Monthly Archives: January 2009

Policy

First things first — let's make it a holiday

Congress passed a resolution yesterday making this coming Friday “National Data Privacy Day.” If the move, intended to raise awareness of data privacy issues at a national level, seems a little last-minute –which is somehow appropriate, considering how data privacy, while a major regulatory issue, often is addressed as an afterthought.

I think we need a parade. We can have themed floats: “Don’t lose Energy Department Lab Hard Drives in the Kitchenette” and “Don’t take Veteran medical records home on your laptop” are two that immediately spring to mind.

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Policy

Cloud computing meets Ow’d computing at White House

All the Web 2.0 savvy, Facebooking, Twittering, Crackberrying technorati coming into the White House this week got the ultimate wake-up call about the state of government IT: some of them didn’t even have phones waiting for them, according to the Washington Post.

The Press office continues to use GMail to do its work, while web divas coming in to work on the White House website were horrified to find that rather than Macs, they would be using Windows XP.

Considering the turnout at a recent Web 2.0 breakfast run by the Bethesda AFCEA chapter, it would seem that there are many who share their pain — and also many who have no idea what they’re talking about. A favorite moment from that breakfast: after a discussion of how NASA JPL was using Second Life for educational purposes, a woman asked if Second Life was interactive, and how questions got answered. Eventually the nice young AFCEAn tending the mic explained to her that maybe this wasn’t the forum for these questions….

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