| Jan 9 | Jan 23 |
 The year begins with lots of introspection on the 10th anniversary
of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996. Quite simply, feds say, the act
changed everything. Or it should have. “When you go back and
read Clinger-Cohen, it’s very performance-based and very results-oriented,” said
Karen Evans, administrator of e-government and information technology
at the Office of Management and Budget. |  But soon the focus returns to immediate IT concerns. Homeland Security
and State department officials say they hope to create an inexpensive
and interoperable digital card system by the end of the year for
identifying U.S. citizens who frequently cross the Canadian or Mexican
borders. The People Access Security Service cards will incorporate
digital photographs and radio frequency identification technology. |
| Feb 13 | Feb 27 |
| President Bush’s proposed fiscal 2007 IT budget is $64 billion,
a 3 percent increase compared with the administration’s fiscal
2006 IT budget proposal. |  The board of directors at federal reseller GTSI announces that
James Leto will replace long-time leader Dendy Young as president
and chief executive officer. The shakeup signals the company’s
intention to shift its focus from reselling IT products to offering
high-margin, high-end technology services.
The General Services Administration receives mixed reviews on its
use of Webcasting to brief industry about Alliant, GSA’s planned
IT contract awards. |
| March 6 | March 13 |
 A variety of analysts weigh in on financial problems at GSA. If
GSA doesn’t fix those problems quickly, “this agency is
gone,” said Bob Woods, president of Topside Consulting Group
and a former commissioner of GSA’s Federal Technology Service. | IT companies enter the market with products that encrypt entire
hard disks as more agencies and corporations disclose information
losses and data theft.
|
| March 20 | March 27 |
 Federal Computer Week recognizes 100 government and industry employees
with Fed 100 awards for their contributions to the public-sector
IT community in 2005. | The FBI’s poor record of managing its Trilogy IT modernization
program puts it at high risk of mismanaging Sentinel, congressional
auditors say. Sentinel is a new program to create an automated case
file management system. |
| April 3 | April 10 |
 DHS officials say they hope to have an alternative plan by summer
after scrapping a multimillion-dollar initiative for an enterprise
financial management system in December 2005. |  President Bush nominates Lurita Doan, a Virginia businesswoman, to
become GSA’s administrator. David Bibb has been GSA’s
acting administrator since Stephen Perry left the job Oct. 31, 2005. |
| April 17 | April 24 |
| GSA’s IT Fund revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2006 is
26.7 percent, or $597.5 million, less than forecasted. Analysts interpret
the shortfall as evidence of the agency’s weak financial condition. |  Input, a market research firm, forecasts 7.5 percent growth in state
and local spending on IT through 2011. It expects a more sluggish
growth rate in federal IT spending during that time. |
| May 1 | May 8 |
| The Defense Department moves more than 11,000 civilian employees to
a new pay system that will eventually cover more than 650,000 employees.
DOD created the National Security Personnel System to give managers
more flexibility for assigning work and awarding pay raises. | Some senior health officials question the value of disease surveillance
systems described in the Bush administration’s newly released
plan for combating a flu pandemic. The plan calls for federal, state
and local cooperation in developing systems that can track pneumonia
and flu cases on a same-day basis. |
| May 15 | May 22 |
| Louis Gutierrez, Massachusetts’ new chief information officer,
said state offices can use compatible Microsoft file formats or plug-ins
and still comply with Massachusetts’ policy requiring the use
of the Open Document Format standard for archiving. |  Government and industry fans of Fox Television’s hit show “24,” which
airs its fifth season finale, agree that the show is most realistic
when it portrays technology’s inconsistent performance. |
| May 29 | June 5 |
| Current and former officials testify that the Department of Veterans
Affairs has had a culture in which employees frequently ignored
information security directives. In that context, a VA employee
took home an agency computer and disks containing veterans’ personal
information, where it was stolen May 3. |  The Central Command says it plans to install high-speed fiber-optic
circuits in the Middle East to link Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar to
DOD’s Global Information Grid (GIG). |
| June 12 | June 19 |
 Mandatory spending cutbacks force the Army to suddenly cancel its
IT Conference, an annual meeting and exhibition of IT products and
services scheduled to open June 6 in Orlando, Fla. | Google offers a Web portal for searching federal, state and local
government sites. Company officials say the new Google U.S. Government
Search portal complements rather than competes with FirstGov,
the federal government’s portal.
A survey of federal contractors that FCW and industry partners
conducted finds that more than half of those surveyed think the
security clearance process for contractors has grown worse instead
of better in the past year. |
| June 26 | July 10 |
| The Marine Corps begins deploying broadband satellite communications
systems at the battalion and company levels in Iraq. Land-based
communications systems alone cannot meet the demands of modern warfare,
Brig. Gen. Joseph Dunford said. |  Only 12 hours after her swearing in as GSA’s new administrator,
Doan freezes all travel for agency employees, allowing exceptions
only with approval from her office. Hired during a financial crisis
at GSA, Doan said she will restore the agency’s reputation as
the leading procurement agency for the federal government. |
| July 17 | July 24 |
 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overrules a
lower court judge’s order that would have shut down many of
the Interior Department’s networks as a security precaution.
