White House

White House CIO Memo Unlikely To Reduce Excess IT Spending As Intended

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A White House memo giving chief information officers at federal agencies greater responsibilities to reduce wasteful technology spending comes up short in giving CIOs the added authority many believe they need to make a significant impact, say current and former government IT officials.

The memo, issued by Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew on Aug. 8, notified U.S. department and agency chiefs that the CIOs working for them have been tasked with greater roles and responsibilities by OMB, as well as greater accountability, in controlling technology spending. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 22, 2011 at 9:01 AM

VanRoekel Begins Tweeting As New Federal CIO

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Steven VanRoekel, the White House’s newly-named federal chief information officer wasted little time thanking Twitter followers from his new account, @stevenvDC at the Office of Management and Budget’s CIO office.

In one of his first messages, he wrote: Keep reading →

 /  Published August 5, 2011 at 1:16 PM

Parsing Obama’s Town Hall Tweets

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Last week, President Barack Obama kicked off his first Twitter town hall with – what else? – a tweet.


“At 1:53 PM Today (July 12), from the White House: I am going to make history here as the first President to live tweet,” he wrote.

And then he sent another tweet to get the conversation really going: “Today 2:07 PM Obama says: in order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep – both.”

Before it ended about an hour later, a number of well-known tweeters (e.g. House Speaker John Boehner) and lots of lesser known folks had tweeted hoping to catch the President’s attention and get a personal response to their question or comment.


While lots of commentary has already and will be written about this historic event, I thought I could provide something different (wearing my data scientist/data journalist hat) and parse his tweets, and those of previous town halls, if I could just recover the tweet steam. I used Searchtastic to retrieved 346 Tweets for visualization. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 21, 2011 at 12:00 PM

Shutting Down Duplicative Data Centers

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Just as our cell phones and computers have gotten progressively more efficient over the past decade, so too have data servers. However, the government has not taken advantage of the increasing efficiency of data storage. Rather than follow the private sector’s lead of shrinking the size and number of the facilities used to house the computers that store their data, agencies have gone in the opposite direction.

Between 1998 and 2010, the Federal government quadrupled the number of data centers we operate. Moreover, on average these centers have been using only 27 percent of their computer power even though taxpayers are footing the bill for the entire infrastructure, real estate and energy costs. The need for backup power supplies, environmental controls (air conditioning, fire suppression, etc.) and special security devices mean that data centers can consume 200 times as much electricity as standard office spaces. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 21, 2011 at 9:01 AM

Battle For Public Safety Airwaves Rages On A Decade After 9/11

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The fight to obtain additional wireless communications spectrum capable of providing police, firemen and emergency managers with the same capabilities most 15 year-olds have on their smart phones has been ongoing since the attacks of September 11, 2001, when outdated radios prevented firefighters and police from communicating evacuation orders. Hundreds died because they could not hear those orders.

And while little has changed in the decade since then, the Obama Administration last month publicly announced its support to transfer a swath of wireless spectrum known as the D block to first responder agencies for the purpose of building a nationwide, interoperable wireless public safety network – a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

The decision puts the White House squarely at odds with a powerful faction of wireless companies that continue to pressure Congress for a public auction of the available spectrum. Those companies argue the spectrum is critical to American competitiveness in an increasingly wireless world and a sale would raise an estimated $28 billion that could be applied to deficit reduction. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 14, 2011 at 3:00 PM

White House Adds Support for Public Safety Broadband Network

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Vice President Biden speaks on June 16, 2011 about the importance of creating a national public safety broadband network at a meeting with first responders, public safety advocates and Administration officials.

 /  Published July 11, 2011 at 3:29 PM
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