Digital Government

Facebook for Trees: The Forest Service’s Quest to Make a Tree Database More User-Friendly

The agency maintains a database that includes various characteristics of some 19 million trees over some 350,000-plus plots of land

Digital Government

Judicial Agency Shells Out $16.8M on IT Services

The contract became effective Jan. 11 and has a 1-year base period with up to four 1-year options.

Emerging Tech

NOAA Wants Feedback on Engagement with Commercial Satellite Industry

An agency official said he envisions a future in weather forecasting where NOAA relies on “a mixture of government and commercial satellites.”

Cybersecurity

Own Worst Enemy: Two-Thirds of Government Data Breaches are Accidental Leaks

More than half a billion personal records were stolen, lost or compromised in 2015, including 191 million records from a single incident, a new report found.

Modernization

Moving to the Cloud? Change Your Culture First

The biggest barrier to cloud technologies in government has more to do with people than technology, officials say.

Digital Government

Navy IT Official: Laws Aren’t Flexible Enough for Emerging Technology

Technology is evolving too rapidly for legal policies to keep up, and it’s hindering the military’s ability to meet its mission, the Navy's deputy CIO says.

Digital Government

DOD Tech Chief Talks Data Centers, Modernization and Cyber Workforce

The Defense Department’s top techie discussed the Pentagon’s most pressing IT issues.

Modernization

How Many Data Centers Does the Government Actually Need?

Based on the definition of a nontiered data center, even a broom closet in a remote location with a server inside qualifies as such.

Modernization

Are Agencies Striking Strong Deals with Cloud Providers?

Agencies need to strengthen service level agreements with cloud providers, GAO noted.

Digital Government

Homeland Security Exploring Body Cameras for Border Patrol

The agency issued a request for information for both body-worn cameras and vehicle-mounted camera systems.

Digital Government

Social Security Wants to Know What its Customers Want -- Before They Do

To some, the thought of a government agency anticipating the needs of its customers is Orwellian at best.

Modernization

NOAA is Hosting More Weather Data in the Cloud

By making a large data set available in the cloud, the agency was able to free up bandwidth and resources on constrained, legacy systems.

Emerging Tech

Next-Generation Weather Satellites Going Up in October. But What’s Coming Down?

The GOES-R constellation will replace the existing GOES fleet, which consists of a backup satellite and two active satellites that monitor the U.S. 24/7.

Modernization

FedRAMP’s Influence Grows Outside the Beltway

Compliance with the cloud-vetting regime even helped one U.S. tech firm win a contract with the Canadian government.

Digital Government

Report: Feds Say Data Centers in Danger of Becoming Obsolete

Only 11 percent of l IT managers in a new survey say they believe their agency’s data centers currently meet mission demand.

Digital Government

Pentagon Extends Deadline for $17.5B IT Deal

The contract is primarily designed to help the Pentagon modernize its IT infrastructure under the Joint Information Environment.

Modernization

A Revamped FedRAMP Revealed

The old approach has proven time consuming, and as time has gone by, more duplicative and less effective as more cloud service providers attempted to have their offerings meet FedRAMP’s requirements.

Cybersecurity

Trump: US is ‘Obsolete’ in Cybersecurity

Trump claimed the Defense Department was “going backwards” in cyber while “other countries are moving forward at a much more rapid pace.”

Emerging Tech

Pentagon: ‘Innovation is a National Security Imperative’

If the quest for innovation could hold the keys to DOD’s most important technological riddles, its top officials have now made three visits to the West Coast tech hub and set up shop.