FedWire: API webinar, Google+ Hangout and VA backlog
FedWire is FedScoop’s afternoon roundup of news and notes from the federal IT community. Send your links and videos to tips@fedscoop.com.
This week is Public Service Recognition Week.
Secretary of State John Kerry is going to participate in a Google+ Hangout.
White House launches webinar series on API standards.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office honored 17 of America’s greatest innovators.
More than 60 senators urged Obama to take action to end VA’s disability claims backlog.
Apropos the backlog, Jon Stewart continues to badger VA for its inability to address the issue:
FedOSS: Open GIS with FCC GIO Michael Byrne
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.
Federal Communications Commission Geographic Information Officer Michael Byrne discusses the role open source plays in geographic information systems and how the FCC leverages tools such as GitHub to further its mission. Byrne became the agency’s first GIO in 2010. FCC launched a maps feature, located at fcc.gov/maps, in October 2011 to highlight mission-critical work.
Also:
FedPod: Apple devices on DOD networks
Apple iOS 6 devices are now allowed on Defense Department networks.
FedOSS: Big data and sqrrl, government RWD frameworks and the future of open source
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.
Big data open source startup sqrrl Vice President of Business Development Ely Kahn discusses the company’s history, entrepreneurial inspiration, growth, product offering and data security. Inspired by a Google Bigtable research paper, sqrrl’s technology is based on the National Security Agency Accumulo project that began in 2008. Members of the original Accumulo team started sqrrl in 2012.
Also:
- New York state goes GitHub and develops a state-wide responsive design framework.
- Results from the 2013 Future of Open Source Survey.
- White paper: Belt-Tightening in Public Sector Puts New Pressure on Application Developers
FedWire: sequester, innovation and NSA
FedWire is FedScoop’s afternoon roundup of news and notes from the federal IT community. Send your links and videos to tips@fedscoop.com.
Pentagon readies to ask Congress for some breathing room from the sequester.
Nine U.S. agencies ranked among Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation’s Top 25 Innovations in Government.
NSA’s research journal on emerging technologies is now online.
Acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris addresses April employment numbers.
Secretary of State John Kerry commemorates World Press Freedom Day.
HHS creates Vine video to warn about the No. 1 killer of men and women:
West Wing Week:
Romine: Cyber framework – ‘on time, actionable’
Charles Romine, director of NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory (Photo: David Stegon/FedScoop)The National Institute of Standards and Technology is about to host its second of four workshops with the private sector in creating the cybersecurity framework outlined in President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order.
When completed, the cybersecurity framework will provide guidance for the sharing of threat information between the public and private sectors.
Charles Romine, director of NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory, who is heading up the creation of the framework, told FedScoop the president’s faith in NIST is a result of the agency’s global leadership in the fight against cyber threats.
“We will deliver a framework that is on time and is actionable,” said Romine, who will keynote FedScoop’s 4th Annual Tech Shootout on May 7 at the Newseum. “We want something that our industry partners can use that will better protect our nation’s critical infrastructure.”
Romine said the workshops are geographically dispersed around the country to allow attendees from every region to participate. They are also being webcast, so anyone can watch them online.
As for the content, Romine said with a tight deadline (the framework is due 240 days from the February signing of the executive order), the emphasis will be on the work. What is being brought forward so far, Romine said, is the experience of several very mature industries in the critical infrastructure space that are able to bring out the core issues needing to be tackled along with solutions.
Crafting the cybersecurity framework means working very closely with industry, something Romine said the IT Labs and NIST in general are very comfortable with. He says that is because NIST goes out of its way to be nonregulatory, allowing for industry partners to collaborate with the agency.
A perfect example, Romine said, is the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, which opened last year. Romine said the center is looking to solve cybersecurity problems, one chuck at a time, working with industry to do so.
In fact, just recently, the agency and 11 major corporations such as Intel, McAfee and Symantec, signed an agreement to provide technical expertise and other resources to the center.
Instead of looking at health information security and trying to solve that, the center will take on one element, such as information sharing between a doctor and a large organization, and try to address that, Romine said.
Romine said the center is drawing up a number of use cases such as those mentioned above or geolocation in the cloud, which is also on the docket. Once a use case is created, private sector partners – such as the 11 that signed an agreement last month – will look for solutions to the problem.
“Our goal is to accelerate the collaboration between the public and private sectors,” Romine said.
Outside of that, Romine said he’ll be focused on maintaining a balanced portfolio of research, ranging from applied to the basic.
“It’s a balancing game as we get a number of mandates to do the applied research, but we must continue to do the basic as well so we are in position to lead creating the standards for the rest of the federal government,” he said.
FedPod: White House launches an API
The White House releases an API for the “We the People” petition site.
