Posted by Richard Koman @ April 2, 2008 @ 4:08 PM

Categories: Standards, International, Microsoft

Tags: Standards Body, Microsoft Corp., European Union, Strategic Planning, Strategy, Management, Richard Koman

The EU is investigating Microsoft’s handling of the OOXML vote, in which Microsoft’s problem-ridden format was approved by the ISO, CNET reports.

In an ongoing investigation, the EU checked in with several European countries where there were allegations of irregularities.

In a letter seen by CNET News.com, European regulators queried the national standards body in Norway to gain details into the local standardization process. Specifically, the European Commission sought information on attempts to influence the debate or vote over the standards proposal.
In response, Standards Norway said there was heated debate but not any “inappropriate behavior that endangered our process,” according to a document seen by CNET News.com.

News.com also reports the EU is talking to Microsoft about the vote, as well.

Microsoft’s general manager of standards and interoperability Tom Robertson said that Microsoft, too, has been queried as part of the investigation.
He said that Microsoft will “fully cooperate” with any investigation from the Commission.
In response to the accusations of stacking committees, Robertson said that IBM and other competitors have done exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing. For example, an employee from Google, which opposed Open XML standardization, joined the Finnish national committee only three days before a vote.
“It seems that one of the main concerns that people have raised about the process is the broad-based participation in the standards body deliberation,” he said. “I think it’s ironic IBM is complaining about new members in national standards bodies when they have been working around the clock to get people to join.”

April 1st, 2008

OOXML: Unofficially yes, formal announcement Wed.

Posted by Richard Koman @ April 1, 2008 @ 8:05 AM

Categories: Standards, Microsoft

Tags: Leader, ISO, Committee, Iso standards, Process Improvement, Leadership, Quality, Business Operations, Management, Richard Koman

PCWorld reports that the ISO has been telling member countries that OOXML will be approved, official announcement to be distributed Wednesday.

Of the 87 countries taking part, 61 approved the draft standard DIS29500, 10 disapproved and 16 abstained.

There’s more work for ISO ahead, as it has yet to decide who will control future development and improvement of the standard.

“It would have been better for the world, probably, if it had gone back to the drawing board and come back as an ISO standard in two years, with all the work done,” said Michiel Leenaars, the Dutch standards committee member who circulated the results.

Oliver Bell has a great post (though perhaps not for the reasons he espouses) about the irregularities in Germany and Norway, including a chilling response from Standard Norge about their process. MSFT-employed Bell thinks this is so much hysteria by “individuals who didn’t get the result that they wanted over the last few days, and the crowds of people willing to take their words as gospel.” But what happened in Norway is uncontroverted. The difference is just spin.

8. … The leader of the committee has an important role succeed in creating agreement, but the leader of the committee had already in 2007 flagged his position which meant that he could no longer meet the criteria for neutrality. He had therefore renounced his task to lead the committees consideration of OOXML and Standad Norges deputy managing director therefore led meetings for consideration of this matter in the committee.

9. Its is correct that a majority of members in the committee believed that comments were not given sufficient consideration However, and in line with what the meeting leader stressed, Standard Norges comments were not formulated as absolutes. The phrasing provided, according to Standard Norge, some leeway which was important to find acceptable solutions through at an international level. During the commentary rounds in the committee meetings there were many that made absolute demands to fulfillment of comments which confirmed that the rigid positions were well established. Standard Norge thus considered any further discussion as futile with regards to achieving agreement in the committee.

March 31st, 2008

Norwegian civil war: Call to recall OOXML ‘yes’ vote

Posted by Richard Koman @ March 31, 2008 @ 6:51 PM

Categories: Standards, Microsoft

Tags: Irregularity, Vote, XML, Blogging, Microsoft Office, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Internet, Office Suites, Software

Posted on Geir Isene’s blog:

Formal protest regarding the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest.

You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway’s vote from No with comments to Yes.

