Four senators have reintroduced legislation that would make it easier for cyber specialists in the federal government to detail at other agencies and lend their expertise.
The Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Act was introduced in September 2018 by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where it was reported on favorably. Peters is now the ranking Democrat on the committee. Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) have signed on to the reintroduced bill as cosponsors.
"The federal government faces mounting cybersecurity threats, from attacks on our critical infrastructure to security breaches that reveal millions of Americans’ personal information, "Peters said in a statement. "This bipartisan legislation will help ensure that the federal government has the skilled workforce in place to combat emerging threats and help federal employees cultivate new skills and expertise in this in-demand field."
Read full story at Federal Soup…
first published week of: 02/11/2019
Congress wants to eliminate tens of millions of dollars wasted annually on benefits payments to the deceased.
A bill introduced in the Senate last week would stop the federal government from paying dead people.
The bipartisan Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, introduced by Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Tom Carper, D-Del., comes in response to several inspector general audits detailing how the Social Security Administration paid more than $40 million to 500 dead people last year in just three states.
In one case, the SSA made payments totaling $381,000 through 2018 to the account of a beneficiary who died in 1974.
“Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be wasted on paying government benefits to dead people,” Kennedy said in a statement. “It’s just throwing hard-earned taxpayer money into the pockets of con artists.”
The bill cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday and awaits a floor vote. Reps. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., and Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., introduced a companion bill in the House.
Read full story at Nextgov…
first published week of: 05/20/2019
Eighty-five federal jobs will move to Colorado as part of a Bureau of Land Management headquarters relocation, the agency told lawmakers Tuesday.
In a letter to U.S. senators, BLM formally announced it will place its new headquarters in Grand Junction, but most of the new Colorado positions will be located at an existing Lakewood office.
Fifty-eight positions will move from Washington to Lakewood, where BLM’s state office and national operations center will take on a larger role. Twenty-seven employees will be located at the new BLM headquarters in Grand Junction, according to the letter from BLM to senators.
“Twenty-seven high-paying jobs in a community is always a help,” Grand Junction Mayor Rick Taggart said in an interview Tuesday.
Taggart said being known across the country as the headquarters of the BLM will “put Grand Junction further on the map” and improve its economic standing. He hopes more jobs from the private sector will follow the BLM headquarters relocation.
Read full story at The Denver Post…
first published week of: 07/22/2019
The city has nearly tripled the size of the fund that supports programs aimed at increasing digital resources available to Boston residents.
Boston has expanded its Digital Equity Fund from $35,000 to $100,000 for 2019. This growth follows a successful round of grant-making last year in which the city helped fund a tech-related college prep program for high school students.
The Equity Fund is a unique city-funded initiative aimed at fostering digital inclusion among residents, which means helping them use the Internet, gain digital skills and have access to tools they need to pursue goals like health care and employment in the modern world. The fund was started in 2017 to help local community groups support the work.
Starting with $35,000 in 2018, Boston increased its size to $100,000 this year. The city will likely give out three to five grants between $20,000 and $35,000 this year, according to Anne Schwieger, broadband and digital equity advocate for Boston.
Read full story at Governmnet Technology…
first published week of: 02/18/2019
The town of Brookline voted Wednesday to ban the use of face surveillance technology, making it the second municipality in Massachusetts to do so.
Town Meeting voted 178-8 to ban the technology, according to WGBH.
Somerville’s city council passed an ordinance in June banning the use of the facial recognition software, becoming the second known U.S. city to do so, after San Francisco.
In a statement, Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, applauded the residents of Brookline for “standing up in defense of fundamental rights and civil liberties, including privacy, racial and gender justice, due process and freedom of speech and association.”
Read full story at MassLive…
first published week of: 12/16/2019
Multiple reports have brought attention to the potential recording and data collection from smart speakers, which sit in people’s homes and living rooms. Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, who introduced the bill, told Government Technology that residents should "have a baseline of privacy [that] peaks when it comes to the home," adding that “privacy is a right in the California penal code."