New award to ‘honor’ government’s most secretive
Who is the most secretive person in the federal government? An organization wants to find out.
Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc. is creating a new award called the Golden Padlock that will recognize the most secretive publicly funded agency or person in the country.
“This honor acknowledges the dedication of government officials working tirelessly to keep vital information hidden from the public,” said David Cay Johnston, president of IRE. “Their abiding commitment to secrecy and impressive skill in information suppression routinely keeps knowledge about everything from public health risks to government waste beyond the reach of citizens who pay their salaries.”
Nominations can be emailed to goldenpadlock@ire.org until May 24.
Governments at all levels, including state and local, are eligible for the award. A list of finalists will be announced in June, and the award will be handed out annually at IRE’s national conference June 20-23 in San Antonio, Texas.
Baby blog: Happy Mother’s Day
It was 11 years ago when I was interning for my hometown newspaper when I opened the editing program to take a final read of the article I was writing that night when I got an error message – the file was blocked because someone else was reading my story.
I yelled out into the newsroom, asking not so nicely for whoever was in my copy to get out as soon as possible. Of course, I had no idea that person was the new copy editor on her first night on the job who opened the story purely by accident.
Correct that: I had no idea that person was the new, blonde-haired, blue-eyed copy editor on her first night on the job.
When you talk about the night you met your loved one, you’d hope it would be some magical story: Your eyes caught across a smoky room, some cosmic force magically pulled you together, and you instantly fell in love, never to be separated for more than a second.
Sadly, that’s not my story.
For us, it was a dingy newsroom of a paper that recently went out of business. The building we met in is now a gastroenterologist’s office. Harp music, it was not.
But not because our road to love and marriage was not out of a movie – we were friends for six years before dating and eventually getting married.
Now, with a new baby in our house – Samantha Jean Stegon was born Friday, May 3, 2013 at Mary Washington Hospital – it’s easy to say I love my wife more than ever.
I joked during delivery I wanted to spend labor in the waiting room, Don Draper-style with a cigar in my hand accepting congratulations while my wife did the work in another room.
Instead, I spent all of the nearly 15 hours of labor at her side, my role being somewhere between errand boy and motivational speaker to help her through the best I could.
In the end, though, it all came down to her, pushing through the pain to give me a beautiful baby girl.
As my mom later pointed out, the work though was not all in the labor – my wife was a model for pregnant women. She ate healthy (her main cravings were for grapefruit and popsicles – OK, she threw in the occasional Double Stuf Oreo, but still) and avoided anything and everything that could be even potentially harmful, including caffeine. She took her vitamins religiously, and never missed an appointment — a grueling schedule, considering we were seeing both her regular doctor and a pregnancy specialist for some extraneous medical reasons.
Thanks to all that, my daughter is a joy to behold. She has 10 fingers and 10 toes, blonde hair and blue eyes, and a set of lungs that would make an opera singer proud.
I’d like to take some credit for that, but honestly, it was all my wife.
So, I’m excited to spend Mother’s Day with her this weekend. It’s always been a hard day for her after the passing of her own mother more than a decade ago, but hopefully Sunday will be better for her with her own daughter in tow.
My hope is she has a wonderful day and takes pride in the human life she created. Both my daughter and she are beautiful, and I’m so thankful for both. I want Sunday to be wonderful for her – she’s deserved it, and something tells me just getting her a card signed by the cat ain’t going to cut it.
Veterans Affairs awards contract for new HR system
The Veterans Affairs Department has awarded IBM a 10-year, $123 million contract to replace the agency’s 50-year-old human resources application with a new software-as-a-service model.
Under the contract, IBM will build, operate and maintain the new system that will be deployed across the enterprise and allow VA to better manage its workforce.
The system will provide enhancements such as new self-service options for VA managers and employees, IBM said.
“IBM is proud to partner with the Department of Veterans Affairs to support its critical mission of helping veterans,” said Anne Altman, general manager of U.S. Federal for IBM. “The VA’s human resources system will provide a more flexible, stable and capable system to meet the evolving needs of the agency and its thousands of employees. The VA’s greatest asset is its people, and this new HR system will bolster the agency’s mission to provide care and benefits for our nation’s veterans and their families. ”
IBM will provide implementation services, as well as management and maintenance services for the new system over the course of the contract.
The new HR system, which will serve more than 300,000 department employees, is expected to be implemented by the end of 2015.
IBM said a phased deployment strategy will be initiated in January 2014 following design, development and testing of the new HR application.
IBM’s HR solution is built using Oracle PeopleSoft, Monster Government Solutions and IBM Software products including IBM Rational, IBM InfoSphere and IBM Tivoli.