New law would force seven states to phase out existing tax schemes by 2020
Congress has voted to make permanent a federal law that prevents states or localities from taxing Internet access.
The US Senate accepted the measure as part of a larger trade bill, which passed today on a 75-20 vote. Since the House has already passed a similar measure, the bill now heads to President Barack Obama for his signature.
There's long been general agreement in Congress that taxing access to the Internet is a bad idea and shouldn't be allowed. But permanent consideration of the tax ban was held up by some lawmakers, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who wanted it to be passed together with the Marketplace Fairness Act, or MFA. continued…
first published week of: 02/15/2016
Renewed emphasis is being placed on vulnerabilities associated with voting machines.
With the surge in data breaches over the past several years, the prevailing wisdom is that no online data is completely safe from hackers. Banks, governments, insurance companies and small businesses globally have lost billions of dollars to cybercrime.
Last year, the top security breaches affected something more precious than personally identifiable information. Data breaches included the most intimate details and actions in life — with the loss of millions of records containing biometrics like fingerprints, career backgrounds, family relationships, secret liaisons, hospital records and much more.
Which leads to the big question that’s being asked with renewed fervor: Could the 2016 presidential election be disrupted, or somehow manipulated, via unauthorized computer hacking or denial of service attacks?
Related situations have come up several times in the past year. Concerns were raised following the Iowa caucuses in February after a new Microsoft vote-tallying app failed in certain parts of the state. The Des Moines Register reported these troubles: “Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems.” Still, no hacker “foul play” was insinuated.
After the hanging chads from the Florida election in November 2000 and the dozens of nationwide contested elections over the past decade, no one wants to wake up to a huge cybermess that involves the word “hacking” on Nov. 9, 2016. Therefore, this election tampering issue has been raised by commentators from both ends of the political spectrum. The Huffington Post mentioned six ways hackers could disrupt an election, including hacking a voting machine, shutting down the voting system or election agencies, and deleting or changing election records.
Meanwhile, Fox News proclaimed that “ballot machines are easy targets.” Pointing to a report by the Commonwealth Security and Risk Management Directorate for the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, experts recently insisted that old technology could impact election results. continued…
first published week of: 04/18/2016
When a single father and ex-Marine in Oakland, Mich., went to pay back taxes on his home, he was told he didn't have to – because he no longer owned the property. A victim of real estate fraud, he went to court to get his house back.
That case shed light on a more widespread problem in which a blank deed is filled out claiming that the property owner is transferring the property to someone else. Once the document is notarized and a fee is paid to the recorder of deeds, the document is part of the official record of ownership. Armed with a fraudulent deed, con artists can take out big mortgages and disappear. Or fraudsters can file a lien without the legitimate owners’ knowledge, get a default judgment in court and walk away with the deed to the property.
Lisa Brown, Oakland County’s register of deeds, wanted to stop this kind of real estate fraud. She contracted with Xerox to help develop the Property Records Notification (PRN) system, in which users create accounts, flag keywords they want to monitor and then create an alert to receive email alerts when changes are recorded on the properties they are tracking. It’s the first of its kind, she said. continued…
first published week of: 05/23/2016
Locating businesses, services and properties in the County of Grande Prairie has gotten a little bit easier.
The county has replaced the former public web map with a more user-friendly interface with special features in which residents can view and use the county's Geographic Information System (GIS) data.
"We wanted them to be able to find things so find quarter sections, find addresses, find roads and find points of interest, like the (Crosslink County) Sportsplex or say churches, community halls throughout the county," said Glen Kilian GIS co-ordinator.
"Those (our PDF and paper maps) are good in a way, people can print them off, but they're statics and they require updating so with a web map like this... it's live in the map. It's easier to update and maintain and just get that information out to the public."
The upgraded map allows the public to view aerial photos, print maps, obtain driving directions for multiple residential and business locations throughout the county and is available to be viewed on computers and mobile devices.
