Many Feds Face Furloughs Twice
Lawmakers Push Retroactive Furlough Pay
How Long Has the Shutdown Lasted?
In Focus: Who Faces Furloughs?
No TSP Contributions During a Shutdown
How Contractors Might Weather a Shutdown
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Video: The Future of Personal Drone Navigation Is Here
September 13, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Technology is forever trying to stay one step ahead of the spatially challenged, those people who never know exactly where they are on a street grid or how to get where they're going. Have no internal compass? There are maps for that. Befuddled by maps? There are smart phones. Still ...
An App to Nab Jerks Who Illegally Use Disabled Parking
September 9, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The Austin non-profit Parking Mobility argues that one in four cars parked in a disabled parking spot actually shouldn't be there, an abuse so common that law enforcement could never reasonably keep up with it. But while meter maids don't always spot these scofflaws, plenty of other people do (especially ...
The Patent Troll That's Been Bilking Transit Agencies Finally Slinks Away
August 26, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Like just about every other legal settlement in the very strange saga of the patent troll that's been suing public transit agencies, this latest agreement is under wraps as well. But at least we know the outcome is finally a good one for transit agencies and their riders: ArrivalStar, the ...
How Robots in Outer Space Are Influencing the Cars of the Future
August 23, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
NASA engineers referred to the most crucial moments in the Mars Curiosity mission last summer as the "seven minutes of terror." During that time, without the guidance or control of any humans back on earth, the rover had to enter the martian atmosphere, descend from an initial speed of 13,000 ...
The Unsteady Rise of Minority Civil Servants
August 19, 2013 Photographs from the riots that spread across American cities in the 1960s capture a telling detail about the era. The incensed communities, as history well remembers, were black. And, invariably, the police officers were white. The Kerner Commission appointed by Lyndon Johnson to study the causes of these "civil disorders" ...
Watch This Adorable Robot Scoot Down Utility Lines Searching for Damage
August 8, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Nick Morozovsky's above invention, the SkySweeper, has at least two brilliant benefits: The acrobatic robot can shimmy down cables and power lines, inspecting them for damage and beaming data back to utility workers, at considerably less cost than your average unmanned helicopter. And in the process, the colorful little guy ...
Watch the Intricate Patterns of Global Infrastructure Emerge From Geocoded Tweets
August 2, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
You may have seen earlier this summer a series of maps released by Twitter showing thegeography of different cities as revealed by millions of tweets. Such maps of digital information are compelling for the way they also illustrate concrete infrastructure: the road networks around cities, the public parks inside of ...
Twitter Can Tell Whether Your Community Is Happy or Not
July 22, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Governments from the local to the national are increasingly interested in "wellbeing," that subjective notion that's harder to measure than per capita income or GDP, that comes closer to capturing what we more vaguely think of as happiness. We'd all like to have it: quality of life, life satisfaction, fulfillment. ...
Yes, GIS Files Are Public Data, Too
July 11, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Back in 2007, the Sierra Club requested a copy of what it thought was a public record from Orange County, California, covering information like the location and addresses of 640,000 land parcels in the county. The local government held the information in a geographic information system, or GIS database, a ...
Are Civic Hackathons Stupid?
July 8, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
No idea ever gets too popular without a bit of a backlash. And now this is happening to the once-obscure civic hackathon. Just a few years ago, such app-developing marathons were rare, and the idea behind them sounded even stranger: Who would willingly give up a weekend to code municipal ...
