The best of ELC 2010

I just got back from the ACT-IAC Executive Leadership Conference in Williamsburg, Va. last night. Those of you who attended will likely agree that it was a whirlwind, thirty-some hours of great information and discussion. While at the conference, Editor Dave Perera and I had the opportunity to cover sessions and sit down with government officials.

Whether you attended the event or not, you’ll probably enjoy looking at some of the highlights of the conference. Below are some of the ones Dave and I wrote about; click through if you’d like to read more.

• Social media increasingly important for emergency response, but falling short of true collaboration – “We were terrified about what was going to happen with the flu pandemic and social media.” (Jenny Backus, strategy and planning for Public Affairs, HHS)
• Q&A: Roger Baker on the future of VistA and VLER – “There’s one fundamental goodness in [VistA] and that is that VistA was designed by the clinicians, for the clinicians. It is an example of how doctors want to work with an electronic medical record. As far as I’m concerned, probably everything else is up for grabs…If we turn this into an IT system built by IT people, then it will absolutely out in the general marketplace. If it retains its basic goodness of it’s first a medical system and it’s second an IT system, then we will have succeeded in where we need to go with it.” (Roger Baker, VA CIO)
• Park: Agency data should be released more quickly, as ‘beta’ – “One of the principles of open data is that you don’t wait forever before you release it. Just like open source is a collaboration to make software better, open data is a collaboration to make data better.” (Todd Park, HHS CTO)
• Spires: Social networks are cybersecurity problem – “I don’t think it’s the fact–or at least that’s not the way I view it–that we’re saying ‘no, don’t do social media,’ because we’re worried about the twenty-somethings at our office wasting time. That’s not it, at all…we’re all worried about the security implications about some of these social media sites.” (Richard Spires, DHS CIO)
• DHS adjusting IT workforce – “I walk in the door and there’s a little over 100 feds in my organization and there are about 1000 contractors, and I say, ‘that ratio doesn’t quite seem right to me.'” (Richard Spires, DHS CIO)
• Johnson: 14 GSA offices to have teleconferencing capabilities by early 2011 – The General Services Administration will be introducing teleconferencing centers at 14 of its offices by January or February of 2011, said Martha Johnson, chief administrator at GSA. The contract has been awarded to AT&T, which will develop and manage all telepresence services.
• DHS could rate software manufacturers according to their supply chain – The intention behind the ratings isn’t to create a blacklist of vendors deemed too risky for federal acquisition, but to identity supply sources that “require a little bit more due diligence and therefore risk management.” (Joe Jarzombek, director for software assurance and global cybersecurity management, DHS National Cyber Security Division)

What was your most important takeaway from ELC 2010?