SIGNAL Magazine has won its share of awards over the years, and all of its staffers justifiably have taken pride in their accomplishments. Usually, these awards have consisted of a single annual recognition for an article, a report or a graphic layout. This year, however, SIGNAL was blessed with separate awards for several endeavors.

The magazine has won three APEX 2009 Awards for Publication Excellence. Executive Editor Maryann Lawlor won an award in the Newswriting category for her article, “Morphing Robot Under Development” (December 2008, page 61). Editor in Chief Robert K. Ackerman won in the Scientific and Environmental Writing category for the article, Computer Researchers Look Past Silicon (June 2008, page 39). And, New Media Editor Helen Mosher won in the Blogs, Wikis and Forums category for the SIGNAL Scape blog, which she originated.

The winners, below, from left to right: Robert K. Ackerman, Maryann Lawlor, and Helen Mosher.

The role for federal CIOs is changing, says Christopher Dorobek in Be a CIO, Not a CI-No, this month’s Incoming column. He gives props to the current administration for not just supporting information technology and e-government initiatives, but insisting on them, as evidenced by the appointment of key people to important positions and Obama’s own determination to not be PDA-less:

Two early and powerful actions have made clear the Obama link between information technology and governing. Perhaps one of the most powerful actions was when President Obama insisted—demanded—that he have a personal digital assistant. That single action spoke volumes about how core information technology is to the country’s new chief executive. It said that he understood the security concerns inherent with many technologies, but it also said that “no” was not an option.

Another action was the creation of a White House new media office and the appointment of the Obama campaign’s new media guru, Macon Phillips, as its leader. Creating the Obama CIO, the White House Office of New Media and the Obama chief technology officer (CTO) were not just semantic steps. The leaders of those organizations—Kundra, Phillips and CTO Aneesh Chopra, respectively—understand that their job is not about information technology. Their success or failure will depend on the government’s ability to carry out its mission. And, in a significant step, it links responsibility with authority.

These developments are signs that It’s not enough for the IT departments that CIO’s run just to keep the network up, anymore, Dorobek continues. And that is where the huge, uncomfortable shift is taking place:

… increasingly, they are being pressed to focus on tools that further enable agencies to carry out their missions and to become even more core to the mission. But too often, CIOs are not the enablers. Many information technology organizations become “no zones,” and the CIO becomes the CI-No. When personnel go to their information technology organization with an idea, they are told all the reasons they cannot do something. And that is particularly true with Web 2.0 applications because of security concerns.

So there’s been a lot of conversation about culture needing to change to get out of this “two-point-NO” mindset. We’ve heard the call for that change from admirals and generals at our own AFCEA events, to say nothing of the wider Government 2.0 conversation on the web and the digital governance movement afoot in public administration circles. Our question for you is how does that change happen? How can we shape the culture so that government IT leaders can say “yes” to technology more often?

Research and development is the seed corn of our technology driven world. With the commercial sector providing many of the military’s new technologies, the old lines delineating military and commercial technologies are blurring into nonexistence. The defense community is working with academia and the private sector to an ever greater degree, and the rapid pace of commercial information technology innovation is increasing the importance of laboratory research. SIGNAL Magazine’s June issue looks at some of the new technologies about to emerge from the laboratory and the effect they might have in this technology-driven age.

Bleeding-edge research increasingly is looking at the effects of new and future technologies, and Rita Boland and Maryann Lawlor join forces to lead off this focus report with “Patterns Emerge From Chaos,” a writeup on how Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers are trying to model chaos from simple behavior patterns.

Shape shifting is the topic of Henry Kenyon’s article, “Programmable Matter Research Solidifies.” He reports on research into programmable matter that would assemble itself into complex three-dimensional objects on command. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program is striving for diverse objects that could assemble themselves into useful gear, but advances in this realm ultimately could lead to Terminator 2-type matter that can change its very nature.

Electronics also may become more flexible in the near term, as Kenyon describes in his next article, “Flexible Circuits Unfold.” His article looks at research into flexible circuitry that literally could be painted on warfighter uniforms to provide all sorts of functions currently limited to boxy devices.

Boland returns with an article on an ongoing effort to create a new qubit. No, that is not a modern form of a Biblical unit of measurement; it is a quantum bit that would operate as a processing element in a futuristic computer. The future may be nearer than most people realize, as she reports in “Science and Technology Challenge Strives to Create First-of-Its-Kind Qubit.”

