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Archived Government Notes
Published in 2020
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LoRa and LoRaWAN: How the Technology Helps Smart Cities
by phil goldstein
Long-range wireless technology can help cities overcome Internet of Things coverage challenges.
Smart city networks power everything from autonomous vehicles to traffic monitoring, services for first responders and intelligent streetlights.
Long-range (LoRa) wireless technology can help cities overcome network coverage challenges and enable them to widely deploy Internet of Things solutions in smart cities, providing coverage where traditional Wi-Fi solutions may not.
Sensors that measure and monitor the environment and enhance services require both a great deal of network bandwidth and, just as important, coverage. After all, if a sensor cannot connect to a city’s wireless networks, what good is it? Getting that coverage deployed throughout a city can be challenging and expensive.
“LoRa devices and the open LoRaWAN protocol enable smart IoT applications that solve some of the biggest challenges facing our planet:
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 04/20/2020
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Making Cities More Walkable with Better Data and Technology
by Daniel Castro
A city’s walkability contributes to improved health outcomes for residents, lower crime rates and increased civic engagement. Governments can use data and artificial intelligence to improve their streets for pedestrians.
Walkable neighborhoods have long been prized among urban designers. Walkability is linked to benefits including higher property values, less crime and better health among residents. For example, one recent study found that older adults living in easy-to-walk communities not only had better physical health, but also higher cognitive functions. Another study found that walkable neighborhoods are associated with more arts organizations and higher levels of civic engagement.
There are many ways cities can become more walkable. Jeff Speck, a city planner who has written two books on the subject, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time and Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places, has identified countless ways to improve the walkability of cities such as providing mixed use development, consolidating parking, providing good transit and biking options, and even planting more trees. But in addition to improving the physical features that make cities more walkable, some cities are using technology to address this problem.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 04/27/2020
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Map Discrepancy Sparks Concerns on Protecting Water
by laurenb clem
A proposed development on Route 146 [Rhode Island] has led to concerns among some town officials about protecting the town’s water supply, but a clear answer to their questions is proving difficult to find.
Last fall, Thomas Whalen, owner of North Smithfield Auto Body, approached the town with plans to expand his business at 784 Eddie Dowling Highway. Whalen plans to build a new, 14,300-square-foot office shop with an office, waiting room and 12 service bays. The project involves a new entry and exit from Route 146, an addition that will likely increase safety at a tricky portion of the state highway.
The project quickly gained the support of the Planning Board, which voted unanimously to recommend it last October. However, the following month, the plans hit a snag when they came before the Zoning Board. At the time, Vincent Marcantonio, a board member, raised concerns that the project could affect the water supply for the nearby Woonsocket Reservoir.
Read full story at Valley b reeze…
first published week of: 02/17/2020
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Massachusetts DOT Gets $1M Federal Grant for Drone Research
by Jeanette Deforge
The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded a $1 million grant to the state to experiment with how unmanned aerial technology could assist with highway construction and emergency response efforts.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded a $1 million grant to the state to allow officials to experiment with using drones and other unmanned aerial systems for highway construction and to assist in emergencies.
The grant to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation is among eight totaling $6.6 million earmarked for highway innovations. Others were issued to Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, North Carolina, Massachusetts and the Pawnee Nation in Oklahoma.
The state grant will be used for systems “that can improve the agency’s ability to survey terrain before and after emergencies, improve worker safety through remote mapping and accelerate construction,” according to an announcement from Elaine L. Chao, the federal secretary for transportation.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 11/09/2020
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McAfee: Counties Need to Upgrade Website Security Ahead of 2020 Election
by phil goldstein
County governments need to transition to .gov domains and HTTPS to ensure website security.
Phil Goldstein is the web editor for FedTech and StateTech. Besides keeping up with the latest in technology trends, he is also an avid lover of the New York Yankees, poetry, photography, traveling and escaping humidity.
County governments are on the front lines of administering elections, and as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, their websites will be visited more often. That’s why it’s more important than ever to protect them from cyberattacks.
Unfortunately, recent research from McAfee indicates that county websites are not as secure as they could be. The cybersecurity firm conducted a survey of county websites and county election administration websites in the 13 states projected as battleground or “toss-up” states in the presidential election in November.
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 03/09/2020
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Montgomery, Alabama Embracing Smart City Technology
by erin brereton
Using artificial intelligence tools and smartphones, Montgomery was able to examine and rate road conditions and speed up repaving.
Wirelessly transmitted data, sensors and other components are helping the state capital deliver streamlined services.
Technology may not have factored in much to the outside world’s perception of Montgomery, Ala., six or seven years ago; the town might have then been viewed as a “sleepy capital city known for historical events,” Mayor Todd Strange says.
Today, however, following the introduction of a number of Internet of Things-enabled systems, Montgomery is steadily transforming into a smart technology hub.
