Digital Government

The quick, cheap path to innovation

Inexpensive prototypes make it feasible to test new ideas and get user feedback.

Digital Government

The case for award-fee contracts

Award fees lead to better work from contractors — as long as they are clearly defined.

Cybersecurity

Marines' social-media ban is bad for morale

Rather than telling troops to get off Twitter and Facebook, the military should educate them about security.

Modernization

6 out-of-this-world government sites in Second Life

Teleport your avatar to one of the federal government's Second Life outposts to learn more about NASA space missions or NOAA's environmental studies.

Digital Government

Agents crippled by tech deployment delays along Southwest border

Border Patrol must rely on old, unreliable equipment to protect crossings and reduce illegal immigration.

Digital Government

Government needs smarter IT to oversee bailout, financial overhaul

Information systems that aggregate data on troubled areas of the financial system could strengthen oversight, says industry and open government advocates.

Digital Government

Agencies should plan now to enable IPv6 on public-facing servers

As the pool of IPv4 addresses dries up, agencies need to begin planning now for an Internet whose growth will be in the IPv6 address space, according to American Registry for Internet Numbers President John Curran.

Digital Government

The $75B Intelligence Budget

Talking to reporters yesterday about the new <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090915_2113.php">National Intelligence Strategy</a>, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair <a href="http://www.dni.gov/interviews/20090915_interview.pdf">said</a> the strategy would serve as a blueprint for a 200,000 person strong, $75 billion national intelligence enterprise.

Ideas

LOC Highlights Uses of Digital Library

Once again, the Library of Congress demonstrates how federal government should not only utilize information technology, but also market the initiatives to actually encourage support and adoption. Tuesday the largest library in the world, which currently touts nearly 142 million items in its collections, demonstrated to 100 guests -- many from academia -- the potential of its World Digital Library in education.

Digital Government

Tech Touted in Clearance Reform

The Office of Personnel Management has increased the efficiency in which the government completes security clearances, completing 90 percent of background investigations in an average of 37 days, the agency's director told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs federal workforce subcommittee on Tuesday. In 2005, the average time needed to obtain a Top Secret security clearance was in excess of one year, Berry said, while today it is only 72 days.

Digital Government

Navy could run two years late on business systems upgrade, GAO finds

Poor management controls are slowing the implementation of the Navy's Enterprise Resource Planning project and driving up costs, according to GAO.

People

The Facebook fan flap

Readers question the value of hoards of agency Facebook fans.

Digital Government

IT Leadership Awards

Consulting firm (ISC)2 on Tuesday announced the final nominees for its sixth annual Government Information Security Leadership Awards. The awards honor individuals who have significantly enhanced the information security workforce by demonstrating a leadership role in any information security workforce improvement initiative, program or project on either a government-wide or agency-specific basis. The program recognizes IT workers from each of the following categories:

Digital Government

Health IT panel approves intermediaries for data

Health and Human Services Department's Health IT Standards Committee has adopted a framework for the flow of patient data to be collected and aggregated to measure the quality of care.

Digital Government

Google readies government cloud offering

Google's government cloud offering will offer Google Apps in a dedicated environment within undisclosed Google facilities in the United States.