The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has rolled out an 18-month, multimillion dollar effort to strengthen security and cybersecurity efforts within health IT following the passing of the HITECH Act. According to statement released yesterday by the Department of Health and Human Services, ONC has requested the public shares its experiences with [...]

President Barack Obama’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. appeared in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday during his confirmation hearing. During his hearing, Clapper was sternly questioned for three hours on his plans for handling the nation’s Intelligence Community, which has been under a critical microscope since [...]

Department of Justice Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute signed a Memorandum of Understanding yesterday outlining the roles and responsibilities of INTERPOL Washington. The MOU is part of cooperation efforts with INTERPOL’s other 187 member countries and the more than 18,000 federal, state, local [...]

Under the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, $30 million will be made available to develop clean-energy technologies for U.S. small businesses. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the funding will be used from the Recovery Act budget appropriations to support the building of a clean-energy economy. This marks the first [...]

The General Services Administration has requested federal contractors submit their greenhouse gas emissions to make the federal government and its supply chain greener. Following the executive order signed by President Barack Obama in October 2009, GSA submitted a document to White House Council on Environmental Quality that outlined recommendations on reducing emissions in the federal [...]

In response to yesterday’s first installment of The Washington Post’s “Top Secret America” series on the Intelligence Community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a document dispelling some common myths surrounding the IC’s use of and relationship with contractors. In the document, ODNI outlines some widely held misconceptions about the IC and [...]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano traveled to Laredo, Texas, last week to announce more than $47 million in Operation Stonegarden grants for the Southwest border states. The grants total $60 million and will support 15 states and the Territory of Puerto Rico to strengthen security efforts along U.S. borders and territories. The grants [...]

The core technology developed for NASA’s Nebula cloud computing platform has been selected as a contributor for OpenStack, a newly launched open source cloud-computing initiative, which will bring together more than 25 companies to collaborate on pushing cloud computing standards for interoperability and portability. NASA launched the Nebula cloud computing platform to provide agency researchers [...]

Jacob “Jack” Lew, Obama’s nominee to replace Peter Orszag as Director of OMB, has served at the State Department since the last time he served as Director of OMB for President Clinton.  Regardless of whether Orszag’s departure resulted from policy differences with President Obama, it’s clear that at least some fiscal policy changes are coming. [...]

Following the first installment of a two-year investigative report published today by the Washington Post, Acting Director of National Intelligence David C. Gompert released a statement that declared that the reports do not accurately depict the Intelligence Community. The report, titled “Top Secret America”, investigated the growth of U.S.  intelligence services since the 9/11 terrorist [...]