As CEO of Amida, Levin will concentrate on providing industry, nonprofits and the public sector with data security — including identity registration and management, credentialing and authentication and policy-based access and control — for information services in the health, education and energy sectors. The company will help these groups design, architect and position digital assets in addition to creating and deploying data-centric services.

Levin launched Amida alongside Dmitry Kachaev, a civic hacker who was in the inaugural class of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program and worked on Project Open Data. Kachaev now serves as Amida’s technical co-founder.

In addition to Levin, VA has seen a string of senior technology officials depart their posts this year including W. Scott Gould, former deputy secretary, John Gingrich, former chief of staff, and Roger Baker, former chief information officer and assistant secretary in the Office of Information and Technology.

Baker has similarly moved his skills into the private sector, having joined Agilex as chief strategy officer.

The post Former VA CTO launches data security company appeared first on FedScoop.

Dan Tangherlini, acting administrator at the General Services Administration, seen here at FedTalks on June 12. (Photo: FedScoop)

Could it be smooth sailing for Dan Tangherlini to become the permanent head at the General Services Administration? Judging from today’s confirmation hearing, the answer is yes.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held the hearing June 18 for the nomination of Tangherlini as GSA administrator. He has been serving in acting capacity since April 2012.

“GSA deserves a leader who understands the complexity of these challenges,” committee Chairman Thomas Carper, D-Del., said in his opening remarks. “He is the logical choice to be confirmed as administrator.”

Tangherlini has extensive experience serving the public, a commitment he says is inspired by his father, and his dedication to public service. Tangherlini’s career began at the Office of Management and Budget, and from there he went on to work at the Transportation Department, the D.C. government, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and most recently prior to GSA, the Treasury Department.

GSA came under scrutiny this past year when a report from the inspector general revealed the agency spent more than $800,000 on a 2010 conference in Las Vegas.

During his 15 months at GSA, Tangherlini has eliminated 50 conferences, saving $28 million.

“We sat here eight years ago talking about the GSA, and it doesn’t seem like we’ve made any progress since then,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said. “Some of the pains we’ve felt from the sequester wouldn’t be here if we had already solved some of the issues with the GSA.”

GSA has struggled in large part due to the lack of leadership, as pointed out by several committee members. In the last eight years, GSA has had eight different leaders; the last two resigned after scandals in their administration were made public.

In Tangherlini’s short time at GSA, he has worked to cultivate a culture of continuous evaluation and improvement, according to his opening statement. In the past fiscal year, GSA reduced its spending on travel, IT devices and printing, ending the year’s expenses 43 percent lower than the previous fiscal years. In cutting travel alone, GSA saved $28 million. In addition, Tangherlini slashed bonuses throughout GSA by 64 percent, and eliminated them completely in the administrator’s office.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, D-N.H, called on a drastic need for a change of culture in GSA, highlighting the corruption found in the June inspector general report.

In response to that report, Tangherlini sent out a joint letter to the organization, urging employees who witnesses misconduct to report it to their coworkers, superiors and most important, the attorney general.

Another measure Tangherlini took was launching the “Great Ideas Hunt” program. The program encouraged employees at GSA to suggest ideas, and more than 600 ideas and 20,000 comments resulted from it. Implementing these in the past 14 months has resulted in $5 million in savings.

Tangherlini expressed optimism about the work his agency has done in the last year, and his plans if confirmed as GSA administrator.

“I hope the information presented to you today is suggestive of what we can do to make GSA a fantastic agency, better than it already is,” he said.

The chairman said he was “very confident” Tangherlini would be confirmed.

The post Tangherlini likely to be confirmed as GSA administrator appeared first on FedScoop.

The Washington Harbour is a hot spot for summer in D.C. (Photo: Wikipedia)

FedScoop’s Social Studies keeps tabs on the latest lifestyle news and events around the Beltway.

Sailing on the Chesapeake. Sunning in the sand. It’s summertime in Washington. Let us count the ways:

1. Dining alfresco at the Washington Harbour. 

2. Long porch lunches at Indigo Landing.

3. Dinner and a movie under the stars at Screen on the Green.

4. Float a lazy Potomac river.

5. Day trip to Chesapeake Beach.

6. Long weekend at Inn at Perry Cabin.

7. Eat crabs at Quarterdeck.

8. Sail and sip aboard the Schooner Woodwind.

9. Celebrate America at  A Capitol Fourth.

10. Dish with lawmakers at the 31st annual Capitol Ice Cream Party. 

What is your favorite summer pastime in D.C.?

The post 10 ways to celebrate summer in Washington appeared first on FedScoop.

