Government/ Industries

IT in Government Topic Center

Government IT: How federal, state and local governments use technology

Business owner sentenced for E-Rate fraud

The former owner of two Illinois technology companies was sentenced to 30 months in prison for participating in a conspiracy to defraud a U.S. Federal Communications Commission program to help schools and libraries in poor areas connect to the Internet, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
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FBI reveals 1991 probe of Steve Jobs

The FBI today made public a background probe of Steve Jobs conducted in 1991, when he was being considered by the George H. W. Bush administration for a spot on the President's Export Council.

Weave open-source data visualization offers power, flexibility

The project, three years in the making and still in beta, is just starting to be rolled out by government and planning agencies.

Half of Fortune 500 firms infected with DNS Changer

Half of all Fortune 500 companies and major U.S. government agencies own computers infected with the "DNS Changer" malware that redirects users to fake websites and puts organizations at risk of data theft, a security company said today.

Tiff over LightSquared reveals odd partnership

LightSquared founder Philip Falcone's response to ethics allegations by a U.S. senator sheds some light on a strange chapter in the carrier's ongoing bid to build a controversial cellular data network.

White House: No comment on call to investigate MPAA for SOPA bribery

The U.S. White House has declined to respond to a petition calling for authorities to investigate the head of the Motion Picture Association of America for bribery related to comments he made following successful online protests against two controversial copyright enforcement bills.

Adscend denies Facebook, AG allegations

Adscend Media, the defendant in lawsuits filed this week by Facebook and the Washington attorney general, on Friday denied the allegations in the complaints and shifted blame to its affiliates.

White House CTO Chopra leaving his post

Aneesh Chopra, who has served for the past two-and-a-half years as the first CTO for the U.S. government, is stepping down in early February.

Google says privacy change won't affect government users

Google today dismissed concerns by a former senior federal IT official that its controversial new privacy policy would create problems for customers of Google Apps for Government.

Lawmakers question Google on its new privacy practices

Google's decision this week to share user data across its online services has caught the attention of eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives, with the lawmakers asking whether the changes will compromise privacy.

Out with SOPA, in with cloud

Count us among the critics of SOPA and PIPA, the two ill-conceived bills that were intended to protect American firms against copyright infringement by foreign websites.

10 IT news stories to expect in 2012

Well, we erred in our 2011 predictions in not repeating a 2010 forecast that Carol Bartz would be ousted as Yahoo CEO -- it was bound to happen, we just called that one too early. Then again, we also predicted last year that Oracle would buy Salesforce.com and have decided not to repeat ourselves this year, so we'll see if we were just ahead on that one, too. Meanwhile, these are our predictions for the next 12 months:

15 top quotes of 2011

As another year draws to a close, we look back on the IT-related comments that stuck with us.

NASA prepares for Mars Rover launch: Here's how you can watch

On Friday, at 10:25 am Eastern, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will rocket into the sky on a 191-foot-tall Atlas V rocket and begin its mission to Mars. NASA is making its final preparations for the first launch opportunity, and tweeters are preparing for a two-day launch tweetup.

On the front line against the next Stuxnet

Last year's Stuxnet worm showed that the machines that run our industrial systems can be brought down with a cyberattack. Meet the people who will get the call when the next big worm strikes.

Are certifications less crucial for healthcare IT jobs?

As regulatory requirements push healthcare organizations to roll out new technology, CIOs, CTOs and other managers see more value in some certifications than others. But they're also looking for 'hybrid IT employees' who can translate technology into business value.

Feds Begin Race to the Cloud

Tasked with adopting cloud computing as a first option in all IT projects, federal agencies are grappling with the hard realities of making that policy work.

Linux at 20: New challenges, new opportunities

The rise of cloud computing and mobility could elevate the open source OS to a level of unprecedented dominance

Monkey business with a camera

Never mind the infinite monkey theorem reproducing Shakespeare, what we were asked to ponder last week is a lone black macaque commandeering a photographer's unattended camera to shoot a few amusing pictures ... and touch off a copyright debate in the process.

Feds begin race to the cloud

Tasked with adopting cloud computing as a first option in all IT projects, federal agencies are grappling with the hard realities of making that policy work.