To Your Health!

If you are still looking for a New Year’s Resolution, I have one to suggest -- be diligent about monitoring and managing your health.

Early this year I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. My urologist was actually shocked at my biopsy results.  I had some of the early indicators, which I had been tracking for about 7 years, and everything pointed to a continued “watchful waiting,” a process where you wait until the signs indicate that cancer is likely.  This process reminds me of a jack-in-the-box toy -- you know jack is going to pop out, you just don’t know when, but when he does, you are startled.

Jack popped out when my biopsy results came in, and I was startled.

A range of treatments were discussed, and I opted for the suggested approach...surgery.  Being fortunate enough to live close to Baltimore, I decided to seek a second opinion from the urology department at Johns Hopkins and called to make an appointment.  Apparently my timing was spot-on, as I was assigned to the world-renowned director of urology at Hopkins, Dr. Partin.  In typical fashion, when I went to my appointment, I took a chart that I had developed to track my Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) over the last 7 years, and proudly presented it to Dr. Partin. He looked at it, and then at me, paused. and finally said, “you're an engineer right?” He continued and said, “Nice chart, but you did it wrong...you should have plotted PSA on a semi-log scale, and you would see a linear relationship.”  This immediately made me think of two things:

• Dang it! I should have known this! and;
• I really like this doctor, he was straight to the point.

My PSA moved into the watchful waiting region about 2 years ago, but when it continued to trend upward, a biopsy was ordered.  As I mentioned, my urologist was convinced that only low level cancer would be detected, and watchful waiting could continue, but I guess all the other normal signs were misleading.

I chose a robotic surgical approach since it is supposed to be more accurate, and, it is just really cool. The robotic surgeon was Dr. Allaf (aka Mo, as he was referred to by Dr. Partin when we were introduced the morning of surgery, July 3rd). Dr. Partin assisted.

Upon closer examination of my dearly departed prostate, the pathologist concluded that the cancer was a wee-bit more severe than had first been thought (an in situ biopsy only samples a tiny part of the prostate).  The cancer was concentrated on the outside region, which made it more likely to spread. Fortunately, there were no signs of it spreading, and my follow up blood tests 3 months after surgery showed no sign of cancer (PSA was not measurable).  Nonetheless, given the pathology results, I got slotted into radiation treatment, which is still underway.  By the way, I am totally amazed at the spatial accuracy of radiation these days (less than 3mm diameter).

So, as you ponder your New Year’s Resolutions, I suggest that you resolve to make sure that all your health tests are up to date, that you probe to fully understand what all of your indicators mean, and that you manage your health accordingly.  I think my engineer tendencies to measure and track everything helped me stay on top of my situation.  You only have one life, so take care of it.

My last radiation treatment is in just a few days, the day before my 61st birthday.  It has been one heck of year, and I welcome 2015!

Happy New Year!

So Long NARA

Life is uncertain.  Eat dessert first.

The world is an uncertain place these days, whether you move or whether you stay put. But several things help guide my way, and I know I have shared this thinking with some of you. The first is confidence. Confidence, but not arrogance. Confidence in one’s capabilities, in one’s adaptability, and in one’s values. The values part is important, because ultimately it will be the filter through which others see you.

I think a curiosity and a willingness to venture out of one’s comfort zone is important as well.

Getting out of the comfort zone forces one to learn new things, to take on challenges, and to expand one’s thinking. I give this advice to everyone I mentor or advise, and I follow it myself.  I believe we all need to keep learning.

 

As many of you know, my passion is engineering - applying technology to deliver business value is something that really drives me.  Throughout my career, I have come to realize that good products typically are not the best the first time they are introduced, and many times aren’t used the way they were originally intended.  Experience has taught me that one needs to do it wrong to get it right.  An unending curiosity is a critical need today, striving to learn and understand new things and to seek better, more efficient solutions.  Provided one learns from mistakes, these really aren’t failures.  A secret to success is not in knowing everything. Rather, it lies in knowing what you don't know, and finding those who do. I’ve been successful because I don’t give up on a goal, seeking out constructive criticism, asking others to tell me that my baby’s ugly, provided it truly is, and then asking them to tell me why.

