Proposed increases in federal technology spending aren’t just for back office operations; they’re also expected to help the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency track down illegal immigrants, weed out illegal job applicants and intercept would be terrorists.
Those are just some of the places where hikes in information technology spending in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget would be directed, if approved by Congress. Keep reading →
Thanks to lightning-fast software from the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), if a truck bomb was discovered in Lower Manhattan we will now be able to predict the likely damage patterns in the surrounding areas, and prioritize the first responders’ activities long before the bomb’s acoustic shockwave ricocheted out at the speed of sound. Keep reading →
Ten years ago, if you wanted to see a 1950s art house classic, you had to drive to the nearest video store, search the movie stacks, hope they carried the movie, and hope it wasn’t checked out — not a terribly convenient process.
Most of the time there was a tradeoff to make: either you enjoyed the convenience of watching whatever what happened to be on TV that night or you took the journey to the rental store and then had the satisfaction of watching exactly what you wanted.
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This article is adapted from a new Deloitte GovLab study, “Public Sector, Disrupted: How disruptive innovation can help government achieve more for less.” For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, follow us on Twitter @AOLgov.
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UPDATED. President Barack Obama reached out across the Internet to engage directly with Americans and small business owners in a live virtual interview staged by The White House Monday. The virtual session, held at 5:30 EST, was hosted by Google and produced using YouTube in what was billed as a post State of the Union Google+ Hangout.
The online question and answer session were streamed live on WhiteHouse.gov, YouTube.com/WhiteHouse and on the White House Google+ page. Keep reading →
The FBI has something new on its most wanted list: A way to monitor, map and analyze social media intelligence around the world in real time.
According to a request for information document issued Jan. 19 on a Federal Business Opportunities website, the FBI and its Strategic Information and Operations Center are looking for ideas from private industry on ways it might provide “a secure, lightweight web application portal, using mash-up technology” with the ability to “rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence.” Keep reading →
Social media and Internet freedom have become an increasingly important part of the State Department’s agenda, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today during an international video Web chat with journalists and bloggers.
Alec Ross, senior adviser for innovation at the State Department, said social media has become both an essential communication tool for diplomats as well as an barometer of broader social freedoms across the globe. Keep reading →
As the firewalls and silos that made up an obstructive government of the past have come down, Bev Godwin’s been working to entice the public to interact and absorb information via web and social media tools.
As director of GSA’s Federal Citizen Information Center (FCIC), Godwin helps federal agencies develop, promote and distribute useful communications on many channels – USA.gov, GobiernoUSA.gov, 1-800-FED-INFO, email, web chat, social media, publications online or by mail, and on laptop, mobile, and e-reader. Keep reading →
When applying to college, students and their parents traditionally have worried about grades, aptitude test scores and application essays. And then there’s the complex financial aid process that requires the submission of detailed tax information.
Supplying the tax data, in fact, has long proven to be a huge headache for many families, and in some cases it’s a major barrier. But thanks to Julie Rushin of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), millions of students and their families are now benefiting from a new user-friendly system that takes away that worry about the tax information. Keep reading →
Roger Cressey can recall with great precision the moment, ten years ago, when the homeland security mission came to life out of the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
“It was the magnitude and the gravity of what we were dealing with, literally when the towers were crumbling, realizing that the world had changed and that our government – our nation – had changed,” said Cressey, who served as the Deputy for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council on 9/11. Keep reading →
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has faced a great deal of scrutiny, both from the public and from Congressional leaders since its creation in 2003. Some have accused it of being dysfunctional, ineffective, and mismanaged, going so far as to call for the dissolution of the Department. While we should ask a great deal of the agency designated to protect us against terrorism and other threats, much of this criticism is misguided, as are recommendations to close the department.
We must face the reality that working to improve DHS is our only option. From a purely practical perspective, DHS is unlikely to be disestablished. We have no track record of closing cabinet departments, and it is unreasonable to expect Congress to assume the political risk associated with pursuing the elimination of the organization designed to protect the homeland. Most importantly, we must acknowledge that, strategically, DHS is too vital to simply do away with. Keep reading →