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DARPA Announces $40,000 Network Challenge

Beginning Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009 10 giant red balloons will be anchored in different locations across the continental U.S. Finding and submitting the location of the 8-foot inflatables is the aim of the DARPA Network Challenge.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said the challenge is designed to “explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.”

Details Here

first published week of:   11/30/2009

Data.gov Launched by Federal Government

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra made good Thursday on his promise to launch Data.gov, which will make data generated by the federal government publicly available. It’s apparent that Data.gov is only in the initial state of development. Day one featured an eclectic assortment of data sets, such as the locations of the world's copper smelters, National Weather Service advisories and weekly reports of earthquakes. Web site widgets for the FBI's 10 Most Wanted and the H1N1 swine flu virus are also featured.

Details Here

first published week of:   05/18/2009

David Arbeit Named Minnesota's First Chief Geospatial Information Officer

Minnesota Administration Commissioner Sheila Reger today appointed David Arbeit as Minnesota’s first Chief Geospatial Information Officer (CGIO). Arbeit, according to a release, will oversee the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office, created by the 2009 Legislature to coordinate geospatial information technology and its use across state government.

Modeled after a chief information officer (CIO), the GIO position -- instituted in some federal agencies and this March in California -- has served to acknowledge the importance of geospatial data and its coordination.

Details Here

first published week of:   06/29/2009

Determining Anchor Points for Sex Offenders Using GPS Data

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has begun tracking more than 6,000 sex offender parolees by using global positioning system (GPS) anklets. Sex offender parolees are allowed to travel only through certain areas and must keep away from other people. The GPS device lets parole agents know when parolees are somewhere they should not be by logging GPS coordinates every minute and sending coordinates to a central server every 10 minutes. This information about parolee location is compared to law enforcement incident data through crime-scene correlation reports. Regular e-mail reports keep analysts notified of any incidents that are close to an offender’s tracks in time and space. The features are accessible through an online mapping application, and analysts can review a parolee’s GPS data for up to 4 hours at a time, or view data in real time (with a 15- minute delay).

Details Here

first published week of:   08/24/2009

DHS Cyber-Security Official Resigns

The director of the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has resigned, several media outlets reported. Mischel Kwon is leaving the post after less than a year, and will soon take a job in the private sector, The Washington Post reports. The newspaper cited anonymous sources who said she was “frustrated by bureaucratic obstacles and a lack of authority to fulfill her mission.” She was the fourth director of U.S.-CERT in the last five years.

Details Here

first published week of:   08/17/2009

DHS data loss puts 1M at risk

A laptop computer stolen this month from a state employee contained personal information on about 1 million Oklahomans, the Department of Human Services said on April 23. “The risk of the data being accessed is low because the computer uses a password-protected system,” the department’s director said in a news release. “Nevertheless, we have contacted our clients to inform them there is a possibility their personal information may be viewed.” The risk may be greater than the department has acknowledged, the director of the Oklahoma State University’s Center for Telecommunications and Network Security said, because the data was not encrypted. “Really, anybody could take that hard drive and stick it in another machine and read everything on it,” the director said. Authorities have not recovered the computer, which was stolen April 3 after an agency employee stopped near NW 50 and Classen Boulevard on her way home from work. The woman’s purse and other personal items also were taken, according to a police report. “That information, in the right hands, could do some serious damage,” said a Secret Service agent from the Oklahoma office.

Details Here

first published week of:   04/27/2009

DHS official: Agencies must make high-risk cyber threats top priority

Federal agencies should prioritize their information security requirements to ensure mission-critical operations are protected first, and delineate between “that which is aggravating and that which is truly dangerous,” the Homeland Security Department’s cyber chief said during a conference on Tuesday. Cyberattacks are growing far more sophisticated, in part because they are more difficult to detect, said the assistant secretary of DHS’ Office of Cybersecurity and Communications. He and the chief executive officer of security vendor McAfee spoke Tuesday at the GFirst conference in Atlanta hosted by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. “The more sophisticated attacks ...are low and slow, designed to not draw attention, but insidiously get at data and resources,” the assistant secretary of DHS’ Office of Cybersecurity and Communications said. “Yet at the same time, the level of noise from less sophisticated attacks continues to grow. This makes for an environment where it is easy to focus on the wrong pieces of the puzzle while bad things happen under the radar.” The challenge for agencies is determining where to focus their limited resources in such a hostile environment, he said in an interview with Nextgov.com after his speech. “We have to put an appropriate level of resources to those issues” that are less critical, he said, such as a denial-of-service attack that temporarily blocks access to an agency’s network or Web defacement that alters online content. “At the same time, we need to recognize that those are not the really dangerous attacks. It’s a resource [allocation] issue; when you have so much attention focused on these areas that are not as critical, the less noisy attacks can” go unnoticed. Only agencies can prioritize information security efforts based upon their individual missions, he said. “[DHS] can help set some requirements and assist in moving the ball forward, but the agencies themselves have to understand their risk profiles and execute against their mission,” he said.

Details Here

first published week of:   09/01/2009

DHS privacy advisors issue recommendations

Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee passed on a series of recommendations to incoming Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. They’re a mix of sound but fairly banal generalities and more specific concerns—and in both cases, they’re a bit worrying.

The specific ones are worrying because, well, they raise specific worries. One is the existence of “fraud vulnerabilities in the current E-Verify system” used by employers to check the legal work status of new hires, which the advisors believe creates “a significant opportunity for fraud, which could result in legal residents and citizens becoming victims of identity theft.” Then there’s the final rule for REAL ID, which "leaves states in the position of subjecting their residents’ personal information to the vulnerabilities of the state with the weakest protections," and (perhaps more unsettling) permits “the placement of unencrypted personal information in the machine-readable zone, which encourages inappropriate data collection and mission creep.”

