Behind the Curtain at TCG

TCG’s Dan Turner to Participate in Entrepreneur Mentoring Program

TCG President Dan Turner will serve as a 2009-2010 Participant in the Entrepreneur Mentoring Program (EMP) in the Greater Philadelphia area. A partnership between the William J. Clinton Foundation and Inc. magazine, EMP facilitates structured, high-impact mentoring relationships over a one-year period between some of the nation’s most successful business leaders and entrepreneurs running emerging growth companies in America’s underserved communities.  Read more in the press release on the TCG website.

And back to Grants.gov we go!

Jason Miller at FederalNewsRadio reports this morning that the agencies who moved away from Grants.gov to service Recovery Act grants must start using it again by March 31. The instruction was included in budget passback language provided to agencies earlier this month.

This news was anticipated but will still come as a disappointment to many who experienced a great deal of success in building their own grant application receipt mechanisms for ARRA grants. OMB told agencies to find alternatives to Grants.gov for Recovery Act grant applications, where possible, due to concerns with Grants.gov's performance. HHS, which runs Grants.gov, has spent $6 million to improve the system's performance, and the system appears to have become more stable as a result.

Over many years, OMB and agencies worked together to develop a single platform for grant opportunity publication and application receipt. OMB appears unwilling to discard that investment of time and resources and allow agencies to continue to develop alternative solutions.

In the meantime, GSA, Energy, and Interior have been developing a pilot system that replicates much of Grants.gov's existing functionality, with the goal of establishing a more robust application and technical architecture for the next version of the system. It is unknown when or if this pilot will ever be used in full production for all agencies, or when that might happen.

Collaboration yields high return on investment

This new study from Frost & Sullivan concludes that organizations that use collaboration technologies yield significant benefits. The study was commissioned by Verizon and Cisco, so clearly there's a focus on their products -- VoIP, web meetings, and so on -- with an undercurrent of "Our technologies aren't that expensive, if you consider the benefits, mate!" But the conclusions do echo our own experience: organizations that use collaboration technologies experience increased productivity and improved work/life balance among staff. And I say this as someone who'll be working from home tomorrow so I can look after a sick kid!

Grants.gov webcast October 21st

Grants.gov's next webcast will be on October 21st...or so Bob Beattie (aka "Cheeky Monkey") tells me. And it's true, too! See? Turns out that Bob is a special guest star of this webcast -- the first time a non-government person will be beamed into our heads by the Grants.gov Big Brain In The Sky -- as he talks about the applicant perspective of working with Grants.gov.

Other agenda items include an FY2009 fiscal review, details on the technical augmentation design (aka "boost," apparently), and a security assessment.

So turn on, tune in, and hope your connection doesn't drop out on October 21st.

TCG Ranked #25 on Washington Business Journal List of Small Technology Companies

TCG has been recognized by Washington Business Journal as one of the Top 25 Small Technology Companies in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.  TCG came in at #25. The list, which is based on rankings by 2008 metro-area revenue and is limited to companies with 150 or fewer employees, was published in the September 18-24 issue.

We like it when the government saves money

TCG has a corporate goal of saving the US taxpayer $1 billion by 2016, by improving how government works. So we love it when we see news like this, showing how the government is saving $100 million in budget cuts for FY 2009 and $140 million for FY 2010 by using a little tangential thinking and a sharpened pencil.

We've established how TCG's staff and projects have saved the government over $164 million so far, and that number is rising every quarter. Pretty soon we're going to publish the details of some of those savings, and they mirror the kinds of things mentioned in this article -- distributing documents electronically, switching to more cost-efficient resources, and so on.

If you have ideas for how we can help the government save our taxpayer dollars while meeting the goals of the administration, let us know in the comments below!

More on Asterisk and IntuitiveVoice Evolution

Want to change the conference line access number in Asterisk/Intuitive Voice Evolution? It's not all that easy if you don't want the conference line to be something not in the 14000-15000 range.

We like to have a nice long conference line access code, like 4859282. It decreases the probability that someone will guess it and use our conference line (not that that's all that likely anymore, what with freeconferencecall.com and all that, but still it would annoy me).  So how do we do that?

We have to mess with the database again. Going back to my blog posting in March 2008, we learn the steps to get into the database. Do the following:

1. SSH into the box (got the root password from Intuitive Voice).
2. Become root, if you're not already.
3. /etc/init.d/mysqld stop (we need to get into the database without a password)
4. mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables & (this will restart the database but make it so passwords are not required. Yay security!)
5. mysql asterisk_config (going into the correct database)
6. Find rows of ast_config where var_val contains the conference line number Evolution created for you. I use this SQL: select * from ast_config where var_val like "%14000%"; (or whatever the conference line I want to change is.
7. Using the "id" tag as the unique identifier (it is unique), change all the var_val lines that reference that conference line. SQL for us:
   
