On Tuesday, December 8th, Vivek Kundra, federal CIO, and Aneesh Chopra, federal CTO, held a live webcast to announce the launch of the new Open Government Directive. Over the past few weeks, we have asked what does this mean for different agencies, how have the agencies been responding to the request for data sets, and [...]

Friday, December 18th, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the launch of a $60 million research program to ultimately figure out how to move forward with the adoption of electronic health records. According to a recently published press release, the money will go towards “focused research in critical areas where breakthrough advances [...]

President Barack Obama has selected Howard A. Schmidt to be the national cyber security coordinator. He will be responsible for organizing and managing the country’s digital networks that have become increasingly vulnerable with a growing number of threats. Schmidt is an experienced computer security executive. He has several ties in the corporate world. Recently, he [...]

Yesterday, Monday December 21st, 2009, the first ever SAVE Award was presented to Nancy of Grand Valley, Colorado by President Obama. The SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award was apart of a contest of federal employees who were asked to come up with different ideas for the improvement of government efficiency. Nancy Fichtner’s idea [...]

It’s the big question with trying to get medical records entirely electronic: can the benefits outweigh the privacy risk? Moreover, can the government provide data security? The Obama administration hopes to have electronic medical records on file for every American by 2014. The administration has put some pretty compelling incentives in place. First of all, [...]

This past October 2009, President Obama signed an executive order that requires government agencies to reduce waste by 50% by 2015, improve water efficiency by 26% by 2020, to operate government vehicles with 30% less petroleum by 2020, and to have the buildings be LEED certified. President Obama is being a role model in his [...]

InformationWeek recently named Vivek Kundra, the Federal CIO, the Chief of the Year. Kundra has held this role for 9 months and has been a driving force in the U.S. government’s IT operations. His top priorities have been cybersecurity, cloud computing, engaging the public over the Internet, and IT project management. One of his more [...]

In a report released Monday, the Office of Management and Budget said Federal agencies are almost halfway towards reaching their two year goal to reduce government contracting costs by currently cutting $19 billion. An objective directed from President Obama, agencies are to cut $40 billion from contracting budgets by 2011.  The administration hopes that by [...]

VP Biden started the administration’s effort to put more than $2 billion to increase broadband in communities that would not normally have access across the United States last Thursday, December 17th, 2009 during an event in Dawsonville, Georgia.  The plan is to have the $2 billion disbursed over the next 75 days. According to NextGov, [...]

Early this morning, Senate passed a crucial step toward final passage of the healthcare bill. In a 60-40 vote, Senate approved a procedural motion, a cloture vote, to move the legislation to a final vote later this week. The vote taken this morning is the first of three procedural measures the bills needs to pass [...]