Transition 2008-09

Wednesday night the Senate confirmed two Democratic commissioners -- Julie Brill and Edith Ramirez -- for the Federal Trade Commission, bringing a full board to the agency as it attempts to take a higher-profile role in the digital age.

Techies now run much of government. And they're not the programmers in the IT shop.

Nearly nine months after Aneesh Chopra was named as the first federal chief technology officer, his role remains undefined.

The Defense Department last week announced the appointment of Sumit Agarwal as deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense Public Affairs. Agarwal served as Google's head of mobile product management for North America. But Agarwal is just the latest in a slew of Googlers to move to Washington.

Techies now run much of government.

Barack Obama is the first U.S. President to have Internet access at his desk, and the first to converse regularly via e-mail.

While there have been numerous major cyber-security incidents in the past year and we've reached the first anniversary of the new presidential administration, is the policy window on cyber-security already closing?

US and Chinese national interests will increasingly compete — politically, economically and militarily — now and into the future on the Internet. For the moment, there is little that the US government can do in response to the alleged cyberattacks, other than condemn the hacking and ask the Chinese government for an explanation.

When President Obama last month named Howard Schmidt to be the nation's cybersecurity coordinator, he filled a gap in the federal government's cybersecurity command structure. Schmidt joins a group IT decisions makers who share responsibility for keeping Uncle Sam's systems, information, and IT infrastructure safe from threats that are growing in number and sophistication.

According to The Public Manager, a government management journal published by Bureaucrat Inc., a nonprofit, good government organization, President Barack Obama gets high grades for his management reform of the executive branch having aready made some significant changes that are on the right track.