Deb Perelman

New Labor Department data finds that as companies made efforts to cut costs but sidestep rounds of layoffs, there was an eight percent increase in the number of companies reducing many of their employees’ hours in 2007. Though analysts say that this isn’t yet happening in the bulk of IT departments–the exception being those that […]

The technology sector ended 2007 relatively unscathed by credit woes, while the impact of the subprime mortgage meltdown edged into other areas of the U.S. economy, which saw the sharp increase in the cost of home mortgages soften auto sales, manufacturing contracted and the services sector weakened. Observers believe that technology is healthier and more […]

U.S. manufacturing shrank by the largest margin in almost five years, despite news that the overall economy still grew in December, which marked the 74th straight month of expansion. The Institute for Supply Managements factory index, published on Jan. 2, fell to 47.7, from 50.8 the prior month. Any number above 50 signifies growth; any […]

The FBI’s most wanted murders, cop killers, bank robbers and terrorists have one more force aligned against them: digital billboards. Clear Channel Outdoor, an advertising company which operates more than 167,000 advertising displays in the United States is providing free billboard space as a public service. In a partnership between the FBI, the digital billboards […]

In a surge not foreseen by economists, new applications for unemployment benefits rose by 1,000 in the week ending Dec. 22 and the number of long-term unemployed workers jumped to its highest level in more than two years, the Labor Department reported Dec. 27. Largely driven by a slowdown in the housing sector as construction […]

If you’re like a lot of workers out there, the top of a new year seems as ideal a time as any to launch the hunt for a new job—if you’re lucky, you’ve just received your year-end bonus and your next one is far away. If you haven’t, you’re likely hoping to get one next […]

As an industry, IT is not exactly famed for finding uses for older technologies. Typically, it opts to replace them with newer and seemingly more exciting innovations whether or not the business value of these investments has been proven. In few areas of IT is this tendency more prominent than in legacy systems, whose “legacy” […]

Given the darkening U.S. economic outlook, Forrester Research is updating its IT spending outlook for 2008. However, as long as the U.S. economy has only two to three quarters of very weak real GDP (gross domestic product) growth—1 to 2 percent—but no recession in 2008, analysts don’t feel that the slowdown will have any negative […]

The IT work force is still scarred from the dot-com bust of 2001, with some technology pros feeling like they never got back on their feet. Even more ended up leaving the field. Fears that another round of downsizing and layoffs are imminent have technology workers on edge again, just when they should be focused […]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently appointed California’s first statewide, cabinet-level CIO. Schwarzenegger created the post in August, establishing the Office of the State Chief Information Officer as a cabinet-level agency with statutory authority over technology policy. Teresa “Teri” Takai, former CIO of Michigan and the director of the Michigan Department of IT since 2003, was appointed […]

IT project managers seem to suffer from a case of low expectations, in which their projects consistently fail to meet the goals set out for them. This is for good reason, as one in three IT projects fail to perform to expectations, finds a survey released Dec. 11 by Tata Consultancy Services, an IT outsourcing […]

It’s a bad day to be an IT professional in Georgia, where state Governor Sonny Perdue has announced that he is moving all of the state’s IT over to the private sector. The move—what Perdue calls the most ambitious outsourcing over services in the state’s history—is expected to result in pink slips for about 200 […]