Author: Daniel

Buffalo Bob, Howdy Doody, and Hilton Head Island

Periodically my wife, Ellen, and I go to visit Ellen’s parents in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Every time we visit I am reminded how lucky I was to not just to marry Ellen but also to marry into such a wonderful family. I have learned much about my professional life and how to behave like an adult, something I recognize is always a bit out of reach for me, from both David and Barbara Elow. And to top it off their relationship with my two daughters which has only deepened over the years is such a pleasure to experience.

In addition, there are always great things to do and see and learn about when we visit Hilton Head and the area around it, as we did this last weekend, January 9th and 10th. Continue reading “Buffalo Bob, Howdy Doody, and Hilton Head Island”

Technologies to Watch in 2010

Recently Wyatt Kash, the Editor in Chief for both Government Computer News and Defense Systems, wrote me a note saying that GCN was working on an article about technologies to watch in 2010 and that he wanted my two cents.

Naturally I had more than two cents worth of thoughts about the issue and most likely my take was so orthogonal to what they were working on that it ended up being of marginal utility.

On the other hand, it gave me an excuse to think about the topic and allowed me to fill out another blog post. With Wyatt’s permission, the rest of the entry is what I sent to him in response to his request. Continue reading “Technologies to Watch in 2010”

Final Version of SCADA Presentation

This is the final version of the SCADA presentation I made yesterday at the Security SCADA Summit, http://www.iqpc.com/Event.aspx?id=223390.

Secure SCADA – Dec 2009 a

The presentation consists of two parts.

Part I was prepared by me and talks about the economic basis associated with the impact of the Internet, wanders through a number of topics I like to kick around (‘from earth centered to sun centered to nothing centered and what that means for Enterprise Architecture’, my thought that everything is a cloud, …), and touches on what the Government is thinking about regarding security.

Part II is a subset of what Rus Records, a fellow CSC’er, prepared which provided some thoughts on the state of SCADA systems in the Chemical, Energy, and Natural Resources areas (what CSC refers to as CENR).

I hope to expand on a number of these topics in future blog entries.

SCADA Conference Presentation

I am one of two representatives from CSC speaking at a SCADA Conference on Tuesday.

My focus, as usual, will be on the strategic reasons behind the movement to SCADA. Oops, perhaps I should back up. SCADA is an abbreviation for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. It usually is used as a catch-all term dealing with computer controlled equipment or machinery (or plants or smart grids or, well you get the idea).

Many of these systems were controlled individually by locally provised systems and thus security, while relevant, wasn’t the most critical factor when designing such solutions. Now that many of these systems are managed over the Internet and an increasing percentage of what most would consider our/US economic critical infrastructure touches these systems, cyber issue have become a very hot topic.

So my presentation will focus on why this is happening and also touch a bit on some of the issues the Government is facing in this space. The second presenter from CSC is an industry expert in the utility, chemical and natural resource market and will provide some more detailed oversight and advice. Continue reading “SCADA Conference Presentation”

Our Man In Brazil

I have been recently asked to provide some insights for the Brazilian government based on my experiences as the CIO for the US Department of Transportation. The initial discussions will occur later this week and include my participation on a panel December 2, www.informacaoecidadania.gov.br, with a represenative from Korea and one from the European Union providing their perspectives from their own experiences.

By the way, I have found the Google translation function, at least when dealing with Portuguese to English, works very well.

The major focus will include the issue of Interoperability and the plans in Brazil to enhance their implementation of eGovernment.

Both terms are interesting ones, I’ll have more to say either during the week or after I come back home about each.

Internationally there is a lot of emphasis and literature about Government Interoperability Frameworks (or GIFs) and thus the focus on Interoperability. While this was and is an interest within the US Government, I don’t recall hearing that specific term used very often.

eGovernment is obviously of great interest, especially in the US these days. The interesting thing  to me is that eGovernment seems to have so many different meanings depending on the person or group or society using the term, and its perceived value differs greatly accordingly. I will write further on this later on also.

Here is the first cut at my presentation understanding that I was asked to mainly talk about my personal experiences, though it is almost impossible for me to not at least attempt to generalize, and relate these experiences to the above topics. All comments are welcome either here or by emailing me directly. I will incorporate as many as I can between now and the presentation.

International Experiences with Integrated Services – United States

Once again, I believe I have demonstrated that talking, or writing, about issues is my happier place, not creating slides about them.

For those still reading, I thought it might be interesting to explain how this opportunity came about.

I have always wanted to teach. This sits in the giving back part of what I would like to accomplish. Further I find the “not wanting to appear like an idiot” syndrome forces you to think about the subject matter you are teaching where otherwise you might not really organize your thoughts. So once again we have the you get out more than you put in possibility as with so many activities.

