(ES&S)
Nation’s biggest voting machine maker reportedly relies on remote-access software.
A US senator is holding the nation's biggest voting machine maker to account following a recent article that reported it has sold equipment that was pre-installed with remote access software and has advised government customers to install the software on machines that didn't already have it pre-installed.
Use of remote access software in e-voting systems was reported last month by The New York Times Magazine in an article headlined "The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine." The article challenged the oft-repeated assurance that voting machines are generally secured against malicious tampering because they're not connected to the Internet.
Exhibit A in the case built by freelance reporter Kim Zetter was an election management computer used in 2016 by Pennsylvania's Venango County. After voting machines the county bought from Election Systems & Software were suspected of "flipping" votes &Mdash;meaning screens showed a different vote than the one selected by the voter —officials asked a computer scientist to examine the systems. The scientist ultimately concluded the flipping was the result of a simple calibration error, but during the analysis he found something much more alarming —remote access software that allowed anyone with the correct password to remotely control the system.
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 03/19/2018
Maj. Gen. Sarah Zabel, the Air Force's IT acquisition process development director, said during a June 6 keynote address at the National Defense Industry Association's agile government event that a free market approach for capability development could be the future where agile software in government leads.
Zabel said it wasn't an official Air Force or Defense Department position, but an "example of what might happen if we let the principles of agile sink farther and farther" into acquisition culture.
"We start from a position of traditional acquisition, as I come into this field and take a look at where we are, I see that artifacts of traditional acquisition are impeding progress," she said.
"It's not that people just don't want to do it, it's the fact that our organizations, incentives, our job descriptions – everything is built on the traditional acquisition basis and view of the world," she said. "To go to a different world… there are just so many artifacts that we need to modify."
Read full story at FCW…
first published week of: 06/11/2018
For years, security experts have warned of an impending cyber Pearl Harbor: an attack so big and bold that it cripples U.S. infrastructure and demands a military response.
However, in interviews with former White House and executive branch officials as well as members of Congress and staffers involved in cyber policy, many expressed more concern about the potential for a Cyber Gulf of Tonkin: a misunderstanding or misattribution around an event that precipitates or is used as a justification for war.
"I think we should all be concerned about a [misunderstanding] or something that is made to look like someone else took action," said Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), a co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus. "Attribution is very difficult, although we are getting much better at it. There's no doubt there could always be a level of uncertainty."
first published week of: 07/16/2018
People who are seeking new outdoor adventures in Warren County will soon be able to locate and read about a vast array of local recreational venues on their smartphone, tablet or computer.
The Warren County Recreation Mapper provides details on a total of 300 or so recreational venues — local hiking trails, waterways for boating or canoeing, cross-country skiing trails, mountain biking venues, campsites, and mountain-climbing opportunities and public parks.
The app is expected to go live as of Aug. 31, according to Sara Frankenfeld, GIS Coordinator for the Warren County Planning Department.
Frankenfeld demonstrated the Recreation Mapper last week to Warren County supervisors.
Read full story at Sun Community News…
first published week of: 09/03/2018
Technicians work on a "Hey Google" booth in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, in advance of CES.
(Steve Marcus/Reuters)
A "smart city" in Toronto might be a smart real-estate play for Sidewalk Labs. And for the public?
Call it a sign of the times: At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, there are more vendors listed as selling “smart cities” technologies than gaming products or drones.
The annual mega-gathering of the tech world—which starts in Las Vegas on Tuesday—was once a parade of TV screens, smartphones, and other personal electronics. But CES’s dazzling displays have increasingly focused on cities themselves, and the profit potential they present to technology companies. The question, as always, is where that leaves people who live in them.
From that perspective, perhaps no other project in the world has drawn as much curiosity as “Quayside,” a 12-acre slice* of Toronto waterfront in line to be developed by Sidewalk Labs, the urban tech-focused subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet. Launched in 2015 by CEO Dan Doctoroff and a number of other Michael Bloomberg affiliates, Sidewalk Labs makes much of its urbanist bonafides. The company is now primarily focused on turning the patch of city-owned land into what it calls the “world’s first neighborhood built from the internet up.”
That could mean nearly anything, based on the 196-page vision document that responded to (and won, last fall) a public Request For Proposal.
