Tech Blog
By Wyatt Kash
Calling all CIOs
We know your to-do list is overflowing. But we thought we’d pass along a request from the folks at the Association for Federal Information Resources Management to answer a brief government CIO survey.
If you’d be willing to answer the following types of questions — and would like to know how your colleagues answer them — AFFIRM would be glad to hear from you and share the survey results. Survey questions include:
- Is hiring and retaining skilled professionals still the top challenge for you?
- Is security infrastructure still the most critical technology?
- What information technology solutions should receive the most funding?
- How will the election affect you and your agency's IT budget?
- What are the biggest skills gaps at your agency?
The survey report will be available Sept. 18 at www.affirm.org.
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By Wyatt Kash
And the Emmy for Engineering goes to ...
It’s not every day technology efforts end up earning an Emmy Award. But the U.S. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Academy thought enough of the work the ITU, ISO and IEC did in hammering out an advance video coding (AVC) standard to award the three international standards organizations one of its prized awards for engineering.
The MPEG-4 AVC (ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC Standard 14496-10) is a remarkably efficient video compression method that substantially reduces the bandwidth required to store and deliver high-quality video and which supports a range of devices, from mobile phones to high-definition TV.
The Engineering Emmy awards are presented "for developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television," Academy representatives said.
The MPEG-4 AVC standard is now being deployed in products and services from companies such as Adobe, Apple, BBC, BT, France Telecom, Intel, Motorola, Nokia, Polycom, Samsung, Sony, Tandberg and Toshiba. And while those products generally span consumer goods, the ability to deliver high-definition video images over broadcast television, cable TV, satellite, as well as mobile phones and Internet Protocol television, will certainly make government surveillance, military and other video applications more efficient as well.
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By Joab Jackson
Privacy and sensor networks
Thanks to the advancing science of nanotechnology, soon we will have a plethora of sensor networks surrounding us. So, maybe we should start thinking about the privacy implications of using such technology, warned Christine Peterson, head of the Foresight Nanotech Institute, a think tank focused on how nanotechnology-based products will affect the populace at large.
Peterson introduced this idea during her talk at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, held last month in Portland.
Nanotechnology is, of course, the science of building things on an atom-by-atom basis. Industry is now getting to the point where they can build a sensor that can detect a single molecule. Low-power and cheap, they could be spread across an area and networked together.
While it hasn't been discussed that much yet, the proliferation of sensor networks will bring with it a gaggle of privacy issues. Who gets this information? How long should it be kept? Who can have access? Will governments have de facto permission to place secret sensor networks out in public places?
When it comes to matters of terrorism, Peterson opined, “the folks in D.C. don't have a big tool set. What they think about is surveillance – atomic, video, biological, chemical—you name it, they want it."
Of course, we will need software for all these sensors, which is why Peterson was at OSCON, making the case for privacy issues before the open-source software crowd. Peterson said sensor network software is where e-voting software was a few years back: The e-voting debacle might have been avoided if states had relied on open source software, which would be open to inspection and perhaps less of a magnet for negative appraisal.
More importantly, the open-source crowd could simply understand all the issues involved. "We need a community that understands security and privacy how those interact, and how they affect functionality, and how they affect freedom. You're the only ones who get this," she said.
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By Rutrell Yasin
The BPM and SOA marriage
What’s the best entry point to launch a service-oriented architecture implementation? Is it through business process management, an enterprise service bus or SOA governance?
I spoke recently with Mel Greer, a senior research engineer for the Advanced Technologies Office of Lockheed Martin, about this subject. Lockheed Martin’s government clients are interested in all three approaches, but the one Greer thinks gives the most value is BPM.
“There is a value proposition associated with the marriage of SOA and business processes,” he said. SOA can be a key enabler for lining up technology with an organization’s mission function, but it is only when SOA is linked up with business processes that an agency can reap tangible benefits from a process and flexibility perspective, Greer said.
It is time to define some terms here. BPM, Greer said, is a discipline that provides the governance of a business process with the goal of improving the agility and operational performance of that process. The goal is not technical.
SOA, on the other hand, is an application architecture approach, which is comprised of reusable components and services.
In fact, enterprise architecture, BPM and SOA working in concert are the necessary ingredients required to ensure that there is a core alignment between an organization’s business and IT strategies and more effective optimization of that IT environment, Greer said.
What’s your take? Have any views on the marriage of BPM and SOA or, better yet, some lessons learned from trying to implement a SOA project that incorporated BPM? Drop me a line at ryasin@1105govinfo.com.
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By Trudy Walsh
Spy vs. spy on display at State
Government Computer News has followed technology developments in the State Department with great interest since the Reagan administration.
So we jumped at the chance to check out the pre-GCN State technology on display now in the lobby of the State Department Annex at 1400 Wilson Blvd. in Rosslyn, Va.
“Listening In: Electronic Eavesdropping in the Cold War Era” is an exhibit that pulls together spy technology circa 1955 through 1985. Produced by the Countermeasures Directorate’s Office of Security Technology in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the show displays a large array of Cold War era surveillance technology, including wired microphones and radio transmitters.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow seems like it was one big recording booth in the 1960s. One photo shows Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1960 holding a listening device that had been discovered inside a large wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States, a gift from the Soviet Union in 1945. Hidden magnetic microphones were especially popular in U.S. embassies in Eastern Europe. These were small microphones attached to long wooden tubes that could be deeply recessed into embassy walls.
Even Cold War era typewriters had countersurveillance mechanisms built into them. Included in the exhibit is an IBM Selectric typewriter. It coupled a motor to a mechanical assembly, so pressing different keys caused the motor to draw different amounts of current that were specific for each key. Close measurements of the current could reveal what was being typed on the machine. To prevent these measurements, State Selectric typewriters were equipped with “inertia” motors connected to a large flywheel. The spinning flywheel absorbed the stress of the mechanical assembly and masked the keys being typed.
Full disclosure: In my youth I worked as a clerk-typist at the State Department in the summers to earn money for college. I spent many hours typing State memos and telegrams in Foggy Bottom offices on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Machinery I used in college is now worthy of a historical exhibit. Farewell, sweet bird of youth, I am officially a geezer.
Now these old recorders and transmitters seem clunky and quaint. But how soon until our iPods and cell phones will be destined for attics of the future? Perhaps there will be an exhibit in 25 years on surveillance technology of the post-9/11 era. The winds of time will blow the dust of obsolescence on us all, including the technology that seems cutting-edge now.
For more on the exhibit, click here.
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