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Joseph Marks

Staff Correspondent

Joseph Marks covers government technology issues, social media, Gov 2.0 and global Internet freedom for Nextgov. He previously reported on federal litigation and legal policy for Law360 and on local, state and regional issues for two Midwestern newspapers. He also interned for Congressional Quarterly’s Homeland Security section and the Associated Press’s Jerusalem Bureau. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in international affairs from Georgetown.

Results 21-30 of 959

How YouTube Can Make Your Congressional Hearing a Hit

May 10, 2013 A video of Wednesday’s Benghazi hearing that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee live streamed on YouTube is already the 18th most viewed video out of roughly 2,400 on the committee’s page. Wednesday was the first time any Congressional committee live streamed a hearing on YouTube, though most committees ...

CDC Wants Trainees to 'Temporarily Forget' Exercises Aren't Real

May 10, 2013 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deploys staff members to some of the most stressful and dangerous environments on earth and the agency wants to make sure they have the emotional wherewithal to handle that pressure. In 2009, the CDC began using virtual reality environments that mimicked the sights, ...

A Blast from the Open Data Past

May 9, 2013 With President Obama’s release of new cross-government open data standards Thursday, I thought it would be a good time to look back at this 1996 New York Times article. (My apologies for any pay wall issues). That’s the year President Clinton issued a policy statement clarifying that the U.S. military ...

White House Orders Agencies to Follow New Open Data Standards

May 9, 2013 Government agencies must collect and publish new information in open, machine-readable and, whenever possible, non-proprietary formats, according to a White House executive order and open data policy published Thursday. The new policy also gives agencies six months to create an inventory of all the datasets they collect and maintain; an ...

New Tool Could Free Syrian Rebels From Reliance on State Internet

May 8, 2013 Syrian rebels may soon have a tool that can effectively nullify what appears to have been a state-imposed Internet blackout this week, the director of the Open Technology Institute said Wednesday. Sascha Meinrath’s Institute is working on Commotion, a U.S.-government funded project to create “mesh” networks of local Internet connections ...

Human Trafficking Hotlines Offer Help and Data

May 7, 2013 Hotlines for human trafficking victims can do more than just help one victim at a time, Bradley Myles, chief executive of the nonprofit Polaris Project, told lawmakers Tuesday. When information from multiple hotlines is brought together it can be a major data source for law enforcement and researchers studying human ...

Interior Storage Heads to the Cloud

May 7, 2013 The Interior Department has awarded a slate of cloud storage contracts to companies including Verizon and AT&T, one month after defeating a vendor protest that threatened to delay the acquisitions. The contracts for cloud storage, secure file transferring, virtual machine operations, and Web and database hosting are all aimed at ...

Blind Agency Attorney Sues CBP Over Tech Access

May 6, 2013 A blind attorney who works for the Homeland Security Department is suing his employer, which he said spent years pushing upgrades that interfered with his computer reading tools and made it impossible for him to do his work. Michael Leiterman lost hours of work time after each upgrade, troubleshooting new ...

Agriculture Department Considers Data-Driven Nutrition Assistance

May 6, 2013 The Agriculture Department is considering building a national database of state-level information about when, where and how people are using food stamps and other nutrition assistance, solicitation documents show. The proposed database would help the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and its state-level partners make smarter decisions about where to ...

Many CIOs Support IT Reform Legislation

May 2, 2013 Many government chief information officers think a proposed congressional overhaul that would give them broader authority over how their agencies buy information technology is a “step in the right direction,” according to TechAmerica’s CIO Insights survey released Thursday. CIOs aren’t all of one mind, though, about provisions of the Federal ...