The Open Data Initiative has the goal of getting federal information assets out to the public for uses such as building mobile applications. But success depends on security policies right so confidential or personally identifiable information doesn’t get out the door, too. Paul Christman is the vice president and Jonathan Sander is the director of Identity Management Product Strategy at Dell Software. They’ve studied the Open Data Initiative. One thing they point out is the need to understand the difference between unstructured and structured data and what federal data publishers have to tackle first.

The General Services Administration in the next three weeks will release the solicitations for the OASIS and OASIS small business multiple award contracts. As GSA nears this milestone, the discussion of whether the government needs another large multiple award contract again comes to the forefront.

If you see someone with a slightly lost look roaming the halls of your federal office building, you might want to ask if they’re from, say, Silicon Valley. A new crop of Presidential Innovation Fellows is adjusting to life in Washington. The software developers, engineers and other technically-skilled young people have come to help agencies improve how they deliver their missions.

If you are Asian, you are probably happier at work than your colleagues, particularly those with disabilities. Those are some of the findings from an analysis of the Office of Personnel Management’s annual survey of federal employees. The Partnership for Public Service and Deloitte looked at effective leadership, support for diversity and overall satisfaction among different demographic groups.

Is the federal government too generous when it comes to workers’ comp? Some in Congress and the Labor Department want to scale back benefits for feds who get hurt on the job. Critics of the current law point to examples of elderly federal workers who were hurt on the job years ago but still get workers’ comp rather than the more stingy retirement benefits. Lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to find out more.