TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
04/30/07 02:23 pm ET
The U.S. Census Bureau has not developed an effective computer-training program for the thousands of temporary workers it plans to hire to interview citizens who may not send in census forms for the upcoming 2010 census, according to a report released last week by...>>
04/30/07 10:52 am ET
Computer Sciences Corp. announced today that it is part of the Verizon Business team that won one of three contracts under the federal government's Networx Universal telecommunications program, according to an article posted by TMCnet. CSC says it will provide "customer-specific network design support...>>
04/30/07 10:05 am ET
Google and four state governments have teamed up to make public documents more easily retrievable when citizens conduct online searches, according to an article by the Associated Press. "Google plans to announce Monday that it has already partnered with four states - Arizona, California,...>>
04/27/07 05:33 pm ET
Agencies thinking about using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology should first conduct security and privacy risk assessments, such as considering what the transmitted information will be used for and the risk to the business if the RFID system fails, according to recommendations released yesterday...>>
04/27/07 10:19 am ET
German intelligence agencies have stopped for now accessing via the Internet suspected terrorists' computers after the practice was publicly disclosed last week. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a German interior intelligence agency, had been accessing via the Internet the private...>>
04/27/07 07:45 am ET
Federal law prohibits the sale of guns to anyone judged mentally ill, but most states are unable to share mental health records with an FBI computer network that would block the sale of guns to the mentally ill because of privacy laws or state...>>
04/26/07 04:02 pm ET
The Defense Department is always on the look out for cutting-edge technologies, which can make perusing defense agencies' daily requests for proposals and information an exercise in suspending disbelief. The latest such request comes from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which recently issued a...>>
04/26/07 01:32 pm ET
Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you computing tips and information you can easily apply at your desktop. This week: customizing Google. As a follow up to an earlier post about simple tricks to make your Google searches more effective,...>>
04/26/07 10:14 am ET
In another sign of the growing business of information technology outsourcing, Computer Sciences Corp. announced that it has agreed to purchase systems integrator and consulting firm Covansys Corp. for $1.3 billion. Of Convansys' 9,000 employees, 6,400 are based in India, which leads the world...>>
04/26/07 09:24 am ET
Not all government e-mails, electronic documents and notes stored on a computer should be considered a public record, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled yesterday. According to an article published by the Arizona Daily Star: [Arizona Chief Justice Ruth McGregor wrote in her opinion,] "Every...>>
04/25/07 05:48 pm ET
Automating business processes is supposed to create efficiencies. But for the Wisconsin's Department of Motor Vehicles, a new computer system has resulted in the opposite outcome. A new system installed in 2004 to reduce the time it takes to receive a license plate and...>>
04/25/07 10:32 am ET
With losses of financial data and personal information on the rise, more universities now offer courses to students on how to combat hackers. An estimated 22 universities in the United States offer such programs, including the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, according to...>>
04/24/07 05:52 pm ET
The General Services Administration has awarded Electronic Data Systems a contract to help roll out the information technology infrastructure needed to provide identity credentials to agencies participating in GSA's governmentwide Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 program. GSA's HSPD-12 Shared Services Provider II contract, worth...>>
04/24/07 05:09 pm ET
A leading cybersecurity association says a report released yesterday by the President's Identity Theft Task Force falls short of adequately protecting Americans' privacy because the report's recommendations for the public sector are less stringent than those recommendations for the private sector. According to a...>>
04/24/07 04:31 pm ET
A White House board tasked to oversee possible infringements on privacy and civil liberties from government information systems and programs designed to fight terrorism has ruled that many programs have not compromised Americans' privacy, according to a report the board released yesterday and a...>>
04/24/07 11:41 am ET
Some education experts question spending on interactive white boards and other advanced technologies that connect classrooms throughout New South Wales in Australia, according an article on the online news site The Age. The interactive white boards are "the latest high-tech device charged with transforming...>>
04/23/07 05:54 pm ET
Charles Havekost, chief information officer at the Health and Human Services Department, told his staff Monday that he will be leaving his position in mid-June to take a position with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. Havekost has been a career civil...>>
