Defense

  • Navy CIO Terry Halvorsen issued a policy making IT security training provided by the services to sailors and Marines equitable to commercial accreditations. He said the department shouldn\'t have to pay for civilian education courses when DoD programs work just as well.

    March 27, 2012
  • Army officials announced the service is on track to more than double a Presidential goal for investments in energy efficiency projects. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy and Sustainability Richard Kidd, said the Army would likely invest $800 million in performance-based contracts over the next two years to realize energy savings and efficiencies at its multitude of bases and facilities.

    March 26, 2012
  • The 10-year saga of the Air Force to award a contract for new aerial refueling tankers ended a year ago. That\'s when Boeing got the final nod. Federal Drive gets a progress report from Boeing on the tanker program.

    March 26, 2012
  • Naval Facilities Engineering Command opened the first of three planned stations that pump E-85, a fuel made up mostly of ethanol. The Navy Secretary said he wants the service to cut is use of petroleum fuel by 50 percent and set a deadline of 2015.

    March 26, 2012
  • The Air Force is hoping the third time will be the charm in its efforts to trim its civilian workforce, announcing Friday a third round of buyouts and early retirements. The service plans to begin offering Voluntary Early Retirements and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments beginning May 1. Applications will be due by May 14 and those approved will need to leave federal service by Aug. 31.

    March 23, 2012
  • The Government Accountability Office says that even while the Army has made some strides toward improving its pay practices, the service is a long way off from the kind of data integrity independent experts would need to see in order to green light the systems as audit-ready.

    March 23, 2012
  • The military\'s chief information officer, Teri Takai, said after the Army completes its migration to DISA\'s email-as-a-service, the Air Force will be next. She said the Navy also is in discussions to move to the cloud. DoD soon will release a new cloud computing strategy and standards guide for industry. March 22, 2012(Encore presentation April 19, 2012)

    March 22, 2012
  • The Navy opened the doors last week on a new laboratory tasked with cutting-edge research on robotics and unmanned systems. And befitting the science-fiction-like focus of research, the Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research, located at the Naval Research Laboratory\'s main Washington, D.C.site, has its own state-of-the-art facilities.

    March 22, 2012
  • Deputy Chief Information Officer Mike Krieger wrote on the CIO\'s leadership blog that migrations resumed Monday after more than a two-month pause mandated by Congress.

    March 22, 2012
  • The Government Accountability Office will release a report this morning detailing problems with the Army\'s payroll system — challenges that threaten the Defense Department\'s ability to be audit-read

    March 22, 2012
  • A decade of war has not deterred people from signing up to work for the Navy and Marine Corps. Juan Garcia, the Navy\'s assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, said retention rates are so high the agency has had to let some people go.

    March 22, 2012
  • The goal is to give people a platform for developing programs soldiers can use on-the-go.

    March 21, 2012
  • Army would agree to buy energy from private plants on Army land but cut the plants off from the electric grid in the event of an emergency. The final solicitation could be out by this spring.

    March 21, 2012
  • Gen. Bill Lord said the community transformation plan focuses on \"delivering warfighting effects while protecting an interconnected and interoperable domain.\"

    March 20, 2012
  • The Army is in the middle of a major rethink of mobile devices, including how it secures them, how it buys them and ultimately, how it uses them. The push comes amid a mandate to find $1.5 billion in IT savings across the Army.

    March 20, 2012