Articles by John K. Higgins

The U.S. Department of Transportation not only wants to construct highways, subways, railroads and airports for the traveling public, but also wants to build bridges to information technology vendors and providers The department has just launched a program to engage vendors and help educate DoT employees about available information technologies. Du...

The Obama administration's program to more efficiently utilize information technology has worked -- but not well enough to get a passing grade from the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers are ratcheting up the pressure on federal agencies to improve their IT resource management -- including the way they procure IT products and services from the private sector.

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives are flexing their collective majority muscles in both substance and style. The most significant change resulting from gaining the electoral majority in the House, of course, is that direction of all committees has shifted to Republican hands But other significant changes are under way. Last week, H...

A coalition of information technology and civil liberties organizations is trying to get ahead of congressional lawmakers and the Obama administration in forging a national cybersecurity policy Members of the coalition met with congressional staffers last week to brief them on the group's just-released white paper on cybersecurity, "Improving our N...

The explosion of e-commerce has exposed consumers to an unprecedented level of risk regarding personal privacy. Businesses, government agencies and consumer groups agree that privacy protection needs to be drastically improved However, there is a tug-of-war brewing over how to accomplish that goal -- whether protecting Internet privacy should be a ...

Federal agencies are struggling to improve performance in two critical areas involving information technology resources -- the use of enterprise architecture and managing data, the General Accountability Office (GAO) says in a new report For the report, "Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enh...

President Barack Obama made an overture to the business community, emphasizing the mutual benefits that come with a truly effective partnership between government and business, in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month Following up with a practical initiative, the White House has directed federal agencies to do a much better job of eng...

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. The administration issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with last month's release of the "Federal Cloud Computing Strategy." Officials are using the strategy not only to pull togeth...

Despite the national effort to cut government spending, expenditures for information technology at the federal level will actually go up in fiscal 2012 compared with 2011. That's good news for vendors Federal agencies will spend about US$79.5 billion on information technology in fiscal 2012, which begins Oct. 1, according to the Obama administratio...

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. Now the administration has issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with the release of the Federal Strategy for Cloud Computing Officials are using the strategy not only to pull togeth...

This story was originally published on Sept. 29, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Government information technology procurement has been largely conducted on an independent basis, with each federal agency determining its own needs and acquiring the infrastructure -- both hardware and software -- to meet tho...

Major federal agencies in the U.S. are gradually getting the hang of dealing with open source technology -- a situation that bodes well for commercial open source providers In a recently released "report card," Open Source for America (OSFA) says that a handful of top level cabinet departments have achieved a high level of success in adopting the t...

Politicians would give almost anything to garner a voter-approval rating north of 75 percent.However, a surprising number of federal agencies are getting much higher marks for their customer-facing websites than the politicians who oversee agency operations from the vantage of Capitol Hill Citizen satisfaction with federal government websites remai...

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is compiling information on the capabilities of vendors that can assist it with its Linux-based information system. NGA has asked vendors to provide a description of their capabilities by Feb. 11. In a quick-response "Sources Sought" notice issued Jan. 28, NGA said it was "researching the market availability of firms that can potentially provide services and products that could be seamlessly incorporated" into the agency's baseline program...

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama frequently mentioned the benefits of information technology, touting the contribution of the Internet to economic growth, and the achievement of innovative enterprises such as Google and Facebook. He pledged to submit a budget to Congress designed to spur innovation "We'll invest in biomedic...

The move to adopt cloud technologies by federal agencies has opened up IT opportunities for many vendors. As momentum builds within these agencies to explore the cloud, support is coming from other quarters Last week, for example, by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said that "Cloud computing offers the federal government several potential benefits, inc...

The world of Internet commerce is booming -- but on a parallel track, identity theft, loss of privacy and fraud are skyrocketing as well. While the government has a role in combating Internet security abuses, two top administration officials visited Silicon Valley to emphasize that the private sector needs to lead the way in developing innovative IT security solutions...

The United States government is falling behind in making critical and productive investments in research related to networking and information technology (NIT), a government panel reported Thursday Federal agencies have used funds designated for direct pioneering research and development in NIT for alternative purposes, such as the creation of inf...

U.S. government agencies will be moving quickly to implement contracting reforms for the procurement of information technology in the wake of policy changes revealed last week by the Office of Management and Budget. For IT vendors competing for a share of the US$80 billion annual federal IT market, keeping close track of the procurement changes will be crucial to business success.

The U.S. General Services Administration selected more than a dozen companies to provide cloud-based information technology products for federal agencies last month, signaling a concrete investment in the cloud environment and underscoring the federal commitment to using the technology. GSA said it would make a total of US$122 million available for two programs...