04/23/07 03:38 pm ET
As instant messaging gains more converts, it still has one big drawback: Users of, say, Google chat cannot instant message users of, say, Yahoo! And then there’s the whole downloading software portion of it -- a pain especially for computer users denied downloading privileges....>>
04/23/07 10:32 am ET
Looks like those of us here on the Web team at GovExec aren't the only ones giving themselves a makeover. The federal government's Web portal, USA.gov, has a new look. They've reduced clutter, added some images, and merged their "Federal Employees" and "Government to...>>
04/20/07 12:22 pm ET
The Justice Department is joining whistleblower suits against Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, and Sun Microsystems, alleging the companies favored technology companies in exchange for kickbacks. The three companies “submitted false claims to the United States for information technology hardware and services on numerous government contracts from...>>
04/20/07 12:18 pm ET
Former Qwest chieftain Joseph Nacchio is guilty of 19 counts of insider trading. Nacchio was on trial in Denver federal court for 42 counts of insider trading. The jury found him not guilty on 23 counts. The former chief executive officer sold $100.8 million...>>
04/20/07 09:48 am ET
Managers are more likely than underlings to take vacation time, according to a new survey of U.S. workers. New York-based employment agency Hudson found that 53 percent of managers “have plans to take both a full vacation and a long weekend compared to 44...>>
04/19/07 03:02 pm ET
Officials from the departments of Commerce, State and Homeland Security testified Thursday before a congressional panel about the rising threat of computer hackers penetrating federal agency information technology systems. Key U.S. defense and nuclear contractors and other critical infrastructure are under continuous and increasingly...>>
04/19/07 01:11 pm ET
Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you computing tips and computing information you can easily apply at your desktop. This week: cookies. By now most of us know that Web sites deposit little chunks of themselves onto your hard drive....>>
04/19/07 12:44 pm ET
Chinese police officers are trying out cap-mounted video cameras, reports the online news service Ananova. The flashlight-shaped cameras, which weigh less than two ounces, have 1 gigabyte of storage, enough to record about 1 hour of video, according to the article, which cites Xinhua,...>>
04/19/07 12:06 pm ET
Austin Yerks, president of Computer Sciences Corporation's Defense Integrated Solutions and Services division, has been named the president of CSC's new Defense Division. In his new role, "Yerks will provide executive leadership and strategic direction for the company's Department of Defense business," according to...>>
04/19/07 08:05 am ET
A minister in the Australian government has suggested using Web 2.0 applications to help set federal policies, according to an article in the Brisbane Times. Special Minister of State Gary Nairn envisions the Australian government setting up blogs in which citizens and community groups...>>
04/18/07 05:47 pm ET
Wisconsin's government computer projects are failing because of poor planning, cost overruns, delays and a lack of oversight, a report released by a state representative shows. Sue Jeskewitz, R, Menomonee Falls, who oversaw the Legislative Audit Bureau report, "says we need project managers, for...>>
04/18/07 05:33 pm ET
CDW Corp., the parent company of government vendor CDWG, is having a big week on Wall Street. Thanks to an announcement by company officials that they expect to release a report of higher-than-expected first-quarter revenue, the stock jumped late last week about $5 a...>>
04/18/07 05:08 pm ET
The Internal Revenue Service encourages as many taxpayers to file electronically as possible. They may have got their wish, but now they have another problem. So many taxpayers submitted their returns electronically on April 16, the deadline for having your taxes filed, that the...>>
04/18/07 04:47 pm ET
Another example of why cybersecurity is a matter of trust and behavior, not technology: a USB device that simulates the movement of a mouse. Some PCs and Web sites will automatically log out users after a period of apparent inactivity, such as a few...>>
04/18/07 04:23 pm ET
The United States isn't the only country concerned about the accuracy and security of electronic voting machines. The Dutch government plans to redo its certification process for e-voting machines after an independent oversight committee criticized the govnerment for failures, the International Herald Tribune Europe...>>
04/18/07 04:10 pm ET
Federal systems integrator CGI Group Inc. could be facing charges of conflict of interest in a $400 million (Canadian) contract it won from Public Works and Government Services of Canada, according to an article in the Ottawa Sun newspaper. CGI has dozens of contracts...>>
04/18/07 02:13 pm ET
New York state Attorney General Andy Cuomo has criticized Verizon, which provides local telephone service on the East Coast, for “chronically poor” telephone repair service, reports Reuters. Verizon, which became a significant federal contractor when it bought MCI in 2005, is seeking permission from...>>
