Federal Eye: Obama’s Cabinet Heads: Players or Props?

As President Obama spent much of his week touting the benefits of the economic stimulus package, he seemed to use his cabinet secretaries and some well-timed events as props and backdrops in what one might call “Obama Stimulus Roadshow.” Some examples: MONDAY • During a ceremony announcing his intention to nominate Kansas Gov. Kathleen SebeliusRead… Read more »

Memo to Our New Federal Chief Information Officer

By Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D. Vivek Kundra, Washington DC’s own CIO, has been appointed Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO). According to a Washington Technology article, Kundra “… plans to make the massive volumes of government data that isn’t sensitive available to the public through a new Web site, www.data.gov. With more data available to theRead… Read more »

Open Source Government Transparency Projects

A whole cadre of folks inside and outside government are awash with figuring out how to address the government transparency question brought on by the President’s Transparency and Open Government memo. At the end of last weekend’s TransparencyCamp, Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs, brought up the issue of bringing open source developers into theRead… Read more »

The President’s Spending Plan

On Wednesday, Stan Collender, author of the popular “Fiscal Fitness” column for Roll Call, and partner at Qorvis Communications, gave AABPA members his thoughts on the President’s budget summary released last week. Stan pointed out that the summary is not a document for budget geeks and beltway insiders hoping for data to scrutinize and pickRead… Read more »

Role of cloud computing, web 2.0, and web 3.0 semantic technologies in an era of transparent, collaborative, connected governance?

Brand Niemann (EPA) and I recently organized a a one-day conference / workshop held in Washington, DC on February 17, 2009 on the role of information and communication technologies in an era of connected governance. This wiki page contains the program and all proceedings including presentations, videos, and handouts from the event: From E-Gov toRead… Read more »

Finally on Twitter

I first heard about Twitter through a friend of my wife several months ago and thought it was stupid. I’m a technically savvy guy, but I just didn’t see the need to post my every move for all of my “followers” to see and I really don’t care to get an update each time oneRead… Read more »

Federal Eye: Report Details Fraud and Abuse at TVA

A two-year review by the inspector general’s office at the Tennessee Valley Authority finds that staffers made millions of dollars of questionable purchases on credit cards provided by the government-backed corporation. Staffers spent more than $360,000 over two years on electronic items including X-Boxes and TiVos for an employee awards program and made questionable purchasesRead… Read more »