Sep 2, 2010 03:39 PM

Contractors deserve a voice in the series of upcoming TechStat review sessions the Office of Management and Budget has launched to fix high-risk IT projects across the federal government.

Aug 27, 2010 12:15 PM

More than half the cyber forensics analysts with government security clearances in the United States work for General Dynamics, which does about $2 billion in annual cybersecurity-related business. Too often, though, what's behind work like that done by General Dynamics is obscured.

Aug 6, 2010 05:07 PM

The news that Google Apps for Government achieved FISMA certification and accreditation makes it easier for Uncle Sam to sign up for Google's cloud services. But what does that milestone actually mean for federal agencies?

Aug 3, 2010 12:54 PM

It's a bad idea, and would be legally tricky. But it's one that's being presented to senior Department of Defense officials by an influential independent advisory board.

Jul 27, 2010 02:52 PM

Google's announcement Monday that it was formally releasing a version of its application suite for government doesn't just represent a Google sales push, but in some ways also indicates that although the federal government is stepping up its cloud computing push, much work remains.

Jul 26, 2010 11:43 AM

Hospital executives aren't just worried about having their own organizations meet the federal government's meaningful use requirements; they're also concerned about their affiliated and owned doctor practices achieving the goals. In fact, many hospitals are assisting (or plan to help) doctors to get on board with e-health records even as those hospitals struggle with their own projects.

Jul 20, 2010 09:07 AM

I'm not a doctor or nurse. Nor am I a hospital administrator, CIO or health IT worker. However, I am a patient. So while the government's long-awaited, meaningful use, stage 1 "core objectives" could very well entail a lot of process changes and costly technology to implement for healthcare providers, from a patient perspective--my perspective--many of the requirements sound reasonable, even commonsensible.

Jul 15, 2010 12:50 PM

The White House on Monday was forced to walk back NASA administrator Charles Bolden's recent remarks to Al Jazeera that one of his top priorities was outreach to Muslim countries, but in fact, the Obama administration has been doing a lot of science and technology outreach to the Islamic world in recent months.

Jul 8, 2010 09:29 PM

The National Health Service in Britain isn’t universally admired for its IT efficiency. But Miles Gray, the urbane hardware solutions architect for the NHS, said at the Cloud Computing World Forum in London that if carefully implemented, the cloud can help the service gain effectiveness and save expenses.

Jun 30, 2010 11:37 AM

When longtime Partners Healthcare CIO John Glaser leaves his position in mid-August to join Siemens Healthcare as CEO of its Health Services Business Unit, he'll be bringing along solid, on-the-ground experience and insightful perspective about the many challenges facing the healthcare industry.

Jun 25, 2010 02:47 PM

The Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill passed out of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday to await consideration by the full Senate. But not everyone is satisfied with what it says.

Jun 24, 2010 07:13 PM

While the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has been moving at a pretty good clip since December when it released the "meaningful use" notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) and certification interim final rule (IFR), right up until the announcement this week of its final temporary certification program, it's apparent just how jammed up its timeline is becoming.

Jun 24, 2010 04:22 PM

When Obama administration budget director Peter Orszag steps down from his post sometime next month, he'll be leaving as one of the tech-savviest budget directors ever. Whether that matters for government IT is a different question.

Jun 23, 2010 09:51 AM

The U.S. Army will discuss plans for integrating cloud computing into its enterprise architecture and broader IT transformation, during an InformationWeek Government Webcast on Weds., June 23. It's a unique opportunity to hear one of the world's largest IT user organizations share its strategy for the emerging cloud model.

Jun 14, 2010 02:43 PM

For many observers of Washington, D.C., the federal government is laser-focused on information technology in ways that it hasn't in the past, from open government to cybersecurity and project management to cloud computing. It's within that context that InformationWeek Government's first live event takes place tomorrow.