 

My career can be characterized as a string of implausible challenges, and my next chapter is similar -- one that will be an outlet for creativity, and one where I can make a difference.  And perhaps most important, this role will let me be me. After all, the time we have to do such things is limited, so I want to make every moment count.

It has been my privilege to work with many wonderful people at NARA.  Thank you.

Never settle.  Keep moving forward.

Quiet People

Throughout my career, people have said that I am quiet -- sometimes too quiet.  I tend to agree, but it is one of those things that isn't easily fixed.

Over time, most people realize that I need to think about things and after I do that, I will express my views and suggestions.  This post summarizes this really well...

http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/10-ways-to-deal-with-quiet-people/

The Wisdom of Steve Jobs

This is a re-post. It contains exerts from a commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave several years ago and captures my feelings very well.

.....[being] fired from Apple was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Stewart [Brand] and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

The Value of Records

I admit it, earlier in my life I had very little appreciation for history. But over time I realized that an understanding of history provides valuable insight into why things are the way they are, and can help provide suggestions for addressing issues today.

When I joined the National Archives, I used work that I had been doing to trace my family history to help me better understand the processes that were in place for archivists and researchers to find records. I used a few facts that I had about my dad’s military experience to launch into some amateur research at the Archives.

I had a picture from one of his albums that showed that he was in the Navy in WWII, and based on the annotations on the picture I assumed he was on the Memphis.

As it turns out, he wasn’t on the Memphis, which was a WWII ship. Instead he was in Memphis for training.

Without being terribly deterred by this misstep, my quest for information continued. I completed an SF-180 to gain access to his military records, and was fortunate enough to travel to the Archive’s St. Louis facility earlier this month to see the Archive’s National Personnel Records Center, which is where most of our military records are housed. I was able to catch up with my request for access to dad’s records and his Navy file was located for me to review.

The record was awesome. I had expected to see the typical record entries – his enrollment date, discharge date, etc. What I found were these things, plus some very surprising items that helped me resolve some of the mysteries in my dad’s past.

Dad joined the Navy in the height of WWII and was discharged at the end of 1945. One of the unexpected treasures in the record file was a film negative containing the image taken of dad the day he joined the Navy.

The big surprise came when I found a letter from my grandmother, written to the Navy, requesting an early discharge for my dad. The request accompanied other documents that supported her request which was based on her inability to maintain the household given my grandfather’s failing health. Dad was needed back home to support his family.

Through a number of letters supporting the request, dad was honorably discharged from the Navy on December 29th, 1945 and returned home to re-assume his position as head of the household. He was 24 years old.

I now understand more of the background of my dad’s life. His role as the head of his household was never discussed, nor was the situation leading to his departure from the Navy. The history did help me understand what drew him to an eventual career in the aircraft industry. After his dad passed away, he left the Virginia area and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to be a part of the growing jet engine industry. His Navy training in aircraft maintenance certainly must have been the seed that inspired him to seek a job working on jet engines. He worked for the General Electric Aircraft Engine group for 32 years, retiring as a field quality engineer, after starting as a production worker.

Records provide invaluable insight into our past. Making these records permanently and easily accessible is incredibly important, not only to researchers, but everyone. Someday, everyone will want to explore the past to finds some clues that will undoubtedly reveals things that will be a surprise.

Authentication is a user-centric activity

My view of what it takes to authenticate something requires attention to two key attributes:
1. Verification that you are getting the item that you intend to authenticate from a reputable source that can represent that the item is authentic, and
2. verification that the item has integrity, i.e., that it hasn’t changed since it was presented by the reputable source.

