Photo: DoD

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III yesterday arrived in Belgium to discuss U.S. defense cybersecurity initiative with NATO leaders.

“It’s an opportunity to convey the importance of cybersecurity to our NATO allies, as well as a chance to encourage them to secure NATO systems,” said Bryan Whitman, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.

Lynn is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen before briefing the alliance’s North Atlantic Council on U.S. cyber initiatives. He will then travel to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe to meet with Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe.

While Lynn will primarily focus on web security, the discussions will also cover the a wide array of NATO issues, Whitman said. Lynn probably will discuss the NATO mission in Afghanistan with the leaders, and the November NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, he added.

An effective defense of the digital infrastructure will require international cooperation, Lynn has said. More than 100 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to hack into various aspects of the U.S.  IT  infrastructure, and foreign militaries are developing offensive cyber capabilities, he noted in a June speech in Canada’s capital of Ottawa.

The Canadian, British and Australian militaries have agreed to work closely with the United States to combat the threat to military information systems, defense officials said. The U.S. military always has maintained that a shared, alliance approach to cybersecurity is critical to defending against cyber attacks, they added.

Lynn’s briefing will update NATO’s 28 nations on U.S. initiatives and suggest measures to improve cybersecurity for the alliance and among the individual countries, Whitman said.

Included in his database of plans is the recently launched TrackDC program.  TrackDC functions as a real-time operational dashboard for every agency in the city.

D.C. is not publishing more information than usual, the presentation is being refined.  Citizens are now able to access statistics and other notable facts for all agencies, all in one place.  Call it Sivak’s own take on the Open Government Initiative.

“While I obviously support those initiatives, and I’m a big fan of openness and transparency and getting all the information out there, I think the community of people that can leverage that data is somewhat limited to a certain extent,” said Sivak.  “So I want to provide the visualizations, I want to provide the analysis that actually lets people ask some of those questions and say ‘Hey, wait a minute, what’s going on here?’ A data set of lots of numbers and tables and columns don’t necessarily help the average citizen make those in depth analyses.”

TrackDC isn’t the only operation now off the ground making things easier for Washington residents.  The site snowmap.dc.gov, provides residents with an animation indicating where snowplows have been and where they are going next.

“Residents can actually track when their neighborhood is going to be, or was, plowed. We’re also working right now on some internal efforts to take all the service requests that come in to the call center about snow and about fallen trees and map those.  Agencies that are responsible for clearing the snow and the trees can then have a visual representation of where the big problem areas are in the city right now and are able to prioritize their attack.”

Sivak is tackling another issue, too – wasteful spending.  By executing a digital signature system, he feels the city could be saving cash.

“One of the things that blows my mind a little bit is that there’s a lot of paper that gets passed around right now and it doesn’t need to be. There are some straightforward systems that we can put in place that allow digital signatures to be used robustly for documents that require them.  We’re hoping to put something like that in place in the relatively near future.”

“That should actually save quite a bit of time and money on behalf of the citizens of the city,” he said. “There’s a whole host of stuff, I could keep going.”

“Well-conceived, effectively implemented environmental protection is good for economic growth,” said Jackson. “Let me repeat that: environmental protection is good for economic growth.”

Jackson makes the assertion that if America has a poor environment, the economy cannot prosper.

“Poison in the ground means poison in the economy,” she said.  “A weak environment means a weak consumer base. And unhealthy air means an unhealthy atmosphere for investments. But a clean, green healthy community is a better place to buy a home and raise a family, it’s more competitive in the race to attract new businesses, and it has the foundations it needs for prosperity.”

With an upswing in “Green IT” and other environmentally responsible business endeavors, communities will see fiscal and quality of life growth, according to Jackson.

“[Environmental protection] creates a need – in other words, a market for clean technology – and then drives innovation and invention – in other words, new products for that market. This is our convenient truth: smart environmental protection creates jobs.”

Jackson honed in on the importance of initiatives such as keeping dangerous chemicals like BPA away from water sources, and focused on the need to keep the state of the environment at the forefront of the public consciousness.

“This is about rising to meet our most urgent environmental and economic challenges – not shrinking from them with the excuse that it’s just too hard,” she said.  “That’s never been a good enough answer for the American people. At no point in our history has any problem been solved by ‘waiting another year to act’ or burying our heads in the sand. Progress is made by seeing – in our greatest challenges – all the possibilities for building a healthier, more prosperous future, and bringing the best we have to offer to the table. It’s what we’ve done before. It’s what we have to do again today. It’s not something we can leave for tomorrow.”

“I feel like I have been incredibly blessed and fortunate to have been able to serve our great nation for over thirty years and do so with so many people around the world that I like and respect. I also believe our country’s future is bright because of the dedicated and fantastic people that I have had the opportunity to serve with and to have been part of teams of people, many still serving government, that work hard to deliver positive results for the American people, our military and law enforcement personnel, and all other parts of government,” Williams said.

