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The Obama administration can check off a long list of accomplishments around cybersecurity. But most of these achievements have only superficially improved the security of agency networks, say industry experts and former government executives.
"Most people don't think the administration has lived up to expectations. There was a lot of enthusiasm based on the cyberspace policy review for several different reasons," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, an industry association. "One, the process the cyberspace policy review went through was open, collaborative and a detailed process. I think certainly industry was very enthusiastic. They didn't love everything in the report, but they felt like there was as real understanding at the White House of what we were doing and how we had to do this collaboratively. The wisdom that was in the cyberspace policy review needed to take a new approach to cybersecurity and the realization that a traditional regulatory model just wouldn't work in this space, these were the things that eventually brought down the legislation." Many point to that lack of getting comprehensive legislation passed by the Senate as the Administration's biggest cybersecurity failure.
Cybersecurity fails to live up to expectations, reflect reality
For too long, the government had thrown good money after bad when it came to IT spending, according to former Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra. In December 2010, he unveiled a sweeping plan to reform federal IT projects, encompassing 25 focus areas. Among them: Shuttering data centers and transitioning to cloud-computing platforms and implementing more robust metrics and processes to effectively manage large- scale IT projects.
With the CIO's office now under the stewardship of Steven VanRoekel and many implementation deadlines now past, Federal News Radio examines whether the initial progress has continued. For analysis, Federal News Radio turned to two federal IT experts: Karen Evans, partner at KE&T Partners, LLC, and former administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology (IT) at the Office of Management and Budget, and Dan Chenok, executive director of IBM's Center for The Business of Government. When it comes to the IT reform plan, Federal News Radio rates the Obama administrations' efforts as being effective. Both Evans and Chenok said the plan is both an evolution of previous administration's effort to reform technology, as well as an acknowledgement of the quickly changing technological landscape.
Ambitious IT reform plan viewed as effective
Information sharing — between federal agencies, and across multiple layers of government — became an even more vital endeavor in the post-9/11 age. The Information Sharing Environment, headed by program manager, Kshemendra Paul, has helped to improve the coordination of information sharing. Under his watch, the National Information Exchange Model has worked to break down intelligence and information stovepipes. Agencies embraced the spirit of the idea, made progress toward the administration's stated goals and the results have been apparent. For those reasons, Federal News Radio is rating the Obama administration's information-sharing efforts as effective.
Agencies embrace information-sharing efforts, make effective progress
[Commentary] The Obama administration promised "an unprecedented level of openness in government." The Open Government Directive, released in late 2009, aimed to lay the cornerstone for new levels of government transparency. It set new requirements for agencies to post government information online to "promote informed participation by the public," to improve the quality of that government data and to inculcate a "culture of open government." As part of the directive, each individual agency was required to publish its own transparency plan. But now, nearly three years later, how much progress has actually been made? For analysis, Federal News Radio turns to Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. West, the founding director of Brookings' Center for Technology Innovation, shares his perspective of where things stand in open gov.
When it comes to creating a more open, transparent government, Federal News Radio believes more progress is needed.
- Reason #1: White House issued policies for openness and transparency.
- Reason #2: However, the quality and usefulness of data has been questioned.
- Reason #3: There's been only minimal participation in blogs and forums around data "communities."
Open, transparent government efforts merit more progress needed
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decided what to do with most of the money it made from the divestiture of its Alibaba stake: Return it to the company’s shareholders.
Yahoo said it will return approximately $3.65 billion in after-tax proceeds to shareholders. That’s about 85 percent of what it made on the deal. It will keep the remainder, about $650 million. “This outcome is terrific for Yahoo,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in an all-hands memo to employees. “It generates liquidity to create substantial value for our shareholders, while retaining a meaningful amount in the company to invest in our future. Also, because we still own 23 percent of Alibaba’s common stock, we have the opportunity to benefit from future upside when Alibaba IPOs.”
Yahoo Returning $3.65 Billion to Shareholders, but in Buybacks or Dividends?
Microsoft and Research in Motion announced that they have signed a licensing deal for Microsoft technology that allows users to more easily move media and data between desktop PCs and other devices.
