“GPO continues to expand into the eBook market and make more Federal titles available to the public,” said Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks. “GPO is fulfilling its mission of Keeping America Informed by providing the public with multiple formats and outlets that they can use to access Federal Government information conveniently and economically.”

GPO also makes eBooks available in partnership with Google’s eBookstore, OverDrive, Ingram, Zinio and other online vendors.

Along with announcing the winners, Mills will discuss how SBA assistance helped small business owners featured in the videos and what inspired their success.

How to join:

• Watch on WhiteHouse.gov/live or the White House Google+ page
• Ask questions and join the discussion on Twitter with the hashtag #WHHangout

“Therefore, while the 2014 process will represent another challenging budget year, it also provides another opportunity to make the hard decisions necessary to spur job creation and job growth and put the Nation on a path of fiscal sustainability,” Zients wrote. “To achieve these goals, your 2014 budget submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should reflect the President’s commitment to cut waste, set priorities among programs, and make targeted investments in critical priorities.”

Agencies should also provide a prioritized list detailing which cuts should be added back, if it is deemed possible. Zients said this would give President Barack Obama “the options needed to make the hard choices necessary to adhere to the [Budget Control Act]‘s discretionary funding levels, invest in priority areas and focus on programs that work.”

OMB is also asking the use of evidence in evaluating the 2014 budget, providing a detailed description of what OMB will be looking for.

Among its many recommendations, OMB suggested:

• Low-cost evaluations using administrative data or new technology;
• Expansion of evaluation efforts within existing programs;
• Using comparative cost-effectiveness data to allocate resources;
• Tying grant awards to evidence;
• Using evidence to inform enforcement of criminal, environmental and workplace-safety laws;
• Appointing a high-level official to strengthen agency evaluation capacity.

According to a draft document obtained by FedScoop dated April 4, 2012, “Building a Future-Ready Digital Government” outlines a plan for delivering better citizen services where agencies will be instructed to execute on a three-layer strategic approach that aims to help government “innovate with less.”

The three “layers” — information, production, presentation — comprise a strategy that decouples content from aesthetics and helps agencies focus on data, content management systems and allows them to more efficiently publish information across multiple platforms, such as websites, mobile devices or application programming interfaces.

The roadmap is divided into four components — “Information-Centric,” “Shared First,” “Customer-Centric,” “Security and Privacy” — and outlines 30 targeted milestones for all federal agencies, the General Services Administration, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“Building for the future requires us to think beyond programmatic lines,” the document states. “To keep up with the pace of change in technology, we need to securely architect our systems for interoperability and openness from conception. We need to have common standards and more rapidly share the lessons learned by early adopters. We need to produce better content and data, and present it through multiple channels in a program and device-agnostic way. We need to adopt a coordinated approach to ensure privacy and security in a digital age.”

The 20-page document also establishes a new Digital Services Innovation Center inside GSA that will “work with agencies to establish shared solutions and training to support both infrastructure and content needs.”

Examples of these services, according to the draft, include “source code sharing tools, video captioning, language translation, usability and accessibility testing, certification for browser compatibility, web hosting, and security architectures.”

The Digital Services Innovation Center will collaborate with a Digital Services Advisory Group comprised of members of the Federal CIO Council, Federal Web Managers Council and federal agency leaders.

Sources tell FedScoop that GSA Mobile Director Gwynne Kostin is likely to lead the new center.

As indicated in the draft, the roadmap unifies objectives outlined in the Obama Administration executive orders “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service” (13571) and “Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government” (13576), as well as feedback derived from mobile and shared first policy task force initiatives and crowdsourced ideation platforms.

The U.S. Army Reserve recently opened its first fully functional solar-powered training facility in Illinois as part of the Army Green Initiative.

The 60,000 square foot training center cost $36 million and will be home to 600 quartermaster and transportation personnel.

Ohm, currently a professor at the University of Colorado, is a former federal computer crimes prosecutor and an expert in information privacy.

“Paul’s keen insights on how the law applies to technology and privacy issues will be invaluable to the FTC’s work in these areas,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “We have been fortunate in bringing in a series top-notch experts to advise us on cutting-edge issues and enhance our in-house expertise. We look forward to having Paul on board.”

Ohm’s bio:

Paul Ohm is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. He writes in the areas of information privacy, computer crime law, intellectual property, and criminal procedure. Through his scholarship and outreach, Professor Ohm is leading efforts to build new interdisciplinary bridges between law and computer science.

Before joining the University of Colorado, in 2006, Professor Ohm worked for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section as an Honors Program trial attorney. Before that, he served as law clerk to Judge Betty Fletcher of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Mariana Pfaelzer of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. He attended the UCLA Law School where he served as Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review and received the Benjamin Aaron and Judge Jerry Pacht prizes.

Prior to law school, Professor Ohm worked for several years as a computer programmer and network systems administrator, and before that he earned undergraduate degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from Yale University. Even today, he continues to write thousands of lines of python and perl code each year. Professor Ohm blogs at Freedom to Tinker and has guest blogged at Concurring Opinions and The Volokh Conspiracy.

