Yesterday, the U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) launched its official Facebook and Twitter pages. In response to DOD Deputy Secretary William Lynn’s memo regarding the responsible and effective use of social media and web 2.0 applications on Friday, February 25, USTRANSCOM moved forward quickly with plans to establish a presence on social networking sites. U.S. Army [...]

In prepared remarks for MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, Director of Government Operations for the National Broadband Task Force at the FCC, Eugene Huang, commented on the goals of the FCC’s forthcoming National Broadband Plan. He said, “the ambitious goal of the plan is to ensure that every American has access to broadband capability.” [...]

President Obama signed an executive order this morning establishing a new, bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.  The Commission’s co-chairs will be former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senate Whip Alan Simpson. The Commission’s goal is to put forward proposals to balance the budget (excluding interest payments [...]

The federal government has launched a new partnership across government agencies and private industry to enable pregnant women and new mothers to receive free text messages that will help keep them and their babies in good health. Texting BABY to 511411 on a moble phone (BEBE for the Spanish-language version), pregnant women can receive three [...]

Julius Genachowski outlined his goal of providing 100 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband internet access to 100 million Americans by 2020 at a speech to regulatory commissioners earlier today.  He called the goal “ambitious but achievable.” Chairman Genachowski termed the high-speed goal the “100 Squared” initiative at the NARUC Conference in Washington, DC today, and [...]

On Friday, Department of Navy CIO Robert Carey wrote a post on his blog entitled “To Work or Not.” He mentioned the success of the semiannual Department of the Navy IT Conference in sunny San Diego, California, and said that when he heard about the coming storms in the DC area, he departed on a [...]

Federal News Radio reports that William (Bill) Turnbull, the Energy Department’s Associate CIO for Advanced Technology and Systems Integration, will now serve as acting CIO at the Energy Department after Tom Pyke retires Feb. 26. In a note to Energy Department CIO staff, Pyke said that Energy Department deputy CIO Carl Staton will also be [...]

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced today a total of nearly $1 billion in American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) awards to advance the adoption and meaningful use of health IT.  The awards also include funds to train workers for the health care jobs of the future and are intended to [...]

Despite calling for a discretionary budget freeze for 2011, President Barack Obama has requested $79.4 billion in spending on information technology projects for fiscal 2011, a 1.2 percent increase over the amount he requested for fiscal 2010.  Included in the proposal are 29 new major IT projects, making for a total of 809 major IT initiatives [...]

Howard Schmidt made his first public comments since his appointment as the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator at the annual State of the Net conference yesterday, saying “The president has been clear in designating me his lead officer” for government cybersecurity. The event was hosted in Washington by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. [...]