Although the Clinger-Cohen act was passed in 1996 that mandated a capital planning and investment control process, PPM as it's found in the private sector is only just making its way to the federal government. As a recent memorandum from the Executive Office of the President notes, ‘the stove-piped and complex nature of the Federal enterprise has led over the years to a proliferation of duplicative and low priority investments in information technology (IT).'

On Dec. 9, the Obama administration released an ambitious 25-point IT management reform plan. The strategy, announced by Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, is aimed at eliminating wasteful spending, streamlining the IT footprint of the federal government, shifting to a "Cloud First" policy and designing 21^st century career path programs for at least some federal IT workers.

For instance, the plan includes efforts to either fix or scrap underperforming IT projects over the next 18 months. The government also plans to eliminate at least 800 data centers by 2015.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is on to his next big thing -- developing a social networking site designed to connect people with non-profit organizations.

Called Jumo, which means "together in concert," the new company will open offices in New York next week, according to Hughes' blog post, and plans to launch in the fall. Listings of current job openings are on the new company's Web site.

My recent piece on a consulting CIO at a small hospital in Wisconsin has made me more aware of the issues involved in IT and health care.

In a recent issue of InformationWeek, Chad Eckes, who runs IT at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, describes his mother's treatment in an emergency room for kitchen burns where she was screaming in pain because they couldn't find her medical records to determine what painkillers were safe. He told his father, "If this had been my hospital we could have had the information in 15 seconds."