The decision relates to a class-action lawsuit over Interior’s
alleged mismanagement of Indian trust funds. | The number of complaints against the federal government alleging employment
discrimination dropped 5.3 percent in fiscal 2005, according to
the Equal Opportunity Commission.
DHS refuses to accept Government Accountability Office findings
that show a lack of accountability in DHS’ purchase card program.
DHS counters by saying the instances that GAO cites constitute only
0.14 percent of all DHS purchase card transactions. |
| July 31 | Aug. 7 |
 The Social Security Administration reveals that it began preparing
its transition to IPv6 shortly after it finished reprogramming SSA’s
information systems for the Year 2000 rollover. The agency’s
early work gives it a head start in meeting a 2008 deadline for
federal agencies to install IPv6 on their backbone networks. | Doan causes a stir when she reveals her desire for NASA to discontinue
its Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement, a popular
multiple-award contract. Doan says that GSA is better suited to
managing such contracts and that NASA should stick to space exploration. |
| Aug. 14 | Aug. 21 |
 The National Treasury Employees Union says new federal telework guidelines
don’t address the question of who will pay for high-speed
Internet connections that teleworking employees require to be most
effective. | A battery recall affects thousands of military and civilian laptop
PC users. Dell warns that Sony batteries in some Dell laptop PC
models sold between April 2004 and July 2006 could catch fire. |
| Sept. 4 | Sept. 11 |
| With a bit of irony, DOD announces it will close the Office of Force
Transformation as part of its transformation and modernization initiative.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created the office in 2001 to
promote new approaches to defense IT and policy. |  DHS issues a final rule that prevents the disclosure of sensitive
information that industry provides DHS under the Critical Infrastructure
Information Act of 2002. It remains unclear, however, whether the
new rule will prompt industry to share critical infrastructure information
with the government. |
| Sept. 18 | Sept. 25 |
 Congress passes the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency
Act, a bill that directs OMB to create a searchable Web database
of federal contracts and grants by Jan. 1, 2008. The bill’s
supporters say its effectiveness in providing greater public scrutiny
of the federal government’s $1 trillion spending on grants
and contracts will depend on how well the database is implemented. | Gregory Garcia is appointed assistant secretary for cybersecurity
at DHS, a position created more than a year ago that remained unfilled
until Garcia’s appointment. Garcia comes to DHS from the IT
Association of America, where he was vice president for information
security programs.
|
| Oct. 2 | Oct. 9 |
 The $436.5 billion DOD budget for fiscal 2007 shifts money from systems
modernization programs to pay for systems already in use. With the
financial drain of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, lawmakers view
future IT systems as a lesser priority, said Kevin Carroll, who
leads the Army’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information
Systems. | FCW recognizes 53 government and industry employees with Rising Star
awards for their
early career contributions to the public-sector IT community. |
| Oct. 16 | Oct. 30 |
The Energy Department announces it will end mandatory polygraph testing
of job applicants and employees, a decision it based on research
showing that computerized polygraph systems are not sufficiently
reliable to justify their routine use.
A survey report from the Senior Executives Association, a group
that represents career federal executives, indicates that many senior-level
officials are feeling demoralized rather than motivated under a
pay-for-performance system that the Office of Personnel Management
introduced three years ago. |  DOD announces its interest in adopting a utility model of computing.
Under that model, DOD would pay for computing services as it needs
them rather than buy and manage its own server hardware, said Lt.
Gen. Charles Croom, director of the Defense Information Systems
Agency. |
| Nov. 6 | Nov. 13 |
 DOD rethinks its wireless policies by acknowledging the need to adopt
new spectrum management technologies, ease restrictions on the use
of military spectrum and update its spectrum governance rules to
accommodate industry and international interests. | Rumsfeld resigns, raising questions about future modernization efforts
at DOD. Experts agree that Rumsfeld’s major legacy will be
his transformation vision, which is one based on network-centric
operations, IT and joint operations. |
| Nov. 20 | Dec. 4 |
|
 Ira Hobbs, the Treasury Department’s CIO, announces he will
retire, ending a public service career that began in 1978. A prominent
figure in government and industry groups, Hobbs has been instrumental
in developing governmentwide strategies for recruiting and retaining
federal IT employees.
The Small Business Administration issues a new rule that specifies
when small businesses must recertify their small-business status.
Small-business advocates are hopeful the new rule will prevent some
companies from benefiting from small-business set-asides long after
they have grown too large to qualify for special treatment. | China is suspected of hacking the Web site of the Naval War College, an institution
that trains senior Navy officers and develops cyberspace tactics. Network officials
remove the college’s systems from DOD’s GIG while they investigate
the incident and upgrade firewalls. |
