|
|
|
FCW Download and Table of Contents
Published September 24, 2007
Print and online news archive
Community.gov: Picture yourself here
DOWNLOAD
|
FCW Download and Table of Contents
Last issue's newsPrint and online news archiveCommunity.gov: Picture yourself hereFEATURESMarrying data and security Partial solutions exist for providing persistent protection, but getting all of them to work together will be the next challenge Read all three articles in FCW's special series on security. …
|
FEATURES
|
Marrying data and security
By John Moore
Partial solutions exist for providing persistent protection, but getting all of them to work together will be the next challenge
|
|
Ethics: Rules vs. common sense?
By Matthew Weigelt
Industry executives worry that heightened ethics sensitivity will stymie productive and necessary relations between government and industry
|
|
Managing human capital
Management isn't easy, and management in the government is even more complex. The latest example of that is the Government Accountability Office. Last week, GAO analysts voted 897 to 445 to unionize, joining the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. Of course, that comes on the heels of GAO being named as the second best place to work in government by the Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of Public…
|
|
The Buzz Contenders
#2: Karen Evans on securityCan the federal government be shooting itself in the foot by publishing its secure Windows desktop configuration standard and the protocol for automatically monitoring that configuration? Some folks attending the Annual Security Automation Conference and Workshop last week in Gaithersburg, Md., said they were worried about that possibility. But Karen Evans, administrator for e-government and information technology at the Office of Management and Budget, said she had bigger worries. "It is…
|
NEWS
|
News briefs
EDS to run data center for DHSEDS will run the second of two large data centers for the Homeland Security Department under an $800 million, eight-year contract the department awarded the company last week, according to EDS and industry sources. "It's a very important contract to us," EDS spokesman Brad Bass said, adding that neither the company nor the department had yet announced the award. "We would like to talk about it, but we are restricted…
|
|
Hacking into EHRs is too easy, group says
By Nancy Ferris
Hackers can access many electronic health records and modify them without the knowledge of the software’s legitimate users, according to a new study by an organization concerned about EHR vulnerabilities.
|
|
Circuit
Security finalistsThe International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, a nonprofit group for information security professionals, announced the finalists of its 4th annual Government Information Security Leadership Awards. (ISC)2 is giving three awards in three different categories. The 2007 final nominees are: Category: Nonmanagerial IT Security Professional Anthony Celata, designated approving authority, Trojan Network Control Center, Army Information Security Command. Cheri Gatland-Lightner, project manager, Office of the Chief Information Security Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health and…
|
COMMENT
MANAGEMENT
|
Telework and the boomers' coming retirement tsunami
By Ben Bain
Federal agencies are bracing for a massive exit of experience and talent in the next few years as baby boomers, who make up a large share of the federal workforce, begin to retire. Managers hope that at least some of them will forgo the golf course for the telework option and will stick around to teach younger employees the tricks of the trade. Many managers who will be eligible for retirement in the next five…
|
|
GSA hopes other agencies will follow suit
By Ben Bain
In addition to its responsibility for meeting internal telework goals, the General Services Administration, with the Office of Personnel Management, is responsible for leading federal telework efforts. In that role, GSA runs 14 telework centers in the Washington metropolitan area where approved federal employees can use government-issued computers. Officials are discussing the possibility of running a line into a GSA center that would enable employees to access the Defense Department's secure Secret Internet Protocol Router Network.…
|
|
Questions and more questions
By Ben Bain
As an increasing number of federal employees work from home, more administrative and legal questions concerning responsibility and oversight are likely to arise. Michael Castagna, chief information security officer at the Commerce Department, shared a few of those questions at a conference sponsored by the Telework Exchange. How does an agency's help desk support teleworkers who are using home PCs? If an employee does something illegal on a home PC during work hours when…
|
|
GSA's 50 percent solution: How to get there
By Richard W. Walker
How can the General Services Administration reach its goal of having 50 percent of eligible employees teleworking at least one day a week within three years?
|
|
Life in the pretelework days
By Ben Bain
“I’m a dinosaur,” said Rita Franklin, the Energy Department’s deputy chief human capital officer, reflecting on what working life was like when she began her civil-service career in the late 1970s. At the beginning, the notion of telework was unimaginable.
|
TECHNOLOGY
|
Technology briefs
Watch list hobbled by data errorsFour years after the federal government launched the interagency Terrorist Screening Center and assigned it the daunting task of harmonizing more than a dozen separate watch lists, balky technology and quirky business practices still combine to introduce gaps and errors in the critical database. For example, several known or suspected terrorists were not properly identified in the Terrorist Screening Database, including 20 watch list records that were not made available…
|
|
DARPA leads new AI research
By Brian Robinson
Computer scientists have long sought to develop computers that can match the subject expertise that humans acquire during a career or a lifetime. Despite intensive work with expert systems and other forms of artificial intelligence, researchers have discovered that building a computer that can learn like a person is more difficult that they expected. Now, with a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program called Bootstrapped Learning, the agency wants to generate renewed interest in achieving…
|
PROCUREMENT
POLICY
|
General asks for shakeup in DOD's C2 programs
By Sebastian Sprenger
Officials spearheading an experimental effort to streamline management of the military's information technology capabilities want more than $1 billion in adjustments to the fiscal 2009 budget request for command-and-control (C2) systems. Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Hostage, who leads the requirements and integration directorate at the Joint Forces Command, said he submitted seven program change requests to senior Defense Department officials at the end of August. Hostage submitted his recommendations to the high-powered Deputy's Advisory Working…
|
FLIPSIDE
|
FCW Time Machine: 2002 | A good problem to have
People have plenty to say about the General Services Administration's schedule program, but one thing is for sure: Since procurement reforms kicked in, the schedules have consistently attracted more and more buying from agencies, indicating that GSA must be doing something right. So much so, in fact, that GSA's income from the fees it charges to agencies to buy from the schedules has far surpassed the costs for GSA to run the schedules and manage…
|
|
|
|
|
