LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Call or write to the appropriate editor

DiGiorgio denies reported statements

Regarding your story on the USS Yorktown [GCN, July 13, Page 1], just for the record:

I did not say that the Yorktown was towed into Norfolk.

Logic does not allow the combination of the words “self-proclaimed whistle-blower.” It may sound good, but there is no such thing.

Your reporter seems to have spent his formative years as a reporter at the National Enquirer. This is based on [his] disregard of what was actually said for the sake of writing what he wanted to write.

Thanks for introducing me to being quoted. The way you obtained the information and the way you misused it is beginning to make me think that, maybe, there is validity to the claim made by the average American redneck that the media is the problem.

Anthony DiGiorgio Engineer Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center Norfolk, Va.

Editor’s note: GCN stands by its story.

Thanks for your editorial, “CIO strength is in ideas” [GCN, July 13, Page 20]. Power is no substitute for vision. Power can short-circuit the process, but sooner or later good ideas will lead us where we ought to go.

The Information Technology Management Reform Act, or Clinger-Cohen, already requires agencies to take into account potential benefit- and cost-sharing opportunities in planning their IT systems. HR 2883, technical amendments to the Government Performance and Results Act, would require agencies to address these opportunities in their strategic plans, although this bill may not go anywhere in the Senate.

One such opportunity is the application of electronic document and records management software and hardware across all offices, programs and agencies governmentwide. The efficient and effective creation, management and use of records is key to realizing the objective of GPRA. And efficiency and effectiveness in the application of IT requires the use of industry standards for interoperability.

The chief information officers, or chief idea officers, may wish to consider whether the standards proposed by the Document Management Alliance are an idea whose time has come.

Owen Ambur Systems analyst IRM Division, Fish and Wildlife Service Washington