Women to move up the ranks at DOD.

PEPFAR turns 10.

USAF welcomes first female chief scientist.

Tangherlini takes the stand.

Fifteen semifinalists selected in DARPA Spectrum Challenge.

Lough Erne declared.

New tools to help the hungry and malnourished.

NASA announces Asteroid Grand Challenge.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter turns 4:

NASA Google Plus Hangout discusses newest space explorers:

The post FedWire: Birthdays, challenges and empowered women appeared first on FedScoop.

Since the signing of the act, the wage gap has shrunk significantly, but has yet to be eliminated. To address the remaining gap, the Equal Pay Task Force and the Labor Department challenged innovators to develop applications and tools to educate the public about the income gap and promote equal pay using publicly available, open government data and other online resources.

Responding to the challenge, Laquitta Martell-DeMerchant and Rachel Koch developed the app Aequitas and the website Close The Wage Gap. The two products give anyone with a smartphone, tablet or computer the ability to find data on salary topics like pay ranges, skill-level requirements for specific jobs and ways to negotiate salary. Obama recognized the two women for their creative apps at the White House’s June 16 Equal Pay Event.

It would have been impossible to design these apps without freely available federal open government data on wages. Last month’s open data executive order, which made open and machine-readable data the default for government information, exemplifies the administration’s push to spur innovation by liberating federal data.

To put the wage gap in perspective, in 2011, an average 25-year-old woman working full time, year-round, earned $5,000 less than an average 25-year-old man. If the wage gap remained each year afterward, the same women at 35 would have earned $33,600 less than her 35-year-old male counterpart. By 65, the income gap would reach $389,300.

These apps and other, similar ones are important because they give women across the country the information they need to demand equality in the workplace.

The post Innovative apps empower women to break through glass ceiling appeared first on FedScoop.

FedScoop presents the State of Cybersecurity Infographic, which highlights the responses of more than 200 government employees polled recently in FedScoop’s 2013 Cybersecurity Survey.

The post Infographic: The State of Cybersecurity appeared first on FedScoop.

Four months after bin Laden’s death in May 2011, rumors started circulating that administration officials were providing classified information to filmmakers Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow. The duo had been the team behind the award-winning “The Hurt Locker,” about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq. Bigelow directed and Boal wrote the screenplay; both won Academy Awards for their efforts, and the film won Best Picture. It was known the two were working on a film about bin Laden, initially about his escape from U.S. forces in Tora Bora, but later shifting focus to the fatal raid.

With the film, “Zero Dark Thirty” — which eventually grossed more than $130 million and was nominated for five Academy Awards — slated for release weeks prior to the 2012 election, many saw propaganda in the works.

“The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote Aug. 6, 2011. “It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a CIA ceremony celebrating the hero SEALS.”

Bigelow denied these allegations of White House favoritism shortly after Dowd’s column.

But responding to the widespread allegations, Peter King, R-N.Y., former House chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, submitted a congressional request to the inspectors general at DOD and CIA. Most important, King wanted to know whether the White House had advised DOD or CIA on providing access to “covert military operators and clandestine CIA officers,” and why Boal had appeared at the ceremony for the SEALS involved in the bin Laden raid.

Nearly two years later, he finally has his answers.

DOD and White House never met “regarding the advisability of providing filmmakers with access to military special operators,” the report reads. The White House did coordinate with DOD about getting the filmmakers set up in a meeting with Michael Vickers, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, through June and July of 2011. But from there, Vickers’ emails and other communications revealed an internal DOD discussion over the level of support the agency wanted to give the film.

Emails revealed a high level of support from DOD’s director of entertainment media and then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, who became defense secretary July 1, 2011. But Special Operations Command balked at the request to interview Navy SEALS, sending an email stating its position “there was already too much information released concerning the bin Laden raid and has obvious concerns about DOD providing any support for this effort.”

But Boal was welcomed at the CIA awards ceremony Dowd wrote about June 24. According to the DOD Public Affairs Office, the CIA Public Affairs Office did not want him to attend, but that fact was not passed along in time. The CIA Public Affairs team was worried as the SEALS would be visible, “with nametapes, because it was a formal ceremony. [They] were in the front row, front, left side, prominently on display for everybody,” according to one official’s testimony.

Other officials paint a different picture. One described it as: “a huge enormous crowd, I mean they built a tent and it was not sensitive, I would say it was not a highly sensitive event. It was pretty much a cattle call for a lot of folks and for around the community and obviously not open to the public per se.” It was even broadcast on the CIA’s closed circuit television. A video depicting the event was accessible via the CIA’s classified network.

