So much for open government, Navy shutters public blog

Former Navy CIO Robert Carey was widely praised for being the first federal CIO to host a public blog, which he started in 2008 and continued until he left the post in June. But that legacy apparenlty will not live on.

The Navy CIO's blog has been stopped, and archived posts appear to have been sent to an unknown location or possibly removed from the Internet.

Terry Halvorsen, who was named the Navy’s CIO on Nov. 22, recently shut down the blog.

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“I’m sure you'll find it interesting and maybe a bit ironic that the new CIO's first blog is his last blog,” Halvorsen wrote in a blog posting Dec. 1.

“I believe in the value of social media and believe it has its place in the Department of the Navy,” Halvorsen continued. “However, as I am focusing on finishing up my duties as deputy commander of Navy Cyber Forces and taking the reins as [the Navy's] CIO, blogging must be a lower priority.”

Halvorsen said he is considering posting CIO messages on the Web and will write a quarterly column for a magazine. He also encouraged readers with a military e-mail address to continue to participate in the dialogue at the Navy's secure internal Pulse website.

It was not immediately clear what happened to the two-year archive of Carey’s blog postings. A search today of the Defense Department’s website and the Internet using the Google search engine did not produce active links to the archive. Several Web links to cached blog postings located via Google were not functioning, and the Navy CIO’s office did not respond to a call requesting clarification.

Carey’s blog was cited as a successful example of government transparency and outreach. It won several awards and was viewed as influential for other federal CIOs, several of whom started their own blogs. Carey was selected to succeed David Wennergren as DOD’s deputy CIO and deputy assistant secretary of Defense for information management in October.