Federal Government
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OSEHRA Community Responds to the Federal Government's Proposed Open Source Policy
The OSEHRA community today submitted a response to the "Draft Open Source Policy for Federal Agencies" released by the White House on March 10. The policy was open for comments through today. This is a major milestone for the OSEHRA community as well as the open source community as a whole. Currently the US Government spends nearly a hundred billion dollars a year on software purchased from the private sector or procured from government contractors. Most of this software acquisition ends up in failure. President Barack Obama has made it a priority to shift technology acquisition policies to solve this problem and restore technology innovation by embracing open source.
- The Future Is Open
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Signs Of Innovation At RFP-EZ
Radically reforming how government operates is a tall order. Plenty of projects have worn the mantle of innovation but fallen into the same old bureaucratic traps. Read More »
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The Government’s Hurricane Sandy Pages Play By Play
With its satellites, scanners and links to local officials, the federal government is often the best source for trusted information during a hurricane, tornado or other natural disaster. Read More »
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The Public Domain Still Needs Idealism
In the current startup universe, there’s still a lot of chatter about changing the world, an objective that has become so cliché—and ridiculed—that it’s easy to forget that those voicing this desire genuinely, vehemently believe it. From the outside, the prospect of a world-changing software product is either very exciting or completely delusional, depending on who’s talking...Idealism about technology as a democratizing force currently looks a lot like defense: protecting digital civil liberties, and fighting against further erosion. This is the side that Justin Peters is most committed to documenting in his book The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet, a partial biography of the late activist and Open Access advocate...
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The Shutdown Will Harm the Health and Safety of Americans, even After it's Long Over
With the U.S. federal government shutdown now the longest in history, it's important to understand what a shutdown means for the health and safety of Americans. The good news is that in the short run, the consequences are relatively few. But, as a researcher who studies natural disaster planning, I believe that Americans should be worried about the federal government's long-term ability to ensure good public health and protect the public from disasters. As the shutdown drags on, it increasingly weakens the government's ability to protect Americans down the road, long after federal workers are allowed to go back to work. Many of these effects are largely invisible and may feel intangible because they don't currently affect specific individuals...
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The US Government’s Digital Strategy: The New Benchmark and Some Lessons
The White House recently launched its new roadmap for digital government. This included the publication of Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People (PDF version), the issuing of a Presidential directive and the announcement of White House Innovation Fellows.
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The War On Poverty Has Been A Colossal Flop
Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty. This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty...
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The White House Now Has A Digital SWAT Team
When U.S. government sites don't work the way they should, they aren't just unhelpful—they also make the federal government look like it's stuck in the 20th century...
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There’s Nowhere Cooler Than Here
With the day-to-day challenges feds face in government IT, it is easy to overlook an important fact: They have one of the best jobs in the world. Not necessarily the easiest or the best paid. Rather, one of the most satisfying and consequential. They have an opportunity to work with a variety of technologies to address issues of critical importance... Read More »
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U.S. Government Seeks Reduced Use of Custom Software, Releases New Policy to 'Free the Code'
As I've written before, there has been a shift, going back almost a decade, away from the debate over whether to use open source to a focus on the how to. The release by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the U.S. Federal Source Code Policy on August 8th is the latest manifestation of this shift. It achieves the goal laid out in the Obama administration's Second Open Government National Action Plan (PDF) for improved access to custom software code developed for the federal government. The plan emphasized use of (and contributing back to) open source software to fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. It also furthers a long-standing "default to open" objective going back to the early days of the administration...
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Why Isn't All Government Software Open Source?
The federal government is the single largest purchaser of code in the world. So why is this code — taxpayer-funded and integral to the day-to-day working of our democracy — so often hidden from public view? There are two sides to answering that question: Why does the government so often build on closed platforms, and once built, why isn’t the code released to the public? Read More »
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You Don’t Need an Exciting Mission to Foster Innovation
Technology has dramatically transformed the way federal employees perform their jobs --from cloud computing to telework --but when to comes to finding new, innovative ways of doing things, most feds lack the appropriate support. Read More »
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2019 DoD/VA & Government Health IT Summit
At DSI’s 16th Annual DoD/VA and Government HIT Summit, we provide an educational ‘Town-Hall’ style forum where representatives from the DoD, VA, Government Agencies, academia, and private industry can have the opportunity to detail their organization’s efforts to facilitate a connected Federal health IT approach through innovative research on IT solutions, technology, and capabilities. This Summit will detail the various initiatives being undertaken across the Federal Government, Military Services, and industry that are aiming to deliver an integrated, collaborative health care system that ensures force readiness, improves health outcomes and delivery of care to our nation’s Veterans, and lowers the overall cost of providing high-quality healthcare.
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