Christopher Dorobek waxes nostalgic about his first e-mail account and how he didn’t get it at first in this month’s Incoming column, “The First Step Toward Collaboration Is to Stop E-Mailing.” And he wasn’t the only one, he writes:

As shocking as it may seem now, all types of questions arose in agencies about whether e-mail was necessary. The General Services Administration (GSA), under then-administrator David J. Barram, was one of the first agencies to ensure that each person in the organization had e-mail—on Flag Day 1996. The GSA press release headline read, “GSA Employees Join Super Information Highway through Intranet.”

Barram’s quote in the release, dated June 14, 1996, states that, “Using this tool called Internet, companies, governments and individuals around the world are inventing exciting new ways to do their work, improve service to their customers, and communicate with each other,” Barram said today. “I believe that use of the Internet will be a key competitiveness factor for GSA in the coming years and that GSA employees must begin to learn how this new resource can change the way we do business.”

Amusing as hindsight can be, Dorobek makes an excellent point when he says that e-mail really did revolutionize the way we communicate, but hasn’t done much toward the effort to collaborate. But since we’ve gotten in the habit of using e-mail to collaborate, for lack of better tools in the ’90s, we’re still using e-mail to collaborate even though better tools are out there. He continues:

My challenge to users is to think before sending an e-mail and ask the simple question: “Is this the best tool for what I am trying to accomplish?” In many cases, much better options are available. Blogs can be used for speaking to large groups of people, but they also create a place where a conversation can happen around topics. Wikis are collaborative workplaces where people can share information and ideas. And other capabilities are popping up every day.

Better tools for collaboration are available. It is time to thank e-mail and move on.

Indeed! Blogs, and wikis, and social bookmarking, and… what else? What we’re curious about here in SIGNAL’s offices are which tools are most effective in facilitating collaboration? It seems like new ones spring up every day, but this could be a valuable conversation in helping managers understand new collaboration tools.

The value of the virtual realm for training has been recognized for some time, but now artificial reality is being exploited for many other applications. Web 2.0 capabilities have opened new doors in cyberspace, and people and organizations are embracing the new world of virtual collaboration. The only limits to using this make-believe realm may be those of human imagination. SIGNAL’s May issue looks at ongoing efforts to explore collaboration in the virtual world.

One picture may tell a thousand words, but sometimes it takes more than that to generate a particular image. That was the case with the cover of this month’s SIGNAL Magazine. Anyone familiar with Second Life may recognize the venue, but very few could know the picture’s circumstances—until now.

The image well suited one of this month’s focus themes, virtual collaboration, and its lead article. SIGNAL Executive Editor Maryann Lawlor wrote that article, which is about a group of U.S. military veterans who generated a Second Life site dedicated to helping veterans. Veterans Collaborate in Virtual World explores how this small group has created the U.S. Military Veterans Center in Second Life, which is a virtual oasis that is providing myriad benefits—both figuratively and literally—to its visiting veterans.

And that type of effort is what virtual collaboration is all about. However, generating a cover about it was logistically more challenging than reporting on the site. Lawlor asked her contacts at the veterans’ organization to provide SIGNAL with a high-resolution image of avatars meeting in that Second Life site. Of course, no one can predict just what they’ll find at any given moment in that virtual realm.

Enter Asdzaa Oh, which is the name of an avatar representing a former U.S. Army wife. Oh sent out the call to other avatars from each of the services, asking them to meet at a specific moment in the site. Several volunteers answered the call, and the image of their meeting now is recorded permanently on the May 2009 cover of SIGNAL Magazine. So, this cover both describes and literally represents an example of virtual collaboration.

One sector that is seeing significant changes from virtual collaboration is the intelligence community. Sharing information in cyberspace is changing every aspect of intelligence collection, processing and dissemination. Intelligence Community Embraces Virtual Collaboration describes how the community is using virtual collaboration and the innovations it has in store for the future.

The future is now for the U.S. Navy as it brings its personnel fully into the cyberspace realm. News Editor Rita Boland describes in School Has the MOVES for Cyberspace Collaboration how the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has the Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation Institute, known as MOVES, that both teaches and researches the fine art of virtual collaboration.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has had to juggle technologies to maintain effective service to its customers—the defense community. Both civilian and military Defense Department organizations depend on DISA for vital connectivity around the clock and around the globe. While the agency has been able to tap commercial capabilities to a greater degree, its customer demands—especially for bandwidth—have been growing faster than expected. SIGNAL Magazine’s April 2009 issue takes a look at how DISA is meeting the challenge of customer service while laying the groundwork for potential future requirements.

