Last-minute Christmas panic gifts are not difficult to spot: an “In the Kitchen with Karl Rove” cookbook; wasabi-scented bath soap; an iTunes gift card that can only be redeemed for Kevin Federline “songs.” Christmas is four days away, and yet 35 million Americans seem to be rolling the dice when estimating their ability to find something great at the last minute.

And for the Beltway CXO looking for gifts that will inspire employees, partners and customers - look no further. I’ve assembled a handy last-minute gift guide that will leave them buzzing for weeks (note to executive: aforementioned buzzing may or may not be positive in nature).

For the Federal Agency Customer:

Executives looking to recognize that special Federal Agency employee while at the same time staying under the $20 gift limit are not out of luck. Might I suggest an IPv6 handbook. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a step-by-step guide to transitioning to the new protocol. (P.S. - re-gifting last year’s IPv4 handbook could in fact cause that Agency’s communications network to implode)

For the Employee:

Beltway executives do not want the hard work of their employees in 2007 to go unnoticed. The long hours, time away from family and devotion to the cause were paramount to your firm’s success. Respond in kind by giving that special employee a “5 Day Telework Gift Card.” That’s right: leave employees smiling with a gift card that can be redeemed for five full days of telework in 2008. You’ll be the hero of the staff, and it will be weeks before they read the find print stating that the gift cards are not valid in the contiguous United States or between the hours of 8am-6pm.

For the Subcontractor:

They helped you land that huge IDIQ contract with the Department of Education and now, it is time to let them know how much you care with a framed copy of the Sub’s 8a certification letter - complete with autographs from the entire SBA management team.

For the CEO of the Company You Acquired:

You bought his/her company for $200 million, and now that person could effectively bathe in caviar every day and still have millions left over in the bank. Bottom line: You’ve done enough for them this year, no gift required.

For the CEO of the Competitor who beat you out on the big contract:

As a child my grandmother eschewed traditional holiday gifts that kids might actually want (i.e. - toys, games) in favor of a certificate that arrived every year notifying me that a constellation had been purchased in my name. This gift was about as useful as the U.S. savings bonds that she sent every year for my birthday paying .00005 percent interest. (in fact, I believe the postage stamp used to mail the Bond was worth more than the Bond itself). Now that I’ve aged it is clear that the Constellation in fact makes the perfect gift…for that CEO at the competitor who walked away with the multi-year $3 billion deal with DHS you spent months bidding on.

In any event, I hope these last-minute holiday gift ideas will serve you well in the few days left before Christmas. Happy Holidays indeed.

When some retiring executives make that difficult decision to ride off into the sunset, it is usually behind the wheel of a golf cart. This is not to say that these accomplished individuals completely detach from business pursuits, but more time to improve on a 6 handicap doesn’t hurt.

The standard retirement book, however, may not apply to Jim Ballard, president of Perot Systems Government Services, who begins a new chapter of his life after retiring from the company on Monday.

During an interview with ExecutiveBiz in April of last year, Ballard confessed that his golf game could use some work, leading one to believe that the coming days and weeks will be filled with a broad range of new experiences. Transitioning to new opportunities is old hat for Ballard, a distinguished 24-year Navy veteran who often found himself adjusting to disparate environments and challenges.

“…no matter whether you’re doing a good job or a bad job, every couple of years, the military moves you to another job. During my Navy career I had the chance to work in a lot of different agencies that had different environments and different characteristics to them,” Ballard reflected in that ExecutiveBiz interview. “It forced me to find ways to lead different organizations. It gave me the chance to test my leadership skills in a “baptism by fire” environment and as well as have the opportunity for on the job training for my leadership skills.”

After Ballard concluded his Navy career in 1997, he genuinely wondered if his skills and experience would be marketable in the real world. This concern evaporated quickly, as Ballard found a way to leverage his background and passion within the contractor community. And the results have followed: Perot Systems Government Services has grown exponentially from $4 million to $600 million in annual revenues.

In the company release announcing his retirement and the naming of Lee Carrick to replace him, Ballard says, “My decision to move on was a very difficult one, but under Lee’s direction, I am confident that Perot Systems will continue to advance its mission in the federal industry.”

Ballard has always been a book that could in fact be judged by its cover, building a reputation for honesty and straight shooting. “I’m pretty much an open book. What you see is what you get,” Ballard remarked during his ExecutiveBiz interview. “I always tell folks that I’m not smart enough to be devious.”

While Ballard’s time at Perot Systems is ending, this is one book that won’t be closing anytime soon.

