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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 701-710 of 983

Mobile work is about more than secure laptops

October 18, 2011 Concerns about workers telecommuting with personal laptops and smartphones don't end with those systems' comparatively lax security, officials said Tuesday. There also are a host of policy questions that need to be answered in case security problems do emerge, either because of a malicious cyberattack or because the device simply ...

GAO Strikes Down Part of Cloud Email RFQ

October 17, 2011 The Government Accountability Office on Monday struck down part of a blanket bid solicitation for cloud computing services that protesters claimed would unfairly restrict them from storing government data including email and records management systems in cloud facilities abroad. A May 9 General Services Administration request for quotation for government ...

Average tenure for agency CIOs is hovering at two years, GAO says

October 17, 2011 The average tenure of an agency chief information officer has stalled at about two years, despite a general consensus among information technology executives that a three-to-five year stay is necessary to institute major organizational and policy changes, a watchdog said Monday. That two-year term of service essentially has remained unchanged ...

Agencies see advantages to open source content management systems

October 14, 2011 Many people were terrified when the Commerce Department first considered moving to an open source content management system for its main website, the agency's new media director said Thursday. Commerce.gov made the transition in mid-2010 to a CMS from Drupal -- among the most popular open source communities worldwide. Many ...

My Experience Tweeting @ the White House

October 13, 2011 In addition to dignitaries, media and Korean American leaders in attendance at Thursday morning's arrival ceremony for South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, the White House also invited several dozen Tweeters -- this reporter among them -- to chronicle the event. And, despite rain that soaked through my shoes, a cancellation ...

Social media enables Occupy DC protests and defines them too

October 13, 2011 The mishmash of different principles and goals floating around the Occupy DC protest's headquarters near lobbyist-heavy K Street is a lot like the near cacophony of Tweets streaming under the movement's #occupyDC and #occupyKst hash tags, said Kelly Mears, a leader of the group's social media outreach. "Twitter would be ...

HHS aims to drive down health care costs with transparency

October 11, 2011 The Health and Human Services Department wants to use the "NOAA model" to bring down health care costs, its chief technology officer said Tuesday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "collects tons of weather data and publishes it online in machine-readable, downloadable form for anyone for free," HHS CTO Todd ...

A Brutal Self-Assessment of HHS' Web Presence

October 7, 2011 The Health and Human Services Department's Web footprint is "currently so fractured that no one knows the total annual Departmental investment in Web-related activities," according to a forthright self-assessment recently posted to the agency's main website. "HHS is an historically siloed entity, and its Web holdings reflect that legacy," the ...

Government Internet Interference Spans the Globe, Study Finds

October 7, 2011 An analysis by Brookings Institution scholars has found 606 incidents of governments interfering with some portion of their citizens' web content since 1995. Overall, 45 percent of the incidents occurred in democracies or emerging democracies while 52 percent occurred in authoritarian regimes, according to the study titled The Dictators' Digital ...

Energy Department plans alternative funding model for data center consolidation

October 7, 2011 Facing uncertainty about future congressional appropriations, the Energy Department is turning to alternative models to fund its part of the governmentwide data center consolidation initiative, including Energy Performance Contacting. The contracting vehicle allows agencies to update and remodel federal buildings without any upfront investment. Under an EPC, a contractor guarantees ...