Thus I have started doing some distance teaching for Syracuse University as an adjunct professor. My first class for what it is worth is in Cybersecurity Policy and Management which has proven to be great fun for me, if not for my students. I hope to also do some classes related to being a Federal CIO and looking at issues of management within the Federal space compared to commercial practice.

Through that activity and through my work at CSC I got to know a professor at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, http://www1.maxwell.syr.edu/default.aspx, one of the top public affairs schools in the country. She had been doing some work with people at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), http://www.iadb.org/. The IADB had a contract with the Brazilian Government to provide advice regarding their eGovernment goals. They decided that getting some “real-life” inputs from a number of countries, including the US, would be useful. From the IADB to my friend at Syracuse University to me.

Thus my normal random Brownian professional movement once again provides another new and exciting opportunity, one I am thrilled and honored to be able to participate in.

If We Were to Focus Solely on God We Could Be Ignoring Those in Need

Ancient books were often were named by their first word. Thus, the book many call Genesis, is called in Hebrew, Bereshit, ‘In the Beginning’, after the first word in Genesis.

For those who like to measure by counting, Bereshit is the longest of the five books in the Torah, with 20, 512 of the 79,847 Hebrew words; 78,064 of the 304,805 Hebrew letters. For those who like to consider meanings, considering how short Bereshit is, the stories and characters are among the most referenced in Western Civilization. Complex and contradictory and very human, and thus memorial.

Each week in synagogues around the world, a portion of the Torah, called a parashah, is read. After this reading, typically one of the religious leaders, perhaps the Rabbi, or a layperson, provides a lesson, called a D’var Torah or Drasha, using the reading as the basis.

This week, the portion being read was called Vayeira, Genesis chapter 18, verse 1, through chapter 22, verse 24. It covers a lot of ground, starting with Abraham being visited by three strangers and ending with the Akedah, or binding of Isaac.

At Ohr Kodesh, the synagogue where my wife Ellen and I belong, Ellen gave the D’var Torah this week focusing on the lessons learned from the visit of those three visitors and what it should mean to us. While her discussion dealt with people we might know but not interact with in a syngogue, it is applicable to many other situations.

I provide it here for your reading pleasure and to provide some food for thought.

D’var torah shabbat vayera

What I Learned at NASA Ames

I had the pleasure of meeting a number of the people CSC has in place supporting NASA Ames. Having visited both the NASA JPL and NASA Ames facilities over the last few months, it is exciting to see the great work being done in both locations. It is great to be where it really DOES take rocket science to do the work.

Being where daily conversations deal with the nature of the black hole in the middle of our galaxy or analyzing the incredible photographs from the Mars lander is a thrill.

Having said that it was from one of the CSC technical staff, Chris Keller, that I learned a completely new, and extremely useful, piece of information.

If you are like me and when traveling from time to time forget both where you parked your rental car and in fact what your rental car is, you might, like me, try and find it by pressing the various buttons on the keys for the car with the hope that you will hear noises or see the trunk pop open. In case someone is looking you can pretend that you pressed the wrong key, close the trunk, and shake your head at how you did that – while being thankful that you found the car.

The problem with this approach is you have to be fairly close to the car for it to work.

Keller pointed out that if you hold the keys to your chin, or in my case to my chins, then your body becomes an antenna extending greatly the range of your key buttons. Voila! Long-distance rental car identification.

A great day of discovery.

Social Networking & Cybersecurity

Earlier today, October 28, I was priviledged to give a talk at the National Defense Industrial Association about Social Network & Cybersecurity.

My focus was to review why Social Network has taken off in the last few years and what implications for the future based on those conclusions. I also briefly reviewed Cloud Computing using some of Peter Mell’s slides from his presentation at the same conference on Monday, with his permission of course.

I had three major points.

Continue reading “Social Networking & Cybersecurity”

A Passing Gender Thought

I have always taken pride, deserved or not, about being pretty progressive if that is the right word about gender issues.

For example, one of the proud moments in my younger political career happened when I was active in College Republican politics in the state of Maryland. One of the young women active in the Notre Dame club, a college in Baltimore, told me that even though we generally were on different sides, she always respected me. The reason was that unlike most of the other male CRs I treated her the same that I treated male CRs. I expected her to keep her word, to work hard, and on and on. Most others expected less from her because she was ‘cute’, which she was.

Ignoring for a moment that one reason I treated her the same was as much due to my social ineptness as anything else, I would say that I tried to carry that goal of equity to my professional life pretty consistently.

But that is not why I am posting this.

One of my standard comments about gender has been to note that in my house there are almost all women, my wonderful wife and two amazing, now college graduated, daughters. The only other male over the course of my marriage was a neutered male cat. I tell people that each day my goal over those twenty-some years has been to avoid doing whatever it was that caused that cat to end up like that.

When I last told that story a few days ago, Liz Renninger’s, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/liz-renninger/0/460/661, immediate response was “Well, I guess you failed.”

And thus one of my favorite stories about myself may have to be retired.