Industry groups, however, have said the bill is unnecessary, pointing to another piece of legislation in the state that requires internet of things (IoT) devices to have "reasonable" security features.
The bill emphasizes the potential barriers to widespread deployment of sensors and IoT devices in smart cities, which can collect data and monitor people in public.
Read full story at SmartCities Dive…
first published week of: 05/13/2019
An old-school way of mapping beehives and pesticide applications is giving way to technology this season in California in an effort to better keep the two apart.
This year the tracking, which has long consisted of giant maps or corkboards taped to walls with tiny pins marking hive locations, goes digital with BeeWhere, a program powered by a geographic information system.
Where beekeepers once had to visit county agriculture departments, they can now register and document hive locations online.
And when harmful pesticides will be used, applicators will get a computer-generated list of hives within one mile so they can provide proper notification.
“The whole effort is to help the bees, protect the bees, get them on the map,” said Rueben Arroyo, the agricultural commissioner and sealer in Riverside County,CA.
Read full story at Bloomberg Environment…
first published week of: 03/18/2019
Lawmakers and regulators still grappling with the downsides of the internet and social media era — such as loss of privacy, criminal hacking and data breaches — are now trying to balance the promises and perils of artificial intelligence.
It can help trace missing children, but misidentifies people of color. It can help detect cancer, but may recommend the wrong cure. It can help track criminals, but could aid foreign enemies in targeting voters. It can improve efficiency, but perpetuate long-standing biases.
The “it” is artificial intelligence, a technology that teaches machines to recognize complex patterns and make decisions based on them, much like humans do. While the promised benefits of the technology are profound, the downsides could be damaging, even dangerous.
Last year police in New Delhi, for example, traced 2,930 missing children in four days by using an experimental facial recognition technology that identified them by examining a database of 45,000 kids living in shelters and homes. Yet a facial recognition tool developed by Amazon and tested by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2018 incorrectly identified 28 members of Congress as having been arrested for a crime, disproportionately picking out African American lawmakers, including civil rights icon John Lewis.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 06/24/2019
Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to merge the departments of Innovation and Technology, and Fleet and Facility Management in 2020 to save the city $1 million and help drive down an $838 million budget shortfall.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced a plan to merge the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) with the Department of Fleet and Facility Management (2FM), which would save $1 million in an effort to cut an $838 million budget shortfall.
A spokesperson with the mayor’s office told Government Technology that the proposal, which requires approval from the Chicago City Council, will be presented to lawmakers during the budget process. Lightfoot is scheduled to deliver her 2020 budget address to the council at its Oct. 23 meeting.
If approved, the merger would take effect in 2020. All personnel will be kept on in their current role or in a new position within 2FM, according to a release from the mayor’s office. The city’s chief information officer and chief data officer, both of which are unappointed at the moment, will be moved to the mayor’s office.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 10/14/2019
As chief information officers at all levels of government take a wider, more enterprise look at their role than in the past, it is becoming increasingly important that they are more than just tech-savvy.
In 2011, when Mark Raymond was first appointed chief information officer of Connecticut, the No. 1 tech priority in state government was hardware virtualization, according to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). Raymond, who was recently re-appointed by incoming Gov. Ned Lamont, found that much of his time was spent doing just that: virtualizing the state’s technology, moving a data center, anything to improve the technical efficiency of the operations, he recalled.
Today, his work with the state is much different. “I now spend the majority of my time talking about the value of the services we provide or the investments we are making,” he said. “It’s more about helping citizens and businesses and less about the technical aspects of the operation.”
The changing role of Raymond’s job reflects what has happened on a broader scale in government IT. The era of virtualization, data center construction and overall operational efficiency is waning. The mass consumerization of technology has shifted IT’s role from its primary back-office function, serving government workers, to one in which it is expected to enable a broad range of new services that can be downloaded onto smartphones and provide citizens with personalized experiences.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 06/10/2019