Soundbytes: Facebook, Health Reform and Flying
A weekly roundup of the best in Nextgov comments. All comments are presented in their original, unedited form.
A weekly roundup of the best in Nextgov comments. All comments are presented in their original, unedited form.
On Money for USPS in Broadband Plan
USPS is losing business (and thus postage sales) because of the internet. They are using the internet to sell postage and for customers to mail packages. But I think they could also embrace the internet change by offering internet cafe services at the local postal offices. From Vicki H
On Health Care Reform in Your Inbox?
I've received at least 30 of these type emails to my government email address. They started in January. The emails always praised the health care reform, solicited support for the reform and asked for donations. Since I never signed up to receive them, I initially reported them to our IT Security office, because I was concerned that it might be a scam. Read more from Brenda
This has been the Achilles heal of Federal IT community. Study after study warns us about this, yet newbies come into govt chasing yet another shinny object. The US Federal Government will wast over $40B in IT program failures and cost overruns. Read more from John Weiler
On While feds avoid social media, their agencies log on
Obviously, Hill staffers are not constrained by the same IT security issues as we are (Fed workers inside and outside of DC). We cannot access LinkedIn or any other social networking sites. The few groups that have access in the government are the recruiting and PR folks who get special dispensation in order to communicate with the public, not the average worker.
We are not allowed to access LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and many INTERNAL social networking capabilities are "turned off" such as the blogging and wikis available in SharePoint. If they don't allow us to do it internally (and we would like to), how do you expect Feds to find value in it? From Lou
On Congress moves to make transparency initiatives permanent
Gee, how neat. Nothing of any significance is being done about the $1T+ budget deficits the U.S. will incur every year for at least the next decade, but Congress is acting to ensure the public can browse inconsequential agency documentation posted on what will likely be an unintuitive web site updated on an intermittent basis at best.
To quote a relevant acronym, BFD. From rmclachlan
On FAA defends big budget hike for new air traffic control system
Relatively inexpensive??? To equipment my Piper for ADS-B, it will cost 1/2 of what I paid for my aircraft. From sailon
On Agencies must be the engines behind sustained transparency push
The idea of the public and agencies being responsible for maintaining transparency and openness is totally absurd. The Administration is supposed to take the lead in how Government behaves. The President and the Speaker of the House both made numerous speeches in which they claimed to be embarking on the "most transparency in history". Now take a look at the shady backroom deals and outright corruption to get the Healthcare Reform act passed by the skin of their noses in only 14 months. Read more from G W Haynes
The problem is not so much that we were trying to get to a destination on a tread mill the problem is that we didn't know the destination. Nice catch phrases are good for one thing, repeating, nothing more.
I've only seen bits and pieces of this bill and can tell you that if you think the health care bill was going to cost us the re-write of this bill is going to make a mockery of IT Security. Read more from Critic
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