Federal Insights

  • President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he is combining White House staffs dealing with international and homeland security, predicting the change will make Americans safer. The Associated Press is reporting, Obama also is creating a new office intended to communicate more effectively with other countries about U.S. security policy. The Homeland Security Council, created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will be kept as a venue for discussing issues concerning domestic security, including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, natural disasters and pandemic influenza. Its staff will be integrated into the National Security Council.

    May 26, 2009
  • Steven L. Katz President Lion Taming, LLC May 25th and 27th

    May 26, 2009
  • We\'re learning more about the plot to blow up a synagogue in New York and shoot down military planes in the same area. The men allegedly began their plot in 2008 and were discovered by authorities when they recruited an undercover informant operating out of a mosque into their group. The informant allowed law enforcement agencies to monitor the group\'s activities, and gave the men inert plastic explosives and an inoperable FIM-92 \"Stinger\" missile two weeks ago.

    May 22, 2009
  • John Ely Executive Director for Procurement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Department of Homeland Security (DHS) May 18th and 20th

    May 18, 2009
  • Don Hale AFGE DEFCON Chair Jacque Simon AFGE Public Policy Director Scott Eblin President, The Eblin Group Heidi Shierholz Economist, Economic Policy Institute

    May 13, 2009
  • Some predicted it would happen and it did. President Barack Obama says the detainee abuse photos he wants to prevent from being released are \"not really sensational\", but at the same time they could put U.S. troops at risk. So he\'s directed White House lawyers to fight the court-ordered release of the photos. He says he won\'t stand for abuse of prisoners. Just recently, White House said it would release the photos, citing little chance of defeating an ACLU challenge to have them released.

    May 13, 2009
  • May 20th, 2009 Steve Rosen, Director of Performance and Strategic Planning in the Office of Federal Asset Sales at the General Services Administration, on the \"eFAS\" system. This system has more than tripled the number of Federal assets sold online, and nearly doubled the amount of money recouped for the government. Mr. Rosen won a Leadership Award from the Chief Information Officers Council at IRMCO this year.

    May 13, 2009
  • May 13, 2009 Stephen W. Warren, VA\'s acting CIO (and acting assistant secretary for information & technology) and Gail Graham, VA\'s deputy chief officer for health information management, talk about updating VA\'s health records system, and integrating it with the Pentagon\'s system.

    May 13, 2009
  • Dissatisfaction with progress in Afghanistan has cost General David McKiernan his job there. SECDEF Robert Gates said \"new leadership\" is required. He said the situation requires \"fresh thinking and fresh eyes.\" So he\'s assigned Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal to replace him. McChrystal is a former commander of special operations forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Right now, he\'s director of the U.S. military Joint Staff.

    May 11, 2009
  • Vice Admiral Robert Murrett Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency May 11th and 13th

    May 11, 2009
  • The Associated Press is reporting the top U.S. general in Iraq is hedging his bets about whether U.S. combat troops will pull out of the volatile city of Mosul on schedule next month. Gen. Raymond Odierno says U.S. and Iraqi forces are in the midst of a neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep of Mosul ahead of a June 30 deadline to hand over security for the city to Iraqi forces.

    May 10, 2009
  • Steven Greenhouse New York Times Labor Reporter Author, \"The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker\" Roger Hickey Co-director, Campaign for America\'s FuturePeter Winch AFGE National Organizer

    May 06, 2009
  • Hundreds of Army public affairs officers from around the world are in the area this week. They\'re attending the Army Worldwide Public Affairs Symposium. The goal is to learn how to better promote the Army. And many of the attendees we\'re doing just that --promoting their home-bases, while interacting with the media . \"We train all of the army intelligence solider airmen, sailors, marines and coast guardsmen in a variety of intelligence specialties\" says Tanya Linton from Ft. Huachuca Arizona. That training includes the joint weapons intelligence course --\"which is basically battlefield forensics. We can look at the site of an explosion and track it back to the bomb makers,\" adds Linton.

    May 05, 2009
  • May 6, 2009 Jerry Davis, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Security at NASA, discusses the complexity of integrating social networking tools into an agency with a huge stockpile of sensitive data, and a large number of employees handling that data.

    May 04, 2009