The deal, according to David Kaefer, Microsoft’s general manager of intellectual property licensing, will allow RIM to meet the demand for mobile devices to “display richer images and data than traditional cellular phones.” The deal is part of Microsoft’s IP licensing program, according to a news release. The agreement deals with Microsoft’s exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) technology, which is a file system the company developed particularly for flash drives. Microsoft also licenses the technology to companies such as Sharp and Sony. Having use of the technology could help RIM add more multimedia capability to its phones, which consumers will welcome. Whether it would help RIM do anything more than keep up with the competition in the smartphone space remains to be seen.
Microsoft, Research in Motion sign licensing deal
Comcast, the nation’s largest broadband provider, has launched the second of its two planned broadband cap trials in Tucson (AZ). The new caps limit users of its premium tiers at 600 GB per month and economy tiers at 300 GB per month. A day after the trials came to light, Comcast announced that its superfast 305 Mbps service will be available in more cities and a spokesman confirmed that service is and will be uncapped. The Extreme 305 tier will cost $299.95 per month and will be available in most major markets in its Northeast division. Concurrent with those speeds, users will also get Wi-Fi at 155 Mbps throughout the home, and Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman, says future in-home routers for the Extreme 305 tier will eventually use the new gigabit 802.11ac standard. Current Wi-Fi gear from Comcast uses 802.11n. But even as it pushes ahead with faster tiers, Comcast is still testing variations on its broadband cap that it first launched in 2008. At the time, the cap was a straight 250 GB per month, but as usage grew and more users hit the cap, Comcast raised the limit to 300 GB per month in May and said it would test out new variations of the cap.
Comcast launches uncapped 305 Mbps service in Northeast, but caps Tuscon Comcast data caps hit test cities, range from 300GB to 600GB (ars technica)
Findings, the year-old content-sharing site from untraditional VC firm Betaworks, was built on the ability to sync and share Kindle highlights. But Amazon told Betaworks last week that this function violates its terms of service. Findings is shifting its focus to web clipping.
The Kindle highlights feature lets reader select and “clip” favorite quotes and passages from the e-books they are reading, then access those highlights online later. At launch, Findings’ main feature was the ability for users to easily share those Kindle highlights with others by syncing their Kindle account with the Findings’ web bookmarklet. Findings maintains that web clipping has become an increasingly important part of the service it provides, though Betaworks CEO John Borthwick acknowledged that the ability to share Kindle highlights was the reason many people started using Findings in the first place. He said that Amazon had known about Findings for a year and had been fine with the service until now. ”I don’t want to intuit what Amazon’s motivations are,” he said, but suggested that the decision was driven not by Amazon but by book publishers: “This is probably what publishers want.”
Betaworks’ Findings shifts to web clipping, as Amazon bans Kindle clips
The American Civil Liberties Union is questioning whether a long-awaited national public safety broadband network could become a tool for a domestic secret police force.
"We shouldn't just accept that undercover police will infiltrate peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, photograph them, and use face recognition or other techniques to identity them," ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley wrote. The post was a response to a National Journal report that detailed the first test of the potential public-safety network's capabilities during the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Police in the Tampa area say that the broadband network and specialized apps allowed undercover officers to use off-the-shelf smartphones to send real-time video of protesters. "If this network is going to be built, it ups the ante on police surveillance--making it more vital than ever that we enforce strict rules governing how surveillance is carried out," Stanley said.
ACLU: Public-Safety Network Raises Police-Surveillance Concerns
The secretly recorded video of Mitt Romney decrying the “47 percent” of Americans who won't vote for him might run afoul of state law that bars eavesdropping.
The rules in Florida — where Romney spoke at a private fundraiser — generally require consent from both the person recording and the person being recorded when one of the parties has a reasonable expectation of privacy. But the question is whether Romney can claim that expectation, partly because fundraising events are about influencing supporters and spreading word about his candidacy. "I think there are good arguments both ways under the statute," said Peter Swire, a professor at Ohio State University who led up privacy work during the Clinton administration. "Both sides can write a good brief now." It may already be too late to worry about the legality of it all: Mother Jones magazine, which first obtained the video, already released the recording. Romney’s words have gone viral, and they may change the dynamics of the 2012 race.
'47 percent' recording may be illegal