Read full story at CityLab…
first published week of: 01/29/2018
In a new ranking of state government websites, Virginia comes out on top, while Louisiana placed last.
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation considered page-load speed, mobile friendliness, security and accessibility for its ranking. It looked at 400 sites in total, rating the state government’s main website along with sites for driver’s licenses, taxes, vital records, elections, business registration, fishing and hunting licensing, and traffic citations
ITIF rated page-load speeds with Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which uses 15 different criteria to provide a score between 0 and 100. “We found that 77 percent of state websites passed the desktop page-load speed test and 50 percent passed the mobile page-load speed test,” the group said.
States can improve page-load speed by compressing images, removing unnecessary comments from code and optimizing JavaScript and CSS code, ITIF advised.
The mobile friendliness score was produced using SEO Centro’s Mobile Friendly Check, which also creates a score from 0 to 100. ITIF considered 90 or above to be passing, a bar set after reviewing multiple non-government websites. Two out of three state websites passed the mobile-friendliness test, but a quarter of sites received a score below 70, showing that “many state websites can still make significant improvement,” the report said.
Read full story at GCN…
first published week of: 09/10/2018
( whitehouse.gov)
The White House hosted some of the biggest technology companies and digital shops within government at an Oct. 22 meeting to explore ways to inject government with tech expertise from the private sector through "tours of duty."
The goal of the event, according to a White House official, is to convene 150 technology stakeholders and human resources experts in the tech space to explore possible options or policies for carving out time for their employees to help government with its tech challenges.
Read full story at FCW…
first published week of: 10/22/2018
( guru99)
Defense agencies face a choice with the cloud: Go with the Defense Information Systems Agency’s milCloud 2.0 option, or source their own cloud from a commercial cloud service provider.
While either option is permissible under the Defense Department regulations, DISA is hoping more agencies will go with the former. Most of DISA’s budget comes from fees paid by the rest of DOD, via a working capital fund, for any IT and network services DISA provides to the rest of the department.
But there are compelling reasons for agencies to make either cloud choice. Under milCloud 2.0, agencies have access to multiple cloud offerings, including Amazon Web Services, Azure, Oracle and others. This can be an attractive option especially for agencies too small to purchase their own cloud offerings. The milCloud offering is more of a “plug and play” approach to the cloud than if the agency were to source its own cloud.
For agencies considering their own cloud, as opposed to milCloud 2.0, there are also some advantages. In many cases, agencies can negotiate better pricing, as opposed to paying DISA. They can get access to more specific cloud offerings, such as AWS Secret. And they have control over the management of the cloud and its vendors when making their own purchase, rather than going through DISA.
Read full story at Government Cloud Insider…
first published week of: 05/07/2018
Mayor Bill Peduto still has a June 1 tweet pinned to the top of his Twitter page: “As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement.” But how can the city deliver on that promise?
“We don’t see this actually as a plan,” said Jason Beery of the UrbanKind Institute. “This is currently a list of goals and a survey of possible actions.”
The city’s ambitious new climate action plan lays out its strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the city 50 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. It includes many changes, from cutting the city’s meat consumption in half to planting 780,000 trees, which could transform life in the city, including where Pittsburghers live and how they get to work.
Lindsay Baxter, who played an instrumental role in writing the city’s first two plans as the former sustainability coordinator, urged the city to spell out which of its ideas would have the most impact. “The urgency of climate change necessitates a plan that leads to action rather than one that establishes a vision alone,” she said during a meeting to collect public comment in November.
The city’s plan relies on individuals and businesses to make big changes. But if it isn’t clear in its 100-page plan what should be prioritized, how will Pittsburghers know how to rally behind it?
Read full story at CityLab…
first published week of: 02/05/2018
In looking over GT coverage in 2018, a number of major themes emerged — like microtransit and the rise of ransomware — that highlight where government’s attention was and what will be on priority lists in 2019.
Throughout the year, the editorial staff at Government Technology works to bring readers the news they need — from security breaches to tales of tech success — to make public-sector IT smart, more efficient and more accessible. In looking back at our most-read stories of 2018, a number of themes emerged that offer a glimpse at what the next chapter holds.
Click through for the major issues of the year that will stay on prority lists in 2019. For our most popular stories of the year, see Year in Review: The Most Read Gov Tech Stories of 2018.
Read full story at GT…
first published week of: 12/10/2018