A busy week for federal IT

Federal information technology issues are having a busy week. On Capitol Hill, the Senate Veterans Committee holds a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for Roger Baker to be an Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Information and Technology as well as the department’s CIO. It’s a great pick for the department that’s often been tangled inRead… Read more »

Mother’s Day

I was tooling down a back road Saturday morning on my way to Wal-Mart to pick up an exercise bike. I had NPR on the radio. They were interviewing this kid who placed third in American Idol a few years ago. He was doing well as a singer; he had just released another album. TheyRead… Read more »

Three Collaboration Tools Everyone Should Know

Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr, IM: do these sound like foreign words? In the face of new social media and collaboration, getting in touch over the Internet has never been more complicated. With so many of these whiz-bang technologies out there, it can be especially frustrating to figure out which ones are worth learning about andRead… Read more »

VistA makes another toehold in the outside world

Some of you already know that VistA adoption has spawned several companies using the open source business model – i.e. take a free product and make money by offering installation, customization and support for the base product. One such player is MedSphere, offering VistA support services. There is another instance of a significant VistA adoptionRead… Read more »

IBM Federal Ready to Protect NASA, NOAA, DOE, USCG, HUD Against New SQL Injection Hacking Attacks

12, March 2009 15:32 EDT — The Web Hacking Incidents Database (WHID) has reported that over 500,000 websites were hacked by a new form of SQL Injection in 2008. The hacking incidents resulted in 19% theft of sensitive data. Government, security, and law enforcement organizations represented the biggest sector suffering from these attacks (32 percent).Read… Read more »

Free National Emergency Alert System

Well, we really don’t have a unified national alert system that is able to alert the population, first responders, law enforcement, etc, in case of natural or man made dissasters. So what did I do about this? Well, I got together with a group of homeland security and IT security professionals and designed a systemRead… Read more »