Because of this irregularity, a call has been made for an investigation by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry with a view to changing the vote.

I hereby request that the Norwegian decision be suspended pending the results of this investigation.

Yours sincerely,

Steve Pepper
Chairman, SN/K185 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 mirror committee)

March 31st, 2008

‘Scandal’ over Norway’s vote for OOXML

Posted by Richard Koman @ March 31, 2008 @ 9:13 AM

Categories: Government technology

Tags: ISO, Norway, Committee, OOXML, Register, Iso standards, Process Improvement, Quality, Business Operations, Richard Koman

We hear stories of “voting irregularities” around the world, not least of all right hear in the USA, but surely the ISO is different. No? The Register reports that delegates have been “complaining loudly about alleged heavy-handed tactics and misdeeds in the voting process” on Microsoft’s OOXML standard.

The Register says that Microsoft appears to have locked up the election after a number of countries’ standards bodies made abrupt switches to favor the format.

Norway’s Geir Isene says the country sees a booming business in fixing “such a broken standard.

The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge.

The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved.

The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard.Their justification: “Standard Norge puts emphasis on that if this [OOXML] becomes an ISO/IEC standard, it will be improved to better accommodate the users’ needs.”

This translates to: “Yes, we know the standard is broken, 79% of our technical committee have told us. But we hope that it someday will be repaired by someone. And we’ll be happy to help if someone can give us the resources.”

What happened in Norway is nothing less than a scandal, says Wium Lie of Opera Software, according to Computerworld.dk (translation via GrokLaw)

“This is a scandal! I am shocked. I am speechless. 21 members of the committee say no, while MS manages to win through its position anyway. It is incomprehensible,” says Wium Lie angrily.

The meeting on Friday began first with a general committee in Standards Norway, which thereafter was reduced to key individuals in the organization plus five representatives who were in attendance at the ISO meeting in Geneva. At the end, even these were dismissed, and three individuals from Standards Norway made the decision.

“Those who made the decision at the end are not those who know the most about this. They are not qualified to make this type of decision and do not necessarily have national interests at heart. They do not represent the Norwegian committee,” says Wium Lie.

The committe head, Steve Pepper, is similarly distressed:

“I am deeply shocked that Standards Norway has chosen to ignore the large majority in the committee. It is the bureaucrats in the committee who have said yes, not Norway. It is a win for MS and a great loss for the rest of the world,” says Pepper.

“So if the majority in the committee were against OOXMl, why do you think that Standards Norway said yes. They have been targeted of enormous pressure from one market interest which has use of great resources, and they have most likely been more preoccupied by their own interests as a standards organization than by the end users interests,” says Pepper.

More gory details at GrokLaw.

March 27th, 2008

Comcast promises protocol-agnostic throttling

Posted by Richard Koman @ March 27, 2008 @ 3:21 PM

Categories: Net neutrality

Tags: Bandwidth, BitTorrent, Network, Comcast Corp., Internet, Productivity, Cable, Networking, Broadband Internet, Telecommunications

News.com’s Declan McCullagh has an interview with Joe Waz, Comcast’s SVP for external affairs (head PR honcho), about the surprising news that the cable company is talking to BitTorrent about ways to work together to fix the problem of P2P apps sucking up everyone’s bandwidth. (Photo by Declan)
The outlines of the deal, according to a joint press release:

Comcast announced that it will migrate by year-end 2008 to a capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic. “This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure our network management systems, but the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today’s emerging Internet trends … ,”said Tony Werner, Comcast Cable’s Chief Technology Officer.

In turn, BitTorrent acknowledged the need of ISPs to manage their networks, especially during times of peak congestion. “Recognizing that the Web is richer and more bandwidth intensive than it has been historically, we are pleased that Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent,” said Eric Klinker, BitTorrent’s Chief Technology Officer.

