The Vast Majority of IRS Employees Aren't Corrupt
GSA Mishandled Executive Bonuses
EIG 2013 as Told by Your Tweets
Infographic: Nominee Limbo
Will You Be Furloughed?
Boldly Go Where No Fed's Gone Before
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Joseph Marks
Staff Correspondent
Joseph Marks covers government technology issues, social media, Gov 2.0 and global Internet freedom for Nextgov. He previously reported on federal litigation and legal policy for Law360 and on local, state and regional issues for two Midwestern newspapers. He also interned for Congressional Quarterly’s Homeland Security section and the Associated Press’s Jerusalem Bureau. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in international affairs from Georgetown.
We the People petitioners typically wait three months for a reply
January 23, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
On average, it takes White House officials nearly three months to pen responses to citizen petitions filed on its We the People website, once those petitions cross the threshold for an official reply. The average wait time dropped markedly, though, after the White House raised its threshold for a petition ...
An entire Senate on Twitter. Really.
January 23, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Twitter entered inauguration weekend with a couple of big political announcements: Not only would First Lady Michelle Obama take up the micro blogging site during her husband’s second term, but all 100 senators in the 113th Congress would be tweeting too. That’s a huge increase from the opening of the ...
Budget authority and executive titles come in for scrutiny in IT reform debate
January 22, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Government chief information officers without authority over their agencies’ technology spending are like “toothless tigers,” former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., testified Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee he once chaired. The committee’s current chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., plans to introduce legislation this Congress that would give ...
Ombudsman helps keep the peace during the FOIA process
January 18, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
When things go sour between an agency’s Freedom of Information office and someone seeking documents, the problem is as likely to be a communication breakdown as it is to be about differing interpretations of FOIA law, open government officials said Thursday. That’s where the Office of Government Information Services, a ...
FOIA Online gets mixed marks at three months
January 18, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
A new digital system for managing Freedom of Information Act requests to the Commerce Department and a handful of other federal agencies deserves an A+ for making it easier to file FOIAs, Amy Bennett, assistant director of the transparency group Open The Government, said on Thursday. FOIA Online deserves a ...
CIO Council to agency IT shops: Get smart on social media and open government
January 17, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
This story has been updated. Every federal agency’s information technology shop should include workers with expertise in social media, open government and cloud computing. That's according to new guidance from the federal Chief Information Officers Council. The updated Clinger-Cohen Core Competencies and Learning Objectives released by the council Thursday said ...
New tactics emerge on We the People
January 16, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Is We the People an organizing tool or a communication tool? That’s a question I’m still trying to figure out more than 16 months after the White House petition site launched and in the wake of a number of high profile petitions and responses (read: secession and gun control) in ...
Innovation fellows help you navigate the federal Web
January 16, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
A team of Presidential Innovation Fellows tasked with making the federal Web presence more navigable launched the beta version of a new toolbar Wednesday focused on doing just that. The MyGov Discovery Bar will slide into view when users reach the bottom of a federal Web page suggesting related government ...
White House raises We the People response threshold to 100,000 signatures
January 16, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The White House raised the threshold for petitioners on its We the People website to receive an official administration response from 25,000 to 100,000 signatures late Tuesday. The move comes a few days after the administration responded to several petitions calling for states to secede from the union in the ...
Government data goes public
January 15, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
When the real estate sites Trulia and Zillow both made initial public offerings this summer it was more than just a victory for the two companies, federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel said Tuesday. It was also a victory for the government data that underlies those two sites, he said ...
