Upf ront
A taxing time indict an agency sub-chief that “many agency employ-
PAUL CONNOLLY
Our government’s on a Class B misdemeanor. ees do not even understand Learning to listen
e l e c t r o n i c c o m - According to a new report what a federal record is,
petency is taking it in from a group that will never much less how it must be A good number of busi-
nesspeople in this
the kisser these days. lack for subject matter—the preserved.” Web 2.0 era certainly are
One day we learn the Citizens for Responsibility The National Archives aware of IT’s many new
U.S. Census Bureau so and Ethicsin Washington— and Records Adminis- social networking tools to
badly bungled the 2010 the federal government is tration, the big-cheese augment their Web sites,
Census planning, it’s “severely mismanaging” its bureaucracy in charge of and analysts report that a
dumping handhelds for electronic records, cling- ensuring compliance with growing number of them
pencil and paper, ad ding the law, has been passive, are actually using those
another $2 billion to the at best, says CREW, tools in daily business.
bean-counting tab. Then issuing only a few Features such as blog-
comes news the Internal general guidelines. ging, chat, interactive
Revenue Service is A s y o u m i g h t comment, polls, and Face-
apparently unwill- imagine, account- book- and MySpace-type
ing or unable to ability is difficult networks are getting more
build a simple Web to find. and more play as venues
site for individual CRE W is no for businesses to interact
online tax filing, latecomer to this with their customers and
instead preferring game, mind you; potential customers.
to allow private ven- it’s been hounding Atitsbest, this Webinterac-
dors to charge fees for the Bush administra- tionhelpsbuildbrandimage
the service. tion for more than a and trust with potential buy-
And that’s not even the ing to “outdated, inefficient year now about 5 million ers. A customer—especially
bad news. Only now is the and ineffective paper record missing e-mails covering one with a previous com-
Department of Homeland keeping systems.” CREW the start of the Iraq war, the plaint or ax to grind—likes
Security getting around notes that readily available, Valerie Plame outing and nothing better than to get
to hardening the govern- off-the-rack software is avail- the aftermath of Hurricane a personalized answer to a
ment’s computer security, able for electronic records Katrina. While it’s easy to question or comment about
which, as you know, can’t management. draw cover-up conclusions a company’s wares.
protectyour Social Security That was the polite press here, even CREW Execu- However, there are still
number, much less nuclear release version. The sum- tive Director Melanie Sloan many businesspeople who
secrets. Not that that really maryofthereport—“Record admits the White House’s know about these newfan-
matters anymore since Chaos: The Deplorable State digital record gap is “not gled tools but don’t know the
both are widely available of Electronic Record Keep- necessarily due to malice first thing about how to use
on the Internet. ing in the Federal Govern- but rather incompetence.” them for fun and profit—the
Even that is not the ment”—cites an “appalling The same sadly applies latter being the most opera-
really bad news. No one, it lack of progress,” “wide- to the Census Bureau, the tive end result, particularly
now appears, will be held spread confusion” and a IRS, DHS, Department of for stakeholders in the busi-
responsible for the whole “complete lack of mean- Veterans Affairsanddozens ness.
mismanaged mess, par- ingful oversight” when it of other federal agencies: No worries. Business
ticularly if e-discovery is comes to handling records government ineptitude in folks can have it both ways:
required: There won’t be throughout the federal gov- practice and principle. They can have fun and
enough evidence left to ernment. CREW concludes —Roy Mark [CONTINUED ON PAGE 10]
