The Circuit
- By Judi Hasson
- Dec 03, 2000
Down and Dirty
In an effort to keep it clean, the General Services Administration is
on a mission to ferret out dirty words on federal Web sites. It has been
using the portal FirstGov to find the infamous seven words that comic George
Carlin identified in 1973 as "the words you couldn't say on the public airwaves...ever." Marty Wagner, GSA's associate administrator for government-wide policy, discussed the topic in a Nov. 20 speech to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.
GSA searched for the seven words and then alerted agencies if any showed
up on their Web pages. The agencies then were expected to remove the offending
pages, Wagner said. FCW conducted its own spot check and discovered that
in almost all instances, the nasty words were not used by government workers.
Rather, they came from citizens who used the Internet to vent anger about
the strong arm of government.
High Court, Semi-Low Tech
The Supreme Court's resistance to new technology was underscored last
week when the justices refused a request by CNN and C-SPAN to televise the
most important oral arguments since Watergate in 1974 — the review of the
Bush-Gore Florida Supreme Court ruling. But Chief Justice William Rehnquist
caved — sort of — when he decided that the court's new Web site (www.supremecourtus.gov) would post a transcript within hours of the Dec. 1 hearing.
Even in this Digital Age, it takes the court 10 to 15 days to get a
transcript online, but the importance of the hearing prompted an exception.
In another bow to the Digital Age, Rehnquist ordered an audio version
of the arguments to be released the same day, but did not go so far as to
put it on the court's Web site. It will only be available through network
news outlets.
A Big Blue CIO
The call for a federal chief information officer rises in pitch, but
who should serve is unclear. Even top government information technology
managers have a hard time giving anyone a mandate. That's the message from
more than 100 local, state and federal CIOs who attended the Government
CIO Summit, a conference held in Florida last month by FCW Government Technology
Group. IT managers nominated and then voted for six candidates for IT czar.
The winner? A tie between Jim Flyzik, Treasury Department CIO and co-chair
of the federal CIO Council, and Charles Rossotti, Internal Revenue Service
commissioner (each got 24 percent of the vote). In a runoff of the top three
vote-getters, IBM boss Lou Gerstner won with 47 percent of the vote, followed
by Flyzik with 27 percent and Rossotti with 25 percent. Naturally, there
were calls for a recount.
The Revolving Door
David Goldberg, an ex-deputy CIO who helped lead the modernization
effort at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is the latest official
to hang up his federal hat and join the private sector. Goldberg, most recently
the deputy associate commissioner for Information Resources Management at
INS, has joined Electronic Data Systems Corp. as vice president and director
of knowledge services business portfolio. He'll be responsible for all
service deliveries across the federal government, both civilian and military.
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