In the interview with Waz, the executive describes the shift as moving to a scheme that is more fair for all users, while still reserving the right to tamp down usage at peak times. The problem, Waz sez, was:

We limited our involvement to unidirectional uploads. If you were simultaneously uploading and downloading, your transfers weren’t affected. VoIP users were benefiting (for instance). That was not consistent with the sense of the broader Internet community about how network management should be conducted.

Not suprisingly, Waz states, “You can never build your way out of this problem.” Does that suggest that the eventual upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 is still waaay off? Here’s a snippet of an article from almost a year ago:

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts stated three months ago that the cable giant had “plenty of capacity” for the next 6-12 months. The next step, of course, is to upgrade the network to DOCSIS 3.0; Roberts has stated 2007 is the targeted year for the upgrades to begin, though significant deployment realistically probably won’t happen until 2008.

The devil’s in the detail of course:

Does this mean behavioral profiling, and by that I mean tracking what a customer does over many months and if they’re a high-bandwidth user in the past, you’ll throttle them first during the next peak period?

Waz: It won’t be personally identifiable type of information. We’ll have more to say about that. When we implement, we’ll provide a thorough (disclosure).

So there will be nothing that says, “If you used a lot of bandwidth before, you get targeted more quickly next time based on previous bandwidth usage.”

Waz: There should be nothing that goes in that direction.

March 26th, 2008

Wall 2.0: Should some things be left offline?

Posted by Richard Koman @ March 26, 2008 @ 8:37 PM

Categories: Defense, Web

Tags: Wall, Construction, Richard Koman

The scrapbooking/archiving site Footnote.com and the National Archives have joined forces to put together an online, interactive version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, widely known simply as the Wall, AP says.

Every name etched onto the real-world wall is viewable online and linked to the veteran’s service record. Online visitors can add photos and describe their memories of the servicemen and women who died in the war.

Cool and all, but is it really a good thing? It’s the experience of being in the stillness of so many people confronted with the scale and blackness of the Wall, the very physicality of the thing, that makes it such a meaningful experience.

“The memorial is a historical document that obviously is very emotional,” Footnote.com Chief Executive Russ Wilding says. “We want the site to help people come together to remember the veterans who were lost.”

Sure, it’s an adjunct, not a replacement for actually going to the Wall. But I wonder if having the simulacrum, even knowing it’s not intended as any kind of replacement, somehow detracts from the power. Aren’t the names now just so much more data on the Web? Isn’t the Wall itself just one more cool website?

March 24th, 2008

Are feds involved in bid to undo state open govt law?

Posted by Richard Koman @ March 24, 2008 @ 12:30 PM

Categories: Homeland security, State & Local Govt

Tags: Ars Technica, EPIC, Law, Fusion Center, Government, Homeland Security, Federal Government, Richard Koman

Did you know that there are more than 40 so-called Fusion Centers across the U.S.? A Fusion Center is a top-secret site where federal and state officials meet to share, analyze and redistribute information on “all hazards, all threats,” as Ars Technica explains.

Here’s a map of where fusion centers are active (red), forming (pink) and nonexistent (gray).

In Virginia, there’s an open government law and the state police are concerned that law might inhibit their ability to share and receive information from other government agencies. So they’re pushing for a bill — HB1007 — that would, Ars reports:

Render all of the Virginia Fusion Center’s databases and records exempt from FOIA requests. The bill also proposes to make Fusion Center employees exempt from subpoena in civil actions related to “criminal intelligence information,” and it would grant to call-in tipsters immunity to defamation and invasion of privacy claims.

Some groups, like the Electronic Privacy Information Center, think the federal government is behind the push to limit open government. Last month EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request (PDF) with the Virigina State Police to find out what communications there have been between VSP and Homeland Security, the Dept. of Justice and the Institute for Intergovernmental Research. There was no response, so last week EPIC filed suit.

Regardless of that suit, HB1007 looks headed for easy passage. The state House passed the bill 100-0 and the Senate just approved a conference report.