DorobekInsider: GSA’s Sawislak to stay at GSA

GSA's Sawislak

Another GSA move — or lack of move, that is: Josh Sawislak, who has been a senior advisor to the administrator and the acting chief emergency response and recovery officer, who had been slated to leave GSA… will be sticking around. GSA Acting Administrator Jim Williams told senior staff this morning.

Sawislak’s wife, who is also a fed, has been transfered to a new post overseas. And Sawislak had been planning to leave GSA to join her overseas.

But Sawislak will be sticking around through the end of the administration.

Early on, Sawislak was seen as a FOL — friend of Lurita, as in former GSA Administrator Lurita Doan — but has gained respect within the agency. He has been working overtime in recent months as the acting emergency response and recovery officer with the seeming parade of hurricanes in the past few weeks.

And when I was at FCW, I had him on the FCW- Federal News Radio show. You can hear that here.

DorobekInsider.com: Hurricane response 2.0

It has been really interesting to watch government implement Katrina’s lessons learned. By most accounts, federal, state and local agencies all did much better responding toGustov then they did with Katrina. [GSA deputy chief acquisition officer David Drabkin was on Federal News Radio’s Daily Debrief this afternoon talking about the acquisition aspects of hurricane preparedness (.mp3)… and Rear Admiral Dr. Craig Vanderwagen, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services was on FED’s Morning Drive this morning talking about the work done (.mp3)]

Of course, everybody is watching the other storms swirling out there in the Atlantic. No rest for the weary.

But it was interesting to see the Gustav response largely because there have been all sorts of developments in technology in the last three years that enables people to get information in various ways.

First off, blogger Andy Carvin noted that the Homeland Security Department has created a “hurricane response widget” that people can put right on their Web sites. It provides links that people can use to get more information.

I foolishly thought it was one of the first government uses of widgets, but… far from it. The FBI has one… as does EPA… and even Rep. Max Thornberry (R-Texas). They aren’t publicized all that much, so I don’t know how much these widgets get used, but… what a great way of getting information out.

Carvin also has a fascinating post about all the online resources that are available out there for people to keep track of what is going on. For example, there is a Twitter site that used to be focused onGustof and has now been rebranded “StormWire.” It can be found at twitter.com/StormWire. (Unsure about what Twitter is? FCW did a primer on it last week on Twitter… and there is a Plain English guide on Twitter.)

There is also a hurricane related ning social networking site about the storms that can be found at gustav08.ning.com.

See about the other named storm names here.