Jun 14, 2010 11:37 AM

Technology leaders with the Department of Energy, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and GSA will outline their next steps in cloud computing on June 15 at InformationWeek's Government IT Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C. With new implementations of infrastructure as a service and software as a service, including hosted apps from Google and Microsoft, the feds appear to be shifting aggressively into full-scale adoption of the cloud services model.

Jun 9, 2010 05:08 PM

While the push is on for mass adoption of e-medical record systems in the U.S., clinicians in many other countries are already accustomed to using digital health records in the care of their patients. What can we learn from each other?

Jun 3, 2010 10:17 PM

The upcoming GMIS (Government Management Information Sciences) has teamed up with the University of North Carolina School of Government to offer UNC's CGCIO (Certified Government Chief Information Officers) program. It's an interesting approach to distance learning. Go to one conference, do distance learning for a year, go to the next conference, and receive the certification.

Jun 1, 2010 02:47 PM

Federal IT managers are under pressure to move beyond the evaluation of cloud computing and into actual implementation. Two early adopters in government next week will share their insights on how to do that.

May 25, 2010 03:22 PM

Even at the Gov 2.0 Expo, a government IT event where the geeks seem to outnumber the bureaucrats, I hear the same old refrain about social media and open data from some questioners and attendees: we can't do this, management won't accept it, government regulations make it too hard.

May 24, 2010 04:46 PM

Tim O'Reilly is raising the bar on what he envisions for the open government movement. At this week's Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C., O'Reilly won't be talking merely about government serving as "a platform" -- that was last year's idea -- but about government as "a platform for greatness."

May 21, 2010 08:57 AM

NIST sponsored the Cloud Computing Forum & Workshop; a kickoff event to bring the government closer to adopting common standards around the most critical issues of security, privacy, and data portability in the cloud. FedRAMP and SAJACC were the two big initiatives, but will they help?

May 17, 2010 03:59 PM

Healthcare providers starting from scratch with projects to implement e-health record systems in hopes of cashing in on the government's $20 billion-plus meaningful use incentive programs had better get going.

May 12, 2010 02:51 PM

When it comes to developing the business case for cloud computing at federal agencies, an early pioneer may be the example of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Kenneth Buetow is leading an effort to develop caBIG – an ambitious community cloud platform designed to connect researchers and medical staff across the United States.

May 6, 2010 04:42 PM

The federal government's cloud computing strategy has hit a "snag," reports the Wall Street Journal. That's noteworthy but not surprising, and you can bet there will be more glitches along the way.

Apr 27, 2010 12:28 PM

Government offices may be prone to bureaucracy and inefficiency, but they're also places where technology is being used to drive new ways of working and to deliver better government services. InformationWeek is looking for examples of such tech innovation in local, state, and federal government.

Apr 19, 2010 03:48 PM

Doctors and other eligible healthcare providers, such as dentists and nurse practitioners, who meet the federal government's upcoming meaningful use criteria for health IT could earn up to $44,000 or $63,000 each in incentives depending on the patients (Medicare or Medicaid) they treat. But meeting those criteria won't be easy. A new CSC report lists the top ten challenges healthcare providers face in cashing in on the incentives.

Apr 13, 2010 03:28 PM

A potential gap in the White House's e-mail retention policy has been exposed, ironically by one of the officials overseeing that policy. One congressman wants White House deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin to explain how messages sent to and from White House staff via Web e-mail systems are preserved. The scrutiny comes after McLaughlin apparently used Gmail for some of his own correspondence.

Apr 5, 2010 04:10 PM

InformationWeek's newly released salary survey lends fuel to the politically charged issue of how much government employees are paid. Our data shows that federally employed IT managers and staffers out-earn their private sector counterparts by about 10%.

Mar 30, 2010 04:44 PM

Jas Dhillon, CTO of Taser, explained to me last December how his company has gone from delivering stunning shocks to unruly police suspects to shocking the competition via cloud computing. In continuing to follow Taser's innovative approach, I found a story behind the story of how Taser was able to do this.