No Furloughs at Customs and Border Protection
IRS Employees to Receive $70 Million in Bonuses
Uncharted Financial Waters at Defense
Postal Service Eyes Cuba
Should Leaders Ever Lie?
Unions: Efficiency Board Is 'Offensive,' 'Unwise'
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.
Smart Disclosure Makes Consumers Happier and Markets Better
June 3, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The government collects reams of information that might benefit citizens, but just opening that data up to the public isn’t enough, according to a task force report released Thursday. Federal agencies should tag any public data releases that might benefit people so consumers and intermediaries such as smart buying applications ...
New Program Will Help Agencies Manage Mobile Devices
May 30, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Agencies looking for tools to securely manage their mobile devices and applications can now choose from among a slate of vendors screened by the General Services Administration, the agency said Thursday. GSA’s Managed Mobility Program offers tools that allow agencies to remotely monitor thousands of cellphones, smartphones, tablets and mobile ...
Cell Providers Must Bounce Back 911 Texts That Don’t Go Through
May 29, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
It’s not universal text-to-911 capacity, but it’s a step in the right direction. The Federal Communications Commission published a final rule on Friday requiring wireless phone providers to send automatic bounce back messages to people who send a text message to 911 in an area that doesn’t support the service. ...
What Will the App Developers Make of This?
May 29, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Some federal agencies have gone above and beyond U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s May 2012 call to open as much of their data as possible to private sector entrepreneurs, according to a Nextgov analysis. Other agencies have barely met minimum open data requirements. The government released a catalog last ...
Tech Roundup
May 28, 2013 Transparency Moves President Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal transfers control of USAspending.gov, the spending transparency website, from the General Services Administration to the Treasury Department. The administration plans to give Treasury $5.5 million to manage the site, previously bankrolled by the congressionally mandated e-government fund, which is devoted to using ...
Open Data Could Aid Spending Transparency
May 24, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
As the Treasury Department examines the next generation of federal financial management systems, one thing it’s keeping an eye out for is how those systems will aid the government’s open data efforts, federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel said Thursday. After the White House published a new executive order and ...
GSA Softened Some Requirements for Bulk Wireless Buying Program
May 24, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The General Services Administration modified the terms of a bulk purchasing program for wireless phone service inked Wednesday after a government auditor found the agency was seeking benefits that weren’t common in commercial wireless plans. Verizon, which was competing to be one of the wireless suppliers under GSA’s Wireless Federal ...
White House Releases New Tools for Digital Strategy Anniversary
May 23, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The White House marked the one-year anniversary of its digital government strategy Thursday with a slate of new releases, including a catalog of government APIs, a toolkit for developing government mobile apps and a new framework for ensuring the security of government mobile devices. Those releases correspond with three main ...
GSA Inks Bulk Wireless Buying Program With Top Telecoms
May 22, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The General Services Administration inked a blanket purchase agreement with four major wireless providers Wednesday that it said would save the government $300 million over five years. The contract with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon will dramatically reduce the number of individual wireless phone plans throughout government and allow agencies ...
NASA Contest Winners Offer Microclimate Data on Earth and Spinach on Mars
May 22, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The “galactic impact” winner of NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge crowd sources micro-climate data, using volunteers and low-cost sensors, to give a much richer portrait of weather patterns across a city. The NASA Greener Cities Project, produced by a team of developers from Gothenburg, Sweden, has the greatest “potential to ...
