Disasters happen. How quickly and appropriately those in authority respond to those disasters can make the difference between a frightening but manageable situation, versus an all-out catastrophe.
It seems that government officials at federal and state and local levels took to heart the lessons from Katrina, and made sure that as Hurricane Irene captured the nation’s attention, they were in front of the storm – with their communications and their preparedness efforts. Keep reading →
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski (pictured) 
has appointed David B. Robbins to be the FCC’s new managing director, effective September 12, 2011. He will succeed Steve VanRoekel, who left the agency earlier this year for a post at USAID before being named U.S. chief information officer earlier last month.
Robbins joins the FCC from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), where he served as associate administrator for the Office of Management & Administration, leading a number of the SBA’s core functions, including human capital management, facilities management, security, records management, executive secretariat, administrative services, and grants management, according to an FCC statement. He also served as director of the Loan Management and Accounting Systems Modernization Program. Keep reading →
This article is the first of several commentaries appearing courtesy of Breaking Defense this week examining what America’s leaders should do next to secure our national security, 10 years after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The green economy is more than quietly turning windmills and grand visions of new infrastructure; it is also construction boots on the ground in public buildings across the US.
With budget constraints looming on the mind of government officials at every level, the question of how to pay for mandated or wished-for infrastructure improvements that cut energy usage in public buildings has grown ever more pressing. The use of energy savings performance contracts may be part of the solution to that quandary. Keep reading →
This August was a little different than most in Washington and not just because of earthquakes and hurricanes. The anxiety surrounding the federal sector is palpable after a year marked by spending debates that nearly shutdown the government in April and took the country to the brink of default in early August.
The writing is on the wall that the era of growth in the federal sector is ending. Executive Branch agencies have prepared plans and, in some cases, executed plans to begin leaning down. The U.S. Post Office, the U.S. Army, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, among other agencies, have announced workforce reductions. Federal sector reductions, however, need to be kept in perspective. Keep reading →
If the experiences of DHS and ODNI are any guide, the success or failure of reorganization may depend on dynamics and relationships that transcend the immediate borders of the new department or agency.
A new government enterprise does not exist in a vacuum, but must operate within a super system of sister departments, White House councils and czars, and congressional oversight
committees. While these institutional actors are rarely taken into account by those who design a new agency, they can have a profound impact on those charged with building and running the organization. Keep reading →
Federal IT managers often look to leading technology suppliers to discover what they have learned to protect their own enterprises. Breaking Gov sat down with Symantec Corp.’s Vice President and General Manager for Public Sector, Gigi Schumm, to discuss what federal IT managers can learn from Symantec’s own approach to security and how those lessons are incorporated into the company’s products.
Breaking Gov: If federal IT managers wanted to look inside Symantec to see how security is managed and baked into your products, what would they see? Keep reading →
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to be a panelist on the panel, “Protection and the Moral Dilemma: Going Offline in the Name of Security”, the kickoff event of the DHS GFIRST summit in Nashville, Tennessee.
The panel itself included senior security experts from across the spectrum of the public sphere: DHS, the FBI, DoD, state government, and even well-known security author Winn Schwartau. Keep reading →
In my last blog posting, I expressed my thoughts on the importance of taking a holistic approach specifically to addressing the recent proliferation of software vulnerabilities. But truly, this approach applies to addressing all cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
I was reminded of that this week when I read a well-known security figurehead’s very myopic response to a newly released cyber education strategy, called the NICE Strategy, implying that the strategy will have little or no impact if it is not updated to focus on developing critical ‘hands-on cybersecurity skills’. Keep reading →
The White House submitted its revised financial outlook and budget priorities to Congress for fiscal 2012 and beyond, predicting that the federal deficit for 2011 will be 20 percent lower, at $1.316 trillion, than projected in February, but acknowledging a number of economic hurdles lie ahead.
Citing a combination of lower outlays and higher-than-anticipated receipts, the 2011 deficit is projected to equal to 8.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), down from 10.9 percent projected in February, the President’s “Mid-Session Report” said. Deficits are also expected to be lower in each of the next 10 years than estimated in the President’s February budget. Keep reading →