Government

The U.S. Department of Labor and Facebook are collaborating on an initiative that they hope will link more unemployed people with potential employers -- a job search page on Facebook. The page also highlights available training programs and educational opportunities. Facebook intends to drive traffi...

Media reform group Free Press has filed a lawsuit against the FCC following the official publication and impending implementation of the commission's Net neutrality rules. Network neutrality is the principle that there should be no restrictions imposed by governments or Internet service providers on...

When the U.S. government goes to the market for information technology, various contracting mechanisms come into play. In fact, as IT evolves, contracting follows, witness recent efforts at the General Services Administration to develop special procurement vehicles for both cloud technology and wire...

Competing for federal contracts is tough -- and protesting the award of a federal contract may be even tougher. But a ruling by a federal agency appears to have improved the ability of all vendors -- not just IT firms -- to utilize key legal channels for protesting the award of federal contracts. On...

The mushrooming use of wireless devices by the general public has spilled over to the federal government as agencies try to match their employees' personal use of mobile equipment with similar devices for use on the job. An emerging issue in federal mobile media use is that there is no overall gover...

Protecting sensitive information in the electronic age is a critical matter -- but the question of what the term "critical" really means has become a vexing problem for lawmakers dealing with cybersecurity issues. Equally challenging is defining the role that government should play in protecting all...

Thousands of federal employees will be using cloud-based email systems as government agencies take their first steps in meeting a mandate to inaugurate cloud services within their information technology systems. The White House has directed 25 large agencies to launch at least one cloud-migration pr...

Federal chief information officers appear to be heeding the unofficial Missouri state slogan: "I'm from Missouri -- Show Me." In a challenging time for procurement of IT systems and services, CIOs are trying to adopt improved methods for acquiring and managing information resources. In a recent surv...

Vendors seeking to provide cloud-based information technology to federal agencies now have some idea of the potential market for their offerings. The General Services Administration has asked vendors to submit bid and qualification information that could lead to their selection as contractors for e...

The Obama administration has come up with a proposal for both improving and simplifying identity protection for consumers using the Internet, computers, and mobile devices. The plan would greatly reduce the need for consumers to use and remember multiple passwords or fill out separate privacy forms ...

The budget deal worked out between the White House and Congress for the 2011 fiscal year will directly impact the federal e-government program. The spending agreement will put a severe crimp in a program that bolsters government transparency efforts, as well as initiatives designed to modernize IT m...

In the competitive federal information technology market, Google thought it was a good idea to challenge the U.S. Interior Department on a potentially rich procurement for hosted messaging services. Google claimed that Interior failed to observe government contracting policies by focusing on Microso...

Vendors competing for federal information technology contracts are required to meet a broad array of standards reflected in much of industry jargon, such as cybersecurity, interoperability and scalability. Technical factors are critical, of course. At a Senate hearing last week, however, it became c...

The U.S. Department of Transportation not only wants to construct highways, subways, railroads and airports for the traveling public, but also wants to build bridges to information technology vendors and providers. The department has just launched a program to engage vendors and help educate DoT emp...

The Obama administration's program to more efficiently utilize information technology has worked -- but not well enough to get a passing grade from the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers are ratcheting up the pressure on federal agencies to improve their IT resource management -- including the way they procur...