The White House has launched the new Challenge.gov, an online platform provided by the General Services Administration that allows federal agencies to post contests aimed at increasing public involvement with the government. As part of President Barack Obama’s call for an open government, agencies were called upon to leverage challenges and prizes to spur citizen [...]

As the federal government ups its battle against cyber attacks and threats, the civilian and military officials in charge of those operations are committed to adopting meaningful measures to protect citizens’ privacy, National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith B. Alexander said on Tuesday. Speaking at the O’Reilly Media Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C., the [...]

A massive computer failure is making it difficult for people to get driver’s licenses and file tax returns in Virginia, but now Gov. Bob McDonnell has ordered a third-party investigation into the problem, according to NewsChannel 3. The computer problems have been affecting the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Taxation, and the State [...]

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday introduced four new application programming interfaces that make FCC data available as web services, and unveiled a community website for “citizen developers” that provides code and tools for using the data sets. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the APIs and website at the Gov 2.0 Summit at the Grand Hyatt [...]

Starting today, Peter Orszag, economist and former director of the Office of Management and Budget, will begin writing a column for The New York Times Op-Ed page. Orszag is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was President Barack Obama’s first budget director, helping to craft the 2009 stimulus package and [...]

Controversial plastic hardener bisphenol-A (BPA), best known for the extensively-reported controversy over its use in plastic baby bottles and sippy cups, has shown up somewhere new: receipts from retail cash registers. A new study, commissioned by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), found that 40 percent of receipts printed on heat-activated synthetic paper by cash registers [...]

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus believes that although the effort in Afghanistan has ways to go–thanks to sufficient resources and a new strategy–the campaign is on track. The progress achieved so far in Afghanistan is “about standard for any one of these kinds of deliberate campaigns,” he said. The current Afghanistan strategy has been in [...]

President Barack Obama is expected to announce tomorrow that companies will be able to benefit from a new tax write-off for investments over the next year. The move, along with Obama’s plan to pour $50 billion into infrastructure improvements, is aimed at stimulating companies to purchase now rather than later. The plan would allow businesses [...]

Cyber self-defense is key to avoiding cyber threats to U.S. national security, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee conducted a six-month study on cybersecurity and found that basic measures such as installing software updates and running up-to-date virus programs can defeat most threats, but are often neglected by computer users. According [...]

The infrastructure to train the Afghan security forces is in place, and surge forces have arrived and are conducting operations, according to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. “We have more than tripled the number of U.S. forces on the ground, NATO nations have contributed more forces as well and non-NATO nations as well,” he said. [...]