Don’t wait around for the next wave in technology. Cloud computing is here to stay. You’ll have to deal with it sooner or later.
That was the message from IT managers attending annual FOSE conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday from a panel of top federal CIOs. Keep reading →
Tight budgets cannot be an excuse for lack of innovation. Rather, federal CIO Steven VanRoekel told the audience at the annual FOSE conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that agencies have a prime opportunity to drive efforts to build a 21st century digital government.
I think we will see a catalyst effect by having FedRamp out there and driving this forward.” – Steven VanRoekel Keep reading →
Negligent insiders are the leading cause of data breaches at U.S. companies and public sector agencies, according to a new study by the Ponemon Institute. At the same time, malicious or criminal attacks are on the rise and are more costly to organizations than data breaches triggered by employees or system glitches, according to the study.
In its report, the 2011 Cost of Data Breach Study, the Michigan-based research organization found that 39% of data breaches in the U.S. involved employee negligence. Keep reading →
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service officials expect a significant upsurge in use of Self Check a free, online service that lets workers check their own employment eligibility status.
The tool was launched last March in a limited number of states and expanded to all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on Feb. 9. Keep reading →
When the surf’s up on the New Jersey coast, U.S. Navy officials are stoked. The waves are helping the Navy harness the power of the ocean to generate electricity for a sea-based radar and communications system that supports maritime security operations.
The Navy and Ocean Power Technologies Inc. recently completed successful testing of an autonomous buoy, called the PowerBuoy, (similar to one tested off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, pictured above). The PowerBuoy taps the almost constant wave action on the ocean’s surface to produce the electricity that runs an on-board radar and communications payload. Keep reading →
There are few aspects of modern life that haven’t been touched by information technology. One of them is the voting process for U.S. overseas military personnel. For the most part, it’s still done by snail mail. A soldier abroad receives a ballot by mail, marks it manually and returns it by mail.
“We’ve been doing this since the 1860s,” said Paul Lux, supervisor of elections for Okaloosa County in northwest Florida. But that’s in the process of changing. Keep reading →
The shape of things to come in government cloud computing will lie in models that are evolving on the state and local level, and may look a lot like what is taking place in Utah and Michigan, according to a new report from research group IDC Government Insights.
The era of the “server down the hall” is over, states the report. Instead, the nascent paradigm for state and local cloud computing will take the form of regional, government-to-government hubs, according to the report. An abstract of the report, entitled “Regional Community Cloud Hubs: the New ‘Trickle Down’ Effect That’s Boosting State and Local Computing” is available at no charge. Keep reading →
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is offering a $15,000 innovation award to anyone who can come up with a best design for a medical stretcher that can be carried into a combat zone by a single rescuer, quickly prepared to load an injured soldier and moved out of the site and into a helicopter. 
The latest in a growing number of government initiated innovation challenges is hosted by InnoCentive Inc. The challenge, which was posted in late December and is open until Feb. 28, requires only a written proposal. Keep reading →
As chief technology officer of the Veterans Affairs Department, Dr. Peter Levin isn’t tasked with making sure that routers are maintained or seeing that the network stays up. Far from it. You could say he’s more of a technology conceptualist.
Rather than “chief technology officer”–a position at VA to which he was appointed in 2009–he might have been more appropriately titled “chief innovation officer.” Keep reading →
When an electrical transformer blew out at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., last spring, the campus was without power for a week. Generators helped keep critical services up and running, including the school’s computer systems. Still, the academy suffered a disastrous loss of email when the on-premise servers reached capacity.
As it happened, however, about a 100 staff members were piloting a cloud-based e-mail service that week. They were the only people on campus who didn’t lose the use of e-mail during the blackout. Keep reading →