TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
09/30/10 05:58 pm ET
President Obama withdrew on Wednesday the nomination of California Chief Information Officer Teresa "Teri" Takai for the Defense assistant secretary for networks and information integration, a job that currently includes the Defense CIO title.>>
09/29/10 02:45 pm ET
The Defense Department would like to whittle down the number of reports it has to provide Congress every year as part of a project to cut $100 billion from its overhead during the next five years, Ashton Carter, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.>>
09/28/10 05:05 pm ET
That's the word I'm picking up based on a combination of some good intel and speculation by more than a handful of knowledgeable gadget and gizmo graybeards.>>
09/27/10 05:16 pm ET
At first glance there's no similarity between the oh-so-hip-microblogging service Twitter and the staid and secretive National Security Agency.>>
09/24/10 02:33 pm ET
On Dec. 6, 1950, the 5th and 7th Marine regiments started their famed advance to the rear (Marines never retreat) from Chosin Reservoir in northeast Korea near the Chinese border to Hungnam, South Korea. They carried their dead and wounded in temperatures that hovered around 35 degrees below zero. The feat is celebrated in the Corps to this day, but it's an otherwise little known event in a widely ignored war.>>
09/23/10 05:08 pm ET
In his testimony given before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, cited Apple's iPad, which costs $499 and up, as an example of the challenges the nation faces as it attempts to operate in a global and amorphous cyber space.>>
09/22/10 03:43 pm ET
In July, the Veterans Affairs Department awarded IBM a $9.1 million contract to develop within three months a system to process claims for Vietnam veterans suffering from diseases stemming from exposure to the Agent Orange defoliant sprayed in that country by the Air Force. (The service's units had the motto: "Only you can prevent forests.")>>
09/21/10 04:51 pm ET
If everything goes to plan, by the end of September the Coast Guard will award a contract for a spanking new commercial electronic health record system that will replace a network based on an ancient version of the Defense Department's electronic medical system. >>
09/17/10 03:17 pm ET
White Sands Missile Range, N.M. -- The Army is conducting pass-or-fail tests here of battlefield communications systems, including wideband versions of the Joint Tactical Radio System, and robots and sensors, said Paul Mehney, a spokesman for the service's integration operation.>>
09/16/10 10:50 am ET
The Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., has developed a database on Afghanistan to help in managing aid and development projects.>>
09/15/10 02:11 pm ET
The Defense Department forks over about half its annual budget -- about $200 billion -- on acquisition of services such as information technology, transportation and upkeep of bases. It's track record of managing these buys is even worse than its record on the procurement of weapons systems, Ashton Carter, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, told a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday.>>
09/13/10 06:22 pm ET
I have picked up strong signals that the Veterans Affairs Department has hit another speed bump with its 9/11 GI bill claims processing system.>>
09/10/10 05:13 pm ET
Google's new instant search feature promises results instantaneously with every letter typed into the search bar. But I find it more annoying than useful.>>
09/09/10 06:04 pm ET
The leaders at the Defense Logistic Agency's Disposition Services outfit, which sells or finds a way to reuse surplus or outmoded military property, has such poor employee communications that it decided it needed some outside help to develop a management transformation thingy.>>
09/08/10 06:07 pm ET
In July, the Veterans Affairs Department shutdown most of its grand scheme to update its asset-and-bean-counting systems, the $400 million Financial and Logistics Integrated Technology Enterprise program, due to a high risk of failure. >>
09/07/10 05:52 pm ET
They're busy rearranging the executive deck chairs at the Military Health System while the nomination of Dr. Jonathan Woodson to be the next assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs molders away in the Senate due to a hold by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. >>
09/03/10 12:10 pm ET
Veterans attending college under the post-9/11 GI bill did not receive an increase in their basic housing allowance for the 2010 spring semester due to the clunky claims processing system that was in place until just this month.>>
09/02/10 02:45 pm ET
In the almost forgotten era before the Internet, if you were sick enough to go to a hospital, all you had do was lie in bed, have doctors and nurses care for you, and you eventually got better.>>
09/01/10 03:16 pm ET
Ahh, computers keep getting faster and smarter, but thank goodness they still don't match up to the power of the human brain -- or I'd be out of work.>>
