Are you sure the agency Facebook, YouTube or Twitter account you follow is legit? How do you know it’s an official government account?
Before now, you couldn’t. But now through the efforts of the General Services Administration’s new Social Media Registry you can. Keep reading →
After six days of the 2012 International Open Government Data Conference, which concluded last week, I and others are asking ourselves this question: Is there a business case for open government data?
Clearly, more needs to be done to spread what is working with open government data.
But when it comes to making a business case for open government data, there are at least three success models – or examples I am aware of:
The Digital Government Strategy directs Federal agencies to “seize the digital opportunity and fundamentally change how the Federal Government serves both its internal and external customers.” For most Federal workers, this is less about changing behaviors and more about translating how they use technology at home to how they use it at the office.
A new report, given by MeriTalk sponsored by Google, underscores the increasing consumerization of technology tools – even in the Federal IT environment. 67% of Federal employees wish that the technology at work could keep up with the changes in technology in their personal lives. Keep reading →
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has signed an agreement with Barnes & Noble to sell Federal eBooks.
GPO works with federal agencies to produce their publications, books, and reports in print and digital formats, including eBook formats. Keep reading →
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a field hearing on technology and the federal government Friday in Northern Virginia, where they heard testimony from large and small information technology companies and government officials about the top technology issues affecting government today.
The hearing was meant to provide access to extensive private-sector IT expertise within Northern Virginia and the National Capital region. It was also an opportunity for federal officials and state and local government partners to share best technology practices amid top technology challenges, including cybersecurity, cloud conversion and data center consolidation, and look at innovative ways to promote efficiency in government IT operations. Keep reading →
On February 17, The Wall Street Journal reported that a researcher working for them discovered that Google ran hidden code designed to circumvent the security settings on Apple devices that use the Safari web browser. While much of the coverage of this revelation has focused on consumers and whether the action may have violated laws or the consent agreement between the FTC and Google, little has been written about the impact for public sector customers.
Public sector customers are big users of Apple devices and these users are governed by a strict set of unique regulations and laws. Given the circumstances of the events here, the question needs to be asked: Did Google break any of the laws or regulations that restrict entities from accessing or changing government computing systems? Keep reading →
The state of Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles issued the nation’s first autonomously-driven vehicle license to Google Monday allowing the self-driven vehicle to operate on public roads, according to officials from Nevada’s DMV.
The Nevada legislature authorized self-driven cars for the state’s roads last year, becoming the first state in the nation to do so. That law went into effect on March 1, 2012. Keep reading →
One of the many promised benefits of the cloud is the availability of cheap, unlimited storage. From a disaster recovery and business continuity perspective, virtualized storage of vital data is truly revolutionary, as it allows organizations to realize more affordable and more efficient backup strategies.
Before the cloud, companies and many organizations used tapes to back up data on a weekly basis, with daily incremental backups to capture changes, and then rotated those copies through physical off-site storage. Keep reading →
The epic shift to cloud computing and need to process massive volumes of data are spurring a high-stakes race to build global data center capacity while making information available on whatever kind of device consumers want it, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a group of Northern Virginia technology executives Thursday.
“We need to think of data center capacity in real time,” he said, as part of Microsoft’s broader bet that businesses and government will use a combination of public and private clouds in the future, Ballmer said. He made comment in a series of wide ranging remarks about how technology is changing and the implications that will have for individuals, businesses, and government during an industry breakfast in McLean, Va., hosted by the Northern Virginia Technology Council. Keep reading →
In mid-March 2012, a German court took a first step toward judicial regulation of the cloud. A court in Hamburg ruled that the file-hosting site Rapidshare must proactively filter the content uploaded by its users.
The ruling may well be the first of its kind. In America, for example, as long as sites that host content take down any uploads that infringe a copyright when they receive notice, they are under no obligation to filter content as it is added to the site. In contrast, the Rapidshare decision (which came as the result of a lawsuit by German booksellers) requires the site to filter out infringing content before it is posted to the Web. Keep reading →