Government

The policy debate that has been raised by the Obama administration's healthcare reform program continues to smolder -- and even break into heated rhetoric when political supporters and critics of "Obamacare" get into the fray. However, in the three years or so that the program has been under way, it...

A U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner is urging consumers to take more control over their data. The call to action comes as revelations that the NSA is spying on Americans to an unprecedented degree continue to shake the country. Unease has been mounting over the amount of data companies are handing ove...

In a drive to reduce government computing costs, federal agencies have been required to cut and consolidate data centers. So far, agencies have reduced hundreds of operational centers -- but they still have fallen short of a five-year target set when the consolidation program was launched in Februar...

The GAO earlier this month found two key deficiencies in a cloud contract that the CIA intended to award to AWS. The GAO decision was prompted by a protest against the contract filed by IBM. GAO is the designated federal agency for handling challenges to federal contracts. The proposed contract prov...

In the wake of recent revelations that the government has been tapping their networks to monitor users, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft in recent days have all published more information about those monitoring requests. Facebook, for example, on Friday reported that for the six months ending December ...

Verizon is on the hot seat. It is at the center of the story about releasing customer information to the U.S. National Security Agency. While Verizon does make information about every call available to the NSA, the actual conversation is still private -- for now, at least. To date, Verizon has been ...

Major IT companies are hoping to seize the moment in an effort to restrain what they consider to be an abuse of intellectual property rights by so-called patent trolls. In a recent flurry of activity, lawmakers and the Obama administration have taken steps to support large IT companies seeking paten...

Private companies that do business with the U.S. government have a big stake in how federal agencies regulate the cybersecurity elements of federal contracts. As cyberthreats increase, the government is attempting to keep pace by upgrading cyber-requirements. The government has now launched a progra...

The Obama administration on Tuesday targeted patent trolls with a number of initiatives aimed at curbing activity it blames for stymieing innovation in America. The initiatives include five executive orders and seven legislative recommendations. Patent trolls have been accused of abusing the system ...

Making money from accessing the vast amounts of information collected by the U.S. government has been the basis for many commercial enterprises. The widespread use of Census Bureau data alone has been a great business resource for decades -- with a relatively new twist as a component of Google Maps....

The U.S. government is awash in data that is collected, stored and disseminated by federal agencies to fulfill their public service missions. However, the existence of huge amounts of information within the government presents a major profit-making opportunity for commercial firms. The Obama adminis...

Government IT managers will no doubt spend every nickel of the Obama administration's 2014 proposed IT budget of $81 billion. They will also likely be dissatisfied with the business environment that affects IT acquisition and deployment. For starters, the proposed 2014 budget for IT, which actually ...

U.S. government employees led a big jump in the use of technology to work from home or other locations, instead of their normal offices, during an annual telecommuting exercise in March. For employers and vendors, the message seems clear that the market for telework and mobile workplace equipment a...

Protecting Internet information has become a costly enterprise, with worldwide spending on security estimated at $60 billion in 2012. That figure will grow to $86 billion by 2016, according to a Gartner study. To help ensure that those investments are being spent wisely -- and to keep technology a s...

If Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray ever imagined that House of Representatives Republicans would eventually warm up to the bureau, that hope has surely been dashed by now. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, on Monday sent a...