The Buzz

No Names, Please

Agencies still prefer purchasing brand-name products, even after a pointed reminder from the Office of Management and Budget about rules against specifying them in acquisition requests. On April 11, David Safavian, chief of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Karen Evans, head of e-government initiatives, sent a memo to federal executives "requesting that agencies take steps to mitigate brand-name usage." Instead, they said, agencies should describe what they need without naming names.

The memo was widely embraced as a positive step. Even big companies such as Oracle Corp., which benefit when agencies specifically request their products, cast the memo in a positive light: "Agencies have to choose technology based on value," said Michael Sperling, spokesman for Oracle. He added that the memo should not affect the company because it only reinforces a rule that already exists.

But the rule is not always heeded. A basic search in April on FedBizOpps, an online market for government requests and suppliers, showed Air Force requests for Panasonic Toughbook computers and Office Depot furniture and an Army request for a Toshiba projector and Canon digital camera.

A spokesman for the Air Force says that in the case of the Panasonic computers, which are used on B-1 aircraft to collect data, other types of laptops had been tested "but did not withstand the conditions of use," and as a result, specifying the brand name was legitimate and abides by Defense acquisition regulations. He did not know why Office Depot was specified, but says he believed it was for similar reasons.

Critical Telework

Telework has yet to be widely incorporated into agencies' plans to continue delivering critical services to the public during an emergency, a Government Accountability Office official told House lawmakers this spring.

Of 23 agencies surveyed by GAO last year, 22 reported that they had a telework policy. But only one of the continuity-of-operations plans in place as of May 2004 directly addressed telework, said Linda Koontz, GAO's director of information management issues in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee.

Ten of the 23 agencies described plans to use telework in the aftermath of an emergency, but none could clearly document those plans, Koontz said. The Office of Personnel Management has pitched teleworking as a way to cut down on traffic and boost efficiency, but also has emphasized it as critical to maintaining key services in a crisis.

"Telework is not just common-sense efficiency, but an important national security consideration," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the committee's chairman. "The decentralization of federal agency functions inherent in a healthy telework strategy can greatly increase the survivability of those agencies in the event of a terrorist attack or other disruptive crisis."

Untimely Investigations

In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that only 43 percent of its investigations of discrimination complaints were completed within the mandated 180 days. On average, agencies were well off the required pace, processing 11,876 investigations in an average of 280 days. That was worse than the 267-day average in 2003, but better than the 305-day mark in 2000. Causes of the problem, the report stated, include "poorly staffed EEO offices, unnecessary and time-consuming procedures, delays in obtaining affidavits, and inadequate tracking and monitoring systems."

ON THE RECORD: Jon Dudas...

...head of the Patent and Trademark Office, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property in late April about efforts to modernize the agency and boost hiring. Some excerpts:

On current challenges: The USPTO is a collection of 7,000 people, including scientists, engineers and Ph.D.s, many of whom spend their time considering how we might improve our system. A multitude of others are reflecting upon our system as well, and many of them have been or will be at your doorsteps to suggest changes. . . . Although Washington is a place where it is easy to identify problems and give excuses, it is my responsibility to identify opportunities and deliver results.

On recent negotiations with labor unions: Where our union, our examiners and management agree: We are one team, and our goal is to make sure that we provide the examiners with the tools they [need]. I would hate to think-and I've talked to a number of folks-that a proposal would in any way cause a demoralization, because it's a discussion process. I've solicited comments from our union, managers, examiners. In fact, I get some of the best comments on how we can change, how we can improve, from working out in the fitness center in our office. So this is meant to be a collaborative process, one in which we're bringing everyone in.

On the current backlog of patent applications: In the last 20 years, the Patent and Trademark Office has broken a record every single year on how many applications it's received. That's great news for the economy. It's also great news for the USPTO, but it's a challenge as well. And despite the growing numbers of applications, certainly in the last several years, we did not hire in record numbers. We now have, because of the bill that was passed last year. The current backlog is approximately 490,000 applications. . . . It's the highest ever. And it will certainly grow over the next few years.

On recent hiring: The reason that backlog will grow is because [patent] pendency is measured going backward, basically. Pendency is at 28 months. That means, a patent that comes out today, 28 months ago it was filed. So we know you could hire 12,000 patent examiners now; it wouldn't affect where [the backlog] goes in the next two years. What you'll see is, three years down the line, or four years down the line, the hiring we're doing will have an effect. We're hiring at record numbers now. The most we think we can handle-860 patent examiners-is what we plan to hire this year. We've already achieved 80 percent of the goal. We're going from 3,600 [examiners] to about 4,400. And there will be some attrition. We're hiring a quarter of our workforce.

Doobie-ous Distinction

In late April, NASA announced the formation of the Exploration Systems Advisory Committee, which will be headed by retired Air Force Gen. Lester L. Lyles, who led the Air Force Materiel Command. Other members include Kenneth M. Baldwin, a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California-Irvine; Amy Kronenberg, program leader for radiation biology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California; and retired Air Force Col. Larry Graviss, vice president of Sverdrup Technology Inc. of Tullahoma, Tenn.

Also on board are retired Navy Rear Adm. Tom Betterton, an aerospace engineering consultant in Warrenton, Va.; retired Army Lt. Gen. Vince Russo, executive adviser in the Office of the President at the University of Dayton, Ohio; and Barry Zilin, CEO of Practical Innovations Inc., Woodbridge, Va.

But we've saved the best member for last: Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, a missile defense analyst in Beverly Hills, Calif. Yeah, that's the same Skunk Baxter who played guitar for the Doobie Brothers-and whose second career in the aerospace world appears to be, ahem, skyrocketing.