TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
09/30/09 05:27 pm ET
President Obama on Wednesday declared American Samoa a major disaster after the territory was struck by an earthquake and tsunami. But if the president wanted to spread that message nationwide, today, it wouldn't get very far.>>
09/29/09 05:48 pm ET
The civil liberties group Center for Democracy and Technology on Tuesday highlighted an interesting question facing the administration as it promotes technology as a tool for increasing transparency: Is there such a thing as too much transparency?>>
09/28/09 02:09 pm ET
Coinciding with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Transportation Security Administration has filtered millions of fiscal 2009 funds to airport surveillance and cargo screening throughout the last month. On Friday, TSA announced two awards for enhanced airport surveillance at Dallas/Fort Worth and San Francisco international airports.>>
09/28/09 08:01 am ET
We'll be bringing you more news on this story later on Monday, but we wanted to make sure that those of you not on GovLoop saw it here first: The social media site aimed at Feds will become part of GovDelivery, which specializes in "government to citizen communications solutions.">>
09/25/09 01:47 pm ET
The Transportation Security Administration's full-body scans at some airport security check points have been the subject of some heated discussions, even on the TSA Blog.>>
09/24/09 09:23 pm ET
Doing business with the federal government is a notoriously difficult endeavor. The myriad of regulations make the barrier to entry extremely high for the average entrepreneur unfamiliar with the BeltWay of doing things. But one two and a half year old tech company's recent entry onto the GSA Schedules program may provide a preview of the Obama Administration's strategy to bring innovation to the government.>>
09/23/09 11:41 am ET
For all of you who hate meetings - and that's probably most of you - here's a recommendation from a New York state assemblyman for fighting swine flu that you'll find a big time saver: Cancel meetings and use the phone.>>
09/23/09 11:49 am ET
The Sunlight Foundation has a post today that combines several of our favorite topics: crowdsourcing, collaboration and contractor misconduct (try saying that five times fast):>>
09/22/09 05:34 pm ET
In his blog The Risk Factor, blogger Bob Charette wrotes about Wisconsin's four-year effort to consolidate networks to save money and improve administration. The state auditor has some results:>>
09/21/09 05:09 pm ET
President Obama, long referred to as the "tech president," has had no formal innovation agenda to back up the title - until now. During a visit to New York's Hudson Valley Community College on Monday, Obama laid out a strategy for creating new jobs, businesses and industries through tapping the nation's innovative potential. >>
09/18/09 04:47 pm ET
I was rather entertained a few weeks ago when I read that former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said politics was never a factor in determining whether the nation's color-coded terror-alert level should be raised. >>
09/17/09 07:51 pm ET
A watchdog group is contesting the government's denial of a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act to see the entire contents of the controversial, potential $18 million contract for the redesign of Recovery.gov. >>
09/16/09 01:23 pm ET
Once again, the Library of Congress demonstrates how federal government should not only utilize information technology, but also market the initiatives to actually encourage support and adoption. Tuesday the largest library in the world, which currently touts nearly 142 million items in its collections, demonstrated to 100 guests -- many from academia -- the potential of its World Digital Library in education. >>
09/15/09 12:41 pm ET
Just ahead of Vivek Kundra's scheduled 1 p.m. announcement, the new cloud computing storefront, Apps.gov is live. The initial offerings include four categories of services currently offered by vendors on the GSA Schedules: Business Apps, Cloud IT Services, Productivity Apps and Social Media Apps. >>
09/14/09 03:48 pm ET
Local authorities rejoice: Select regional fusion centers that collect and share regional information on terrorist threats and activities will soon have access to sensitive terrorism-related data housed in the Defense Department's classified network.>>
09/14/09 02:32 pm ET
The government will not release stimulus data from the private sector and states on Recovery.gov until Oct. 30, 20 days after spending reports are due, the board overseeing Recovery Act funds announced on Monday.>>
09/11/09 04:49 pm ET
