GAO's Enterprise Electronic Records Management System

NCC-AIIM Monthly Meeting
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Westin Arlington Gateway

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) deployed an enterprise electronic records management system over a 23-week period in 2006. the session focuses on strategy for rollout and communication, user training, and resulting cultural adjustments. Learn how GAO integrated its simplified big bucket functional retention schedule into the system design. Discover the obstacles encountered and lessons learned in a lively discussion with the project leaders, Carol Brock, CRM, Records Officer for GAO and Cheryl Smith, CRM of NetSmith.

Quality control

Election Software Lost in Transit

Standards, open source vs. proprietary

Leadership by Numbers has two very illuminating posts:

Hope for Microsoft's OOXML Continues to Erode
Maybe ODF and OOXML is Not Black and White

It is important to concentrate on the merits of the case and not let it become a religious discussion.

Security solutions that are not flexible

Secure Your Email With GnuPG

This week, we will introduce another way to secure your email: GnuPG. GnuPG (or the Gnu Privacy Guard) is an open source program for encryption and authentication that has a built in web-of-trust. If Alice “trusts” Bob’s key and Bob “trusts” Carol’s key, and Alice gets an email from Carol, she will be able to verify that Carol is indeed who she says she is, even if she has never met Alice. It is as if their mutual friend Bob had introduced them.

What if it is a business inquiry from a prospective customer? It would be totally legitimate, the email you most want to receive? I don't think this is a viable solution.

Concerning entrepreneurship

Via Brian Wynne Williams we discover top 10 myths of entrepreneurship. My favorite:

Venture capitalists are a good place to go for start-up money. Not unless you start a computer or biotech company. Computer hardware and software, semiconductors, communication, and biotechnology account for 81 percent of all venture capital dollars, and seventy-two percent of the companies that got VC money over the past fifteen or so years. VCs only fund about 3,000 companies per year and only about one quarter of those companies are in the seed or start-up stage. In fact, the odds that a start-up company will get VC money are about one in 4,000. That’s worse than the odds that you will die from a fall in the shower.

Even if you have a computer or biotech company, there may be a better source of seed capital.

New Communications Forum 2008

Society for New Communications Research

Now in its fourth year, New Communications Forum is the premier conference that brings together thought leaders and decision makers from around the globe to discuss the impact of social media and new communications on media, marketing, journalism, PR and advertising, business, culture and society.

NewComm Forum is not a typical conference and it’s definitely not “Blogging 101″. The Forum provides an in-depth, hands-on exploration of the future of communications. In its four year history, it has come to be known as one of the world’s leading conferences focusing on the latest trends in new emerging media and communications platforms.

Unfortunately, I don't think I will be able to go this year. If you have never been to this conference I highly recommend it. This is the demo for social media.

OpenID, security and privacy

OpenID and DataPortability.org to gain major support

Momentum appears to be building behind the related notions that users should have a single set of login credentials to sign into most—perhaps even all—of the web sites that they frequent and that they should be able to easily move their personal data between different social networking services. These ideas have gained so much traction recently that groups like DataPortability.org and OpenID have made many pundits' lists of "what will be hot in 2008." But while reports this week show that OpenID and DataPortability.org are gaining support from giants like Google, Facebook, IBM, and Verisign, a number of lingering questions about security and privacy remain.

Wouldn't a single set of login credentials be a huge honking security vulnerability?

Concerning email smears

Certain scurrilous emails smearing Presidential candidates are circulating. Email is not anonymous. There are ways, ways that don’t require advanced technical knowledge, of tracking down the source of an email. Even in cases where it has been forwarded, it is possible to track down the original source.

In the United States presidential candidates receive Secret Service protection. If your email can be reasonably interpreted as an incitement to assassination, the Secret Service will track you down. They will obtain search warrants, require your Internet service provider to provide your identity, and come knocking on your door.

Do no play this game. None of us are amused.

Treating the customer like a criminal suspect

ATT ready to filter our Internet for us

Here’s a worrisome report on ATT’s willingness to inspect packets, filter out what it thinks are copyright violations, and limit peer-to-peer interactions.

Because war with customers work so well.

March of the aggregators

Contec Adds Three New Mobile Publishing and Distribution Deals

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jan 4, 2008 (Marketwire via COMTEX) -- Contec Innovations Inc. (TSX VENTURE:BUZ) has signed three new mobile content publishing and distribution deals involving its BUZmob(TM: 104.18, +1.14, +1.10%) mobile publishing service. Over 200 content publishers covering dozens of topic categories - including news, sports and finance - now use BUZmob as their mobile publishing service. Contec's new partners are EIN News, Blogdigger and BlogNetNews.

