National & World Headlines

  • The Defense Information Systems Agency's recently released five-year strategic plan takes a multi-pronged approach to building what DISA Director Lt. Gen. Ronnie Hawkins calls "information superiority." Tony Montemarano, director of DISA's Strategic Planning and Information Directorate, joined Pentagon Solutions hosted by Francis Rose, to discuss how DISA leaders developed the new guidance.

    October 17, 2012
  • Chris Devlin-Young is a Coast Guard veteran, who became partially paralyzed when his plane ran into a mountainside in 1982. Since then, he's won numerous world medals in the Paralympic sport of monoskiiing and does counseling work with wounded veterans.

    October 17, 2012
  • Gary McKinnon, a British computer hacker who has been fighting extradition to the U.S. for seven years, will not be extradited, because of the high risk he could kill himself, Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May said on Tuesday. He's accused by the United States of causing more than $700,000 damage to U.S. military systems and was facing up to 60 years in a U.S. prison if found guilty of what one U.S. prosecutor called the "biggest military computer hack of all time". McKinnon admitted hacking into Pentagon and NASA computers, claiming he was looking for evidence of aliens.

    October 17, 2012
  • A U.S. Navy submarine and an Aegis class cruiser that collided somewhere off the East Coast are both back in port and officials are investigating what went wrong. The submarine USS Montpelier arrived at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in southern Georgia. The USS San Jacinto arrived at Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Fla. on Sunday. Navy officials say they collided at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday during routine training operations. No one was injured.

    October 17, 2012
  • FTA administrator Peter Rogoff discusses the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act. Attorney Stephen Ramaley talks about a U.S. District Court's decision ruling the 8(a) program unconstitutional. Erik Wasson of The Hill talks about Sen. Tom Coburn's Wastebook 2012. Juliet Beyler discusses the upcoming deadline for service members and their families to apply for retroactive pay.

    October 17, 2012
  • The Defense Information Systems Agency sees itself as a safety valve for increasing pressure on military services' IT budgets. At a meeting of CIOs last week, DISA told the military services they could offload commodity IT services to their data centers.

    October 17, 2012
  • A new Federal News Radio survey of federal chief information officers shows that budget cuts are among their biggest concerns. Senior technology managers also said among the biggest benefits they are seeing from moving systems to the cloud is cost savings. DoD deputy CIO Rob Carey said the Pentagon is setting certain changes in motion as part of its move to the cloud to help deal with an assortment of challenges.

    October 17, 2012
  • David Goldman of Public Health Science discusses a new customer complaint form put out by USDA. Martin Libicki of the Rand Corp. talks about Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's recent speech on cybersecurity. John Mahoney discusses the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's latest report on the federal workforce. GAO's Brenda Farrell talks about her agency's analysis of the Military Health System.

    October 15, 2012
  • Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrel Issa (R-Calif.), wrote to the heads of 10 defense companies seeking information about the legal justification for not issuing notices of potential layoffs due to the across-the-board defense cuts set to go into effect Jan. 2. If contractors don't issue the notices and contracts are, in fact, terminated or modified, then agencies will pick up the contract-termination and employee compensation costs, the Office of Management and Budget stated in guidance issued late last month. But Republican lawmakers have argued the White House doesn't have the legal authority to ask companies to not comply with the law.

    October 12, 2012
  • Current definitions of cyberspace have led to confusion about roles, responsibilities, lanes in the road, a top Air Force general said Thursday. Senior leaders will convene a summit in November to zero-in on a common understanding of cyber.

    October 12, 2012
  • Now what? Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged yesterday sending a drone into Israel, which was shot down last weekend after flying some 25 miles (55 km) into Israeli territory. Nasrallah said in a televised speech that the drone was Iranian-made. Israeli warplanes shot down the unmanned plane, but the infiltration marked a rare breach of Israel's tightly guarded airspace. Already under pressure in Lebanon, Hezbollah is under pressure from rivals who accuse it of putting Lebanon at risk of getting sucked into regional turmoil.

    October 12, 2012
  • Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said President Barack Obama has failed to produce a workable budget plan, while Vice President Joe Biden said budgets introduced by Ryan "eviscerated all the things that the middle class cares about."

    October 12, 2012
  • The Defense Secretary told a group of business leaders Thursday night the nation's critical infrastructure is vulnerable to online assaults that would take down systems and networks. Panetta said DoD is acting aggressively to get ahead of the problem through workforce training and through technology capabilities.

    October 12, 2012
  • If your bathroom at work is only cleaned three times a week, instead of daily, does that constitute cruel and unusual punishment? Shore-based Navy civilian and military personnel are about to find out, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

    October 12, 2012