If you think about it, if you want to be assured you can access authentic government data, where do you go – in the paper world, you go to a depository library (verification #1). You then get access to a copy of a document that may contain the data you are looking for, probably with the help of a document librarian. The document you get access to appears in a form (bound and denoted to be authentic, etc.) that you can trust to be authentic. Given these two validations, you, the user of government data, can conclude that the document is authentic.

There are some key points affecting the electronic world.
1. Replicas are provided, originals are not sent.
2. Replicas are always modified from the original. The digital world has accomplished this almost seamlessly – documents are rendered to adapt to your browser and environment, print-ready documents are RIPed to deliver a similar look-and-feel to the original. The term RIP is probably very telling when you look inside one of these sausage machines.
3. The challenge that we face is one of determining whether the user or receiver of the replica has sufficient information to confidently determine whether the replica is authentic.

Authentication is a user-centric activity.

The tools that the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has adopted to support authentication are targeted to address validation #2 – integrity. Fortunately, GPO qualifies for validation #1, as long as we maintain our reputation for being a trusted repository of official and authentic government documents. But, this is why we have invested in FDsys and need to continue to maintain this repository to sustain the level of trust we have earned.

Quotations

I run across quotations at times that really resonate with me. This is a good place to create a registry of these.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."  Theodore Roosevelt 

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which
knowledge gives." James Madison, 1822

"Whatever you are, be a good one." Abraham Lincoln

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin

"Science is about what is, and engineering is about what can be. The entire existence of engineers is dedicated to doings things better and more efficiently." Neil Armstrong, 2000

"Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south." “Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower February 22,1955 [I think is is really interesting that President Eisenhower included communication in these statements supporting the Interstate Highway Program.]

10 stupid career-limiting moves… ...and how to avoid them

I ran across this recently and felt that this list is very good and should be referenced occasionally. Most of these are common sense, but there are some good tips to consider. The list comes from John Heckers, an executive coach in Cherry Creek, Colorado.

1). Making money a major consideration. Harold Geneen, the former head of ITT when it was the world’s largest conglomerate said, “If you have to choose between money and experience, take the experience and the money will follow.” If you’re a money-grubber, you are going to wind up both less prosperous and less experienced than those who value each experience before the money. The money will follow in time — and in much greater amounts.

2). Refusing to “play politics.” Everyone says they “hate to play politics,” but the most successful people are also the most successful business politicians. Office politics is the game of knowing the power centers and utilizing them for your advancement and benefit. If you’re not bright enough to see how this is going to get you ahead in any organization, I hope you truly enjoy being a cubicle dweller.

3). Spending money on everything but your career. If you take a look at the 100 most successful people in America you will find that almost every single one of them has spent money on coaches, professional advisors, consultants and so on. I’ll see people go spend $100,000 on a new Mercedes, but get cranky about spending $25,000 or so on an Executive Coach. Lousy priorities. How do you think you get the money to buy Mercedes? Duh! Your career. Maximize it! And, by the way, most of my executive coaching clients found out to their delight that all they had to do to get at least a portion of my fee paid by their company was ask the right people in the company.

4). Less-than-professional attire. I see, especially among young people, an incredibly stupid belief system that they should be able to dress as they please. If you believe that, please go to work for the Peace Corps or a social service agency (and even they have dress codes). If you want to get ahead in business, dress like the top people dress to the greatest degree possible.

5). Not keeping commitments. Anyone who is careless about keeping commitments is going to get a bad reputation. This is a very small town.

6). Bad-mouthing someone influential. “Nuff said. It is the kiss of death.

7). Believing you have a right to a “work-life balance.” We’re all working our behinds off these days. Life is rough in the business world right now. No matter how old you are, if you believe that you need a “work-life balance” in the middle of the worst recession since 1929, you really need to grow up and get your behind to work.

8). Not improving themselves. Again, people will spend money on houses, vacations, cars, etc., but won’t take classes to stay current or move ahead. Find out if you need or can get certifications, licensures, degrees, diplomas, etc. Get them. Show your superiors that you are constantly spending time and money on your career. Many times, the company will pay for this, but even if they don’t, it is the best investment of your money you can make to invest in yourself and your knowledge and professional base.

