The Latest

Next year will mark the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Marine Corps Aviation. To commemorate this noteworthy milestone, the US Marine Corps has produced a remarkable new publication entitled 1912-2012 100 Years of Marine Corps Aviation: An Illustrated History.

A stirring snapshot of some of the key people, aircraft, and events that comprise this first century of Marine aviation, this book showcases the achievements of Marine aviation through seldom seen photographs and accounts of pivotal battles and events. Keep reading →

As college students, we keep hearing that “times are tough.” In the midst of economic uncertainty, we are studying hard, networking and trying to keep our resumes fresh. We want to work, and for those of us with a passion for public service, the government is our first choice for employment. The problem is that government employment might not be available.

GovLoop member, Amanda Parker, recently completed her Master’s of Public Policy program. Through sacrifice and dedication to her work — and what Parker admits was a stroke of good luck — she secured an internship that she called her “dream job” at a federal agency. Alas, due to budget constraints, she’s afraid her agency won’t be able to convert her to a full-time employee upon completion. Keep reading →

Mistakes happen. Whether you are a politician or a plant manager, you will slip up and make a mistake at work from time to time. The key is knowing how to handle your gaffes to get past them as quickly as possible.

In the past couple of weeks we have seen some excellent examples of crisis management play out in front of us. Republican presidential candidate hopefuls Herman Cain and Rick Perry have both made some serious negative headlines recently, but they have handled their situations quite differently. Keep reading →

Federal agencies have begun the long march to cloud — moving selected portions of their data processing work into the Internet cloud, prompted in large part by an Obama administration “Cloud First” mandate initiated last year.

Some of that work–from computing infrastructure on demand to software delivered as a service–is already being provisioned by commercial providers, including Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), as well as Google, Microsoft and others. Keep reading →

The National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded its latest forum on federal cloud computing earlier this month with the release of the U.S. Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap designed to help federal agencies understand the essential characteristics of authentic cloud services.

From the point of view of those who provide cloud computing infrastructure services, though, the federal government still has a long way to go in learning how to utilize such services. Keep reading →

Day after day the threats we are exposed to in cyber space grow. Just recently Panda Security announced they processed their 200 millionth malware file. Just think about that for a moment, 200 million individual pieces of malware.

The company went on to say that cyber intelligence automatically detects, analyzes and classifies more than 73,000 new malware strains a day. That clearly illustrates the continuous change that goes on in the cyber threat environment. Keep reading →


When I saw this interactive budget image (the treemap above) issued by the White House, I thought it could actually be made clearer and really interactive with visualization tools like one I use (Spotfire) with just a little effort.

I also thought that all the data files provided by the White House for the fiscal year 2012 Budget could also be made clearer and more accessible in a spreadsheet so I decide to provide that service for our readers. Keep reading →

Last week I attended the EarthCube Charrette with about 140 geoscientists from the National Science Foundation (NSF), US Geological Survey, academic institutions, and industry. Estimates are there are about 100,000 geoscientists in the world.

The goal of EarthCube is to transform the conduct of research by supporting the development of community-guided cyberinfrastructure to integrate data and information for knowledge management across the geosciences. Keep reading →

When someone says they shop at Costco, you can likely assume they are either: 1) a member of the public seeking lower cost options to everyday expenses 2) a member of the retail community seeking to apply margins to low cost products. Either way, shopping at Costco or any other wholesale warehouse seems to have become a means of survival for those weathering the last few years of the infamous economic “downturn” and a symbol of consumer adaptation.

In a federal technology-focused e-newsletter this week, I was humored by use of the term ‘Costco Federal’ when referencing the strategy and tactics some agencies are using to procure the latest IT products. While the popular wholesale warehouse chain is not, to my knowledge, currently competing for large government IT procurements, the term undoubtedly demonstrates a resounding anticipation of the need to “save money” as we enter the next fiscal year. Given the strained economy, coupled with the uncertainties of an approaching election year and headlines like “Budget austerity is coming — what should you do?” , I think it is safe to conclude that today’s IT purchasing decisions are being greatly influenced by a knowledge of the inevitable — budgets WILL be cut. Keep reading →

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