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.
Measuring Government Social Media Part II: We the People
March 15, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
While we’re on the subject of measuring government social media engagement, it’s worth drawing attention to a few stats on the petition site We the People that White House Digital Strategy Director Macon Phillips cited in a recent blog post. According to a White House survey of people who had ...
Updated IT Reform Act Would Make CIOs Presidential Appointees
March 14, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
This story has been updated. An updated draft of legislation to fundamentally reform how the government purchases information technology gives agency-level chief information officers more authority but scales back some earlier proposals to centralize purchasing for major IT products and services. Most notably, the revised bill, proposed by Rep. Darrell ...
How to Use Social Media in Government: A Response to Cory Booker
March 13, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Newark Mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker may be the hottest thing in government social media now but the General Services Administration’s social media guru Justin Herman is no slouch either. So when Booker told an audience at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, on Monday that the ...
Measuring Open Government
March 12, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Crowing about the success of a program or initiative doesn’t mean much if you don’t have hard numbers to back up those claims. That’s a lesson every field learns eventually and most have to relearn on a regular basis. With that in mind I wanted to draw attention to a ...
Bipartisan Bill Aims to Beef Up FOIA Compliance
March 12, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The Republican and Democrat sitting atop Congress’ top watchdog panel unveiled joint proposed legislation Tuesday that would mandate a single online portal for all Freedom of Information Act requests across government. The 2013 FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act would direct officials to look closely at FOIA Online, a 5-month old ...
Payroll and HR Shared Services Center May Go Paperless
March 11, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The Agriculture Department’s National Finance Center is considering purchasing a new system that will allow it to convert to an entirely digital workflow, solicitation documents show. The National Finance Center, based in New Orleans, is an Office of Personnel Management-designated shared services center for human resources. That means it manages ...
New iPhone App May be Fishing for Feds’ TSP Info
March 11, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Officials are urging federal employees to steer clear of a new third-party application that may be fishing for personal information about their Thrift Savings Plan government retirement accounts. “A free iPhone App, TSP Funds, currently being offered through the Apple App store asks TSP participants for their account login information,” ...
Internet Censorship Is a Trade Issue Too
March 8, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Correction: This article has been updated to correctly state the location of Friday's speech. Government Internet censorship doesn’t just hurt people inside a country; it may also damage companies outside that country, a former White House official said Friday. When China and other nations block the websites of U.S. companies ...
It's Not Enough to Close a Few Data Centers; Those Left Must Become More Efficient
March 7, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The Office of Management and Budget wants to focus less on simply closing federal data centers and more on making sure the government’s existing data center stock is operating as efficiently as possible, an OMB official said Thursday. That’s why federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s office plans to roll ...
Japan Is the Most Cloud-Friendly Nation
March 7, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Japan leads the world in creating a legal and security environment that’s conducive to cloud computing, with Australia, the United States, Germany and Singapore not far behind, according to a global scorecard the software industry group BSA released Thursday. The report focused on countries’ legal and regulatory protections related to ...
