Lisagor: My crystal ball tells me...

Not to disappoint, I have more predictions this year. In 2006, a major tactical war theater decision will be made in an online Navy chat room.

To Doris in Montana who wrote, “Lisagor’s annual predictions would have more credibility if a hundred monkeys had typed them,” I say not all of my predictions for last year failed, but I was way off on one of them. Paris Hilton’s name appeared not once but three times in Federal Computer Week, thanks to items in both Circuit and Intercepts.

Not to disappoint, I have more predictions this year. In 2006:

  • The General Services Administration will end the year in the midst of a complex reorganization.

  • The ex-head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency will make several million dollars advising local municipalities on how to deal with the new head of FEMA.

  • The number of conferences on Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 will surpass the number of people who nod their heads knowingly, still not knowing what HSPD-12 means.

  • Several intelligence analysts will resign after being forced to listen to hundreds of hours of illegally obtained telephone conversations among Office of Management and Budget officials because a software algorithm thought OMB was code for OsaMa Bin Laden.

  • The burgeoning federal deficit will continue to burgeon.

  • Lockheed Martin will buy the University of California system to protest losing a bid on a Los Alamos National Laboratory contract.

  • Labor unions will continue to object to pay for performance because they fear it will make employees liable for their performance.

  • The U.S. Border Patrol will require illegal aliens to maintain a one-mile separation. Crossings into the United States will decrease dramatically.

  • Federal agencies will heed the Government Accountability Office’s advice to learn to deliver bad news and will cancel 75 percent of all systems development contracts for nonperformance.

  • A major tactical war theater decision will be made in an online Navy chat room.

  • A chief information officer will speak in acronyms before a congressional panel. Lawmakers will object and demand a clear explanation of SOAP, XML, UDDI and WSDL by COB, or IT budgets will be DOA.

  • The IPv6 communications protocol will make the world a safer place and cure global hunger.
  • Lisagor founded Celerity Works in 1999, which helps executives boost and manage business growth. He is the author of "Business Development Guide for Selling to the Government," which is available at www.celerityworks.com/guide.html. He lives on Bainbridge Island, Wash., and can be reached at lisagor@celerityworks.com.

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