TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
06/30/10 05:12 pm ET
I'm picking up strong signals that George "Peach" Taylor, who served as the Air Force Surgeon General from 2002 to 2006, has landed a key job in the Military Health System as deputy assistant secretary of defense for force health protection and readiness,...>>
06/29/10 04:59 pm ET
The Veterans Affairs Department planned to release on Wednesday its request for proposals for the largest information technology acquisition in its history: the $12 billion Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology contract, known as T4.>>
06/28/10 05:19 pm ET
In hyping President Obama's decision on Monday to allocate 500 MHz of very scarce spectrum for mobile wireless broadband services, his economic adviser Lawrence Summers said this amounted to the best use of spectrum currently used by federal agencies and TV broadcasters.>>
06/25/10 05:47 pm ET
Despite reports by National Public Radio, Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, who quietly left her position as director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury on Monday, did, indeed, make the Thursday opening of a $56 million center focused on treatment of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. >>
06/24/10 05:31 pm ET
I wrote on Wednesday that I couldn't even began to comprehend a Veteran Affairs Department FedBizOps notice on Virtual Call Centers because it was written in language that barely resembled common English. >>
06/23/10 04:34 pm ET
The Veterans Affairs Department says it plans to issue a procurement on June 28 for virtual call centers. I think this may be a good idea, if I could understand the tortured language in the FedBizOps notice.>>
06/22/10 05:51 pm ET
Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, who ran the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury since it was established in November 2007, left that command on Monday in a very low key ceremony, I'm told.>>
06/21/10 04:32 pm ET
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity wants some help from smart folks who can develop new kinds of optical, biological or brain-based computers.>>
06/18/10 04:45 pm ET
Before the Senate hands over $13.4 billion to the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate Vietnam Veterans for exposure to Agent Orange, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., has a few questions for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, according to this syndicated column by Tom Philpott. >>
06/17/10 06:10 pm ET
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., floated what he considers a nifty idea to finance a nationwide public safety broadband network at a hearing on Thursday of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet: auction off a mess of spectrum to raise the billions of dollars need to finance the building and operating of the broadband network. >>
06/16/10 05:14 pm ET
Rob Carey, the Navy's chief information officer, said in a statement he expects to weigh anchor and move to a new position inside government, most likely by the end of the summer.>>
06/16/10 04:56 pm ET
That's a question that 13 employees of the Veterans Affairs Department would have a hard time answering, said VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker said in a call with reporters on Wednesday. The unlucky 13 reported they lost their portable gizmos in the month of May.>>
06/15/10 04:43 pm ET
The Navy wants to beef up its networks at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, headquarters for the Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa. So the service invited interested vendors to attend a two day briefing there next month.>>
06/14/10 04:21 pm ET
The Army's surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, issued a memo on June 9 governing the screening requirements for post-traumatic stress disorder and mild Traumatic Disorder (mTBI) for administrative separation of soldiers that stands out as a model of brevity.>>
06/11/10 02:13 pm ET
Amtrak has offered WiFi service to high rollers zooming along the Northeast corridor on the high-speed Acela Express trains, but the national passenger rail carrier said it has released a proposal to now provide WiFi on all its trains.>>
06/10/10 05:27 pm ET
I'm told sometime in the past month the Office of Management and Budget approved a six-page claim form that veterans use to apply for disability benefits, replacing a 23-page application that was so complex that only a bureaucrat could comprehend it.>>
06/09/10 10:18 am ET
We have all come to accept the fact that the Navy and Army have sizeable air forces. And the Army even has its own mini-Navy of just fewer than 50 ships, including a nifty high-speed ferry that can transport 600 troops and their gear.>>
06/08/10 04:58 pm ET
D'Val Westphal, the "Road Warrior" correspondent for my local paper, the Albuquerque Journal, had a insightful column on Monday on why we should never, ever fully trust Google maps to get directions.>>
06/07/10 05:34 pm ET
In December 2009, Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughhead put out a directive establishing nifty new camouflage uniforms for Navy SEAL and other Naval special warfare folks -- but not mere mortals engaged in the ground combat theaters of operations. >>
06/04/10 02:58 pm ET
National Guardsman (and woman) from Alabama, Missouri and Louisiana responded quickly to the Gulf of Mexico oil mess, doing the grunt work they always do in the face of disaster.>>
06/03/10 05:44 pm ET
Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the new U.S. Cyber Command, estimates that bad actors now probe Defense Department networks and systems 250,000 times an hour -- or some 6 million times a day. Or this: 2.19 billion times a year.>>
06/02/10 05:10 pm ET
The Technology Acquisition Center at the Veterans Affairs Department held an industry day for its planned $12 billion Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology (T4) procurement at a hotel near its headquarters in Eatontown, N.J. -- a trip some potential bidders found a wee bit too far.>>
06/01/10 03:35 pm ET
The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to make it easier to transfer medical information from the Defense Department to the Veterans Affairs Department without the need for prior authorization from a service member.>>