To view the map, visit http://maps.countygp.ab.ca/publicmap/. continued…
first published week of: 03/28/2016
The clash between the FBI and Apple over opening up a terrorist killer's locked iPhone presents a hard choice between compelling arguments, according to Federal CIO Tony Scott.
“In my mind, strong encryption is something everyone will be able to get behind with a narrow set of exceptions”Federal CIO Tony Scott
"It's a really hard, hard topic," he said. "I could make an argument on both sides. Strong encryption is important and a backdoor might be a problem," he said. However, he also said society has an interest in pursuing and prosecuting criminals.
"The answer comes down to a bigger, broader debate on values" of both, he said. He said the country has decided on similar thorny issues in the past and this one is another "hold-your-nose," choice.
Ultimately, he said, "In my mind, strong encryption is something everyone will be able to get behind with a narrow set of exceptions" for law enforcement. continued…
first published week of: 03/21/2016
Many of the staples of modern technology we take for granted have roots in the military's research and development arm.
Created after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) makes investments and conducts research into game-changing technologies with national security implications. Just this week, the agency announced planned funding for military cyborgs.
While the agency's breakthroughs on cyborgs or stealth technology may not have obvious civilian applications, much of DARPA's past research does.
Whether you're using the Internet or GPS, you have some of the government's top scientists to thank. continued…
first published week of: 02/15/2016
Overhaul aims to make innovation office more agile and more focused
Defense Secretary Ash Carter is overhauling nascent efforts to do business with Silicon Valley, hoping to reinvigorate a Pentagon innovation office that failed to gain traction in the technology community.
Mr. Carter announced Wednesday that he has removed leaders of the innovation office, opened last August in Silicon Valley, replacing them with executives who have worked at top tech firms, including Apple Inc. and the Google arm of... continued…
first published week of: 05/23/2016
Brainstorming ideas might be fun, but data is a better guide to what people want. At IBM’s Government Analytics Forum, some experts in online government services explained why data gathered through testing and user metrics should drive design.
“You never actually know until you're testing,” said Jessica Barrett Simpson, senior federal student aid adviser at the Education Department.
The department reaches out to defaulting borrowers to encourage them to start repaying their student loans. Officials expected people to respond well to concrete information about their loan repayment amounts, but they decided to test something that seemed like clickbait: an email message telling borrowers that they could pay as little as $0 per month.
Simpson’s instinct told her that few borrowers would trust the message, but when the data started coming in, her team found that the $0–per–month promise got far more responses than the more traditional messages.
Other approaches that seemed gimmicky have also proven to be effective. continued…
first published week of: 05/09/2016
There have been 321 incident reports of "ransomware-related activity" affecting 29 different federal networks since June 2015, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The numbers indicate a form of malware that has done high-profile damage in the private sector is a threat to government computers as well.
DHS relayed the information in a letter to Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) after the senators inquired about the spread of ransomware, which encrypts a computer user's data until hackers are paid off, usually via crypto-currency.
Not all of the 321 incident reports involved a computer being infected with ransomware, according to DHS – some were phishing emails or ransomware that was thwarted by an agency's security operations center. continued…
first published week of: 04/11/2016
In this year's survey, the Center for Digital Government recognizes 55 counties that understand technology's value, empower their tech leaders, and implement new ideas to make life better for those who live and work there.
The results of the 14th Annual Digital Counties Survey are in and that means two things: a new batch of winners after which other counties can model their own digital projects, and new data on the latest trends and forecasts in the gov tech sector.
Key findings of this year's survey include few surprises and many reinforcements of the narratives found in recent issues of Government Technology. Cybersecurity remains atop the list of project areas where organizations expect to spend more time and energy, while citizen engagement made its first appearance on the list in recent years at the No. 7 spot. A list of this year's top 10 areas where technology leaders expect to have an increased focus next year can be found below, as compared with priorities from 2015 and 2014 continued…
first published week of: 07/25/2016