Despite a rough end to his previous term, the Senate Banking Committee endorsed Ben Bernanke for another term as Federal Reserve chairman. The committee in an executive session voted overwhelmingly in favor of his re-confirmation with a vote of 16-7. His current four-year term will be ending this January. After a confirmation vote from the [...]

Three ideas from the Department of Health and Human Services are results of the accessible federal decision making process. In a press released dated this week, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the Information Streaming, IdeaLab and YouTube “What To Do About the Flu and Prevention PSA Contest” have been made using the presidents memorandum for [...]

Today Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder announced the creation of a Presidential task force on controlled unclassified information releases. This announcement is one of two major steps to enhance information sharing among federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies. The first step in safe guarding sensitive information [...]

Recently healthcare informatics seems to be a buzzword in both the healthcare and education industries. As Congress pushes for a new healthcare system and information technology advances both converge in healthcare informatics and educators are taking notice. Now many colleges and universities across the world are offering degree programs in healthcare informatics. These students pursuing [...]

Department of Homeland Security is facing pressure from three Republican Congressmen over the leaked TSA documents. Representatives Peter King (R-NY), Charles Dent (R-PA), and Gus Nillrakis (R-FL) authored a letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano asking how her department has “addressed the repeated reposting of this security manual to other websites” and asked about legal [...]

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency signed two findings regarding greenhouse gases adding them to the Clean Air Act. These two findings named endangerment findings and cause or contribute findings help define which gases contribute the most to greenhouse effect. Endangerment findings state that six well-mixed gases at the current concentrations threaten the public [...]

This week the Federal Aviation Administration announced plans for a multi billion-dollar project to modernize air traffic control and flight time called NextGen. This program has goals of saving flight time and over a billion gallons of fuel every year. According to an article from the New York Times, the NextGen system will rely on [...]

Early this week the Department of Energy confirmed an additional $100 billion will be awarded to advanced energy research projects.  This announcement comes just days before the much anticipated Copenhagen Summit. Many anticipate that diplomats attending will put pressure on the United States to up their clean energy efforts. Last week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu [...]

Travers is the Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator and the Acting CIO of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Information. It is her role to help support the EPA’s mission to protect the environment and public health. Before this role, Travers worked as the Deputy Office Director for the Office of Technology Planning and [...]