Greg Jaczko (Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Greg Jaczko announced Monday he will step down as head of the agency once a successor is confirmed.

“After an incredibly productive three years as Chairman, I have decided this is the appropriate time to continue my efforts to ensure public safety in a different forum,” he said. “This is the right time to pass along the public safety torch to a new chairman who will keep a strong focus on carrying out the vital mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

Full transcript:

After nearly eight years on the Commission, I am announcing my resignation as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, effective upon the confirmation of my successor. My responsibility and commitment to safety will continue to be my paramount priority after I leave the Commission and until my successor is confirmed.

After an incredibly productive three years as Chairman, I have decided this is the appropriate time to continue my efforts to ensure public safety in a different forum. This is the right time to pass along the public safety torch to a new chairman who will keep a strong focus on carrying out the vital mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

During this last year alone, the agency has responded with an impressive focus on safety under my leadership to a number of diverse challenges including the accident at the Fukushima Da-ichi reactors in Japan, and a number of severe incidents at reactors in the United States ranging from flooding, an earthquake and tornados to damaged plant structures and steam generator problems. In addition to this vigilant oversight, together we identified and began to implement lessons learned from Fukushima and completed our rigorous safety reviews for the first new reactor licenses in 30 years.

Throughout my time on the Commission as both Chairman and Commissioner, the agency finalized regulations to ensure new reactors are designed to withstand an aircraft impact, completed the development and implementation of a safety culture policy statement, enhanced our focus on openness and transparency, and enhanced awareness of and worked to resolve some of the most long-standing generic issues facing the nuclear industry, including sump strainer issues and fire protection. Beyond the power reactor work, substantial progress was made in establishing a more transparent and effective oversight program for fuel cycle facilities. In addition, radioactive sources of concern are now fully protected with our new security regulations and source tracking system. We stand as a stronger and more decisive regulator now because of these years of efforts. I am truly humbled by the agency’s success.

Serving the American people as the Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been an honor and privilege. The mission of this agency – protecting people and the environment, and providing for the common defense and security – could not be more clear, or more critical. Our collective focus on that mission was, I believe, one of the primary reasons the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was one of the best places to work in the federal government throughout my tenure. The highly talented and dedicated professional staff, including dozens who have served on my personal staff over the years, have been instrumental in fulfilling the agency’s mission.

I will always be grateful for the opportunity of having served alongside the staff for all of these years, and for all that we accomplished together. I am looking forward to bringing all I have learned from my work and focus on safety at this agency with me as I move forward.

Source: Data.gov

Data.gov celebrated its third anniversary on Monday.

“Over the past year alone, Data.gov has not only added more datasets, it has added more opportunities for interaction with them, and more opportunities for collaborating and sharing information both nationwide and around the world,” the site said in a post announcing its anniversary.

“These communities bring together experts from the public, academia, industry, and government to address the national challenges in energy, health, and law, and this year new communities launched on safety, education, manufacturing, oceans, ethics, developers, and business,” the site said. “From organizing challenges to inspire new innovations to supporting code-a-thons in cities, to building platforms for entrepreneurs to find new technologies and grow their businesses—Data.gov is putting federal data to work for Americans.”

The site now includes nearly 450,000 data sets from 172 federal agencies after launching with only 47 data sets back in 2009.

Data.gov is managed by the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies in collaboration with the U.S. chief information and technology officers.

From the posting:

This position is in the Office of the Chief Information Officer which serves as a principal advisor to the Secretary and Senior Officials on matters related to Departmental information technology.  The Office governs and manages the network infrastructure and operations of the Department.

The Director of Information Assurance Services will be the representative of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and will be designated as the Department of Education’s Chief Information Security Officer per the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

The Director is responsible for implementing all of the Department of Education FISMA requirements including developing and maintaining an agency-wide Information Assurance program; developing and maintaining information assurance security policies, procedures, and control techniques to address all applicable requirements for the information assurance program; training and overseeing personnel with significant responsibilities for information assurance with respect to such responsibilities; and assisting senior agency officials concerning their FISMA responsibilities.

The Director will establish the organization structure and management systems required for threat identification, risk management, crisis management, employee accountability, and security of Education information and IT systems.  The Director must effectively communicate risk, opportunity, and cost to the CIO in a fashion that easily leads to decisions.

Provides leadership for the Department-wide IT security certification and accreditation program, including periodic risk assessments of all major applications and general support systems per OMB Circular A-130 and applicable guidance as promulgated by the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST).

Administers the Department-wide employee security education training, and awareness program dealing with information assurance. Represents the Department and the CIO at meetings and briefings with security representatives from business and interest groups and other Federal agencies.

Department of Homeland Security Chief Technology Officer for Cybersecurity and Communications Peter Fonash shares his current focus with FedScoopTV.