White House

See the following -

How A Small Group of Entrepreneurs Transformed Government Services

Aneesh Chopra | Nextgov.com | May 7, 2014

President Obama started with his own White House, recruiting Internet-savvy entrepreneurs to serve as chief technology officer (me), chief performance officer (Jeff Zients), chief information officer (Vivek Kundra) and director for social innovation (Sonal Shah), among other senior positions...

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How DoD Plans to Leverage Artificial Intelligence and Open Source to Improve Emergency Response and Disaster Relief

Some might not know it, but the US military plays a key role in US disaster response strategy and, accordingly, the Department of Defense (DoD) has prioritized its disaster response mission and is investing heavily towards increasing its capabilities and effectiveness. Technology is a big part of all modern DoD missions, and disaster response is no different. The most promising and transformative technology on the horizon for our future, and for the future of the DoD, is Artificial Intelligence (AI). So how exactly will the DoD leverage Artificial Intelligence technologies in order to meet the demands of the disaster response mission? Is a new Center of Excellence created by DoD, called the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Read More »

How Healthcare.gov Went Wrong

Staff Writer | Department of Better Technology (DOBT) | October 10, 2013

Here at DOBT we talk a lot about How To Fix Procurement, but you don’t hear a lot about why things go wrong. The Healthcare.gov Fiasco is instructive in that it highlights every piece of our procurement process that’s broken. How, with a half-trillion dollar a year spend, could something like this botch even happen? Here’s how: Read More »

How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation

Trevor Timm | Electronic Frontier Foundation | January 16, 2012

Over the weekend, the Obama administration issued a potentially game-changing statement on the blacklist bills, saying it would oppose PIPA and SOPA as written, and drew an important line in the sand by emphasizing that it “will not support” any bill “that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." Read More »

How the Cloud Can Bring Expenditure Agility to Agency Budgets

Kate Spies | GovernmentHealthIT | July 3, 2012

A clear presidential push becomes apparent reading the FY2013 budget. The White House is calling for Federal agencies, health departments among those, to shift IT budgets from a capital expenditure basis to one built on operational spending. In their words, the generation of a “more agile, operational focus” – and the cloud computing model is one way of embracing that expenditure agility, IT-wise. Read More »

How The NSA Undermines Cybersecurity

Brendan Sasso | Nextgov.com | April 30, 2014

...Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated cyberattack could cripple critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed Congress to enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didn’t, he issued his own executive order in 2013...

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How To Deal With The Campus Sexual Assault Crisis

Times Editorial Board | Los Angeles Times | May 12, 2014

...This month, the U.S. Department of Education said it was investigating no fewer than 55 institutions of higher learning for possible mishandling of sexual assault complaints; that includes two schools in Los Angeles — Occidental College and USC — as well as UC Berkeley. 

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How To Fix Healthcare.gov

Clay Johnson | Department of Better Technology (DOBT) | October 21, 2013

Late last night, the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services finally communicated with the public and let us know their plans on fixing Healthcare.gov with a “tech surge”. Their plan? Read More »

How to Make Your Government Agency More Innovative

Tom Fox | Washington Post | June 5, 2012

The words innovation and government may not be synonymous, but “the times, they are a-changin.” Last month, the White House launched a Presidential Innovation Fellows program that will bring in 15 innovators from outside government to provide expertise on five technology projects. Read More »

India Adopts A Comprehensive Open Source Policy

The Government of India (GOI) has adopted a comprehensive and supportive open source policy. It builds on their earlier efforts to adopt open standards for procurement. As we've seen in other regions, the adoption of such policies often brings out concerns from some quarters who want to spread 'fear and doubt' about the policy. So, what are the facts about the policy, and how does it fit into India's broader economic development strategy? Read More »

Internal watchdog blasts DoD's health IT efforts

Jared Serbu | Federal News Radio | April 22, 2013

The Defense Department's current approach to achieving health record interoperability with the Veterans Affairs Department is "manifestly inconsistent" with White House directives to adopt and use open data standards, according to a memo from the Pentagon's top systems evaluator. Read More »

Is GitHub Government’s Next Big Thing?

Luke Fretwell | FedScoop | June 6, 2012

With recent attempts from the White House to bring a more agile approach to government technology, U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s “Shared First” initiative, released in December, coupled with the federal government’s new digital strategy, the door may slowly be opening to a more widespread public sector collaborative coding environment, such as the one provide by San Francisco-based startup GitHub.

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Is Obamacare’s ‘Tech Surge’ Real?

Ezra Klein | Washington Post | October 23, 2013

On Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a major "tech surge" to save the health-care exchanges. "Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov," they promised. Read More »

Is the US Finally Ready to Get Serious About Biodefense?

Biological and other disaster threats - whether accidental, driven by forces of nature, or intentional - pose fairly grave risks to the United States and the world. Situational awareness has been a conspicuous topic ever since the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax scare that followed shortly thereafter. Since then we have experienced numerous disasters: health impacts of major weather events such as hurricanes and earthquakes, new virus outbreaks like Ebola in Africa, raging wildfires on the West Coast (I live in California), and the ever-present threat of pandemic flu which a hundred years ago infected some 500 million people across the globe and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, according to the Center for Disease Control and Preparedness (CDC). But since the initial flurry of public health preparedness funds in the ensuing several years after the 9/11 attacks, this topic has not had a high priority at CDC nor the funding necessary to implement it successfully.

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Is The White House Trying To Blow Up An Open Data Bill?

Andrea Peterson | Washington Post | January 29, 2014

The case for open data is pretty straightforward: Citizens deserve access to the information created with their tax dollars. Publishing that data in a format that's easy to search, sort and download could unleash a wave of innovation. If the private sector had access to government data it could find new ways to leverage it -- creating new services for consumers and new jobs. Right now, we're a long way from that ideal. Read More »