Welcoming ITAA's new leader

The ITAA had a reception at the Tower Club in Tysons Corner, Va. for the organization's new leader, Phil Bond, who just took over for the industry organization.

Bond most recently was an executive at Monster Worldwide and formerly served as Under Secretary of Commerce. He replaces interim ITAA President Robert B. Laurence.

We'll sit down with Bond soon to get his take on the issue facing the IT industry and ITAA.

Some of the discussion among the people at the gathering:
* Budgets... Yes, government IT budgets are on people's minds. It is the end of the fiscal year, so we're seeing a lot of awards. But what happens on Oct. 2?
* Procurement and acquisition... One former senior DOD IT official said he is concerned about the level of training for acquisition personnel these days. Of course, we have hacked away at the number of procurement people and then we are asking them to do more. The really experienced people are totally overworked. It just seems like a bad combination -- we give them more flexibilities but then don't give them the training they need?
* GSA... Yes, GSA is a big discussion topic. Somebody actually asked why were were being such cheerleaders for GSA. I don't think we have been. We named GSA as one of the organizations worth watching -- and I still think it is. I think the question that people are starting to ask is whether Doan's honeymoon is over.
* SARA Panel... Apparently ITAA's Olga Grkavac has heard a thing or two about her piece on the SARA Panel recommendations that she wrote for Federal Computer Week. Perhaps not surprisingly, we did hear from the SARA Panel, and they want to write something in response.

And in the 'enough about me, what do you think about me' category... You'd be surprised the number of people who come up and talk about our coverage, but also about our covers. A former EPA official said she liked our cover this week -- both the cover story, which is about the greening of government IT, and the cover art -- one of my favorites of the year. It has the Capitol with a blooming flower/light bulb. Kudos to FCW art director Susan Morrison.

Meanwhile, back on the circuit... I'll be at AFFIRM at lunch today to hear Karen Evans. Then we're actually having dinner tonight with Adam Tuss, who hosted FCW's radio show. We have finished up recording those for the radio -- hence the dinner. But we're working to figure out what we should do in their place. Of course, you can find archived copies of the radio show on FCW.com's multimedia site, www.fcw.com/multimedia.