But SOCOM officials were wary of Boal’s appearance at the event. Navy Adm. William McRaven — commander of Special Operations Command after Aug. 8, 2011 — was described as “visibly, surprised and shocked,” by one official.

Still, DOD did work to grease the wheels at SOCOM. Douglas Wilson, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, sent Boal an email directly, saying he “will work to unclog the SOCOM pathway for you.” And he did just that. An email from Vickers revealed McRaven, despite initial hesitations, had agreed to allow a special operations planner to talk on background.

“His main task is to provide accuracy and context where needed,” wrote Eric Olson, the previous commander of Special Operations Command. “My (our) hope and intent is that [the special operations planner’s initials] not be identified by name as having participated in any way.”

But the special operations planner actually never participated in any way. No meeting ever occurred.

Throughout July, the filmmakers and Wilson continued to communicate. But in mid-August — eight days after King filed his request and 11 days after The New York Times charged the White House catering to Bigelow and Boal — the special operations planner was told, “We may want to let the dust settle a little,” before any meeting should take place.

In the end, no meeting ever did.

The post ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ filmmakers never met with SEALS appeared first on FedScoop.

Mike Giesler, VP, systems engineering, U.S. public sector, NetApp, discusses lowering the cost of government with technology in this interview with FedScoopTV.

Excerpt:

“IT can help lower the cost of government in a number of ways. First and foremost, it can help lower capital costs and operational costs within IT itself, but it can also help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of how we deliver government. We’re in an era of explosive data growth: IDC predicts that data growth will be 50 percent, per year — that’s 58 times over the course of this decade. So if a customer has a database that’s 100 terabytes today, which is big, by the end of this decade, it will be 5.8 petabytes in size. That’s just one example of that explosive data growth. We’re creating and capturing more data than we ever have before. We’re storing it for longer periods of time and the richness of that data is greater than it’s ever been before. So you look at Gartner — one other interesting data point — Gartner shows that the fastest-growing expense in the IT data center today is storage. So when you think about the efficiency of government, you think about lowering the cost of government, with all those data points, you have to look at the data first and the cost of storing, securing and managing that data.”

The post NetApp’s Mike Giesler on lowering the cost of government appeared first on FedScoop.

Of the many interesting speakers who appeared at FedTalks last week, one in particular struck a personal chord with me. Hadi Partovi is the founder and president of Code.org, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to grow computer science education, both in our schools and in the workplace.

While I was getting my degree in computer science, the personal computer went from something only die-hard techies owned, to being in every home and office, and the Internet came out of the laboratory to bring the world closer together. It seemed like a lot of people were majoring in computer science, but that might have been because that was the main group of people I saw on a daily basis.

Anyway, Mr. Partovi showed us some rather disturbing statistics. Even though computing jobs take up about 60 percent of all math and science occupations, only about 2 percent of all math/science students are computer students.

Most colleges and universities don’t consider computer science part of the STEM core of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Nine out of 10 schools don’t even offer computer programming courses. In 39 of 50 states, coding classes don’t count toward high school graduation math or science requirements. It is disturbing to say the least, especially when you consider that, if things continue the way they are, by 2020 there will be 1 million more computing jobs than the number of computer science students who can actually do them.

“What can I do about it?” I hear you say. Well, the first thing you should do is watch this video:

Mr. Partovi has gotten many influential people to speak out on the importance of computer science, ranging from computer moguls to political figures to sports stars. They all are saying how important computer science education is and will be for our future.

If you have never learned to code, there is no time like the present to learn, at least a little bit. The Code.org website has links to many popular online sites where you can learn to code. It is definitely worth your time, and can open up your mind to so many possibilities.

If you already know how to code, you can help out by donating some of your time to teach programming to interested students. Code.org can let you know about local learning centers or even help you start one of your own.

If you are a teacher or parent at a school where computer science education is lacking, let Code.org know about it. They will help you look into ways you can help to bring this important subject to your school. In the meantime, you should also make arrangements to show the video to students at your school.

The post Putting ‘science’ back in computer science appeared first on FedScoop.

FedScoop’s Luke Fretwell and Red Hat U.S. Public Sector Chief Technology Strategist Gunnar Hellekson discuss the latest in federal government open source software. (Archive · RSS)

This episode

Juli Klemm, head of Cancer Biology and Genomics Section, National Cancer Institute, and Chris Mattmann, senior computer scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, join us to discuss building government open source communities and the upcoming Open Source Summit, June 25-26 in Washington, D.C.

The post FedOSS: Creating open source communities appeared first on FedScoop.