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Bob Brewin

Editor at Large Bob Brewin joined Government Executive in April 2007, bringing with him more than 20 years of experience as a journalist focusing on defense issues and technology. Bob covers the world of defense and information technology for Nextgov, and is the author of the “What’s Brewin” blog.
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VA National Cellular Contract Mystery Solved

May 17, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow When the Veterans Affairs Department awarded its $200 million national cellular contract on May 9, two key players -- Sprint and T-Mobile -- were mysteriously missing from a lineup that included AT&T Mobility; Verizon Wireless; and A&T Systems, a small business located in Silver Spring, Md. Adam Nouravarsani, the telecommunications ...

Navy Wants Some Good Anti-Terrorist Computer Games

May 16, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow The Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., wants to acquire a bunch of anti-terrorist games that can run on a variety of gadgets, including computers and iThings to support -- I’m not making this up -- its Combatting Terrorism Fellowship program. Types of games NPS is looking for include: Terrorist ...

Military Commands Will Tap AirWatch to Manage Mobile Devices

May 16, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow To manage and secure Apple iPads used by B-2 nuclear bomber crews, the Air Force Global Strike Command quietly selected the same mobile device management software used by the Veterans Affairs Department. Global Strike Command, which manages the nation’s fleet of nuclear bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, will piggyback on ...

VA Takes a Brute Force Approach to the Claims Backlog

May 15, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow The Veterans Department has mandated overtime for its 15,000 employees who process disability claims in order to whittle down the backlog, which has drawn heat from Congress, veterans groups and even comedian Jon Stewart on the “Daily Show.” The mandatory overtime will run through Sept. 30, the end of the ...

Lawsuit Says IRS Illegally Seized 60 Million Health Records

May 15, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow This story was updated at 4:12 p.m. A lawsuit filed in California accuses the Internal Revenue Service of illegal seizure of 60 million electronic health care records belonging to 10 million Americans. The suit filed in the Superior Court of San Diego by Robert Barnes, a Malibu lawyer representing a ...

House Spending Panel Backs Joint Defense-VA Electronic Health Record

May 15, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow This story has been updated. The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday solidly backed development of a single, joint electronic health record for the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments in its preliminary version of VA’s fiscal 2014 spending bill. The committee provided $344 million in development funds for the integrated electronic ...

My Sidewalk Coverage of the iEHR Conference

May 14, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow This Wednesday and Thursday the Defense Strategies Institute plans to hold a conference on the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments’ planned integrated electronic health record (iEHR) that, as I reported, is open to vendors who want to peddle their wares to the government but not to the media. So many ...

Intel Research Arm Wants to Tap 'Media in the Wild' for Facial Recognition

May 13, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Human eyeballs, not fancy facial recognition software, helped identify the Boston Marathon bombers, due to the fact that the software works best on well-posed, frontal facial photos taken for identification purposes. The Intelligence Research Projects Agency says it wants “to dramatically improve the current performance of face recognition tools by ...

Army Awards $156.6 Million Anti-Nerve Gas Agent Contract

May 13, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow This story has been updated with additional details and background. The Army has awarded a $156.6 million contract to the DynPort Vaccine division of Computer Sciences Corp for development of an anti-nerve gas agent that protects against a wide range of nerve gases for up to 60 days. The agent ...

Who Wants a Nondeployable Helicopter?

May 9, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Who wants a nondeployable helicopter? Not the Army, which views its fleet of Lakota choppers as operational only in “permissive” environments such as the United States, according to Lt. Gen. William Phillips, the Army’s uniformed acquisition chief, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. In 2006 the Army awarded ...