The White House released a memo on Monday on how agencies can legally arrange contests in order to engage citizens to find new ideas on how to use technology to improve open government. The memo was from Jeffrey Zients, the Deputy Director for Management, in the Office of Management and Budget.
Zients stated, “This memorandum highlights [...]

Last week, Secretary Napolitano announced the “National Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign Challenge.” This initiative will call upon industry leaders as well as the public to give ideas on how to enhance cybersecurity awareness.
In her address at a conference in San Francisco, Napolitano declared, “We need to recognize that those answers are found not just in Silicon [...]

President Obama proposed an IT budget of $3.3 billion for the VA Department for the fiscal year of 2011. Now the Senate panel has decided to add another 1% ($30 million) for fiscal 2011 for various projects.
The increased funds will go into projects that are in the Veterans Health Administration, as well as the Veterans [...]

The Army’s chief information officer, Jeffrey Sorenson, is spearheading an effort to consolidate the Army’s email system. They also plan to outsource its operation to make it more efficient, cost-effective and secure.
The Army has invited companies who are bidding on the email contract to partner up with the Defense Information Systems Agency. DISA operates 13 [...]

The National Institutes of Health is one of the first federal agencies to use OpenID. This service will allow researchers, as well as other visitors, to access privacy-protected sites by entering one password at a time. Users can easily switch between different secure sites without having to continually enter a login credentials.
According to NextGov, Peter [...]

Last Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they plan to increase the number of airport body scanners with the $1 billion from the Recovery Act funds.
This advanced imaging technology has been rather controversial because it is in a way a “virtual strip search.” The Transportation Security Administration promises blurred images and remote viewing, [...]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” initiative this past Friday. The availability of Recovery Act Funds for this community prevention and wellness initiative will be a key to building a healthier nation.
The initiative includes helping communities improve nutrition, as well as motivate more [...]

President Obama will today tap Robert Harding, the retired Army major general, to lead TSA. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will make the announcement around noon today, according to administration sources.
Harding retired from the Army in 2001 after a 33-year-long career in the military. Some of his roles in the Army included most recently [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has become part of the Twitter community. She joined Twitter just yesterday, March 4, and she already has 1,434 followers as of this morning.
Start following her here: @lisapjackson
This is one way the EPA, and Jackson in particular, will work to be more open and transparent. The EPA has [...]

The Office of Personnel Management is expected to release new retirement statements. John Berry, the Director of OPM, said that the glitches in the system that affected as many as 12,000 retirees would be revised by sometime in mid-April.
Currently, with the paper system that is in place it can take anywhere from 5-40 business days [...]