9). Having an in-office romantic relationship. You might as well start filling out the unemployment application now if you’re going to fool around in the office – especially, but not only, if you’re married. There are so many things wrong with this it needs its own post.

10). Thinking inside the box, or acting outside the box. Think outside the box. But follow the “rules” of corporations when you’re acting. You can do virtually anything so long as you play “Mother May I?” correctly according to the corporate Hoyle at your company. But if you are a staid, linear thinker, you’re never going to get ahead. Linear thinkers are a dime a dozen, but many are in the corporate hierarchy. This is why you have to look like a stodgy boring suit in playing the game, but truly think with originality and intelligence.

Your baby's ugly -- sage advise for entrepreneurs

Steve Baker, friend of mine recently posted this article that is really good, not just for us crazy entrepreneurs, but for everyone in the world today -- the last paragraph contains great advise for us all.

It takes an incredible amount of intense drive, determination and strong ego to breathe life into a business and create products from scratch, but it's also that same ego that won't let a business owner be objective about what their business needs to succeed.

The business is up and running at light-speed and management doesn't have the time or willingness to stand back and take an honest look at what they have created. They are too close to the problems to see them. Just like a proud parent, they have spent sweat and time creating this "baby," and they refuse to believe that it might be less than perfect.

I call this the "business parent trap." It is in this trap that business owners often create and introduce products that would not test out in the marketplace. There's an attitude of "Hey, it's gotta be great because I thought of it."

I've found that there are usually two basic things wrong with a business: the product (the baby) and the management (the breath).

So how do you assess your business? Are your employees going to tell you that you're headed in the wrong direction? Not likely.

Occasionally a consultant will be brought in to review the company's performance in a given area. Unfortunately, when management does bring in a consultant, they often are really looking for affirmation - not straight-forward constructive criticism. Unfortunately, some consultants are more than willing to "affirm for a fee."

If you're going to succeed, then someone needs to tell you if your baby's ugly or you've got bad breath. So here are some blunt yet truthful thoughts for your business, and perhaps you:

• GET OVER YOURSELF: Know yourself, trust yourself, believe in your self...then Get Over Yourself. You're really not the smartest person in the world. You built the business and know it better than anyone else, but no one else really cares how much you know.
• SPECTATOR SPORT: Conversation with you should not be a spectator sport for others. Remember that there's a huge difference between listening and merely waiting for your turn to talk. You hired your employees and perhaps a consultant because you assumed they had brains, so let them use them. Ask questions and listen to answers.
• JUST ANOTHER PRODUCT: Realize that even though you think that your new product or service is the greatest thing since the flip-top beer can, the world just sees one more product and must be convinced. You created this product and you know every function of it, but customers do not buy functions, they buy only benefits. Whether your product is a high tech internet service or a left-handed widget, you must show how it is uniquely beneficial to your customer. Functionality makes your products work, benefits make them sell.
• PAPER WEIGHT: If you have the skills to create a product, chances are that you don't have the skills to market and sell it. Many business owners think that marketing and sales are the simplest part of their business, so it is almost an afterthought. There is only one reason that inferior products outsell better ones; and that is successful marketing. Think of your marketing plan as the complete story book that sells your product. If your story book is a best seller, then your product will be a best seller. Without the right story that will build sales and distribution, your wonderful product is just another paper weight that is headed for a land fill.
• STAND BACK: Your competitors are not all stupid. Guess what? They think their babies are cute too, and they may tell better stories that make them look even better than yours. So stand back and look at yourself and your baby and try to look through the eyes of a disinterested party, because believe it or not, the world is a disinterested party.

Remember, there's a strong chance that you will not be in business in 5 years. As busy as you are, and successful as you think you are, you must set your ego aside and realize that there are things beyond your control.

The secret to success does not lie in knowing everything; the secret lies in knowing what you don't know, and finding those who do. I’ve been successful because I seek out constructive criticism, asking others to tell me my baby’s ugly…but tell me why.

