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Apps.gov is Live
Just ahead of Vivek Kundra's scheduled 1 p.m. announcement, the new cloud computing storefront, Apps.gov is live. The initial offerings include four categories of services currently offered by vendors on the GSA Schedules: Business Apps, Cloud IT Services, Productivity Apps and Social Media Apps.
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States Can Access Defense Network
Local authorities rejoice: Select regional fusion centers that collect and share regional information on terrorist threats and activities will soon have access to sensitive terrorism-related data housed in the Defense Department's classified network.
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Stimulus Data to be Delayed
The government will not release stimulus data from the private sector and states on Recovery.gov until Oct. 30, 20 days after spending reports are due, the board overseeing Recovery Act funds announced on Monday.
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Next Week: Cloud Computing Storefront
You may have seen <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137841/White_House_CIO_to_disclose_cloud_computing_plans">reports</a> today regarding a major announcement next week from federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra on the government's cloud computing initiative. The source of most of those reports is <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2009/M09-116.html">this release</a> from NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which says only that Kundra "will outline his vision for a new federal government cloud computing initiative". As the home of <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090828_3538.php">NASA's cloud computing initiative</a> (cleverly dubbed "Nebula"), Ames seems like a natural choice to reveal the government's new cloud strategy.
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Kundra: Transparency Will Take Time
Speaking at a Washington conference on government technology, the <a href="http://www.gov2summit.com/">Gov 2.0 Summit</a>, this morning, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra acknowledged that to achieve the transparency the Obama administration has promised there would need to be upgrades to many agencies' antiquated IT infrastructures. Delivering those upgrades on the other hand, may be a task that outlasts both Kundra and the administration.
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More Recovery Funds for Airport Security
The Homeland Security Department will infuse airports with $35.4 million in recovery funds to enhance security, bringing the total amount of recovery dollars dedicated to screening and explosives detection technology to $1 billion.
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Now It's Personal
One of the award winners at the Gov 2.0 Summit held in Washington on Wednesday (and continuing Thursday) was <a href="http://www.bart.gov/">BART</a>, San Fransisco's public transportation system, Bay Area Rapid Transit. A popular feature of BART's Web site is "<a href="http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090327.aspx">Seen and Heard on BART This Week</a>," which posts photos and Tweets from BART riders -- like this one:
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Obama's Secrecy Record Is Mixed
An annual report card on the Obama administration's secrecy track record found slight decreases in secrecy in the last year of the Bush-Cheney administration and a very mixed performance by Obama in upholding his promise of unprecedented transparency.
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NOAA's Take on 'Cloud Computing'
It may seem as if weather forecasters are more often wrong than they are right, but the Commerce Department's National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is hoping to change that by installing a new supercomputer for weather and climate prediction.
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No Gmail in DC Government
On my post about <a href="http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/09/is_gmail_ready_for_government.php">Gmail and government</a> on Tuesday, two anonymous <a href="http://twitter.com/gnagesh/status/3764791877">commentators</a> informed us that District of Columbia government employees <em>do not</em> use Gmail accounts for official business, but rather the more common Microsoft Exchange email system.
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Defense Giant Passes Away
The defense acquisition, systems and software engineering communities lost one of the true giants this week with the passing Monday of retired Rear Adm. Wayne E. Meyer at the age of 83.
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VA Touts Results for Telework Day
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's office today promoted the results of the Commonwealth's <a href="http://www.teleworkexchange.com/teleworkdayreport/">Telework Day</a>, which took place on Aug. 3. According to Kaine's spokesperson Lisa Torphy, 95 percent of the more than 4,200 employees who took part in the event were Virginia-based employees, including more than 2,200 federal employees.
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O Gov Directive Making a Comeback
A White House transparency initiative announced the day after the Inauguration -- the details of which have been <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Data-from-Public-Consultation-on-Open-Government/">delayed for months</a> -- is about to make a comeback, according to officials with the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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U.S., Mexico Sign Telecomm Agreement
Public safety and law enforcement organizations in Mexico and the U.S. will soon be able to communicate across the border. The departments of Homeland Security and State announced Wednesday that senior officials on the U.S.-Mexico High-Level Consultative Commission on Telecommunications signed a bilateral telecommunications agreement to support a cross border communications network that will provide cross-border voice, data and video channels to strengthen border security and incident response.
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School Districts Face Unsecure Networks
The Homeland Security Department has talked a lot about testing network security in federal government and critical infrastructure markets, but one network administrator warns about vulnerabilities in K-12 school districts. In an email to Nextgov, he had the following to say about his own experience:
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Is Gmail Ready for Government?
In case you've been out of pocket this afternoon (or don't have <a href="http://twitter.com/Nextgov">Twitter</a>), Google's popular free email service <a href="http://mail.google.com">Gmail</a> <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137384/Gmail_hit_by_widespread_outage">has been down</a> for much of the afternoon. While it's fun to debate whether the outage (and the absence of the ubiquitous Gchat) has increased or decreased productivity for office workers across the country, the outage brings up a salient point about cloud computing and the wisdom of having the government rely on consumer technology.
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Internet Turns 40
Robert Charette, a risk management consultant and a contributor to Tech Insider and <em>Government Executive</em> magazine, <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/computing/it/riskfactor/internet-turns-40-">noted</a> on his Risk Factor blog that Sept. 2, 2009, marks the 40th anniversary of the "official" creation of the Internet, or its predecessor, <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/">ARPANET</a>.
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Crowdsourcing Court Records
Last week I made a visit to the District of Columbia's federal courthouse to look up some documents for a story I've been working on. Since I don't have an account for the federal court records database known as PACER, heading down to the courthouse was the only way I could download and print the records I needed at a cost of eight cents per page. I sat down and dutifully printed out the first lengthy set of documents, only to find that somehow all of the text printed out backwards on the page.
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Storm Spike Due To Stronger Tech
On the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the agency charged with weather forecasting recently found that more storms have been identified since the late 19th century because of advances in information technology, not because there are more storms.
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