From awards to telecommuting, FOSE had it all

E-government initiatives have been effective for transforming government service but have failed to bring about the much ballyhooed re-invention, said Martin Cole, chief executive of the global government group at Accenture Ltd., at the FOSE 2005 trade show, produced by PostNewsweek Tech Media, publisher of Washington Technology.Cole suggested governments adopt a four-point plan:  Information technology companies looking to land business with the government of the United Kingdom should partner with contractors that already have a foothold in the market and leverage the expertise of consulting and investment groups, said panel members during "Selling to the U.K. Government," a FOSE presentation."The scale and range of the business opportunity is phenomenal," said Patricia O'Hagan, managing director of Core Systems Ltd. of Belfast, Ireland.The U.K. government differs substantially from the U.S. federal government in several ways, said Dave Feldman, consul for investment of U.K. trade and investment with the British Embassy. The U.K. government includes the entire health care industry, he said, and it employs a larger proportion of the country's workforce -- 25 percent -- than does the United States. Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff is studying the department's proposed $847 million Office of Screening Coordination and Operations as part of his comprehensive initial review of the agency, according to senior officials. The new screening office would be created under President Bush's 2006 budget request to Congress and would encompass nine screening programs, including U.S. Visit, Registered Traveler and Secure Flight.While the review is proceeding, the $390 million U.S. Visit program and other projects will move quickly on major initiatives, said Scott Hastings, CIO for U.S. Visit.The public-private partnership Telework Exchange at FOSE unveiled www.teleworkexchange.org, its new Web site, designed to tell federal workers about the benefits of telecommuting and to calculate cost savings. Officials from the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, along with industry members Intel Corp., CDW Government Inc., Citrix Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc., created the initiative to speed the federal workforce's adoption of telework requirements. The Web site provides information on the program and lets federal employees calculate the personal cost of commuting as a percentage of their after-tax income. It also calculates daily savings and tracks federal agencies' progress in complying with the initiative. A system to track emergency response and local traffic, and a government official who brought the power of the Web to human resources are among the winners of the sixth annual Digital Government Awards. The awards from Accenture Ltd. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning were announced at FOSE. The five winners were: "Moore's Law is absolutely alive and well," said Intel Corp.'s incoming Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini, referring to the 40-year-old premise that processing power doubles every 18 months. Otellini kicked off FOSE by addressing critics who have said Moore's Law has hit a wall. He said Intel's dual-core Itanium 2 server processor, due out this year, will have 1.7 billion transistors, making it the company's first billion-transistor part and proving that Moore's Law still has legs. Intel has a road map for four generations of processor platforms, which eventually will take the company to a 15-nanometer manufacturing process, he said. Nanometers describe the average size of features on a chip. Today's processors largely use 90-nanometer technology, while Intel plans to introduce 65-nanometer-based chips this year. [IMGCAP(2)]When told that he had won the 7th Government Azimuth Award, Craig Luigart couldn't believe the news. "I was stunned, and I couldn't talk for 10 minutes," said Luigart, Veterans Affairs Department associate deputy assistant secretary for plans, policy and program execution.Luigart is best known for focusing the government on Section 508 accessibility standards. He has been the chief information officer of the Education Department and chairman of the CIO Council's 508 Committee.Winning the Industry Award was Alan Paller, director of the Sans Institute of Bethesda, Md. The CIO Council makes the annual awards, honoring people whose work has benefited government IT, at a dinner during FOSE.