Cloud computing -- continued

I plugged into a cloud computing webinar recently. I thought the meeting was informative for the first 30 minutes, and then it turned into a sales pitch for a tool to help create a private cloud. The supplier was Appistry (http://www.appistry.com/products).

Here are my takeaways:

• Cloud computing is the next step along the path in creating common, shared data centers. The major steps in this evolution are: dedicated data centers, virtualization of data center components (virtualized servers and shared storage), and now cloud computing.
• Some government groups are starting to use the cloud concept, but are creating "private" clouds by using their own infrastructure on configuring it to be a cloud environment to gain capital and operational efficiencies.
• Appistry claimed remarkable capital improvement efficiencies through developing a private cloud with their applications (CloudIQ Manager, and CloudIQ Engine). They referenced a benchmark study that resulted in an 80% improvement in capital utilization. Frankly, I find that hard to believe on a sustained rate. They also claimed very good operational efficiencies, which seem logical since the infrastructure would be normalized to standard configurations, in theory requiring less staff.
  
  

My hope in attending the webinar was to get better insights into cloud applications for government applications without using owned infrastucture. This discussion didn't address this since Appistry is focused on selling tool to help create private networks. But, the benchmark data on capital and operational efficiency benchmarks (even with factoring in some realism in the claims) helps demonstrate the value of cloud computing in potentially lowering ongoing costs to manage IT systems. Once the security model is adequately addressed, this model will start to be the solution of choice for data centers and information systems.

10 qualities of mind for navigating uncertainty

1. Bring your full self to the challenge - Don't hide from the experience. Reinvent your leadership everyday. Develop a capacity for living in the moment. Let yourself experience the full emotional range. Change must begin with you.

2. Let your values by your guide - Your honesty, integrity, courage, and commitment to excellence may be the only thing certain in an uncertain world. Rely on your principles. They will prevent mistakes and help you sleep.

3. Live in a "world of not knowing" - Develop the capacity to learn in real time. Be gentle with yourself. Tolerate the ambiguity of life. Be clear about what you know and don't know. Befriend your anxiety about not knowing.

4. Clarify what you can and cannot control - In America, we see ourselves as the world's great problem solvers. But sometimes we can't control the outcomes. Learn when to take the initiative and when to be let nature take its course.

5. Live in the past, present and future - Keep perspective. "Realistic optimism" goes a long way. Stay passionate and optimistic yet honest about reality. Dreams can go a long way during tough times. Past lessons are our greatest teachers.

6. Befriend the chaos of life - Chaos is healthy - it's about life reordering itself. Face it head on. Chaos is the source of creativity and innovation and creates non-linear, business concepts that bring about our next generation of products.

7. Manage your bright and shadow sides - Expect to see both sides of your personality. Face up to your leadership shortcomings. Be aware of how stress brings forth your shadows. Get feedback from a friend, spouse, or partner.

8. Understand the diversity of people - Everyone sees change through his/her own lens. Some choose to hide; others act; still others won't stop talking. Listen deeply, tailor your response, and stay one step ahead.

9. Embrace the paradox of leadership - Uncertainty is full of contradictions and requires a multi-faceted response. Consider: tough empathy, urgent listening, reflective decisiveness, flexible firmness, and constructive impatience.

10. Build a culture of principles and performance - Focus on the higher purpose; teach people how the business works; lead by example; focus and align; obsess over customers; leverage core capabilities; be a leadership liberator; and lead brutally honest management teams.

Did you know? Interesting trivia...

A friend recently sent this to me. I thought it was very telling of the times we are living in.

