Back in October, the Director of National Intelligence killed a program called BRIDGE. (I've written about BRIDGE here before.) As such a vocal advocate of BRIDGE with a financial interest in its success, my bias is clear, but for whatever that biased opinion is worth, BRIDGE's death was the biggest government IT failure of 2009.

If you're in New York this week, take note that it is Internet Week. It kicks off Monday night with the fourth gathering of IgniteNYC, where I (along with 13 others) will be giving a 5-minute presentation, with 20 slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds. (Here's more on the Ignite format.) My presentation will be on A-Space, which I've written about here before.

What is A-Space? It has been the most publicized government IT project in a long time, but media coverage simply describes it as "Facebook for Spies." Yes, it's a social network that will finally let intelligence analysts network and collaborate. But I think it has much larger implications beyond just giving analysts a new tool. I've been developing a pilot A-Space tool for the past year, and from my vantage point, it's clear that independent Web developers will play a crucial role in A-Space's success--and, by extension, U.S. national security. In the process, I think those same developers can change the way the entire government acquires software. Unfortunately, A-Space managers have not yet reached out to the developer community. I'm going to try to do it for them, starting with this brief column.