First, Information Services Inch Closer to the Edge, from Executive Editor Maryann Lawlor, examines just how the agency is adjusting to the tsunami of new information technologies and capabilities. Her expert source is none other than John J. Garing, DISA’s chief information officer and director for strategic planning. Lawlor also includes a sidebar on a cloud computing service, called the Rapid Access Computing Environment, called RACE. The RACE platform also powers Forge.mil, which News Editor Rita Boland wrote about previously in February’s Project Brings Open-Source Methods to Defense Realm.

Boland also contributes to April’s DISA focus report with Division Evolves to Keep Connections Safe for Everyone, which looks at how DISA’s Field Security Operations Division struggles with the ongoing conflict of ensuring security and accessibility. Both the security players and their strategies have changed considerably, and that change may be only beginning.

The U.S. Marine Corps finds itself in the unique position of sharing attributes of all the other military services. That has helped the Corps procure technologies in that it can learn from and adapt some systems developed by other services. However, the Corps has its own unique situations and requirements, so it finds itself pursuing Marine-specific solutions to modern challenges. SIGNAL’s April issue looks at Marine Corps technologies as the multifaceted service girds for the fog of future combat.

Leading off this report is an article on Marine Corps command, control, communications and computers (C⁴). In Security, Regionalization Dominate Marine Technology Needs, Maj. Gen. (s) George J. Allen, USMC, head of Marine Corps C⁴, explains major changes going on with Corps information technology, foremost of which is a greater reliance on civilian Marine personnel for many Marine Corps information system functions, among other developments.

Moving new technologies into the Marine Corps’ battlespace is the purview of the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Virginia. Marines in Southwest Asia cannot wait for normal procurements and acquisition processes to work their way to the front, so the command tries to speed new systems into warfighters’ hands. Some of these new systems are adaptations of commercial technologies, as Executive Editor Maryann Lawlor explains in Command Answers Call From the Field.

Looking across service lines, engineers at the Marine Corps Systems Command are working to enable interoperability for Internet Protocol (IP) data. In Keeping Tactical Traffic Local, contributing writers Kathleen Bahr and Maj. Fritz Doran, USMC (Ret.), describe how joint testing is opening up ways of establishing tactical IP network interoperability without adding costly new equipment.

Finally, News Editor Rita Boland reports on how the Marines are working on their Mojo. No, it’s not a magical charm set; this Marine Corps Mojo is a rapidly deployable renewable power source. Marines Test Their Mojo describes how this system can provide solar or wind energy of as much as 500 watts—suitable for intermediate power requirements.

The October issue of SIGNAL magazine is now available. You can read available web articles by visiting SIGNAL Online’s Table of Contents

Direct Hit Quotes for October:

“What we don’t want to do is give commanders history lessons.”—Col. Chuck Mehle II, USA, commander, Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence, JFCOM, in “Laboratory Integrates Intelligence.”

“It’s not blind jamming. We call it smart or responsive jamming. It’s responsive because we know the threat, and we respond to this specific threat.”—Valery Rousset, director, Thales C4ISR marketing and capability development, command and intelligence unit, in “Jammers Transmit Battlefield Flexibility.”

Featured Photo:

Petty Officer 3rd Class Georganna Bowden, assigned to the “Chargers” of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 14, gives the signal for a clear deck aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington during an ammunition onload with the Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Alan Shepard. The George Washington is training with Carrier Air-Wing 5 during a transit to Japan where the ship will replace the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk as the U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier.

This month’s Direct Hit Quotes:

“We can’t control the weather, but we can do a lot more to control the information and communications technology systems we use globally.” — Howard Schmidt, member of the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism international advisory board, in Countries Collaborate to Counter Cybercrime

“If people travel in a hostile cyberenvironment—and China and Russia are two—I warn them not to take the same PDAs and phones they use when they are home.” — Dr. Joel F. Brenner, national counterintelligence executive in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in The Corporate Cyberspace Menace You Don’t Know

Featured Photo:

U.S. Army soldiers from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, take a knee and scan for enemy personnel while waiting to conduct a joint clearing operation in a group of small villages south of Salman Pak, Iraq.