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,10,Goto(20)" where id=140624;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,9,Macro(pause)" where id=140623;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,7,Macro(callrecord,${CUT(CHANNEL,,1):4})" where id=140621;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,8,Set(__MONITOR_FILENAME=/var/www/html/monitor/${UNIQUEID})" where id=140622;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,6,Macro(reporting)" where id=140620;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,5,Set(__STATUS=ANSWERED)" where id=140619;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,4,Set(__DESTINATION=)" where id=140618 ;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,Conf5,0" where id=140613;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,1,2" where id=140614;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,1,Set(__DIALED=${EXTEN})" where id=140615;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,2,Set(__TYPE=INTERNAL)" where id=140616;
   • update ast_config set var_val="4859282,3,Set(__SOURCE=${CUT(CHANNEL,,1):4})" where id=140617;
8. /etc/init.d/mysqld stop (stop the unprotected mysql instance)
9. /etc/init.d/mysqld start (start the good one)
10. Go into the web interface and restart the PBX (not necessary to reboot)
11. Give it a shot.

MAX Federal Community on FederalNewsRadio

FederalNewsRadio has a story and a couple of interviews about the MAX Federal Community this week. (Note: TCG supports this system on behalf of OMB.) The Community is powering a lot of inter-agency collaboration across government. FederalNewsRadio interviewed Sandi McCabe at the Department of Education and our colleague Shahid Shah of Netspective Communications about how the system works and the benefits it provides.

Interview with NITRC project manager on FederalNewsRadio

Following up from NITRC's Excellence.Gov Award win earlier this week, FederalNewsRadio has posted an article and audio story, including an interview with Nina Preuss, TCG's NITRC project manager.

Nina is quite right: We didn't expect NITRC to win this award but, given its focus on transparency and the fact that it's saved a significant amount of money for the NIH, perhaps it's not that surprising!

2009 Excellence.Gov Awards finalists announced

ACT-IAC has just announced the finalists for this year's Excellence.Gov Awards, the theme of which is "Transparency: Using IT to improve the interaction between Government and its Stakeholders." A list of the finalists is below, in alphabetical order. The top 5 finalists will be announced at an awards lunch on April 14 at the J.W. Marriott in Washington, DC.

Everyone at TCG is delighted to see on the list two programs that we support! (Disclosure: I was a judge on this year's program. I recused myself from voting on those programs that TCG supports.) Competition among the 60 nominations this year was tough, so the judges' recognition of NITRC and BFELoB is really tremendous. Congratulations to all the finalists and, in particular, to our colleagues at NIH and OMB/Education!

Also of note for our readers with an interest in grants management is the recognition of Research.gov. Congratulations to the NSF!

Anyone can attend the award lunch by registering at the ACT-IAC web site. (Scroll down to the Upcoming Events box, and click through to the list of upcoming events.) Registration fees are $85 for IAC members, $50 for government individuals, and $110 for non-IAC members.

1. AIDS.gov, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Office of HIV/AIDS Policy;

2. Budget Formulation and Execution Line of Business (BFELoB), Department of Education, Managing Partner Office of Management and Budget, Policy Lead;

3. Doing Business with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Using the Electronic Information Exchange (EIE), Office of Information Services;

4. e-Government Portal & Master Data Management, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB);

5. Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI), Office of Personnel Management Human Resources Line of Business;

6. ESnet4, the Energy Sciences Network 4th Generation, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research;

7. Facility Registry System (FRS), United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Environmental Information (OEI);

8. Federal Trade Commission Consumer Response System & Services (FTC CRSS) Program, Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection (FTC BCP);

9. Global Combat Support Systems–Air Force (GCSS-AF), United States Air Force (USAF)/Air Force Material Command (AFMC)/Electronic Systems Command (ESC)/554th Electronic Systems Wing (554 ELSW)/HQ 754th Electronic Systems Group (754 ELSG);

10. Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), The Library of Congress, Law Library of Congress (LLOC);

11. GovPay, Department of the Interior, National Business Center, Acquisition Services Directorate (AQD);

12. GSA Infrastructure Technology Global Operations (GITGO), GSA Office of the Chief Information Officer;

13. Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE), General Services Administration (GSA) / Office of the Chief Acquisition Officer, Office of Acquisition Systems;

14. MSC.gov, Media Services Center (MSC) of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO);

15. Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC), NIH Institutes; 16. Ready Retirement, Social Security Administration (SSA);

17. Research.gov, National Science Foundation;

18. Transportation Coordinators’ – Automated Information for Movements System II (TC-AIMS II) Theater Operations (TOPS), US Army Program Executive Office (PEO) Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS);

19. USASearch, the U.S. Government’s Official Web Search Engine, GSA Office of Citizen Services, U.S. General Services Administration;

20. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI): Passport Card and Border Crossing Card (BCC), Department of State/Consular Affairs (DOS/CA);

21. www.travel.state.gov, Department of State/Consular Affairs/Consular Systems and Technology (CA/CST)

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor for the awards, please contact Charlene Nieman at 703-208-4800 x 205 or via email at cnieman@actgov.org.