• If you are one in a million in China, there are 1,300 of you
• China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world
• The 25% of India's population with the highest IQ...is greater than the total population of the United States --> India has more honor kids than America has kids
  
  
• The top 10 in demand jobs in 2010...did not exist in 2004
• We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist...to use technologies that haven't been invented...in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet
• The U.S> Department of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs...by the age of 38
• 1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year
• 1 in 2 worker has been there less than five years
  
  
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online
• There are over 200 million registered users on MySpace. If MySpace were a country, it would be the 5th largest country in the world
• The #1 country in broadband internet penetration is...Bermuda. The U.S. is #19, and Japan is #22
  
  
• We are living in exponential times
• There are 31 billion searches on Goggle every month - in 2006, this number was 2.7 billion
• Who addressed these questions before Google?
• The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992 - today, the number of text messages sent and received everyday exceeds the population of the planet
• Years taken to reach a market audience of 50 million
  - radio, 38 years
  - TV, 13 years
  - Internet, 4 years
  - iPod, 3 years
  - Facebook, 2 years
• Number of Internet device in 1984 was 1,000
• Number of Internet device in 1992 was 1,000,000
• Number of Internet devices now is 1,000,000,000
• There are 540,000 words in the English language, about 5X as many as there were in Shakespeare's time
• It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century
  
• It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4 x 10^18, or 4 billion gigabytes) of unique information will be generated this year - more than was generated in the previous 5,000 years
  
• The amount of new technical information in doubling every 2 years - for students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that...half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study
• NTT Japan has successfully tested a fibre optic cable that can transmit 14 trillion bits per second along a single strand of fibre. This is equivalent to 2,660 CDs or 210 million phone calls every second. This technology is tripling every 6 months and is expected to maintain this rate for the next 20 years
• By 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain -- predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capability of the human species
  
  
• During the time it took for you to read this, 67 babies were born in the U.S.; 274 babies were born in China; 395 babies were born in India; and 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally
  

Comment collection / collaboration tool

I stumbled across an innovative tool this week that may be very useful for us at the GPO. The tool is offered by Mixedink. MixedInk takes a fresh approach to collaborative writing. It's a fun, democratic and elegant way for people to weave their best ideas together. (Plus, it's free!)

I met with the founder of Mixedink Friday and got a complete demonstration of the tool. They are a small start up company that has developed this concept into a very user-friendly tool that is hosted in a cloud. This tool was used by Slate Magazine to allow the general public to create a proposed inauguration speech for President Obama (Mr. President, Give this Speech).

As the new administration moves to more open government, tools like this could play a big role.

GPO's Competitive Strategy

A colleague asked me for my thoughts on GPO's competitive strategy. He was working on a paper for his MBA and was looking for input from other GPO managers.
To address this question, I think we need to start by looking at the agency’s mission, and then examine our strength, weakness, opportunities and threats. From here, we can look at our strategy to remain competitive (and viable) in the market to serve our mission.

From the 2004 Strategic Vision document, our mission is stated as follows:
- To provide the agencies and organizations which make up the three branches of the Federal government with expert printing and publishing services, on a cost recovery basis, in order to avoid duplication and waste of government resources.
- To provide, in partnership with Federal Depository libraries, for nationwide community facilities for the perpetual, free and ready access to the printed and electronic documents and other information products, of the Federal government.
- To distribute, on a cost recovery basis, copies of printed and electronic documents and other government information products to the general public.

The vision was stated as follows:
- To deliver Federal information products and services from a flexible digital platform.

Competitive strategy
Our strategy to meet the opportunity and fend off the threats can be outlined.

1. We will understand the market we serve in light of our mission as outlined in Title 44.
This isn’t a new action, but one that needs to be carefully addressed given the rapid changes in technology, which translates to rapidly changing market needs. For FDsys, we worked closely with our end user community; librarians, agencies, congress. Focus groups and councils were formed to communicate with these groups to get their input into what they felt was needed in a new system, and to also validate that we understood them. These groups formed a good basis for candidates for beta testers. This process of involving the customer/partner is critical in successfully meeting market needs.

2. We will accurately capture requirements.
We have a number of examples, both good and bad from which to draw. Concentrated requirements working groups work well for this, with customer/partner follow up as required to validate these requirements are understood.