Each year, the Kidney Ball brings out the leaders in the government contracting space. Last month’s Kidney Ball was no exception. The event ended with entertainer Patti LaBelle rocking the 1,000 plus crowd. Some of the executives who attended included: Donna Morea of CGI, Anne Altman of IBM, Greg Baroni of Unisys, Jim Duffey of EDS, Linda Mills of Northrop Grumman, George Wilson of Stanley, Jim Ballard of Perot Systems, Mike Bradshaw of Google, Jim Sheaffer of CSC among many others.

From top to bottom: Anne Altman; Jim Duffey; Patti LaBelle & Greg Baroni; Tony Englert & Donna Morea.

We’ve reported on the intersection of government and Web 2.0 technologies before on this blog. It’s an important and shifting landscape and nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in Washington D.C.

Most of the applications are born in the private sector. Wikipedia, for example, became widely used well before Intellipedia, the intelligence service’s equivalent information sharing website.

“Web 2.0 applications are being created on the private side of things,” Ramesh Ramakrishnan, division director at Citizant, a Chantilly-based government solutions provider, said. “We then look at how a particular tool can be applied to a variety of federal agencies.”

“So much of the federal government information is stacked in individual silos. But wikis are getting more popular from the standpoint of collaboration,” Ramakrishnan says, pointing out that the greatest benefit is that a wiki can turn a Web site into a knowledge repository, allowing interdepartmental collaboration.

Mashups, an application using data from more than one source, are among the best examples of government’s adoption of ‘Gov 2.0′. Citizant recently worked to develop enterprise mashups to create a National Housing Locator system for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Using the Google Maps API and the NHL database, an information data sharing tool was born. (see picture).

“HUD was looking at all the services it provides within its program areas and identified an office that did a lot of geocoding [assigning geographic identifiers],” Ramakrishnan said. “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel of geocoding. What better way than to take the geocoding already done from one office and use it as a service within all of HUD.

Essentially other users can leverage the existing program and applications by using it as service across the board, and so now, in this case, the geocoder becomes a service center of sorts and the housing locator platform is able to combine its data with an already existing map.

To be sure, there’s a menu of government-specific constraints with Web 2.0 applications. For example, on gov’t wikis, deciding who can and cannot edit or view a page could potentially be a matter of national security. Issues also abound with privacy issues and determining moderators, especially with social networking sites.

“Full cross pollination from private to gov’t is a long way off,” Ramakrishnan said. Citizant is currently working with employees in various gov’t agencies to establish an integrated platform model for Gov 2.0 solutions.
For more on this, check out our recent interview with Sean Dennehy, Chief of Intellipedia Development.

If 60 is the new 40, then it is fair to say that $10 billion is the new $1 billion when it comes to the government contractor threshold for tier-one status. As massive, Agency-wide contracts such as Networx proliferate, the resources and staffing required to serve as a prime balloons along with them.

What this likely means is that the steady drumbeat of executives at midtier government contractors speaking of the challenges associated with contractor “no-man’s land” - as Washington Technology editor David Hubler so aptly puts it - will continue.

The “no-man’s land” that Hubler refers to is that painful period for government contractors when they have outgrown small business or minority status - and all of the benefits that come along with it - but are still too small for many prime contracts (especially the massive, multi-agency ones).

Contractors that find themselves in this position can pursue different paths: growth through acquisition, organic growth or, in the case of RS Information Systems (one of the area’s largest African-American government contractors with over $300 million in annual revenue), pursue a well-matched suitor to acquire them.

The more you read about the obstacles these midtier contractors face, the more you grow to appreciate those who have carved out a successful path to tier-one status - and the executives behind that growth. One of the most impressive case studies is SRA International, and the executive who played a giant role in growing the company from $135 in annual revenue past the $1 billion threshold.

Dr. Renato DiPentima - known to friends and acquaintances as Renny - served as president and chief executive officer of SRA from January 2005 through March 2007. Prior to assuming this position, he served as president and chief operating officer as part of his 12 years at the firm.

But DiPentima is one of those executives who transcends the company he is associated with; recognized as one of the region’s most significant and influential leaders within the contractor and Federal community: Government Computer News Industry Executive of the Year in 2000; Government Executive of the Year in 1993; Federal CIO Council 2003 Industry Executive of the Year by the Federal CIO Council; and the list goes on and on.

While DiPentima might have slowed down a tad after handing over the reigns in April to his successor Stan Sloane, SRA still has its foot firmly on the accelerator. Because when it comes to landing the juiciest contracting plums, companies like SRA must push on, past $1 billion, past $5 billion and on to the $10 billion range.

The good news for Sloane, SRA’s president and chief executive officer who has been on the job for nine months, is that DiPentima laid the foundation for this lofty goal to be met. Between 33 years in senior government posts and an additional dozen years with SRA, DiPentima has witnessed and played a major part in the contractor community’s transformation and evolution.

