Nextgov

Companies are mining data to solve real world challenges

May 1, 2012 Big data has been making big news in fields ranging from astronomy to online advertising. The term big data can be difficult to pin down because it shows up in so many places. Facebook crunches through big data on your user profile and friend network to deliver micro-targeted ads. Google ...

A message from the Editor

April 30, 2012 Welcome to the new Nextgov. We’ve redesigned the website to better showcase our award-winning journalism and bring you a broader array of information about technology and the business of government. While the new site is a dramatic visual departure from our previous design, the improvements are more than cosmetic. We’ve ...

Can a Bake Sale Save NASA?

April 27, 2012 It’s come to this. Space aficionados, scientists and other friends of NASA have decided to tap a great American tradition to shore up the space agency’s planetary exploration budget -- they’ve planned a nationwide fundraising bake sale and car wash for June 9. That’s right. The folks that put a ...

Defense Defends Telework

April 20, 2012 The Defense Department announced a new telework policy for its civilians Friday. The policy requires the heads of Pentagon components to promote telework by removing "artificial barriers" to the program. It requires the department to authorize the practice for the maximum number of positions without compromising mission readiness, according to ...

GSA's Martha Johnson, teleconference proponent, is undone by live event

April 2, 2012 In October 2010, right around the time General Services Administration officials were attending the lavish training conference in Las Vegas that forced the resignation of administrator Martha Johnson on Monday, GSA was encouraging agencies to conduct more virtual meetings to save money and cut greenhouse gas emissions. "As the federal ...

from govexec

Help Us Celebrate Your Failures. Really.

March 28, 2012 You’ve heard the expression “success has many fathers; failure is an orphan.” Help us turn that around at our May 7 Excellence in Government conference here in Washington. We’re looking for a few brave souls willing to own their failures in the interest of helping their peers learn from their ...

DARPA Eyes Battlefield Medicine Manufacturing

March 22, 2012 The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency launched a project yesterday called Bio-MOD -- Biologically-derived Medicines on Demand -- to develop portable gizmos to manufacture medicines on the battlefield. DARPA wants researchers to concentrate on developing a system that can quickly manufacture in remote outposts a class of medicines called protein ...

FBI Deals Major Blow to Hacker Collective, Stratfor Data Thieves

March 6, 2012 The FBI's New York field office Tuesday announced the arrests of six key hackers allegedly responsible for crimes affecting over 1 million people. The hackers all were aligned with the collective Anonymous or its offshoots, including LulzSec, AntiSec and Internet Feds, according to the FBI announcement. Among the hackers was ...

CBS Takes on Stuxnet

March 5, 2012 While President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu work to reassure themselves and the Western world that they won't allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, CBS on Sunday reminded viewers that nuclear bombs aren't the only weapons of mass destruction U.S. leaders are worried about. In a "60 ...

Got a Problem? Blame the Help Desk.

February 1, 2012 In what might be the modern equivalent of the cat-ate-my-homework excuse perfected by a previous generation of school children, James Murdoch is offering a new defense for ignorance of critical matters: Blame the IT shop. Murdoch's lawyers say the tabloid executive never received an email chain describing the scope of ...