3. We must innovate.
Innovation is the process of devising a product or service that addresses the customer’s/market’s unmet needs. The output of the innovation process is a concept that, with a supportive business case, enters the product development process, where product design is completed and design conflicts are resolved. Practically speaking, a winning concept must also meet GPO’s success criteria. We need to maximize GPO's value through innovating solutions to meet or exceed needs, delivering solutions to position GPO to be the natural source for authentic Federal information.

4. We must organize in a way to assume a posture of serial innovation to efficiently meet new market needs as they emerge.
We need to have plans to continue to anticipate and understand GPO’s market needs and be prepared to address these with effective solutions in a timely fashion. Our organizational structure coupled with new policies (like our System Development Life Cycle process) and governance (Planning and Strategy board serving in an oversight role for strategic direction and capital investment planning) will support this, coupled with continued diligence into market assessment and active voice of customer work.

5. We must deliver.
We need to develop the integrity within the agency to do what we say we are going to do. This can be accomplished through prioritization of initiatives and through establishing effective organizations to implement projects to meet our goals.


Reference: GPO's Strategic Vision

FDsys goes live!

The initial launch of GPO's FDsys went live yesterday. This release includes the search and access elements of the system, introducing a vastly improved user interface over the GPO Access tool that has been in production since 1994.

The team has done an outstanding job getting a very complex system completed. In early 2008, the program management of FDsys was changed, moving GPO into the role of the prime contractor. Harris Corporation was ineffective at getting this difficult task completed. When this change was made, the team committed to delivering the first release in January. In less than a year, the GPO team contracted new subject matter experts, completed the system design, and led the development, integration, and test activities to launch this system. It was an terrific example of excellent teamwork and collaboration, doing whatever it took to complete the job on schedule.

Innovation

The Rochester Institute of Technology is putting additional focus on innovation and, being a member of the dean's council for their Golisano College of Computing and Information Science, I was recently asked to comment on my definition of innovation. I feel innovation is the process of devising a product or service that addresses the customer’s unmet needs. The output of the innovation process is a concept that, with a supportive business case, enters the product development process, where product design is completed and design conflicts are resolved. Ideally, only winning products enter the development process. Practically speaking, a winning concept must also meet company success criteria and societal criteria.

Additionally, I believe that innovation should be approached on a “needs-first” basis. This is an approach to innovation in which companies first uncover all the customer’s needs, then determine which are unmet, and then devise solutions to address those unmet needs. This approach to innovation has, at times been difficult to use effectively, mostly because it is difficult to identify and capture the customer’s needs. Capturing customer needs to drive innovation is a critical step and enhances the performance of the eventual product or service in the market and therefore is worth the effort required.

Cloud Computing: Pilot Results

In an earlier blog, I discussed how cloud computing may be a good option for help converting paper publications to searchable digital files. We embarked on a pilot test of cloud computing to evaluate this option.

The cloud was used to convert uncompressed TIFF images into searchable PDFs, requiring an optical character recognition (OCR) engine and a PDF distiller. This is a computationally intensive operation typical of image processing and therefore seemed to be a good application for distributed cloud computing.

Our pilot at the Government Printing Office consisted of processing nearly 20,000 pages of the Statutes at Large collection that had been scanned to our specifications. To assess the cloud capabilities, samples of the collection were processed with four different instance types; small, large, high-CPU medium storage, and high-CPU, large storage. The characteristics of these instances are outlined in this table:

Virtual instance details

Results were developed to assess the cost of processing a 100 page publication, which is roughly a 90MB package of TIFFs. Calculated costs included the upload/download transmission cost and the computing cost.The results were very interesting, indicating additional processing capability (virtual cores) improves the performance, to a point.

The transmission costs actually turned out to be higher than the processing costs, but it was clear that the high-CPU, medium storage processing solution was the most cost effective. Licensing costs for the OCR tool were not included in this evaluation.

Pilot cost summary

Special thanks to our to our awesome engineering co-op student, Isaac Jones for developing the test plan and collecting to data for this evaluation.

References:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
FDsys Operational Specification for Converted Content

Printed Electronics

In late 2007 silicon ink and inkjet printers were used to print a transistor with respectable performance. And now, a year later, there have been good advancements in demonstrating a product using this technology -- RFID tags using printed ICs (PICs). The past year has boosted nFET thin-film transistor (TFT) performance from electron mobilities of 80 cm2/Vs to nearly 100 cm2/Vs and full CMOS functionality has been achieved.

This is extremely cool. It was not too long ago that printed electronics was used for conductors as a part of an assembly. Now, printed electronics is moving into an area where effective active electronics can be built using low-cost printing technology. The flexibility and scalability enabled with printing technologies in the electronics market is mind-boggling, making the production of billions of devices seem reasonable.

One key market for this technology is for supply chain item inventory marking using RFID tags. Once a cost effective solution for individual RFID tags is available, this technology will quickly move to the mass market making inventory control and consumer transactions nearly painless. These low-cost RFID tags are expected to become increasingly common as a means of identifying every type of consumer product. Some device cost ~20 cents today, with a gaols to achieve a sub 1 cent cost.

References:
RFID Tags Using Printed Electronics
First Printed Silicon RFID Platform for Item-Level Intelligence

Crunch time

It seems like all projects experience a big crunch at the end. This is certainly the case with GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). This ambitious program to develop and launch a world-class information management system for Federal publications has been underway for some time now and has experienced a number of difficulties over the past few years. But since March of this year, the team has achieved traction and has been making terrific progress. Nonetheless, as the promised launch date approaches, knuckles are starting to turn white and some folks are starting a nasty habit of gritting their teeth.

I think things will turn out fine for this project despite the end-of-year vacations and holidays -- this team is focused and dedicated to getting this complex information system launched.

I was rummaging through some old files recently and came across a drawing that fit the FDsys situation well. Needing only a few Photoshop edits, this drawing was customized to fit bill perfectly.



To learn more about FDsys, check out the website -- www.gpo.gov/fdsys

Colorado Inventor Showcase

I had the pleasure of being invited to attend and judge the 4th Annual Colorado Inventor Showcase on November 10th at the Cable Center on the Denver University Campus. The event was terrific, where a number of Colorado companies came and displayed their innovative products. A group of judges reviewed their products and made some pretty tough assessments on their innovative nature and their ability to meet a market needs.

My pictures of the event can be seen on my Smugmug page: http://mlwash.smugmug.com/gallery/6573530_VjaLs#418504358_8Ev7S

Winners included the following:

• Inventor of the Year Award: Inventor - Beacon Biotechnology Team; Company - Beacon Biotechnology - Beacon’s BrightSPOT Reader, a hand-held device to provide instant diagnoses of any disease imaginable.
• Consumer Product of the Year Award: Company - re-thought; Inventor, Robert Irwin; BioHAWT - A biomimetic horizontal axis wind turbine designed for power generation
• Commercial Product of the Year Award: Company - VanDyne SuperTurbo; Inventor - Ed VanDyne; Fuel efficiency device called a SuperTurbocharger, designed to increase fuel efficiency by 25%
• Software Product of the Year Award: Company - Alchemy Grid - Inventor, Elliot Turner - Orchestr8 transforms the way you distribute and consume Internet content
• Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Philip Hartman (Age 14); Company - Fiberlight Int'l;
• Honorable Mention Award: Company - Smart Lid; Inventor - Bill Miller;
• Honorable Mention Award: Company - ET Squared; Inventor - Pete Tovani; Product to mitigate the negative impact of Human Beings on planet Earth.
• Honorable Mention Award: Company - Think Like a Genius; Inventor - Todd Siler, Ph.D.; Three dimentional imagination tool for bringing new ideas to life
• Honorable Mention Young Entrepreneur Award: Company - Kyle Invent; Inventor - Kyle Myhra; Spot Sucker stain remover technology