Russ Johnson

So I’ve been seeing many tweets today from @PoliticalMath regarding the data from Recovery.gov. Among my favorites was:

CA zip code 95814 added 75,000 jobs. Population: 16,600. That’s 5 jobs per person! http://bit.ly/14Uijc

As I read into the issue more I found that much of the jobs “saved or created” went to government agencies as this BigGovernment.com blog post shows:

But the most relevant information on Recovery.gov is that most of the jobs created or saved are in the public sector. For instance, according to Vice President Biden, out of the 640,329 jobs, 325,000 went to education and 80,000 to construction jobs. The difference we will soon find out is going to other government jobs. You need more evidence? 13,080 grants went to the private sector, and 116,625 went to [federal] agencies.

Even when the money went to private ventures was completely wasted:

First, $159 billion has been spent so far. That’s $248,273 per job. However, when you look at some specific contracts that were awarded you find that some jobs were created or saved at an insane cost to taxpayers. For instance, $1,359,633,501 were awarded to CH2M WG IDAHO LLC, in WA to create 2,183 jobs. That’s $622,827 per job. That’s not as bad though as the $258,646,800 awarded to the Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC in NY, to create 25 jobs. That’s over $10.3 million per job.

The whole stimulus is a joke and it always has been. Many conservatives complained about this boondoggle far before it was a law. When will the liberals learn you can’t buy your way out of a bad economy. You can in fact deregulate and lower taxes to improve and encourage the economy. Instead they have focused on ways to spend and regulate more. There is an excellent video from Reason.com about the a private analysis of stimulus spending by Recovery.org. Cross-posted at RightSideofTech.com

As I’ve said many times here increased regulation including net-neutrality regulation will result in poorer quality services and/or higher costs.  This is a natural byproduct of governmental interference in the market.  Gizmodo had an article that articulated this very point in regards to the recent regulation called for by the FCC chairman Julian Genachowski.  The regulation he called for has resulted in AT&T allowing VOIP on the iPhone.  AT&T is allowing it not because they feel it’s good for business.  Rather they are seeking to be ahead of the regulations forthcoming and provide a way for them to justify price increases. It’s always been my opinion that the FCC and Congress should spend their time and energy increasing competition and seeking ways to break up these sudo monopolies owned by the telco and cable companies.  Instead Obama’s administration will monkey with the market decrease quality and increase prices.  Further placing the US at a disadvantage on the world market. Cross Posted at RightSideofTech.com

Today columnist John C. Dvorak made the claim that Vivek Kundra was a phony.  In his story he disputed the education and qualifications of Mr. Kundra.  Among the claims he made was that Vivek Kundra had lied about his MS degree in Information Technology.  It appears shortly after the release of this blog entry GigaOm reported:

University of Maryland University College spokesman, confirmed that Kundra graduated from the school with a Masters of Science in Information Systems Management.

This fact seems to clear up the fact that he did in fact have a MS from University of Maryland.  However there still is no evidence he had a degree in Biology as he claimed in his Washington DC bio. While the education stuff is entertaining and controversial I find the questions about his background more interesting.  Here you have a man placed in charge of multiple billions of dollars of US IT spending.  This same man seems to lack any significant experience in IT that would justify such an important position.  While I agree that he is more than willing to throw resources towards Web 2. 0 technologies this will not solve the underlying problems that exist in Federal IT spending and implementation.  The fact that he spent $18 million dollars to build Recovery.gov is ridiculous.  His spending might be justified if he had made significant improvements in data availability.  However according to OMB watch:

…administration has yet to release much new information that wasn’t previously available online.

Obama did what he always does in his appointments.  He choose a candidate that was politically connected over skill set and experience.  That is why he choose a Leon Panetta for CIA Director.  He choose a politically connected individual over someone with a strong military or intelligence background.  Consistently he has proven that he would rather find someone that benefits him in some politically strategic way rather than choose individuals for their qualifications and experience.

Apparently the Obama administration did not get the memo that its 2009 and not 1692. On the Whitehouse.gov blog a post encourages readers:

If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

This reminded me of the Salem witch trials where people were encouraged to turn in their neighbors for “fishy” behavior. In addition to this odd behavior Redstate.com is reporting the Obama administration is using provisions from the Broadband Data Improvement Act to gather information on individuals with broadband access including IP address, address and Internet access points on the home. I’m not normally one for conspiracies but this has all the makings of a good one. Cross posted with Rightsideoftech.com

Gizmodo had an article about a pledge by President Obama to spend 3% of GDP for resarch and development.  The geek in me is excited by this focus on technology. However our President has already massivly increased government spending. This excesive spending cannot be sustained even if we obtain next generation technology from this spending. Using the federal government as a conduit for funding results in inefficiency and waste of precious tax payer dollars. The better option would be using tax credits and decreased regulation to encourage investment in research and developent in the sciences. This free market approach would keep the Federal govenment out as a middleman and allow for innovation and waste fewer taxpayer dollars.

So, today it made the news that our graceful and suave president gifted the Queen of England a new iPod. At first, I thought this was an April fools joke; but, no. This latest guffaw occurs not long after Obama gifted the prime minister a collection of DVDs. Add all this to the fact that Obama sent a letter to the old president of France and we’ve got some serious hilarity. Now, I know that Obama did not personally make these embarrassing gift purchases and mis-addressed letters, but it does bring into question his ability to choose competent employees. The icing on the cake is that Obama’s committee overseeing the auto industry contains not one single person with auto industry experience. All of these little things just further show Obama’s lack of good judgement and inexperience. It is disheartening to face the fact that he’s the one running recently nationalized companies and handling trillions in new spending.

Obama has named Washington DC’s Vivek Kundra as the nations Chief Information Officer.  As the CIO, his job getting all of the various government bureaucracies to coordinate their technology operations will be difficult.  Additionally, according to Stephanie Condon of CNET, Kundra has said that his job is “to ensure the public has access to information, and to rethink the way the public interacts with the government in an information economy.”  I agree with the idea of the government providing methods to access data.  Kundra also said his office is working on the roll out of Data.gov.  This site would be used to make large amounts of government data available to everyone.  He has already done some of this with Washington DC’s Digital Public Square.  I took a look at the sight and it has crime, finance, and other data available for download in various formats including XML and CSV.  Also, the site is peppered with feeds for different types of data.  Hopefully, he will be able to make some of the same kinds of data available from the Federal government.

After reading the article, I was left with some concern about Kundra’s plans. In addition to the availability of data, Kundra has his eye toward a federal social networking site:

… Kundra said, the federal government should be able to host space online where citizens can turn to each other for solutions to social problems, much as they do now on sites like Facebook. “You’ve got 140 million (Facebook) users that have been able to organize on issues and problems and create a movement so people can be heard,” he said.

While I love the idea of an open and transparent government, I’m not sure they need to create another social networking community.  The market delivers this to consumers already with Facebook, MySpace and other niche communities.  Additionally, vast amounts of personal data is stored on many social networking sites and this doesn’t seem like a good thing to have within the control of the Federal government.  I also think having communities like this will only serve to distract precious IT resources from more important tasks.  We don’t need the Federal government dabbling in social networking.

An organization as large as the Federal government will be difficult to manage.  That combined with the fact that he will have to create a change in government worker’s attitudes about the data they manage, and you’ve got one very tall order.  Finally, there will be pressure to delay or not share data from those both inside and outside of the administration. Overall, his plans are ambitious and will be very difficult to achieve. Hopefully though, some good stuff will filter down to the average American.