TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
02/27/09 02:44 pm ET
A quick scan of the stimulus tracking sites shows that most agencies like to use text - a lot of text - to present information. That makes navigating a bit tedious. But some departments, like the Health and Human Services Department, looks to have put a bit more effort into designing their site, using graphics and thinking about how to package content.>>
02/26/09 06:10 pm ET
The federal information technology community must still be pinching themselves to make sure they are not dreaming. Almost every administration relegated IT to the back rooms, thinking of the computer guys as propeller heads, and chief information technology officers as someone who were there to fix the secretary's BlackBerry.>>
02/25/09 06:31 pm ET
The Defense Department has been conducting training exercises for cyberwarriors for years, but it finally formalized the operations in the National Cyber Range. From an article on MSNBC:>>
02/24/09 05:13 pm ET
For CIOs, some good news from the latest , the industry association that was formed with the merger of the Information Technology Association of America and AeA.>>
02/24/09 04:47 pm ET
From the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Feb. 24 issue of TechBeat, the agency's biweekly tip sheet for journalists:>>
02/24/09 03:48 pm ET
From my colleague Humberto Sanchez at CongressDaily comes the news that the $410 billion omnibus spending bill unveiled on Monday by House Democrats includes authorization for the controversial E-Verify program through the end of the fiscal year.>>
02/23/09 03:56 pm ET
The White House just sent out an announcement with another slew of nominations, this time mostly communications and media types. Notable among the nominees is Macon Phillips, who has been named director of new media. Phillips served in the same position for the transition...>>
02/23/09 03:33 pm ET
If you've been reading the coverage of the Obama Administration's Web roll-out, you must have noticed the small cottage industry of bloggers and reporters tracking changes on WhiteHouse.gov, Recovery.gov and the many, many other Web sites the Obama Administration has launched within a month...>>
02/20/09 03:31 pm ET
Apparently, the Bush administration was less than forthcoming with details about the 2010 budget, telling agencies to not provide Obama's transition team with information about their funding requests until the January 20 inauguration, said a source with inside knowledge of the situation. According to...>>
02/20/09 11:55 am ET
Congressman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to the White House yesterday calling for the Obama Administration to clarify its policies on the preservation of emails. In his letter to White House...>>
02/19/09 02:09 pm ET
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today that she has appointed Mary Ellen Callahan as chief privacy officer for the department. Callahan is a partner in the international law firm Hogan and Harston in Washington working on privacy and security issues.>>
02/19/09 11:32 am ET
First it was the FAA. Now news comes of another government Web site being hacked.>>
02/18/09 05:53 pm ET
The latest in what seems to be an endless string of reports that take a stab at solving the nation's cybersecurity failures says more effective coordination, metrics, policies, and training is needed across markets. This seems to be a lesson everyone except government grasps.>>
02/18/09 04:44 pm ET
If you're a soldier or a civilian working for the Defense Department, it's becoming harder and harder to do anything online. There's no YouTube, MySpace or even reading blogs for some. Now, for airmen at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, there's no Internet at all.>>
02/18/09 02:15 pm ET
Researchers from the University of Toledo, Ohio, report in the medical journal Sleep Medicine about the first case of someone emailing while asleep -- an act related to sleepwalking.>>
02/17/09 05:02 pm ET
Staying true to its word, the Obama administration launched Recovery.gov today in conjunction with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act so that "every American can go online and see how their money is being spent," Obama said in a statement.>>
02/13/09 02:46 pm ET
It's been just three days since Virginia's Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine launched a Web site soliciting Virginians' ideas about how to spend the economic stimulus money the state may receive. As of Friday afternoon, 1,274 projects (and counting) were posted on stimulus.virginia.gov.>>
02/13/09 10:57 am ET
As I'm writing this post, I'm also trying to download part A of the 500-page conference stimulus bill posted on The House Rules Committee's Web site yesterday just before midnight. I've been trying all morning and it looks like it will take at least another 30 minutes to download the 13 megabyte file.>>
02/12/09 04:43 pm ET
In an update on the controversy over the Justice Department phishing test, Government Executive reporter Alyssa Rosenberg wrote near the end of her article:>>
02/11/09 06:34 pm ET
In the spirit of reaching out to the public to collaborate on policy decisions, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has launched a site asking Virginians to send in projects that could be funded by the billions of dollars soon to come form Congress.>>
02/10/09 04:54 pm ET
Fellow blogger Andrew Noyes, at CongressDaily's Tech Daily Dose, reports that health care information technology looks to have (mostly) dodged the knife in the Senate's economic stimulus bill. His analysis:>>
02/10/09 10:52 am ET
Perhaps there is a limit to how much information the government should release via social media. From CNet:>>
02/09/09 06:00 pm ET
Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but it's always nice to get recognition from Web 2.0 giants like Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org. In an interview with GovLoop, Newmark, whose is a member of the social networking site, said:>>
02/09/09 05:58 pm ET
The Office of Personnel Management has settled its dispute with Hewitt Associates over a faulty retirement calculator for the agency's RetireEZ modernization project. According to a Hewitt statement issued earlier today:>>
02/06/09 10:10 am ET
It looks like the Obama administration is vetting long-time federal IT executive Roger Baker for the chief information officer post at the Veterans Affairs Department, according to sources.>>
02/05/09 04:33 pm ET
Senate Republicans want to include in the economic stimulus bill a provision that would allow the federal government to offer 4 percent to 4.5 percent home loans as a way to reduce foreclosures while at the same time goosing the U.S. economy by freeing up more money for consumer spending. This idea, like most policy decisions that come out of Congress, sounds good until agencies are asked to implement it.>>
02/04/09 12:44 pm ET
The latest name to circulate as the possible pick for Obama's chief technology officer is Virginia's secretary of technology, Aneesh Chopra, according to a source with inside knowledge of the administration's plans.>>
02/03/09 05:01 pm ET
How long before the government's investment in e-health records -- mostly spent in the form of "incentives" provided through Medicare and Medicaid -- starts to pay off? Longer than you may think, if you look at the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the House stimulus bill.>>
02/02/09 05:23 pm ET
Fellow blogger Alyssa Rosenberg at Government Executive's FedBlog writes that the Justice Department's phishing test for its employees may have spilled over to the Commerce Department.>>
02/02/09 03:35 pm ET
GSA sent out an announcement that Alliant Small Business is officially accepting task orders. In case you forgot, the contract was awarded to 72 companies back in December. Today's announcement means the protest period is over and GSA is finally ready to move forward with part of the troubled contract vehicle.>>