You may have seen reports today regarding a major announcement next week from federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra on the government's cloud computing initiative. The source of most of those reports is this release from NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which says only that Kundra "will outline his vision for a new federal government cloud computing initiative". As the home of NASA's cloud computing initiative (cleverly dubbed "Nebula"), Ames seems like a natural choice to reveal the government's new cloud strategy.>>
09/10/09 04:03 pm ET
Speaking at a Washington conference on government technology, the Gov 2.0 Summit, this morning, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra acknowledged that to achieve the transparency the Obama administration has promised there would need to be upgrades to many agencies' antiquated IT infrastructures. Delivering those upgrades on the other hand, may be a task that outlasts both Kundra and the administration.>>
09/10/09 03:59 pm ET
The Homeland Security Department will infuse airports with $35.4 million in recovery funds to enhance security, bringing the total amount of recovery dollars dedicated to screening and explosives detection technology to $1 billion.>>
09/09/09 11:07 pm ET
One of the award winners at the Gov 2.0 Summit held in Washington on Wednesday (and continuing Thursday) was BART, San Fransisco's public transportation system, Bay Area Rapid Transit. A popular feature of BART's Web site is "Seen and Heard on BART This Week," which posts photos and Tweets from BART riders -- like this one:>>
09/08/09 01:51 pm ET
An annual report card on the Obama administration's secrecy track record found slight decreases in secrecy in the last year of the Bush-Cheney administration and a very mixed performance by Obama in upholding his promise of unprecedented transparency.>>
09/08/09 12:37 pm ET
It may seem as if weather forecasters are more often wrong than they are right, but the Commerce Department's National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is hoping to change that by installing a new supercomputer for weather and climate prediction.>>
09/04/09 04:24 pm ET
On my post about Gmail and government on Tuesday, two anonymous commentators informed us that District of Columbia government employees do not use Gmail accounts for official business, but rather the more common Microsoft Exchange email system.>>
09/04/09 08:22 am ET
The defense acquisition, systems and software engineering communities lost one of the true giants this week with the passing Monday of retired Rear Adm. Wayne E. Meyer at the age of 83.>>
09/03/09 05:36 pm ET
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's office today promoted the results of the Commonwealth's Telework Day, which took place on Aug. 3. According to Kaine's spokesperson Lisa Torphy, 95 percent of the more than 4,200 employees who took part in the event were Virginia-based employees, including more than 2,200 federal employees.>>
09/03/09 05:04 pm ET
A White House transparency initiative announced the day after the Inauguration -- the details of which have been delayed for months -- is about to make a comeback, according to officials with the Office of Science and Technology Policy.>>
09/02/09 03:53 pm ET
Public safety and law enforcement organizations in Mexico and the U.S. will soon be able to communicate across the border. The departments of Homeland Security and State announced Wednesday that senior officials on the U.S.-Mexico High-Level Consultative Commission on Telecommunications signed a bilateral telecommunications agreement to support a cross border communications network that will provide cross-border voice, data and video channels to strengthen border security and incident response.>>
09/02/09 03:26 pm ET
The Homeland Security Department has talked a lot about testing network security in federal government and critical infrastructure markets, but one network administrator warns about vulnerabilities in K-12 school districts. In an email to Nextgov, he had the following to say about his own experience:>>
09/01/09 05:12 pm ET
In case you've been out of pocket this afternoon (or don't have Twitter), Google's popular free email service Gmail has been down for much of the afternoon. While it's fun to debate whether the outage (and the absence of the ubiquitous Gchat) has increased or decreased productivity for office workers across the country, the outage brings up a salient point about cloud computing and the wisdom of having the government rely on consumer technology.>>
09/01/09 12:42 pm ET
Robert Charette, a risk management consultant and a contributor to Tech Insider and Government Executive magazine, noted on his Risk Factor blog that Sept. 2, 2009, marks the 40th anniversary of the "official" creation of the Internet, or its predecessor, ARPANET.>>
