Programs aim to take advantage of technology to higher inform and have interaction citizens in a variety of topics, from scientific research to budgeting. The Obama Administration released a second round of open government initiatives, introducing nearly two dozen plans to stimulate or improve the government’s interaction with citizens — from streamlining Freedom of knowledge Act (FOIA) requests to “participatory budgeting” mechanisms allowing citizens to steer public spending projects of their communities. The Second Open Government National Action Plan (NAP) expands on initiatives from the administration’s first set of open government initiatives, released in September 2011. Those initiatives included improving the functionality of different government websites, including the White House “We the folks” online petition site, Performance.gov, Data.gov, and other open data initiatives throughout government agencies. Other initiatives launched or expanded by the administration, in accordance with a Dec. 6 post by Nick Sinai, US Deputy CTO, and Gayle Smith, special assistant to the President, include efforts to expand using challenges, incentive prizes, citizen science,... Read More »

Tech companies, advocacy groups, and Internet users rally to demand that governments limit online surveillance. 20 Great Ideas To Steal (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) On Tuesday, a coalition of businesses and advocacy groups have scheduled a sequence of events around the globe to induce governments to reform surveillance practices. The protest against mass surveillance, inspired by the months of revelations in regards to the reach of the usa National Security Agency and designated “The Day We Fight Back,” was announced last month at the anniversary of the death of technology activist Aaron Swartz. It’s also intended as a reminder of the defeat two years ago of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a up to date high-water mark for online activism. By midday Pacific Time, the coalition’s website said that it has facilitated more than 37,900 calls and over 86,000 emails to legislators. A Google lookup the JavaScript code particular to the coalition’s protest banners suggests almost 1,000 of them has been put on websites.... Read More »

Vendors from Aryaka and Pertino to Cisco and incumbent carriers wish to shake up your wide area world. Here’s why you’ll want to allow them to. The cloud’s capacity to upend long-standing IT practices — and vendor business models — knows no bounds. Having changed how it organizations deliver applications and infrastructure, cloud services at the moment are changing the way in which they design, deploy, and manage wide area networks. That change is coming none too soon for respondents to the InformationWeek 2014 Next-Generation WAN Survey. Though 68% of respondents see demand for WAN bandwidth increasing (versus 34% who said so in our 2012 survey), just 15% are bringing new services or more capacity online now. Given the lead time to provision WAN links, we wonder just why they’re waiting. Enter a brand new wave of vendors, from newcomers reminiscent of Aryaka, Glue Networks, and Pertino to titans similar to Cisco, all trying to the cloud to seriously change your WAN. Through the use... Read More »

Eric Chiu, co-founding father of HyTrust, says cloud operations would require “layered security” and encrypted virtual machines when at rest. Much was written recently about how willing enterprises are emigrate a number of their operations into the cloud. That move to the cloud would proceed much faster if security weren’t still an overpowering worry and consideration. In the second one half 2013, Forrester Research conducted its usual Forrsights Hardware Survey and located enterprise hardware buyers greater than willing to utilize cloud servers, but they were limiting their use as a result of unresolved concerns over security. In that survey, 73% of IT decision makers were considering public cloud security, and 51% were thinking about their very own private cloud security. The cloud now represents not just concentrations of compute power and storage, but in addition a concentration of security, given the possibility of mischief or disaster if those centralized resources fall into the inaccurate hands. Whether it is a private cloud within the virtualized enterprise... Read More »

UPMC CIO Dan Drawbaugh will discuss a model for tech product development, the role of tech in healthcare reform, and more during an InformationWeek.com radio chat on Tuesday. Innovation in healthcare technology takes a load more than really helpful. Consider telemedicine. Not just must a patient and doctor agree that a video session is fine to switch an in-person visit, but so must the insurance company that pays for the session, the federal government bodies that regulates it, and the hospital that supports it. The complexity involved is a huge reason healthcare provider the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center thinks it could help create breakthrough IT products. And it’s why UPMC has install a greater than 120-person Technology Development Center to refine technology that UPMC can use in-house and market to other healthcare providers and payers. The goal is to make UPMC in-house IT a profit source. “Almost everything I’m doing I’m thinking, ‘Can I make it right into a commercial product?'” says UPMC CIO... Read More »