Author Archive

Joab Jackson

Joab Jackson is the senior technology editor for Government Computer News.
Infrastructure

Cloud computing disarms State Department's worries over fast system deployment

Cloud computing offers a tantalizing promise of savings. But how can an agency test new cloud-based services without compromising the mission? The State Department might have found a new technique: Test cloud services with workgroup-portioned projects.

Infrastructure

GSA adds up cloud savings

The General Services Administration estimates it can save as much as $1.7 million a year by switching its USA.gov search Web site to a cloud computing infrastructure. Here's how the numbers break down.

Cybersecurity

Attempted break-ins are, almost, an everyday thing

More than half of federal IT professionals have to deal with some sort of cybersecurity-related incidents at least once a week, and almost a third deal with incidents daily, according to a survey.

Infrastructure

A-Space melds social media and intelligence gathering

With A-Space, a social-networking site for intelligence analysts, the Defense Intelligence Agency wants to extend electronic collaboration into the creation of intelligence.

Digital Government

NASA program proves the benefits of social networking

The NASAsphere pilot program showed how social networking could best be useful -- namely by allowing people to join a conversation and contribute valuable details that might have not surfaced otherwise. Approximately 93 percent of questions posted to the community were answered by users at different NASA centers.

Cybersecurity

Locking down Windows with virtualization

Red Hat thinks it can apply NSA-level security to Windows from the outside.

Management

Warning crooks: Bucks County, Pa., has your number

Seven police departments within Bucks County, Pa. are using software that allow their police officers to share basic criminal information while on their beats.

Infrastructure

White House friends GSA, comments on social media

GSA's Bev Godwin, recently returned from a six-month detail to the White House, talks about the advantages of using social media to connect with the public and balancing the ease of using Web 2.0 tools with the challenges of meeting government regulations.

Infrastructure

Energy labs jostle for top supercomputer honors

Los Alamos National Laboratory falls out of the supercomputer top spot.

Infrastructure

Open-source tools could make it easier to build a hybrid cloud

Government agencies interested in building out privately-run internal clouds have a growing number of open-source tools to work with.

Management

Towns host each other's recovery data

Two Tennessee towns find a COOP solution

Infrastructure

The Web's next act: A worldwide database

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the Web, wants to create a worldwide Web database, and he wants government agencies to lead the way.

Emerging Tech

2 examples of how government data linking can work

At the International Semantic Web Conference, data linking experts gave examples of how linking government data can work — one involving agency spending data and one on sharing IT architectures.

Infrastructure

How the Semantic Web would work

Rendering data into the Resource Description Framework can make it easier to interpose it with other sets of data to create entirely new datasets and visualizations, researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said during a demonstration.

Infrastructure

13 resources for government Linked Data

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Infrastructure

Cloud computing could generate big-time savings

A Booz Allen Hamilton analysis quantifies the potential savings agencies could get on hardware and support costs by moving to cloud computing.

Emerging Tech

IPv4 addresses almost gone

The Internet will run out of unused Internet Protocol version 4 Internet addresses soon, predicts the American Registry for Internet Numbers.

Infrastructure

GSA to debut link shortener by year's end

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Digital Government

Is PDF hurting transparency?

At least one transparency advocacy group says PDF, championed by Adobe, inhibits the easy re-use of data.

Emerging Tech

Plasmonics: A new hope for the post-silicon era

A new way of compressing light could lead to faster computers, scientists predict