Faster Than The Government Can Keep Up

Everyone agrees abut two things: 1) there's a huge government deficit and 2) technology is changing rapidly. So what's the issue here? The government is having a hard time finding the money to keep up with the latter.

In particular, BlackBerry devices are on the same road as the once must-have Palm Pilots.The Veterans Affair Department is now ready to authorize new mobile devices to replace their BlackBerry-only devices, but there isn't a strategy in place yet to acquire them. Of course, gadget lovers will use any excuse to get upgraded equipment and new devices, and what they want are iPhones and iPads. (The Androids and iPhones are the two leading smartphones and the iPad is still expected to outsell other tablets, even with the recent announcement by Amazon of the budget-friendly Kindle Fire.)

The VA's CIO Roger Baker told the press yesterday that "there will not be an explosion of new devices." VA employees must make a strong business case for them and they must trade in their laptops or BlackBerries.

But funding for the iPhones and iPads isn't just a matter of replacing aging BlackBerry devices. It's security. The VA had to set parameters so that adding these new devices to the existing network will not compromise the agency and expose it to security risks. "The major thing we're doing is deciding that we are going to utilize an MDM, a mobile device manager, that will enforce the policies throughout the VA." Baker explained that the MDMs will be customized with viewers to virtualize the information instead of saving the data directly to the devices, which will use a single, encrypted email client as well. With the G4 standard available, there's another thing to consider. The iPhone and iPads are on the G3 network, and the VA is still debating on whether or not to permit access to the G3. It makes sense to go forward to the G4 standard, but the popular smartphones are still on the G3 network.

Technology will continue to change rapidly, but budgets, even for the government and other large institutions, tend to lag.

http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/audio-va-cio-roger-bakers-september-it-report/2011-09-28?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

Good Paper Goods

This middle-aged computer geek has been in love with the idea of going high tech for everything since I was in high school. Except for one area -- good old fashioned paper and fountain pens for taking notes and keeping a calendar.

My favorite thing about Bank of America is that I don't need an envelope or deposit slip at the ATM. I rarely write checks by hand and I don't use check registers. I check my balances online and download my statements each month. I'm holding off on buying an iPad because I don't want to pay for a subscription to the hard copy of a magazine. I don't want the paper clutter and I want a discount for not consuming the paper.

But calendars and notes are different. During one of my stints of being unemployed, I listened to a recruiter complain that his computer was down and, therefore, he couldn't check his calendar about setting up an interview for me. I told him that I preferred to use a paper calendar for that so that I can check it immediately. I can't imagine having to fire up my computer or futz with my smartphone to check a date and time on an electronic calendar. Once upon a time smart families and efficient small offices would hot sync Palm Pilots so that everyone would know everyone's schedule, but Palm Pilots are rarely used today.

As for notes, it's much easier for to take a pad and jot down notes, especially at meetings. At work, I've often just typed out details, contacts and notes on what needed to be followed up to update the higher ups on the status of projects. Recently, I discovered a way to combine both an agenda and meeting and project notes. It's called the Rhodia Meeting Book, a complimentary copy of which I was sent to me by Exaclair, which is well-known for high quality paper goods. Other lines include Excompta, Quo Vadis, Clairefontaine and G. Lalo. Fountain pen lovers are probably also familiar with it the inks from its division, J. Herbin. All their paper is thick enough to be fountain-pen friendly. I'm a southpaw, and I find that fountain pens are easier to write with and make my handwriting more legible.


What I love about the Rhodia Meeting Book is its well-thought out layout. There's ample room for writing the goal of the project or a synopsis of a meeting, contacts, notes and steps to be taken and by whom. Color code additional note, such as for follow-up, and it's a lot more efficient and easier to read than a black and white print out of a Word document or Excel spreadsheet. Of course, you can do that and tape it onto one of the pages. Rhodia paper is heavy enough to withstanding tugging.