Instead of waiting in the rain for a bus, residents can track its location with an app and confirm exactly when it will arrive. Visitors can access free Wi-Fi within the nine-block downtown corridor that’s home to the Capitol Building; the church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor; and some of the city’s other famous sites.
Drivers can pull up to one of the 1,700 recently installed street meters in the area, dubbed the Smart City Living Lab — a project of the Montgomery Smart Community Alliance, a partnership that includes the city, Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce and Alabama Power — and quickly pay for parking with their smartphone.
Turning one of America’s most historic streets into the Living Lab will help Montgomery test smart technology applications, according to Alabama Power’s Leslie Sanders, vice president of the southern division.
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 09/28/2020
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More Than 10,000 Federal Employees Have Contracted COVID-19
by eric katz
The number of positive cases in the federal workforce has more than quadrupled since early April.
As the United States topped 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the number of federal employees who have tested positive for the virus has surpassed 10,000.
While most federal employees are still teleworking, many agencies have missions that cannot be performed remotely and hundreds of thousands of federal workers continue reporting to their work stations. Federal offices, like those in all sectors in the country, have struggled to keep their employees safe. Workers have complained of insufficient protective supplies, equipment and distancing policies. The total number of positive cases within the federal workforce has more than quadrupled since early April.
At some agencies, employees are instructed to continue working even after exposure to the virus. At others, thousands of workers are home on quarantine as they await test results or to see whether symptoms develop. The work of the government must go on, however, leaving employees exposed to the novel coronavirus. Here’s a look at the agencies in which the most federal workers have contracted COVID-19.
Read full story at Government Executive…
first published week of: 05/04/2020
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Most States Receive Low Grades for Online Spending Transparency Info
by Jed Pressgrove
States have made progress with budget portals that allow citizens to see how tax dollars are spent, but a new report shows they remain lacking in online transparency about economic development subsidies.
More than half of all U.S. states received a grade of “F” or “D” for online spending information on subsidies given to businesses for economic development, according to a recent report by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group.
Citizens deserve the ability to see what’s being done in their name with their taxpayer dollars R.J. Cross, policy analyst
The report, titled “Following the Money 2019: How the 50 States Rank on Online Economic Development Subsidy Transparency,” is the 10th edition of an ongoing series about online government spending transparency. In the report, 17 states got an “F,” which means they failed to meet “basic standards of online spending transparency,” while 14 states got a “D,” which means they didn’t “provide critical information to citizens in a readily available format.”
“Citizens deserve the ability to see what’s being done in their name with their taxpayer dollars,” said R.J. Cross, policy analyst and first author of the report. “You can’t hold your government accountable without information about what your government has actually done. And on top of that, when government hands cash to a specific company that they’ve chosen, there’s so much room for corruption and favoritism that it’s especially important to be transparent from beginning to end of that process.”
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 01/13/2020
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Multiple “CIA Failures” Led to Theft of Agency’s Top-Secret Hacking Tools
by dan goodin
Vault 7, the worst data theft in CIA history, could have been avoided, report finds.
n early 2017, WikiLeaks began publishing details of top-secret CIA hacking tools that researchers soon confirmed were part of a large tranche of confidential documents stolen from one of the agency's isolated, high-security networks. The leak—comprising as much as 34 terabytes of information and representing the CIA's biggest data loss in history—was the result of "woefully lax" practices, according to portions of a report that were published on Tuesday.
Vault 7, as WikiLeaks named its leak series, exposed a trove of the CIA's most closely guarded secrets. They included a simple command line that agency officers used to hack network switches from Cisco and attacks that compromised Macs, in one case using a tool called Sonic Screwdriver, which exploited vulnerabilities in the extensible firmware interface that Apple used to boot devices. The data allowed researchers from security firm Symantec to definitively tie the CIA to a hacking group they had been tracking since 2011.
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 06/22/2020
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NASA Sees an “Exponential” Jump in Malware Attacks as Personnel Work From Home
by dan goodin
Space agency report suggests employees are falling for online scams
NASA has experienced an exponential increase in malware attacks and a doubling of agency devices trying to access malicious sites in the past few days as personnel work from home, the space agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer said on Monday.
A new wave
“A new wave of cyber-attacks is targeting Federal Agency Personnel, required to telework from home, during the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak,” officials wrote in a memo. The wave over the past few days includes a(n):
- Doubling of email phishing attempts
- Exponential increase in malware attacks on NASA systems
- Double the number of mitigation-blocking of NASA systems trying to access malicious sites (often unknowingly) due to users accessing the Internet
The last item is particularly concerning because it suggests that NASA employees and contractors are clicking on malicious links sent in email and text messages at twice the rate as normal. Tricking people into clicking on malicious links or opening malicious email attachments remains one of the easiest ways to gain entry into enterprise networks and individual computers users alike.
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 04/13/2020