Zients stated, “This memorandum highlights for agencies policy and legal issues related to the implementation of the Obama Administration’s commitment to increase the use of prizes and challenges as tools for promoting open government, innovation, and other national priorities.”

The memo included potential benefits of prizes, such as “stimulate private sector investment that is many times greater than the cash value of the prize.” It also included a section on the use of prizes and challenges and a section dedicated to the pre-prize and post-prize stages.

The Obama administration is hoping to launch an online forum in the next four months. This forum would be a place to seek solutions to the legal barriers agencies might be encountering.

The next due date for agencies in the Open Government Directive requires agencies to develop and publish an open government plan. Part of this plan is to consult the American public in their efforts and explain how it will “improve transparency and integrate public participation and collaboration into its activities,” so the memo released on Monday comes at an opportune time.

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DoD Deputy Secretary William Lynn

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 Major General William Johnson, USTRANSCOM Chief of Staff, said “USTRANSCOM will use these sites to tell the world what we do every day: deliver what the warfighter needs to execute successful missions.  They are a significant step forward in our efforts to engage with our partners and the public. I encourage partners, customers, and friends to visit frequently, leaving comments along the way.”

CLICK HERE to visit USTRANSCOM’s Facebook page.

CLICK HERE to visit USTRANSCOM’s Twitter page.

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According to NextGov, Peter Alterman, senior advisor to the NIH chief information officer for strategic initiatives, “It’s a real advantage for the user, who doesn’t have to get another password and try to remember it.”

“The less personal information that we have to keep, the safer things are,” said Alterman. An advantage of this new service is that government agencies will not have to maintain a list of all IDs and passwords.

The General Services Administration has approved the Open Identity Exchange Technology, which is the coalition of providers including Google, PayPal and Equifax.

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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.

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“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.

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The program uses an interactive Web site and database to connect mentors and mentees in NNSA facilities across the nation and help employees identify the skills they need to learn and the colleagues who can teach them. The Web site also offers training to help mentors learn how best to convey their knowledge and experience to others.

“At NNSA, our people are our greatest asset, and we must make sure we’re doing everything we can to preserve and share knowledge as our highly skilled workforce transforms,” said Michael Kane, associate administrator for NNSA’s Office of Management and Administration. “Our ability to implement the president’s unprecedented nuclear security agenda depends on our ability to recruit and retain the next generation of nuclear security professionals and ensure that they have the tools they need to succeed.”

The program is available to federal employees at all nine NNSA sites, which allows employees at different locations to match skills to needs without geographic boundaries.

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Until now, most military personnel have been able to access social-media platforms from their government computers, but policies have not been consistent across the department. The Marine Corps instituted a policy in early 2007 blocking Marines from accessing these sites through the Marine networks. However, Marines have been allowed to access the sites from personal computers, according to the American Forces Press Service.

“The world of Web 2.0 and the Internet provides these amazing opportunities to collaborate,” said David M. Wennergren, deputy assistant secretary of defense for information management and technology. “It not only promotes information sharing across organizational boundaries and with mission partners, but also enables deployed troops to maintain contact with their loved ones at home.”

While allowing access to these sites, the new policy also notes the importance of protecting military networks and operations. According to the policy, commanders are allowed to temporarily limit that access as required to maintain operations security or address bandwidth constraints. It also prohibits malicious activity on military information networks and denies access to sites promoting prohibited activity such as gambling, pornography and hate crimes.

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The number of government data centers has been increasing steadily, going from 432 in 1998 to as many as 1,100 in 2009. According to FierceGovernment, Kundra said, “We’ve seen that this is the best practice from the private sector, and the government needs to take it head on.”

Kundra noted in a memo that all agencies must be ready for an inventory of the IT assets by April 30. He also stated that the preliminary data-center consolidation plan will be developed by June 30 and the plans will be finalized by Dec. 31, 2010.

Kundra also stated, “This growth in redundant infrastructure investments is costly, inefficient and unsustainable and has significant impact on energy consumption.” The implementation of the plan will begin in early 2011.

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Here are the activities the Navy is working on directly from Carey’s blog:

1. Decision Making and Governance: We continue to work toward a more agile decision-making model while ensuring proper alignment across resources, requirements, acquisition, policy and operations. We are striving to perform like an enterprise, so we can leverage the buying power of the DON or DoD where appropriate. This will ensure that we maximize the value of our IT budgets using Enterprise Architecture as the main tool to drive interoperability and cost management.
2. Networks/NGEN: The Department is forging ahead toward closure of the current NMCI contract and moving closer toward NGEN. In addition, the legacy environment is shrinking and being enveloped by the present NMCI environment.
3. Cybersecurity Capability/Investment Model: We are also working toward a Cyber Capability Model combined with the appropriate metrics and investment guidance to ensure that our resources are placed where they are absolutely necessary.
4. Enterprise Mobility: The power of the smart phone and our ability to securely connect to the network and information needed to perform our jobs is expanding exponentially. This is freeing our workforce from the Industrial Age model of the “desk” and allowing us to securely work from anywhere.
5. Web 2.0/Social Media/Collaboration: No longer are social media tools a new phenomenon, but rather standard ways to share information. We will continue to look for ways to leverage these tools to make better decisions more quickly and efficiently.
6. Privacy: With so much of our sensitive information being used to conduct everyday transactions, we must be even more vigilant about protecting personally identifiable information (PII). Deployment of data at rest encryption continues to help mitigate the impacts of lost and stolen devices.
7. NNE/Cloud Computing: We are marching toward the Enterprise User concept where we can engage the network (the Global Information Grid) from any device and access our information.
8. Cyber/IT Workforce Skills: Everyone is a cyber warrior and as such will require better and different training. The Cyber Age is here, and we must accelerate our knowledge of the network as a tool to perform our work.
9. Identity Management: We are striving for an identity-based physical and logical access standards-based model that is interoperable across the Federal Government and with our coalition partners.
10. Critical Infrastructure Protection: We are working to operationalize a new model that will provide for leveraging assets from the Navy and Marine Corps to ensure that the Naval mission can be accomplished when tasked.

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Referring to the newly created position of the cybersecurity coordinator, Snowe said: “He’s a member of the National Security Council and cannot testify. Given the significance of this issue … it really needs to rise to a different level.”

Snowe, who serves on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Task Force on Cyber Security, added that given the serious nature of cybersecurity, it is unacceptable to have a senior administration official who is not accountable to Congress and meets behind closed doors.

The Senate Commerce Committee heard from experts who expressed their concerns about the lack of a comprehensive defense toward attacks targeting the nation’s financial industry, telecommunications system and electrical grid. Michael McConnell, executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton’s national security business and a former director of national security and national intelligence, said if the United States were to fight a cyberwar today, it would lose. James Lewis, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the nation is “under attack every day, losing every day vital secrets.”

One solution to these problems is the Cyber Security Act of 2009. It would regulate organizations and companies that provide critical infrastructure for the United States, require licensing and certification for cybersecurity professionals, and provide funding for grant and scholarship programs. The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Cyber Security Act, something Lewis said was necessary and overdue.

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