While Dr. DiPentima relishes the opportunity to travel with his wife - and spend more quality time with his children and grandchildren - he is still actively involved with SRA and the contractor community. And with so many midtier contractors looking to replicate the growth that he helped to usher for SRA, I have little doubt that there will be a packed house on hand to hear him speak at the ExecutiveBiz “Been There Done That” lunch series event on January 24, 2008 at the Westwood Country Club in Vienna, Virginia.

IT leaders in government are wrestling with several competing forces in the Web2.0 world. The greatest force is a push for change towards more user-focused computing.  But a resisting counter force threatens to delay this change.

The counter force here is institutional inertia. Big organizations are just slow to change, and the larger, more complex the organization is the slower it can be to change.  Change in IT is particularly hard since new IT must work with the old IT and since users have varying degree of control over the organization’s IT budgets. All this adds to inertia in the adoption of new Web2.0 service models.

There are ways to address inertia and speed the delivery of Web2.0 concepts in large organization.  Here are a few proven methods:

1) Stay mission focused
2) Make fast gains that scale to the size of the enterprise
3) Leverage out of band networking
4) Address security and policy concerns up front

Here is more on each:

1) Stay mission focused. The greatest cause of inertia in large government organization is the need to keep everyone focused on critically important missions.  Use that fact to help speed the delivery of your Web2.0 project by ensuring everyone understands the mission-focused nature of your project.  You can build an overwhelming case for your project if you logically show a transformational improvement to your agency’s ability to accomplish its goals and support the mission. I’ve seen the power of staying mission focused help small teams make dramatic change at some of the largest agencies in the government, so this is a force you definitely want on your side.  

2) Make fast gains that scale to the size of the enterprise. Make your first Web2.0 project one that will serve a great number of users and help them all do something better.  For example, hosting a blog or wiki server is something that can reach all ends of your enterprise for a relatively low cost and will help you prove to management that you are focused on the mission. By fielding capabilities that can be used by the entire workforce you will be demonstrating to all that Web2.0 has incredible potential.  After fielding blogs and wikis you can move to secure enterprise mashups, a way to bring the true power of Web2.0 to every user in the enterprise. 

3) Leverage out of band networking.  The chain of command is very important in government organizations and all large enterprises, and I would never advocate going around it.  But direct contact with users, vendors and other mission partners is also critical to success of modern IT.  So why not use modern IT to help with your networking?  Interact with your users in their collaborative environment.  And meet them where they connect online… Does your agency have a database of experts?  Sign up.  Do your users and vendors use capabilities like LinkedIn.com or Second Life?  Meet them there. Don’t limit yourself to technical interactions.  Direct face to face connections via conferences and executive networking (like through our own ExecutiveBiz, of course) are critically important to ensuring strategic alignment between IT programs and the workforce.

 4) Address security and policy concerns up front.  A huge concern in all agencies today is the need for protection of the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.  Web2.0 capabilities can be built with security, but only if that security is planned in from the start.   Policies for Web2.0 capability usage are also important to address.  Management will feel more confident in the program if you can propose sound policies that will accomplish the role out of new capabilities.  For example, what type of postings will be considered appropriate to your agencies internal blogs? And which ones will be considered appropriate to those that face your agencies customers?  Policies associated with Web2.0 capabilities, like all policies, are only effective when made public.  For a good one see the policy for the public facing blog of the US Government at http://blog.usa.gov/roller/govgab/page/policies

All citizens and the entire government workforce can benefit from the introduction of Web2.0 into government IT.  But we should all understand the government IT workforce faces some daunting challenges in fielding these capabilities.  It can take lots of work and lots of prior planning to succeed in this environment.  Success will come sooner by focusing on the mission, delivering early successes, staying connected with all mission partners, and by addressing security and policy issues up front.

Bob Gourley is the former CTO of the Defense Intelligence Agency and is the co-founder and CTO of Crucial Point LLC.  Bob blogs on enterprise IT at http://ctovision.com

Barely a day goes by that we do not hear about the growth of Twitter and the how addictive it can be in terms of its usage. As more people get used to the idea, it acts like a controlled form of Instant Messaging – not as invasive as Skype or AIM and more instant than an email along with the ability to broadcast. Among the many various applications being envisaged, the million-dollar question is whether it will be used in the enterprise or not ? Send 30 minute updates to your team about the status of your project ? Assign tasks to team members on your way home on the subway ? Instant notification of schedule changes ? Will it get the stamp of validity from corporate customers who will use this tool to communicate with their employees or customers ? Amazon and JetBlue are two pioneers in this field who are using it to notify their customers about product availability and flight deals. Viget Labs, a local company uses Twitter internally to communicate among team members and to share information about project status, blogs and articles.
Nevertheless, there are definite concerns about privacy and sharing of corporate information. Viget Labs has laid down policies about sharing of customer information similar to those laid down by many companies for blogging. The social element coupled with the sharing and broadcasting nature of the service that has made the Twitter service so popular, may very well work against it in the enterprise space and slow its growth in the enterprise space.

