The Department of Homeland Security aims to offer cloud computing services to its component agencies in fiscal year 2012 including email, authentication, business services and other services from data centers, the DHS chief information officer said Thursday. DHS will host most services on private clouds, but will also tap into public clouds, DHS Chief Information [...]
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will meet next week to consider President Obama’s proposal to create a national infrastructure bank. The proposed bank would provide $10 billion solely for transportation projects. Obama has already pleaded for $50 billion of direct spending into infrastructure projects as apart of his recent jobs proposal. Supporters of the idea [...]
Information Week reported on federal officials testifying to the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity this week that the government should have confidence in federal data being moved to the cloud. A number of representatives in Congress expressed their concern over cloud computing not being entirely safe for federal information. “You’ve got to have a promise [...]
More workers were hired in September and job gains from previous months were revised higher, but the Labor Department’s latest jobs report says it did not make a dent in the nation’s unemployment rate. Unemployment remains at 9.1 percent, the same rate as July and August according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment [...]
In an ongoing effort to enable 911 location services for mobile devices, similar to what landlines already offer, the Federal Communications Commission last week proposed for all phones to be GPS-enabled by 2018. The FCC said in its order that this effort is both achievable and inexpensive because most 2G and 3G handsets “shipped by manufacturers were equipped [...]
Americans should not be concerned about government dysfunction because the Founding Fathers intended for “gridlock” to occur, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Wednesday. Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the role of judges under the Constitution. Scalia last testified to Congress in 1986 for his confirmation hearing. [...]
Federal Aviation Administration executives had grim reports on the airline industry during Wednesday’s meeting with Congress. The FAA representatives cited serious problems with budgeting, deadlines and management of its billion dollar upgrade of the air traffic control system, all of which are affecting the agency’s multi-stage NextGen effort. NextGen was developed to modernize all of [...]
The Obama administration shows a lack of response to online users on its online petition site, according to a recent item on Nextgov. The White House has failed to fulfill its promise to respond formally to any We the People petition, the item contends. In the site’s first week the administration received more signatures than [...]
A U.S. lawmaker and a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday called for U.S. government officials to put more pressure on their Chinese counterparts to stop a cyber-espionage campaign that has targeted U.S. companies. Rep. Mike Rogers, (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, indicated that espionage sponsored by the [...]
As the cybersecurity landscape is populated by numerous stakeholders, including internet service providers, consumers and government agencies, the U.S. government has adopted a “facilitative role”, rather than an authoritative role, in developing a national battle plan against cyber attacks. That is according to Bruce McConnell, senior counselor and director of cyber strategy at the Department of Homeland [...]