The money is in the aggregators.

Online reputation management in action

Shashi Bellamkonda saw a post on Twitter referring to the allegations that Network Solutions has been caught front-running domain names. His explanation:

I found out that we have started protecting all domain name searches at Network Solutions by holding the searched domains for our customers for a short period of time before releasing them. This gives our customers the opportunity to register names later without fear that the name will be registered by a “Front Runner.”(Have posted some background info on ” Front Running “ below).

We did this because we heard customers complain that queried domain names are being snatched up by other people as soon as they searched. Network Solutions makes sure its search data is secure and we do not sell it any third party. I know that Network Solutions has no intention of keeping any searched domain or monetizing it.

This an excellent example of online reputation management. It works because Sashi has a good online reputation with 751 followers on Twitter and 26 inbound links on Technorati.

This is a perfect example of making friends online BEFORE you need them. It is important to respond swiftly to such controversies and to have a credible platform from which to do so.

Edit -
Small Biz Technology takes my view.
Corporate Social Media Rep = Ombudsman

Priorities

SBA budget has 191 earmarks, but no money to cut loan fees

Blogs and the federal market

Amtower Off Center

Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, and PR consultant Alice Marshall are both experienced and well known bloggers. Topics discussed included why blogging is so hot, how to get started, why you should read other blogs before you start, defining your "voice" and more. Social networking was also discussed.

Reporters read blogs

PR Group’s Journalist Survey Identifies Blogs’ Influence on Traditional News Coverage

A survey of U.S. journalists by communications firm Brodeur (www.brodeur.com/) suggests that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting. The survey is part of an ongoing research project by Brodeur in conjunction with Marketwire to dissect and understand the impact that social media and blogs are having on traditional news delivery. The online survey was conducted among a random sample of North American reporters and editors, and was focused on understanding how social media and blogs influence their work.

Do you have a blog strategy as part of your FOSE marketing?

IPv6, Federal agencies meeting the letter, not the spirit of adoption

How feds are dropping the ball on IPv6

For the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) IPv6 mandate, agencies "didn't really have to deploy it. They only have to be capable of it," says Dave Siegel, director of data services product management at Global Crossing, which has one federal customer of its IPv6 service.

Capable of, but not deploy? What a great example of fed speak.

Blogs, wikis, Twitter, and social media

Does this sound like too much work? Hire an expert.

IASA Washington DC Conference

March 10-11 2008

The IT Architect Regional Conference is the largest event in the Washington, D.C. area to address the pressing needs of IT architects today. There are over 30 seminars and four tracks separated by specialty: Enterprise, Infrastructure, Software and Fundamentals. Architects of all levels can take their skills to the next level.

The productivity of wasting time

Justin Thorp has a fascinating post about Twittertale, a diverting Web application that allows you to see who has the biggest potty mouth on Twitter.

It is not difficult to see that Twitterdale could be tweaked to measure who is talking the most about your client, or your client's industry. This could be a valuable tool communications professionals. This is a small example of the sort of tool that comes out of the serendipity of social media.

Perhaps cracking down on perceived Internet abuse is not a good idea.

Explaining federal contracting to the public

Nick Wakeman

The mainstream media and the Washington Post in particular catch a lot of grief for the way they cover government contracting. They focus on the negative, make overly broad generalizations and lack context, or so the complaints say.

One issue I've had is that the mainstream press doesn't do enough explanatory journalism, where they take the time and space to break down an issue.

Precisely what is preventing contractors and the trade associations from setting up their own blogs and making their case directly to the public?

The growing controversy over federal contracting

Clinton cries foul over award fees

Clinton asked the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general to evaluate incentive bonuses and award fees DHS paid to contractors to determine whether those payments are being properly managed. She would also like to tie award fees more closely to contractor performance governmentwide and recently helped insert an amendment into the fiscal 2008 Defense Appropriations bill that seeks to achieve that goal.

“The issue will probably get greater attention because of who Hillary Clinton is,” said Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council, a trade association for government contractors. “She is asking the right questions, and it is fair game.” ...

... With Clinton leading the charge, other federal contractors are bracing for increased scrutiny and possible legislative action to curb abuses of such fees.

“There is huge grade inflation,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. “The government takes these tasks lightly.”

Now is the time for government contractors to get in front of this controversy.