Just as many organizations have adopted blogs to communicate with their customers, its easy envision it being used similarly to reach out to the Twitter generation . Typically, organizations will more easily adopt it to use it to connect to end consumers but the value that it brings for use internally among team members or a project is rather limiting.

It is becoming clear that there is in fact a happy medium between the old – and currently unraveling – Japanese keiretsu system that guaranteed lifetime employment and a younger generation here in the U.S. that hops between jobs as if they were hopping from the Red Line to the Blue Line at Metro Center.

This successful middle ground plays out repeatedly among executives at government IT companies and contractors. Earlier, I profiled Lee Technologies founder John Lee as he approaches 25 years at the helm of the successful provider of solutions that enable commercial enterprises and government agencies to mitigate risk to their physical infrastructure.

Another area company with an equally impressive pedigree and legacy for information technology innovation – and one that has been heating up as of late with some major contracts – is Centurum. For more than thirty-five years, Centurum has been focused on building and deploying mission critical systems that enable government agencies and military branches to operate and communicate more effectively on a global scale.

Delivering a life cycle of IT services to the DoD and Federal agencies, Centurum has steadily grown into a 400+ employee company specializing in providing advanced IT life cycle solutions in six core areas: network engineering, systems integration, BPM, systems engineering and design, information operations and operational support.Much like John Lee, Centurum has also benefited from an executive who has remained an integral part of the company as it has grown. Sam Seymour, Executive VP and COO, has been with the company 16 years and is no doubt pleased with the momentum Centurum is carrying into 2008.

Centurum is among a handful of mid-tier contractors with an aggressive growth plan in place to raise its revenue up to the level of the larger competitors they also find themselves locked up against when competing for business. The first step for Centurum is the $100mm threshold – a milestone that is now a great deal closer after recently being awarded a $420 million IDIQ contract with just one other company to provide network-centric services to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. And just a few months in, Centurum has already been awarded over $7 million in competitively bid task orders for the contract.

Centurum quickly followed that with a $16+ million IDIQ contract for In-Service Engineering Agent (ISEA) support for multiple radio frequency and satellite communication programs and projects at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems San Diego (SSC San Diego). With options, the cumulative value of the contract could reach north of $84 million.

Centurum continues to pursue balanced growth across its core service areas, and Seymour sees 2008 shaping up as a year where the focus will be on “…developing a deeper and more rich compliment of core competencies that are established, viable swim lanes.” He adds this will be achieved by heightening employee skill levels by pushing certification training and assembling a deeper pool of high-level subject matter experts.

The road ahead appears bright for Centurum and Seymour – an avid motorcycle enthusiast – as 2008 approaches. At this rate, the $100 million milestone will be in the rear view mirror in short order.
Brian Lustig is co-founder of Lustig Communications, a Rockville, MD-based communications firm that works with growing technology and government IT firms. Lustig is also a contributor to local business and industry publications.

More than 60,000 federal workers retired in 2006 according to a recent BusinessWeek article. That leaves a lot of unoccupied desks across the federal government. While Uncle Sam scrambles to recruit a new generation of workers, contractors have already begun to replace many of the vacancies.

Contracting firms, often with larger wallets and stronger on campus recruiters, have started to supplant the traditional federal employee. Firms like Booz Allen Hamilton and Accenture have extended their reach beyond the typical administrative and tech-focused duties and have begun to shoulder an variety of jobs typically reserved for the feds.

Lockheed Martin tops the list with over $33 billion in government contracts.

In turn, the contractors have begun to look to the next generation of workers. Two recent Lockheed Martin contracts were shaped by some of the younger members of the team, Linda Gooden, Executive Vice President of Lockheed Martin’s16,000 person Information Technology unit told The Washington Post.

Gooden utilized recent college graduates to develop an online payment system for a Social Security contract. Gooden wanted it to be Web-based and figured she would leverage their experience growing up with the Web, she told the Washington Post in an interview last year.

Though, many government agencies seeking to recruit the new talent face an uphill battle. “It’s a big sacrifice to work in government,” says Harvard public management professor Steven Kelman in an interview with BusinessWeek.

One of the other side of the contractor debate is David M. Holtsclaw, president of Local 145 of the American Federation of Government Employees. “This is costing us a lot more money in the long term,” Holtsclaw told BusinessWeek. “A lot of folks are retiring on a Friday and coming back on Monday working for contractors”

The balance between federal workers and contractors isn’t likely to be struck anytime soon; the height of the federal worker exodus won’t hit until 2009, with over 61,000 feds retiring.