TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
07/30/10 05:06 pm ET
The Defense Business Board wants to put the central Defense Department network and computer outfit on the chopping block as part of a series of proposals to save the Pentagon $100 billion over the next five years. Arnold Punaro, chairman of the Defense Business...>>
07/29/10 04:21 pm ET
Earlier this year, I reported that the Air Force planned to pony up $104 million from its 2011 budget to fund development of the new headquarters of the U.S. Cyber Command at Ft. Meade, Md. I thought that was rather generous of the Air...>>
07/28/10 02:24 pm ET
Videos showing how to navigate websites are all over the Internet. What's unusual is seeing one done by the president of the United States. But there it is, right on the White House blog: Barack Obama giving viewers a tour through the new Healthcare.gov...>>
07/27/10 01:30 pm ET
David H. Brooks made a lot of money selling body armor to the Defense Department for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan through a company, DHB Industries, that he led until 2006. But now Brooks stands accused of orchestrating a $190 million stock fraud scheme...>>
07/26/10 05:01 pm ET
By Tom Shoop The 92,000 Defense Department documents posted to WikiLeaks that are all over the news today aren't exactly the Pentagon Papers, argues Fred Kaplan in Slate: Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many...>>
07/23/10 10:01 am ET
The Defense Department is warning "patriotic women" to be aware of individuals posing as members of the military on dating sites who are running scams. In a press release issued on Thursday, the department related a story of a woman named Shelley who "was thrilled to meet a handsome Marine on a dating website she frequented." Making a long story short, the guy, presumably not a Marine, tried to swindle her out of some money with a sob story.>>
07/22/10 06:10 pm ET
Agencies have been pretty much experimenting with social media for the past two years, writing blogs (that are mostly routine), Tweeting (mostly press releases) and conducting an occasional town hall meeting (that is typically very orderly). It's understandable that many of the attempts have been carefully orchestrated offerings, given the novelty of the technology and the risk-averse nature of bureaucracies.>>
07/21/10 04:39 pm ET
The Defense Intelligence Agency tried to get a head start on July 16 managing the reaction to the Washington Post "Top Secret America" series, which started running in the paper and on the Web on Monday. >>
07/20/10 04:23 pm ET
We all know the old joke, if you want to find an Air Force base, look for a golf course. It turns out managing all those courses worldwide -- 65 in all -- is such a complex task, the service has decided it needs some software to keep track of all the details.>>
07/19/10 05:54 pm ET
In what has to be considered a coup in the world of federal information technology consulting, Suss Consulting signed July 16 former DISA Chief Information Officer John Garing to its team, along with James Kane, who served as chief Executive officer of rival Federal Sources Inc. for the past decade.>>
07/16/10 03:38 pm ET
A prolific -- and popular -- blogger at for the Transportation Security Administration has begun to spread his word to the Defense community. Bob Burns, a.k.a. Blogger Bob, wrote his first post for the Armed With Science Blog, which appears on the DoD Live website.>>
07/15/10 02:47 pm ET
Wired's Danger Room reports that Peter Lee, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's "leading advocate for crowdsourcing and other ways of tapping new talent is leaving to join Microsoft." Lee, former head of Carnegie Mellon University's computer science department, was at DARPA for only a year. He developed DARPA's Transformative Apps program.>>
07/14/10 05:34 pm ET
Those smart techie folks at Carnegie Mellon University have put together a program aimed at boosting young students' interest in computer science with the hopes that they can convince more teenagers to enter scientific and technological careers.>>
07/13/10 05:36 pm ET
In Lie to Me, the yet-to-be-a-hit TV series on Fox, Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) uses his insight into the human condition to determine if a person is lying - and then solving crime based on his observational skills. Lightman typically peers into a subject's eyes, looking for twitching and shifting pupils. Now, a computer program can do that.>>
07/12/10 05:02 pm ET
The warfighting philosophy of Marine Gen. James Mattis, nominated to replace Gen. David Petraeus as the next commander of U.S. Central Command, is to break down units into very small groups that have lots of autonomy that allows them to act very quickly. Gregg Grant, who covered Defense issues for Government Executive and now works for Defense Technology, writes that under such a "decentralized battlefield . . . quality becomes much more important than quantity.">>
07/09/10 05:56 pm ET
Counselors have begun to use apps to treat patients online. Physicians are developing iPhone apps to treat conditions like vertigo. So, it shouldn't be surprising that the Defense Department, which is embracing everything app, has an iPhone program to help treat stress, maybe even post traumatic stress syndrome.>>
07/08/10 02:18 pm ET
Wired's Danger Room blog has a fun contest that Nextgov readers should take a serious look at -- especially cyber specialists. >>
07/07/10 04:55 pm ET
The Defense Department continues to put money toward trying to understand head injuries better and information technology is a big part of that. In its latest effort, the department awarded a $17 million to BAE Systems to place sensors in soldiers' helmets to record the effects of an n explosion, like a roadside bomb.>>
07/06/10 03:57 pm ET
Update on the leak of military documents to the website WikiLeaks: The Pentagon charged U.S. Army intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, from Potomac, Md., with "eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for allegedly illegally transferring classified data, according to a charge sheet released by the military," CNN reported.>>
07/02/10 02:32 pm ET
The 413th Contracting Support Brigade, Ft. Shafter, Hawaii, which supports the U.S. Army Pacific, placed an order in late June for 12 Apple iPad tablet computers, the first federal order I have been able to find for the gizmos that, based on everything I...>>
07/01/10 04:27 pm ET
Trolling through FedBizOpps last night for an interesting gadget or gizmo procurement, I came across something even better based on my experience. The Marine Corps on Okinawa (where I had a brief stay before heading to Vietnam) just awarded a $5,600 contract Karing...>>