04/18/07 09:47 am ET
Blackberry wireless e-mail devices suffered interruptions of service Tuesday evening that appeared to be ending Wednesday morning, according to multiple news sources. The Blackberry outage appears to have only affected North American users. An early morning call to the Blackberry U.S. technical support line...>>
04/17/07 05:54 pm ET
General Services Administrator Lurita Doan is scheduled to testify Wednesday at a hearing held by the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee. The subject: GSA's fiscal 2008 budget request. The hearing was scheduled to be held in one of the smaller rooms in the House...>>
04/17/07 05:01 pm ET
The U.S. federal attorney's office and CA Inc. officials aren't saying whether they’ll pursue legal action against CA founder Charles Wang for alleged accounting fraud, InfoWorld reports. A CA board report released last week accuses Wang, who stepped down as the company’s chief executive...>>
04/17/07 12:07 pm ET
Everyone knows the legend of the superhacker, the supersmart electronic code breaker tearing through security barriers. But University of Colorado Law School professor Paul Ohm writes that the incidence and danger of superhackers, or whom he calls "superusers," tend to be exaggerated. Ohm cites...>>
04/17/07 11:42 am ET
In the April 9 issue of New York Magazine, author Steve Fishman writes an in-depth article laying out why so many workers dislike their bosses. Fishman quotes Robert Sutton, a Stanford professor who studies the topic, who says bosses tend to give off "subtle...>>
04/17/07 10:05 am ET
The Internal Revenue Service will get rid of as many as 2,000 jobs because of its push into electronic tax filing, reports the Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass. The majority of those who will lose their jobs will be seasonal employees, those who process...>>
04/17/07 09:46 am ET
Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who oversees the issuance of agencies' security grades, wrote yesterday in The Hill newspaper's Congress Blog why the government's overall security grade increased from a D plus to a C minus. The reason: More agencies like the Department of Homeland...>>
04/17/07 09:36 am ET
The futures Web site Poolitics.com offers a betting pool on whether General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan will stay or leave. The site allows visitors to bet $1.20 on whether Doan will remain in or leave her position by June 1. The closing date...>>
04/16/07 02:22 pm ET
Education Department officials are considering temporarily shutting down access to a student loan database due to some users accessing students' private data without permission, The Washington Post reports. Some student loan companies have allowed marketing firms, collection agencies and loan brokerages to mine the...>>
04/16/07 01:40 pm ET
A culture of corruption pervaded the security software company and government contractor CA Inc. almost from its inception, according to a report issued by the company's corporate board Thursday. According to the report, founder and former CEO Charles Wang oversaw “accounting fraud lasting more...>>
04/13/07 05:44 pm ET
A former Social Security Administration employee was indicted Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for stealing identities from an SSA database, InformationWeek reports. Jennifer Batiste, 45, allegedly received $20 for each query she made to an SSA computer network to collect...>>
04/13/07 04:55 pm ET
General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan plans to meet Monday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel as part of the investigation into whether she violated the law that limits political activity in federal agencies, government sources confirmed. The meeting with the independent federal...>>
04/13/07 03:37 pm ET
Biometrics is becoming more popular in government as a security tool. Using digital fingerprints is a favored biometric because of its supposed infallibility – a belief that this video from the Discovery Channel show "MythBusters" proves to be misplaced. In it, two innovative hackers...>>
04/13/07 12:48 pm ET
A review of the General Services Administration's daily briefing shows that several opinion pieces and news articles on the conduct of the agency's chief Lurita Doan were excluded. GSA's daily briefing is sent to all GSA employees and acts as an official archive of...>>
04/13/07 11:17 am ET
Maine's Department of Health and Human Services will pay another $7 million on a failed Medicaid claims processing system before it can kill the project, according to an article in Maine's Times Record. The total cost of the claims processing system could surpass $70...>>
04/12/07 05:07 pm ET
In a recently released white paper, Information and Privacy commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Ann Cavoukian, and biometrics scientist Alex Stoianov, argue that a new biometric technology removes the privacy risks and concerns leveled at traditional biometric technology. Biometrics, which uses personal characteristics such as...>>
04/12/07 04:29 pm ET
The following post was written by Tim Clark, editor and president of Government Executive. It was a long day of technology talk at the Press Club yesterday. The security event (see below) began at 7:30 a.m., and another event, sponsored by the Association for...>>
