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Federal surveyors use smartphone apps to review Missouri River flood damage

September 8, 2011 Army Corps of Engineers teams inspecting flood damage along the Missouri River used to scribble down detailed directions to where they'd found seepage in a certain levee or turbid water bubbling up on the landward side of a dike so damage could be spotted by the next surveying team. Inspectors' ...

from govexec

Federal surveyors use smartphone apps to review Missouri River flood damage

September 8, 2011 Army Corps of Engineers teams inspecting flood damage along the Missouri River used to scribble down detailed directions to where they'd found seepage in a certain levee or turbid water bubbling up on the landward side of a dike so damage could be spotted by the next surveying team. Inspectors' ...

SSA survey response shows limits of IT management reforms

September 7, 2011 This story has been updated to include comments from the Office of Management and Budget The Social Security Administration can't fully modernize its business and accounting information technology systems and processes because of governmentwide limitations beyond its control, the agency wrote in its response to a congressional survey released Tuesday. ...

Issa blasts federal IT management, releases business systems surveys

September 6, 2011 A Congressionally-requested survey of how agencies manage their business and accounting information technology systems reveals too much work is still being done manually and not enough data is being made public, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., charged Tuesday. Issa released agency responses to the survey late Tuesday, along ...

Going Mobile

September 6, 2011 Doctors at Veterans Affairs Department medical centers will be able to pull up patient records on smartphones and tablets starting in October, and some top VA officials already are using the mobile devices for nonclassified work. Medical providers at VA's 152 hospitals had been lobbying for years to incorporate mobile ...

Agencies should post officials' schedules, other info under new transparency partnership, group says

September 2, 2011 Federal agencies should post visitor logs, officials' daily calendars and other information on their websites as part of a new multination open government partnership, a watchdog recommended this week. Citizens also should be able to file and track Freedom of Information Act requests directly from agency sites, the group OMB ...

Defense Language Institute Dips Into Dot-Edu Domain

September 1, 2011 The Defense Language Institute has launched a dot-edu website for a handful of Dari students because the dot-mil sites it normally works with are too "hampered by security and bandwidth restrictions," according to a Defense Department press release. The Naval Postgraduate School, one of the few military institutions with real ...

The TSA App and Flying Pie

September 1, 2011 The Transportation Security Administration included about 900 items fliers could or couldn't carry onto their flights or put in checked baggage when it first launched its My TSA app in July 2010, agency official Neil Bonner said Wednesday. That list grew to more than 3,000 items as people used a ...

Weed the People?

September 1, 2011 Adding to its string of online open government initiatives, the White House on Thursday announced a new Web feature that will allow activists to petition the federal government straight from the White House website. Officials will monitor the We The People site and "if your petition attracts enough support, White ...

Agency apps must be regularly updated or face obsolescence

September 1, 2011 Mobile applications are like websites -- they're either regularly updated or rapidly outdated, government app experts said Wednesday. But agencies also should be wary of packing their apps with so much content they confuse or overwhelm users, government IT officials said at a webinar hosted by Government Executive Media Group, ...