Ideas
Wired: Army Arrests Docs Leaker
Wired's Threat Level blog reported late Sunday that Army officials have arrested a U.S. intelligence analyst who allegedly leaked military and State Department documents to <a href=http://wikileaks.org/>Wikileaks</a>, a whistleblower Web site. The site posted in April a video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed innocent civilians.
Ideas
A Vote for Agency Contests
Nextgov posted an <a href=http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100603_8509.php?oref=topnews>article</a> on Thursday reporting that two Republicans have criticized the Obama administration for wasting taxpayer money on its initiative to create contests in which the public, businesses or even public agencies submit ideas to solve a long-standing national problem. The winner takes home either a cash prize or just the recognition that his or her idea won.
Ideas
Social Media's Increasing Drivel
Social networking, Twitter in particular because of its tight limits on characters, has given rise to a new set of clichés, trite musings and empty phrases. Danny Brown, a writer at Lawrence Ragan Communications Inc., a public relations firm in Chicago, <a href=http://www.ragan.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=5AA50C55146B4C8C98F903986BC02C56&tier=4&id=192A51224B77420EA2D12867A99BF25E&AudID=3FF14703FD8C4AE98B9B4365B978201A>wrote</a> on Thursday that many of these worn out quips need to be extracted for good from social media.
Ideas
Layering the Oil Spill Fall Out
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has generated lots of computer models, applications and Web sites. Here's another one: <a href=http://www.geoplatform.gov/erma.html#x=-90.42000&y=28.03000&z=6&layers=>Geoplatform.gov</a>, developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric and Administration.
Ideas
Choosing the Transparency Mascot
Government Executive's Editor in Chief and FedBlog author Tom Shoop <a href=http://blogs.govexec.com/fedblog/2010/06/a_transparent_accountable_masc.php>posted an item</a> on Tuesday about Recovery.gov's mascot contest. From FedBlog:
Ideas
Where to Draw the Line?
Government Executive Editor in chief Tom Shoop <a href=http://blogs.govexec.com/fedblog/2010/05/government_and_business_a_new.php>wrote in FedBlog</a> on Friday about President Obama's statement on Thursday about increasing the federal government's technological ability to respond to future oil spills -- and how that relates to where to we should draw the line on government's role and on regulation.
Ideas
OPM Finds Lots More Teleworkers
The Office of Personnel Management conducted a survey of federal workers on telework habits and has begun to munch the numbers. While the survey findings haven't been released, Justin Johnson, deputy chief of staff at OPM, gave a sneak peek at some of the results during a panel discussion on telework on Thursday.
Cybersecurity
TSA's Database of Jerks
For nearly three years, the Transportation Security Administration has been assembling a database of airline passengers who are overly rude or threaten a screener. USAToday published an <a href=http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-05-24-TSA-threatening-fliers-watch-list_N.htm>article</a> on the database Monday, reporting:
Cybersecurity
A Cyberattack With That Latte?
Researchers at the University of Calgary have a new security threat they want you to know about. Typhoid adware.
Ideas
What CISOs Have Been Waiting For
When NASA's chief information security officer issued a memo on Tuesday directing network managers to stop writing reports on certifying systems complied with a security law and instead focus on canning systems for ways hackers could infiltrate their systems, you could hear security experts exhale a big sigh of relief. This is huge. One security expert told Nextgov that this is what they've been working toward for the past 15 years.
Cybersecurity
Hackers Will Soon Want Your Car
Hackers can infiltrate just about anything that's made up of zeros and ones, it seems. And that will include your car once it is hooked into the Internet in the not-to-distant future.
Ideas
Another IRS E-mail Scam
This time of year brings out <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080325_3349.php?oref=search">scams aimed at tricking taxpayers</a> to give up personal information through e-mails. The latest landed in my inbox on Friday. The e-mail had the subject "Internal Revenue Service - Tax refund (28831290) $620.50," and it said it came from "Irs.Gov." It's message:
Ideas
Outsourcing to the Insourced
An Australian data management company has hired 200 inmates in a jail there to process data. iTNews <a href=http://www.itnews.com.au/News/174631,indian-outsourcing-firm-looks-to-prison-for-data-entry-work.aspx>reported</a> that the prisoners "will handle banking information 24 hours a day using a shift system." They'll be paid (U.S.) $2.20 a day.
Ideas
CIO, Who's Your Boss?
For years, chief information officers have been trying to gain respect in the C-suite. That meant reporting to the leader of the agency or office in which he or she worked. That relationship was enshrined in the 1996 Clinger Cohen Act, which established the CIO position and required the chief to report to the head of the agency. <a href=http://www.cio.com/article/20909/Federal_IT_Flunks_Out>Almost everyone ignored it.</a> (The Obama administration, so far, has been the exception, with the Veterans Affairs Department putting a lot of stock in CIO Roger Baker and John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, <a href=http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090914_5915.php>elevating the agency's CIO</a> to report directly to him.) But for the most part, it's been a struggle for the CIO to earn boardroom cred and move out from under the CFO's thumb.
Digital Government
The iPhone App Doc
It was just a matter of time. Doctors now use an iPhone app to treat patients.
Ideas
File Under Ironic
Max Palevsky, described as a baron of the early computer industry who helped found the giant chip maker Intel Corp., died on May 5 at 85. Here are the last three sentences in the nearly 1,800 word <a href=http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-0506-max-palevsky-20100506,0,5625708.story>obituary</a> that ran in the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>:
Digital Government
Needed: A Security Tune Up
As the nation's health industry embraces electronic health records, one area that certainly will become a hot topic -- even more so than now -- is the security of those records. If history is any indication, the digitized medical files will be just as susceptible to hackers and unauthorized users' prying eyes as most other electronic files stored on every network nationwide.
Ideas
Virtual Worlds on the Rise
In her blog on Thursday, Paulette Robinson, the assistant dean for teaching, learning and technology at the National Defense University, <a href=http://science.dodlive.mil/2010/05/06/virtual-worlds-in-government%E2%80%A6-oh-my/#more-2056>posted an item</a> on Thursday about her effort to create a group in the federal government to talk about the use of virtual worlds in the federal government. It started out slow she said, but now the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds has 1,600 members - and a <a href=http://www.ndu.edu/irmc/fcvw/fcvw10/index.html>conference</a> starting May 13.
Cybersecurity
Cyberwar Out; Crimes, Espionage In
One of the interesting discussions to come out of the international confab in Dallas on cybersecurity, which concluded on Wednesday, was whether the term cyberwar hurt the effort to fight cybercrime. According to an Associated Press <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFatTsavzN-4tZkORnptEFLD-6ogD9FGS7D01">report</a>, it does. Here are some comments and thoughts from top cyber experts:
Ideas
How Real the Semantic Web?
Most have heard of the Semantic Web, an idea developed by Tim Berners-Lee . Generally speaking, the Semantic Web, or Web 3.0 as it is also referred to, will be able to make connections among your personal information and devices to anticipate your simple actions, decisions and needs. (The classic, yet simplified, example Berners-Lee offered years ago is a call comes in to your phone and the Web automatically turns down the volume on your stereo. The example goes on to show more complicated tasks such as setting up an appointment with a new doctor.)
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