Williams had served as FAS commissioner since 2006 and filled in as acting administrator of the GSA at the end of the George W. Bush administration.

To cull information from officials of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the committee organized public meetings, including contractors involved in the development of its environmental impact statement. Also included were Fort Detrick emergency personnel, the Frederick County Board of Commissioners and members of the local community.

While acknowledging the uncovered problems, the committee came to the conclusion “that it would not be useful to propose specific revisions to the environmental impact statement given that construction of the new facilities has begun.  Rather, the Army should develop new guidelines for conducting hazard assessments of biocontainment facilities.”  There is, at this time, no specific guidance for such assessments.

Addressing the common complaint of citizens’ concerns buried in government bureaucracy, Open 311 allows citizens to control information consumption of the city services they choose.

Organizations on the web use APIs as a means of encouraging interaction with data.  According to the District: “An API functions as a web protocol giving programmers anywhere access to data on a web server to build custom applications using that data.”

In June 2009, the District became the first city in the world to launch an Open 311 API.  The code behind the API is open-sourced, allowing anyone to use it and build on it.  D.C.’s API can be found at api.dc.gov.

D.C. CTO Bryan Sivak

“With Open 311, we’re simplifying services, making them more accessible, and bringing government closer to the people,” said District CTO Sivak.  “I’m proud that the District is helping lead this innovation in digital democracy.”

Now the District is collaborating with other municipalities to create a common, multi-jurisdiction Open 311.  The District, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Boston are the first cities to participate in this common venture.

Read more about D.C. CTO Bryan Sivak here.

In order to be eligible for the five percent of contracting dollars available, a particular firm must be at least 51 percent owned by one or more women and primarily managed by one or more women who are U.S. Citizens.  The firm in question must meet SBA’s size standards for that industry.

The owners must also be able to prove to the SBA that they are “economically disadvantaged,” in accordance with SBA standards.

According to the SBA: “The proposed rule authorizes a set-aside of federal contracts for WOSBs, where the anticipated contract price does not exceed $5 million in the case of manufacturing contracts and $3 million in the case of other contracts. Contracts with values in excess of these limits are not subject to set-aside under this program.”

Also there is a requirement, set forth in a prior proposed version, that each federal agency certify that it had engaged in discrimination against women-owned small businesses in order for the program to apply to contracting by that agency.

For more, click here

“Eleven months in cloud computing time is really about 11 years,” Dave McClure, associate administrator for GSA’s office of citizen services and communications said. “The market is changing fast, experience in the market is changing daily, and customer needs are becoming better defined.”

“We’ve learned we need to interact with industry very carefully. As we go out with the new RFQ, we’re going to be reaching out and making sure we pull in as big a pool of vendors as possible,” McClure told Information Week.

McClure has indicated a commitment to making the service as beneficial as possible for both the agencies and the contractors who are bidding for contracts, hence the forthcoming, reworked quotation request.

According to a note published in the Federal Register, General Services is looking for comments and feedback on the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information Systems (FAPIIS) – the new database aiming to keep government contractors honest.

GSA faces some problems in the early stages of the project, such as how to make the system as agile and easy to use as possible.

Without direction, the crush of information on the site could become overwhelming and make the tool difficult to use.  And there would be a lengthy list of info:  according to the 2009 Defense Authorization Act, which tasked the GSA with the creation of FAPIIS, any firm with more than $10 million in federal grants or task orders must submit information to the site – and any time a federal agency is awarding a deal worth more that $500,000, they have to conduct research on the firm based on the FAPIIS.

The comment call lasts until the end of March, ahead of FAPIIS yet to be scheduled launch.

“We worked closely with users of the National Resource Directory to find out how to make the information they need easier to find,” said Noel Koch, deputy under secretary of defense for Wounded Warrior Care and Transition Policy. “The resulting re-design is easier to navigate and adds useful new features.”

The upgrade improves the ability to locate and follow the latest wounded warrior and veteran issues.  A new “bookmark and share” application helps visitors alert others to the content they’ve found most helpful through social bookmarking, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools. Users are also now able to subscribe to Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or e-mail updates to receive new content, events and features based on their specific interests and needs.

“There are thousands of programs and benefits available to wounded warriors and their families, from healthcare and housing to education and employment assistance,” said Koch. “Our people must have an easy way to sift through it all to find the resources that are most helpful for their circumstances, especially while they’re dealing with what can be overwhelming challenges. That’s why we’ve partnered with the VA and Department of Labor to offer the National Resource Directory. And with the feedback mechanisms we’ve added in the re-design, we’ll be able to keep improving our service to our wounded warriors and families.”