04/12/07 03:49 pm ET
The following post was written by Tim Clark, editor and president of Government Executive. A bit of skepticism has been flying around about the government’s effort to achieve significant advances in cybersecurity by standardizing agencies’ use of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Or so...>>
04/12/07 11:39 am ET
Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you computing tips and computing information you can easily apply at your desktop. This week: View your IP address. As a follow up to last week’s post on anonymous surfing, we thought it would...>>
04/12/07 10:43 am ET
An undetermined number of e-mails sent by White House aides from a Republican National Committee account have been lost, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said some e-mails were lost because they had no clear policy for archiving the emails....>>
04/12/07 10:36 am ET
This post was written by Karen Rutzick, staff correspondent for Government Executive Magazine. NASA is retooling their Web site, and they’re doing their homework first. NASA Internet Services Manager Brian Dunbar is conducting extensive interviews with Web site users, including the media, such as...>>
04/11/07 02:50 pm ET
The two latest Candorville comic strips (one that ran April 10 and another that ran today, April 11) have an eerily familiar ring to them -- especially for anyone who has followed the congressional hearing investigating General Services Administrator Lurita Doan's role in the...>>
04/11/07 12:40 pm ET
One of Microsoft’s main selling points of its new operating system Vista has been the platform's built-in security features. Beefing up security also was the primary reason why the Office of Management and Budget last month issued a mandate requiring all agencies to follow...>>
04/11/07 11:45 am ET
The U.S. Holocaust Museum and Google Earth have teamed up to bring satellite map images of the effects of the atrocities in the Darfur region of the Sudan, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Holocaust Museum and Google Earth executives say the project, called the...>>
04/11/07 11:15 am ET
Continuing a long streak of government data losses, the Department of Community Health in Georgia disclosed yesterday that a contractor lost a CD containing the personal information of 2.9 million Georgians, according to CNET news. The department's claim processor contractor, Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services,...>>
04/10/07 02:01 pm ET
The California Senate plans to vote on bills this week that would limit the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in documents the government issues for personal identification, ComputerWorld reports. According to the article: Two of the bills would impose a three-year moratorium...>>
04/10/07 11:40 am ET
The Internal Revenue Service has nearly completed encrypting all of its laptops in the wake of an internal audit that showed nearly half of its laptops tested for security contained unencrypted personal financial data, ComputerWorld reports. The article quotes IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, who...>>
04/10/07 11:13 am ET
This week’s The New Yorker investigates the phenomenon of commuting, nominating Washington as a “worthy candidate” for one for the country’s worst commutes. (Article not yet available online.) The article, “There And Back Again,” reserves the worst commuting honors for Atlanta and analyzes the...>>
04/10/07 10:33 am ET
When choosing numbers, humans tend to choose certain types of numbers, such as prime numbers, more often than other kinds of numbers, a fact that impacts the way humans choose passwords and other security related features. For example, choose a number between 1 and...>>
04/09/07 06:05 pm ET
A blogger who writes the Philocrites blog (on "religion, liberalism and culture") claims that a reader accessing his site from an Air Force computer has been blocked from accessing his site. Chris Walton, who says he writes about the Unitarian Universalist movement, posted an...>>
04/09/07 05:58 pm ET
A spokesman with the Office of Special Counsel, the independent agency investigating General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan for violating a law that limits on-the-job political activity in government offices, says investigators do not know when they will complete the investigation. Some investigations involving...>>
04/09/07 11:54 am ET
In the February issue of the International Journal of Health Geographics, two University of Georgia scientists mapped the possible effect of a nuclear explosion in metropolitan Washington, D.C., as well as three other cities (New York City, Chicago and Atlanta). According to the article,...>>
04/09/07 11:42 am ET
What’s a toasted bagel plus avocado in a CD container? Lunch! Click the link above for a neat way of re-using CD spindles (the plastic container for a pack of blank CDRs, for example) as a high-tech variant to the tin lunch box to...>>
04/06/07 05:15 pm ET
A GSA official told Government Executive Friday afternoon that Sprint informed the agency that it will not protest the Networx award. Sprint lost its bid to be part of Networx, the next generation government telecommunications contract announced last week. As an incumbent on GSA's...>>
