People

DOD considers distributing task, delivery orders electronically

Defense Department officials want to make the electronic distribution of task and delivery orders standard.

Acquisition

Technical knowledge and government IT professionals: An oxymoron?

Do government IT pros have the expertise to know a good technical idea when the see it? And, even more importantly, can they distinguish between suggestions that are self-serving from those that are in an agency's interest?

Digital Government

But what about you newbies out there?

As readers may have noticed, we had a flood of comments responding to the question: “How did you get your federal job?”

Digital Government

CDC increases competition with $5 billion IT contract

The 10-year indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity pact awarded to 30 companies that will provide information management, management consulting and IT infrastructure.

Digital Government

Senator working on a privacy 'do-not-track' bill

Legislation would allow consumers to opt-out of having their Web activities tracked for advertising purposes.

Modernization

VA considers dumb computers to save money, tighten security

Thin clients could cut PC maintenance costs in half, but IT managers should be prepared for stiff resistance from clinicians, who won't warm up to them, say private tech chiefs who have made the move.

Digital Government

What Will Takai Do?

President Obama <a href=http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100930_1811.php?oref=topnews>withdrew</a> on Wednesday the nomination of California Chief Information Officer Teresa "Teri" Takai for the Defense assistant secretary for networks and information integration, a job that currently includes the Defense CIO title.

Digital Government

Survey: FOIA Workers Need $$$, Tech

Federal employees who are responsible for administering the Freedom of Information Act say their offices are too short-staffed, underfunded and technologically inept to process requests as expeditiously as the White House wants, according to a survey conducted by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Ideas

Google's Street View of Penguins

Watch out penguins. After <a href=http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2010/09/backlash_in_europe_over_google_street_view.php>raising privacy concerns</a> in Europe, Google Street View has arrived in Antarctica.

Digital Government

Kaiser Donates Doctor-Talk Tool

Kaiser Permanente announced Wednesday that it is donating a translation-enabling technology to the International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organization.

Cybersecurity

BitTorrent Protection

<a href="http://www.bittorrent.com/">BitTorrent</a> users, a free, open source peer-to-peer file-sharing application, might be wondering how to protect themselves. It's quite difficult to know when a download is masquerading as something it isn't. And while some might associate the tool with those who download illegal music, movie and software files, it's also used in legal ways. For example, users quite frequently download Linux distributions, some of which exist in DVD, a form that can only be obtained via BitTorrent.

Digital Government

How to save energy and money through data center consolidation

NASA has discovered the benefits of two critical elements of data virtualization: power management and virtualization, which go hand in hand.

Digital Government

NIH builds a bridge to paperless processes

The National Cancer Institute and Bristol-Myers Squibb are using digital certificates to eliminate paper in a cancer therapy evaluation program, a trend that advocates hope will become more widespread in government.

People

Takai nomination for DOD CIO withdrawn

California CIO Teri Takai's nomination as defense CIO is dead at least for now; the job and its responsibilities are being shifted between Defense Department agencies.

People

Army Corps of Engineers caught in web of political wrangling

The Army Corps of Engineers has tried numerous times to reorganize, but lawmakers don't want to risk potential job losses at home, according to corps officials.

Modernization

Web clearinghouse for student loans not needed, GAO says

The Education Department would face numerous problems if it tried to create an online clearinghouse for public and private student loan information, report says.