The Defense Department is aggressively working to consolidate and simplify its information technology networks, according to a department strategy report. The Pentagon says the report lays the foundation for how it will handle IT related issues to improve overall efficiency and cut costs. According to Teri Takai, the defense chief information officer, the plan strives [...]

Last year, the White House set a goal to close 800 data centers by the end of 2015. Today the federal chief information officer said it is ahead of schedule for reaching its goal. Steven VanRoekel cited data center closures as means to “[cut] spending on wasteful, underutilized hardware, software and operations as well as [...]

The head of the National Security Agency said last month that playing offense in cyberspace is challenging because the current strategy focuses primarily on defense. “They find a vulnerability, they penetrate the network, we find out about it several months later,” said Army Gen. Keith Alexander “We diagnose the malware, we set up the signature, [...]

Among the many areas fully funded in the omnibus spending package is the Military Health System‘s information technology systems, with $1.4 billion allotted for fiscal year 2012. At the same time, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2012 limits the Pentagon’s power to spend that money. The Act restricts the Pentagon from spending funds [...]

Congress has thrown a wrinkle into the federal government’s planned-consolidation of federal data centers by putting the Pentagon‘s own consolidation plans on hold. In November, the Defense Department said in a report that the Defense Information Systems Agency, which operates 14 data centers in the cloud, was its first choice to provide cloud services to [...]

Agencies reported plans to eliminate or merge 30 percent of their some 1,000 plus domains in the State of the Federal Web report, produced by the .gov Reform Task Force. The report attempts to draw out agency web habits and cite efforts to consolidate or eliminate domains which agencies indicated would take place by year’s end. Highlights in [...]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is to establish a National Program Office for the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, according to a recent announcement. AMP was initiated by the White House in June, 2011, as a way to identify and develop “high-quality” manufacturing jobs and enhance global competitiveness. According to AMP, the partnership strives to achieve this goal [...]

The House of Representatives has passed legislation which sets a cap on the number of parking spaces at the Mark Center property in Alexandria. The parking cap, which limits the number of usable parking spaces to roughly 2,000 for around 6,000 federal employees, is a result of worries that interstate 395 will become dangerously overcrowded, [...]

The recently passed spending package, funding the government until September, has helped prevent the U.S. Postal Services from defaulting on its multi-billion retiree health care benefits. The Postal Service now has until August to pre-fund the retirement packages to its employees, according to the Washington Post. “We are pleased that the action taken by Congress [...]

A quarter of the 800 data centers planned for closure by 2015 will come from the Army, but the service’s chief information officer said the closures are not about the centers themselves, but the data. At an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association conference, Lt. Gen. Susan S. Lawrence said the closures are more about giving [...]