The stalemate over sequestration just got deeper with horribly predictable political posturing over the tardy release Friday of the Office of Management and Budget’s congressionally-mandated report on how the drastic automatic cuts would be implemented.
The 394-page report set the stage for the mutual denunciations in its preamble, declaring House Republican proposals to avert the sequester as “particularly irresponsible.” Keep reading →
Choosing the best software for soldiers on the battlefield is becoming as important as the weapons they use. But it’s also becoming an increasingly complicated supply challenge for military commanders and acquisition officials, according to defense experts.
There’s little question that real-time information – and the ability to analyze and act on that information quickly – is becoming the ultimate weapon for warfighters. Keep reading →
When it comes to budget cutting, there comes a time when some programs simply have to be dumped. Keep reading →
A coalition of technology companies on Tuesday launched a major lobbying effort aimed at showing members of Congress that data transparency in federal spending is not only possible, but could be achieved in short order using standard markup languages and electronic identifiers that the commercial world has been leveraging for years.
But Congress must first pass into law the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or Data Act, before the deployment of such industry standard technologies could put an end to fraud, waste and abuse in federal spending by making detailed information about where and how every tax dollar is being spent. Keep reading →
The nation needs cyber-security legislation to authorize sharing of threat data between industry and government in real time, said Gen. Keith Alexander, chief of both the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command, and it can be done without any danger to individual privacy.
“This cyber legislation that’s coming up is going to be absolutely vital to the future of our country,” said Gen. Alexander. Keep reading →
In one of his first public appearances since being officially named CIO at the Department of Energy, Robert Brese called for greater efforts to develop a skilled cybersecurity workforce, and stressed the importance of responding to cyber threats, not merely being prepared to prevent and recover from them.
In a series of wide-ranging remarks on the state of cybersecurity in the federal government, Brese highlighted six factors shaping the evolution of federal cybersecurity policy, but concluded that despite many challenges, the federal government is “doing a better job than a majority of the private sector” in defending its networks. Keep reading →
Legislation intended to deter members of Congress from profiting from stock trades based on inside information is inadvertently forcing 28,000 federal employees to expose their personal financial information on the Internet.
The result, according to a trade group for senior government executives, is a number of unintended risks that federal employees must now bear, and another reason for talented executives to think twice about serving their country by taking a position in the federal government. Keep reading →
We feature many contributors on Breaking Gov. It’s not everyday, however, that one of our contributors ops to take a leave in order to run for Congress.
James Windle, who has written passionately about the fine points of federal spending for Breaking Gov since its launch nearly a year ago, is doing just that. Keep reading →
Sequestration, the $1.2 trillion poison pill that the Congress and the White House built after last year’s Supercommittee failure to find agreement on cutting the nation’s budget, might become a colossal hangover for the nation on January 3, 2013.
It could also, however, create business opportunities. Keep reading →