Government use of IT - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• McAfee executive picked for top Homeland Security post

  A McAfee vice president and seasoned technology executive will head the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity office, the agency announced Monday.

• Internet should be prepared for 'militarisation': UK ministry report

  A recently published report on potential scenarios of cyber-conflict, The Global Cyber-Game, says it is inevitable that the internet will be "militarised" -- used to serve the needs of military conflict between nations -- and that ICT will increasingly be both an important means and a target of such conflict.

• Spy-proof enterprise encryption is possible, but daunting

  Data encryption could help enterprises protect their sensitive information against mass surveillance by governments, as well as guard against unauthorized access by ill-intended third parties, but the correct implementation and use of data encryption technologies is not an easy task, according to security experts.

• Berlin won't migrate to open source, looks to open standards instead

  The German city-state of Berlin won't migrate to open source software. Instead, its parliament decided in principle to choose workplace IT based on open standards.

• Prism leaker steps forward, cites 'massive surveillance machine'

  The person responsible for disclosing details on the growth of U.S. government surveillance programs that exploded into public view last week has identified himself as 29-year-old Edward Snowden, a technology contractor working at the U.S. National Security Agency.

• Australian govt proposes cloud strategy

  The Australian government has thrown its weight behind the cloud, proposing in its National Cloud Computing Strategy that federal agencies scale up their use of cloud services.

• Study: US military too reliant on foreign-made equipment

  The U.S. military's reliance on foreign-made products, including telecommunications equipment and semiconductors, is putting the nation's security at risk by exposing agencies to faulty parts and to the possibility that producing nations will stop selling vital items, according to a new report from the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

• Govt agencies to re-examine systems after Inland Revenue email misdirected

  Government agencies are being asked to look at their email systems following the Inland Revenue's accidental release of 201 emails to the wrong people.

• Government shops for 21,800 desktops

  The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has issued a request for proposal (RFP) for desktop-as-a-service which will initially include 9800 virtual desktops.

• West Virginia auditor blasts Cisco, state for 'oversized' router buy

  West Virginia wasted millions in federal grant money when it purchased 1,164 Cisco routers for $24 million in 2010, a state audit concluded.

• Charting the Novopay debacle

  The Novopay saga began in 2005 when Australian human resources and outsourcing provider Talent2 outbid 10 other potential providers to win a deal to replace the Ministry of Education's payroll system.

• Pentagon to add thousands of new cybersecurity jobs

  The Pentagon is planning to expand its cyber security force nearly five fold over the next several years in a bid to bolster its defensive and offensive computer capabilities.

• MFAT seeks online language learning service

  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is looking for an online service to assist its staff serving overseas and their family members to learn other languages in pursuit of their work.

• Detail on kiosk fault too risky to release: MSD

  The security fault labelled "critical" in Security-Assessment.com's May 2011 report on the Ministry of Social Development's kiosk systems was promptly fixed, but MSD still declines to provide detailed information on the reasons for suppressing details of the fault under the Official Information Act.

• Cloud works for government, says Ovum

  Case studies conducted by industry analyst Ovum into cloud computing implementations "illustrate that benefits were greater than expected, while risks and difficulties were lower than typically experienced by traditional ICT projects", says Ovum's Steve Hodgkinson.