Details Here

first published week of:   02/16/2009

DHS secretary says cabinet-level IT position unnecessary

The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today basically dismissed the concept of a cabinet-level IT position for technology and cybersecurity, noting that IT networks and services underlie most operations today. The DHS Secretary delivered an unprecedented Web address on October 20, which came on the heels of a video address on cybersecurity by the U.S. President last week, urging citizens and businesses to help in the fight against cybercrime and cyberattacks, and detailing her department’s role in the fight. In a brief Q&A session following her online speech, she said, “It’s really hard to segregate [IT] out.” “I’m not sure that I think that a cabinet-level position is necessary. And the reason is that cyber runs through everything that we do as a government,” she said when asked why there was no cabinet-level IT position. “I think one of the things we’re learning as we enter this new cyber arena is that segregating it into an IT function is no longer adequate. Again, as my remarks suggested, cyber is part of everything we do, from the most basic transaction.” Cyber should be “part of our thinking in all departments,” she said. “But added to that now, the president has included a chief technology officer, a chief information officer, in the White House, and he will be appointing a coordinator for cyber within the White House to help make sure that cyber is part of all that we do throughout the vast array of the federal government as we move forward.”

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first published week of:   10/19/2009

DHS: Government and Citizens Must Work Together in Cyber-Security Fight

The federal government decreed October National Cyber Security Awareness Month with the theme of "Our Shared Responsibility" tacked on for good measure. When Greg Schaffer, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), addressed the crowd Wednesday, Oct. 14 at the National Cyber Security West 2009 conference in Sacramento, Calif., he definitely had that theme in mind when he spoke about modern IT integrity.

“We’re here today because the responsibility to deal with these issues, the real focus of attention on how we address these problems cannot be with the federal government or with state governments alone,” he said. “The focus and intention really has to be spread across absolutely everyone who touches a computer and its use of the technology.”

Details Here

first published week of:   10/12/2009

DOE Awards Up to $14.6 Million to Support Development of Advanced Water Power Technologies

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced that 22 advanced water power projects will receive up to $14.6 million in funding to advance the commercial viability, market acceptance, and environmental performance for new marine and hydrokinetic technologies as well as conventional hydropower plants. The projects selected today will further the nation’s supply of domestic clean hydroelectricity through technological innovation to capitalize on new sources of energy, and will advance markets and research to maximize the nation’s largest renewable energy source.

“Hydropower provides our nation with emissions-free, sustainable energy.  By improving hydropower technology, we can maximize what is already our biggest source of renewable energy in an environmentally responsible way. These projects will provide critical support for the development of innovative renewable water power technologies and help ensure a vibrant hydropower industry for years to come,” said Secretary Chu.

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first published week of:   09/21/2009

Economic Stimulus Will Boost Technology and Role of State CIOs

With billions of dollars directed toward health IT, rural broadband and education technology, the economic stimulus package will have significant impact on technology in state and local government, according to Gopal Khanna, CIO of Minnesota and president of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). Just as important, President Barack Obama’s plan for tracking stimulus spending could help transform relationships between federal, state and local government, Khanna said.

Obama signed the massive $787 billion economic stimulus package Feb. 17. The measure includes $19 billion to accelerate adoption of health IT, $7 billion for broadband Internet connectivity and $15 billion to train students for an "innovation" economy.

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first published week of:   02/23/2009

energy Department meets regulatory milestone with delivery to WIPP

The U.S. Department of Energy achieved a major environmental cleanup milestone during the week of March 2-6 with the first shipment of remote-handled transuranic waste leaving DOE’s Oak Ridge Reservation and arriving safely at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The first shipment left the Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center the morning of February 26 for a 1,300 mile journey and safely arrived at the WIPP site on February 27. Just five months ago, the first shipment of Contact-Handled TRU Waste from the Oak Ridge Reservation safely arrived at WIPP, again allowing another regulatory milestone to be achieved. “The start of remote-handled shipments to WIPP honors our commitment to move this waste out of Oak Ridge and place it in a permanent repository,” said the manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Office. “We have kept our commitment to the State of Tennessee to meet a cleanup milestone for the Oak Ridge Reservation to begin shipping by February 28.”

Details Here

first published week of:   03/09/2009

ESRI's Jack Dangermond: GIS Brings Better Government Transparency

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Jordan and Bill Clinton - what do they have in common? They’re all synonymous with the field in which they worked. When you think of Jack Dangermond, you think about GIS.

Lanky, bespectacled and a touch harried, Dangermond doesn’t cut the figure of an industry titan. He exudes the air of a man who was determined to follow his dream, as well as someone who is still slightly astounded by the success he has attained. Dangermond, above all else, is passionate about GIS.

In this rare interview, he sat down with Government Technology to detail ESRI’s growing Web presence and chart the company’s future. He also explained FedStat, a proposed stimulus dollar-tracking solution based on a program initiated by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called StateStat; itself an evolution of New York City’s legendary CompStat, a system of allocating police resources based on spatial data. In addition to stimulus spending and tracking, Dangermond explained the important role GIS will play in infrastructure, smart roads, energy, cloud computing and more.  

Details Here

first published week of:   05/04/2009

IG says more work needed on DoE's unclassified cyber security program

DoE’s Inspector General … released a report evaluating the agency’s unclassified cyber security program. The report said DoE is making improvements, but still has a ways to go to reduce risks to systems and data. Some National Nuclear Security Administration sites were cited in particular.

Details Here

first published week of:   10/26/2009

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