My wife, a fully participating member of the Sandwich Generation, introduced me to Rhodia products, and she has a sizable collection of their various notepads. She says she cannot be "tethered" to her computer for calendars, articles she's writing, even correspondence. Paper "liberates" her. And, trust me, she's no slouch when it comes to using technology.

No doubt computers have changed the way we do work and the way we live. My paper calendar and Rhodia Meeting Book make all that better, even with up-to-date technology. My biggest problem? The temptation to buy more is too easy. I work just a few blocks from Art Brown, which sells a wide variety of Rhodia products as well as fountain pens and inks.

Back. Up. Daily.

At home, I'm the nag. I am always nagging my wife to back up her computer. She claims she's busy with our son, working, doing laundry, yadda, yadda, yadda. Guess what happened? She nearly lost all her data, including ad copy write-ups she is contractually obligated to keep for two years. She admitted that she hadn't backed up since October 2010.

How this happened is beyond me. We have anti-virus software running on all the computers in the house. For the record, we really thought CA, which we got through Cablevision at no extra charge, was the best. Unfortunately, it didn't work with Windows 7. I should really look into that now since Windows 7 has been around for a long time. I read recently that Windows 7 is pretty resistant to malware, but here's what happened to my wife's computer. A virus and a Trojan horse crept through Microsoft's own anti-virus program and hid her data files. We used malwarebytes.com to detect, quarantine and destroy the culprits. She's back in business. But she learned one valuable lesson:

Back. Up. Daily.

A View From The Top

My current job involves preparing for disaster recovery, going beyond just preventing issues with firewalls and other security measures. I recently read an article about the Veterans Affairs Department’s low priority of documenting a detailed view of its IT architecture.

This came out in the testimony Roger Baker, the VA’s CIO on May 11. Baker told Congress that the VA has 62 data centers and approximately 37,000 servers, but admitted that some of those servers could be “virtual instances running on a single physical server.”

How big an issue is this? Beyond the obvious of not having standard up-to-date hardware and software for security, there is another potential problem. The VAD is supposed to work with the Department of Defense to implement joint systems as well as to developing and securing information systems.

The irony is that from a medical records standpoint, the VA hospitals have their system right. A VA hospital in Florida can access a patient’s records in a VA hospital in Connecticut. This is something that computer savvy doctors understand. (Note: many doctors are still not committed to electronic medical records. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to spend the money, but sometimes it’s because of the lack of standards outside VA hospitals.)

Back to the VAD's architecture, Baker's concern is because things are not being handled as they would in a private company. Joel Willemssen, managing director for IT at the Government Accountability Office, said it’s absolutely critical to get a picture of the VA’s architecture. Baker is planning to cancel failing programs and restructure the way VA's IT department operates instead of focusing on the broader architecture. Willemssen admits that Baker is going to have to cut up the problem like a sausage and deal with it in chunks. Realistically, it's the only thing that can be done for now.

Learn more from: http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?NewsID=2325

Unhealthy Operations

Californians, take note. If your health insurer is Health Net, watch your credit report. Somehow, Health Net cannot account for nine of its server drives which contains the personal information needed for identity theft. Almost 900,000 Health Net "subscribers" may be at risk.

It gets worse. Health Net failed to encrypt the data.

Now two state agencies are investigating what happened (or, in this case, what didn't happen). Beth Givens, director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said Health Net didn't even go through the basic steps of security.

Of course, Health Net will now offer its "members" free credit monitoring and identity theft insurance. What does that cost? Last year I blogged that someone assigned a cost to each case of a security breach -- $204.00 per lost record. This is not actual money being spent, but if that is indeed an accurate number, Health Net's security breach is valued at $172,380,000 - thousands of times more than the salary someone with my expertise earns. Some of this cost is real. Depending on the outcome of the investigations, Health Net could face fines to the tune of millions of dollars. There's precedence for this. Hospitals in Massachusetts and Arizona were fined for HIPAA violations. The people who steal identities are not interested in your health, just your wealth.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/mar/15/state-regulators-launch-investigations-health-net-/