NTIA

President Barack Obama signed into law today a tax cut extension bill that includes long-awaited provisions for setting aside wireless communications spectrum to help build a nationwide public safety network for first responder organizations.

The allocation to public safety organizations of the much-needed wireless spectrum, known as the 700 MHz D-Block, comes exactly 10 years, 23 weeks and 4 days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – the event that highlighted in agonizing detail the inability of firemen, police and emergency responders to communicate in a timely, effective manner. Keep reading →

One the nation’s most authoritative sources for residential address data, the U.S. Census Bureau, may soon have to confront a costly legal constraint that prevents it from sharing basic street address information with thousands of county, state governments and other organizations.

The limitation not only means that state and local governments must spend more to validate address information, so must the Census Bureau and other federal agencies, according to a group of data specialists speaking at a conference on the use of geographic data. Keep reading →