04/06/07 05:08 pm ET
Col. Charles Lambert, program manager of the Army’s Logistics Modernization Program, recently gave a speech at a gathering of contractors about how to change business processes. “The first thing with any American worker, just like an American solider, is explain to them why they’ve...>>
04/06/07 04:58 pm ET
As part of its strategy to move away from building large proprietary information technology applications in favor of buying packaged commercial applications, the Defense Information Systems Agency said today that it will use an Army contract to buy the commercial services instead of developing...>>
04/06/07 04:03 pm ET
In his April 4 Washington Post editorial, "The IG Ideology," Harvard professor and federal procurement expert Steve Kelman argues that federal government's inspectors general, by issuing critical reports on government operations, foster a culture of negativism and fear that perpetuates poor public management and...>>
04/06/07 10:43 am ET
Using your privately-owned laptop at work still doesn’t mean you have a right to privacy for non-work files stored on that computer, CNET reports. A technically-minded police officer in Glencoe, Okla., was troubleshooting a network problem on a laptop owned by city Treasurer Michael...>>
04/06/07 09:51 am ET
Researchers now attribute a December 2006 disruption of the Global Positioning System to a solar flare, Reuters reports. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “observed two powerful solar flares on December 5 and 6, 2006, emanating from a large cluster of sunspots,” according to...>>
04/05/07 05:14 pm ET
The recent IRS inspector general's s report concluding that the Internal Revenue Service had lost at least 490 computers between January 2003 and June 2006, exposing possibly thousands of Americans' personal tax information to possible theft, is yet another reminder that many agencies have...>>
04/05/07 03:41 pm ET
The chairman of the House's oversight committee has asked the head of the Republican National Committee to produce e-mails stored on the committee's servers related to the use of federal resources for political purposes. In a letter dated Wednesday, House Oversight and Government Reform...>>
04/05/07 03:23 pm ET
The Defense Logistics Agency has a new strategic plan available online. In the plan, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Dail, DLA's director, reports that the agency seeks to extend “beyond its traditional wholesaler responsibilities.” The agency has just finished a multi-year information technology and business...>>
04/05/07 12:06 pm ET
Russia is making a serious bid to compete with the U.S. Global Positioning System, the New York Times reports. “By the end of the year, the authorities here say, the Russian space agency plans to launch eight navigation satellites that would nearly complete the...>>
04/05/07 11:42 am ET
They don’t call it “death by PowerPoint” for nothing. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that presenters who use PowerPoint presentations and read verbatim their display slides are making it harder, not easier, for the audience to understand the information. John Sweller, a University of...>>
04/05/07 11:31 am ET
Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you computing tips and computing information you can easily apply at your desk top. This week: anonymous Web surfing. From time to time, employers decide to block a Web site they have determined that...>>
04/04/07 04:46 pm ET
Jack Penkoske, director of personnel at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said Wednesday that he hopes other agencies do not embrace telework. Speaking tongue-in-check on a panel at the Excellence in Government conference (sponsored by Government Executive) in downtown Washington, Penkoske said that if...>>
04/04/07 03:09 pm ET
Mobile wireless networking, coming to an airplane near you! The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. airlines will start offering in-flight WiFi connections within the next 12 months. “If broadband connections at 35,000 feet are as popular as they have been at hotels, airports,...>>
04/04/07 02:04 pm ET
The latest thinking in federal Semantic Web technology should be on display April 25 when the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) holds a conference in Reston, Va. (Click here for the agenda; the event is unclassified and free.) The Semantic Web could revolutionize...>>
04/04/07 09:42 am ET
The CEO of an electronics supplier charged with exporting U.S. defense technology with missile applications to India pleaded not guilty Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. Parthasarathy Sudarshan, an Indian national who heads Cirrus Electronics, is being held at least until Thursday when he faces...>>
04/04/07 09:13 am ET
“The closest thing the Internet has to a governing body seems to want the same kind of immunity from national laws that the International Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee have enjoyed for decades,” says CNET blogger Declan McCullagh. McCullagh cites a recent...>>
04/03/07 02:18 pm ET
Google has great fun with its April Fool's Day press releases. Among this year's, for example, was an announcement of the debut of Gmail Paper. But now the company is having to convince people it's serious about another piece of news: A three-foot python...>>