Government

The Justice Department is stepping up its program to engage more actively with the private sector on dealing with cybercrime and cybersecurity breaches. "We in government know that we cannot go it alone in fighting cybercrime. We need a strong partnership with you in the private sector," Assistant A...

U.S. government agencies can significantly improve their ability to deal with cybersecurity problems by utilizing big data analytics. However, agencies are finding it difficult to fully benefit from these advanced analytical tools for a variety of reasons -- including dealing with the sheer volume o...

"The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge said. Although that has become the country's rubric, lawmakers in the United States aren't inclined to give business free rein. The Department of Justice last month trumpeted its first online marketing prosecution: th...

The United States Federal Aviation Administration last week came under fire once again for problems with the implementation of its troubled Next Generation Air Transportation System. The NextGen program to overhaul the U.S. national air traffic control system, estimated to cost $29 billion between 2...

A U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled, in essence, that the NSA's collection of metadata concerning Americans' communications is illegal. The court vacated U.S. District Judge William Pauley's December 2013 ruling in ACLU v. Clapper, and remanded the case to the lower court. Pauley had granted the gover...

The U.S. Supreme Court last month granted a request from Spokeo, a data aggregator, to consider whether the legal basis litigants must meet to file a claim in federal court should be broadly or narrowly defined. In the case, Spokeo, Inc. v. Thomas Robins, Thomas Robins is a resident of Virginia acti...

Federal agencies need to change course in handling IT spending quickly, particularly in reversing the inertia behind longstanding conflicts between CIOs and CFOs over the procurement of IT resources, according to IDC Government Insights Research Director Shawn McCarthy. Government IT managers need t...

Two cybersecurity bills approved this week by the U.S. House of Representatives pose a threat to citizens' privacy, according to opponents of the measures. Both bills, H.R. 1560 and H.R. 1731, aim to improve sharing of cybersecurity information between businesses and government agencies. "'Informati...

Comcast has decided to abandon its plan to merge with Time Warner Cable, according to multiple press reports. The company is expected to make a formal announcement on Friday. About a week after reports emerged indicating the U.S. Department of Justice was leaning against Comcast's $45.2 billion doll...

The dynamic world of information technology calls for a future-oriented approach to IT management. However, government agencies too often may be looking backward rather than forward with respect to how they operate IT systems, especially when it comes to investing huge sums of taxpayer money into th...

The European Commission on Wednesday began official antitrust proceedings against Google, alleging abuses of its dominance in Internet search. The EC further opened a probe into Google's Android mobile operating system. In a Statement of Objections sent to Google, the EC notes that its preliminary i...

Several wireless and cable industry groups on Tuesday filed lawsuits challenging the Federal Communications Commission's new open Internet rules. The lawsuits seek to nullify the new rules on the grounds that the FCC exceeded its authority in making them -- most notably by redefining broadband servi...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation this week filed a complaint against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for secretly collecting data on all telephone calls to as many as 116 countries, possibly going back to the 1990s. The suit was filed on behalf of Human Rights Watch. Many of the calls wer...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is at the forefront of regulating the impact of information technology on consumers, is bolstering its technical resource capabilities through a new Office of Technology Research and Investigation, or OTRI. The FTC is concerned about the failure of commercial...

All major U.S. government agencies employ a chief technology officer who generally deals with the management of IT resources including hardware, software, cybersecurity and the mechanics of the digital world. The U.S. Commerce Department has now gone a step further in addressing the challenges prese...