From robots to Obamacare, listed here are the 15 ultimate InformationWeek government tech stories from 2013.

If several words could sum up 2013 for the govt technology community, they could be surveillance, robots, security, cloud computing, mobility, sequestration, and HealthCare.gov.

Each helped defined the year.

It is sensible, then, that every of those topics figured prominently in a single or more of the year’s hottest stories in InformationWeek Government. This year’s top-ranking stories, in keeping with the variety of readers who read them, capture a glimpse of ways technology shaped the work that government agencies were busy tackling in 2013.

Government surveillance practices which have remained largely out of sight for Americans suddenly spilled into our living rooms in April as surveillance video played a number one role in identifying the suspects within the tragic Boston Marathon bombing. Although the rapid arrest of the surviving suspect brought a way of the advantages of surveillance, it also made clear just how much the nation’s citizens had come under the watch of sophisticated security IT systems. 

That realization exploded into more disturbing view, beginning in June, with the leak of a chain of National Security Agency documents detailing the widespread number of US citizens’ telephone records within the name of national security. Revelations that the NSA was tapping into the overseas cables utilized by the world’s leading technology players, including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, unleashed a firestorm of complaints and a brand new push by the non-public sector to reinforce its encryption methods. The Obama administration is now weighing the findings of a just-released presidential report making 46 tips about methods to rebalance competing demands for privacy and national security.

On a more positive note, federal agencies also showed how technology — and the evolution of robots — is extending the reach and capabilities of humans. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, staged a two-day contest for robots developed to aid people get over natural and other disasters. Google’s recent purchase of Boston Dynamics and Tokyo-based Schaft, either one of which had robots within the competition (Schaft took top prize), heightened the sense that robots are gaining wider attention in technology circles. NASA, meanwhile, continues to attract universal interest not just for its various missions to explore Mars but in addition its efforts to share data and technical applications with fellow Earthlings.

Meanwhile, the perennial debate on cyber-security only intensified in 2013, but no less than one event stood out this year in government circles: The Obama administration’s Cybersecurity Executive Order in February. The order, in accordance with Congressional inaction facing cyber threats at the nation’s critical infrastructure, ended in the discharge in October of a countrywide framework for managing cyber-security risks. The framework, prepared by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and in accordance with best practices gleaned from industry, should be released in February.

The collection of agencies taking significant strides toward cloud computing and mobility make it hard to single out anyone story that sums up the year’s progress on both technology fronts. The dept of Interior’s move to award up to $10 billion in cloud computing contracts highlighted how far some federal agencies have come because the administration issued its “cloud first” memo in 2010. However, because the findings of a contemporary InformationWeek survey on government cloud computing shows, agency progress toward the administration’s cloud-computing goals remains uneven, and remains not high priority for some agencies.

One explanation for that — and one of the most other defining stories of 2013 — was the struggle agencies faced adapting to across-the-board budget cuts imposed by sequestration, and longer-term funding uncertainties as Congressional failed repeatedly to arrive the cheap agreement. That struggle took on a public face in October with the govt shutdown.

Few government IT stories, however, left a larger mark on 2013 than the government’s failed launch of its healthcare insurance exchange.  In actual fact, to contain the collection of stories, commentaries, and reports surrounding the ill-fated launch, and subsequent repair of the government’s HealthCare.gov site, we created a different report section you could find here on InformationWeek. 

Here are the head 15 most generally read stories in InformationWeek Government in 2013:

1. Boston Bombers Can’t Elude City’s Tech Infrastructure

Video surveillance played a key role in identifying the suspects in Monday’s tragic Boston Marathon bombing, setting a precedent for increasing use of sophisticated security IT systems nationwide.

2. Smartphone Maps While Driving Banned In California

Recent court decision in California makes it illegal to compare smartphone maps except in cases of hands-free, voice-guided navigation.

3. BlackBerry: The Fax Machine Of Its Era

BlackBerry liberated executives from their desks. However the company’s concentrate on messaging relegated it to a tool that didn’t keep pace with innovation.

4. Military Drones Present And Future: Visual Tour

The Pentagon’s growing fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles ranges from hand-launched machines to the Air Force’s experimental X-37B space plane.

5. DARPA Takes Aim At Space Junk

Defense research agency seeks partners to assist it repair and reuse retired satellites.

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