SDFM The Business of Defense

  • The Central Intelligence Agency says it\'s practice of shredding and burning classified papers-often referred to in movies and books as \"burn after reading\"-is one of several ways the CIA conserves energy, reduces its impact on the environment, and lowers costs through its sustainability efforts. But what about the Agency\'s carbon footprint? Exhaust from the Agency\'s on-site incinerator generates steam to heat water at CIA Headquarters. In addition to saving fuel, that process reduces the amount of waste-which would otherwise be destined for landfills-by nearly 1,000 tons per year. The CIA increases its recycling efforts each year, annually collecting over three tons of plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum, construction debris, and other waste.

    April 25, 2011
  • According to the Associated Press, \"British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted Thursday that NATO isn\'t edging toward the deployment of ground troops in Libya despite the decision by several European nations to send military staff to assist rebel forces.\" Britain, Italy and France are sending combat advisers to train Libya\'s opposition forces.

    April 25, 2011
  • Wikileaks suspect PFC Bradley Manning has arrived at his new temporary home. The Leavenworth Joint Regional Correctional Facility in Kansas. It is there he will wait while the government decides whether to put him on trial. The first order of business is in-depth assessment by the medical staff there. The facility is a state-of-the-art, 464-bed, medium/minimum custody facility with a 48-bed special housing unit built to comply with American Correctional Association Standards. It officially opened last October.

    April 25, 2011
  • World War One era documents have been declassified by the CIA. One document outlines the chemicals and techniques necessary for developing certain types of secret writing ink and a method for opening sealed letters without detection. One question that has come up since the declassification is, why now as opposed to a decade ago when, the case was litigated in court? The revelation at the time was deemed to be a hazard to U.S. national security.

    April 25, 2011
  • In the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan, the Defense Department says it concurs with the State Department\'s determination that the situation in Japan does not pose significant risk to U.S. citizens. As a result, last Friday, the Pentagon ended the voluntary authorized departure of DoD eligible family members from Honshu, Japan. So far approximately 20,000 personnel, approximately 140 aircraft, and more than 20 ships from the U.S. military have supported Operation Tomodachi.

    April 25, 2011
  • Changes may be coming at the top at the Pentagon and the CIA. If they are in the works, it\'s difficult to tell who will do what, but as far as CIA Director Leon Panetta is concerned, \"I hope he stays there. I think we wants to stay there. I\'m encouraging him to stay there, says House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers. And he has some advice for the President. \"You may need to find another Secretary of Defense. I think Secretary Gates deserves his time, but I would not make wholesale changes in all of the national security posts all at one time.\"

    April 25, 2011
  • The White House has had an iPhone app for a while now. In fact, it\'s inching toward a half million downloads. Now, the administration is branching out into the Android world. Both apps allow users to access audio, video, written briefings, White House blogs, and get alerts. The White House says almost 7 percent of the visitors to the whitehouse.gov website already come from either iPhone or Android devices. And their figures show the traffic from those mobile platforms to the president\'s official site has nearly doubled in the past year.

    April 25, 2011
  • DISA, the Defense Information Systems Agency, is adding a social networking layer to its software development collaboration system. Forge.mil is DISA\'s shared software development environment. Forge.mil community will let developers organize into groups and sub-communities to share their development work with Defense Department stakeholders. DISA imagines those groups forming around communities of interest, organizations, mission areas, or specific technologies.

    April 25, 2011
  • The Internal Revenue Service says it saw a significant increase in the number of electronically filed returns this year. By April 18th, this year\'s slightly-delayed tax day, the IRS had received 101 million E-Filed returns - almost a nine percent increase over tax year 2009. It\'s also the first time the number of e-filed returns has crossed the 100 million mark. The IRS says it\'s received almost a billion returns over E-File since the program first began nationally, in 1990.

    April 25, 2011
  • Tips teleworking managers need to know about e-mail.

    April 25, 2011
  • Women in Federal Law Enforcement Executive Director Margie Moore and Jessie Lane, president of the WIFLE Executive Committee, join host Debra Roth to talk about the association and what it\'s doing to address the concerns of its members. April 22, 2011

    April 22, 2011
  • The National Archives says its Civil War records are among its holdings that are most requested by the public. But until now, reviewing those documents required a trip to Washington and time reviewing the original papers. But the Archives has now put about 275,000 pages of records with the names of some three million potential draftees online. The Archives didn\'t have the money to digitize the records itself, so it partnered with the genealogy service Ancestry.com. After five years, the Archives will own the digital records, free and clear.

    April 21, 2011
  • The US Department of Agriculture says its stakeholders in the area of farming are a lot more tech savvy these days. So, its Natural Resources Conservation Service is focusing on developing mobile apps as a way to communicate and exchange data with them. The service thinks using apps instead of traditional paperwork for things like financial assistance and geospatial data exchanges could cut down processing time by 60 to 70 percent. And for farmers, they say, it\'ll mean they can spend more time in the field.

    April 21, 2011
  • The Department of Veterans Affairs has come up with a solution for modernizing its electronic health records system: Releasing the software to the open source community. VA says it\'s seeing a lot of innovation around electronic health records in the private sector. It thinks opening up the source code to its VistA software will be the easiest way to incorporate those technologies into VA, while also letting tech companies build on the platform it\'s already developed. VA uses VistA in 150 hospitals and 800 outpatient clinics.

    April 21, 2011
  • Bryan Lowry President, AFGE Council of Prison Locals Tim Shorrock AFGE Contract Analyst Dr. Toni Lewis Chair, Service Employees International Union\'s Health Care Division

    April 20, 2011