August 1, 2006

More on that GCN story / business problem ≠ technology problem

Yesterday I posted about this GCN story that seems to lay all blame for grants management inefficiencies at Grants.gov’s door. In re-reading the article, think the author got the wrong end of the stick from GAO’s report. Here’s the first sentence…

ITIL and EA are not the same thing

GCN has an interview with Malcolm Fry, who’s considered the “father” of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Fry says that “ITIL is, to some degree, enterprise architecture”. But as Wikipedia accurately describes, ITIL is a set of service management best practices.…

2006 International Enterprise Architecture Survey

John Gøtze highlights a fascinating and comprehensive survey of enterprise architecture implementations and utilization in governments worldwide. Some of the conclusions aren’t surprising (limited realization of EA goals, little calculation of benefits versus costs, etc.) but it’s encouraging to see such…

FPDS-NG testing

Washington Technology reports that GSA wants people to test FPDS-NG, one of the systems being mooted for replacement as a consequence of S.2590, the bill which proposes creation of a single federal funding (contracts and grants) data. (Go try it out, here.)…
July 31, 2006

GCN story on GAO report

This GCN article is a little misleading, making GAO’s report sound like a condemnation of Grants.gov, which it doesn’t appear to be to me. While Grants.gov comes in for some criticism in GAO’s report, it is not the root of all the…

S.2590 approved by Senate committee

The Washington Post reports today that S.2590 was approved by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last Thursday. A fella from Forrester Research claims that it would be “feasible” but “a huge undertaking,” natch, primarily because of the political…
July 28, 2006

Summary of GAO’s grants streamlining report

As I posted earlier, GAO has released its second grants streamlining report. They surveyed grantees for this one, and found that many of the goals of P.L. 106–107 have not yet been met. (Hands up — who’s surprised?  I thought so…) Here’s…

New GAO grants streamlining report

GAO just released its second report on grants streamlining. I’m digesting it this afternoon and will report back with a briefing later on. For now, here’s the link: Grants Management: Grantees’ Concerns with Efforts to Streamline and Simplify Processes. GAO-06–566, July…
July 27, 2006

A nice reminder

I went to a meeting today with some folks I’d never met before and we got to talking about the use of open source. They are in a government agency and are extremely enthusiastic about using as much OSS as possible. And…

S.2590 — Hearings and a ‘Doh!’ moment

Word reaches me that two NGP Partners testified at the latest hearings regarding S.2590, otherwise known as the “Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act”, which was amusingly titled What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You. Hoho! And somewhat related is…