Kenneth Corbin

As federal agencies move swiftly to begin doling out billions of dollars in grants for new broadband networks, government officials and other stakeholders urged rigorous accountability and monitoring to ensure that the money is used effectively and steers clear of waste and fraud. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the agency within the Commerce Department […]

WASHINGTON — Much of the recent discussion about health IT has focused on digitizing patients’ medical records, but a string of experts and advocates here at a policy conference on Capitol Hill said that wireless, Internet-enabled technologies hold a more sweeping potential for cutting health costs and improving the quality of care. Intel Chairman Craig […]

Facebook users are once again in an uproar over a set of changes in the popular social networking site. Facebook recently updated its home page to give it a more real-time flavor, incorporating a status update box that bears an uncanny resemblance to microblogging phenom Twitter. The redesign, rolled out last week, added the Twitter-like […]

WASHINGTON — Enthusiasts of cloud computing like to describe it as the next great paradigm in the IT industry, following on the heels of proud predecessors like the mainframe, the PC and the Internet. The idea that data and applications will reside in the ether and computing power will become a resource distributed over a […]

Federal agencies overseeing $7.2 billion for broadband deployment through President Obama’s massive economic stimulus bill have unveiled an aggressive plan for allocating the funding–laying out a rough timetable for when the first dollars might begin filtering into the economy. At the Department of Commerce, the heads of the three agencies and several senior-level staffers involved in […]

People like to talk about wireless spectrum as the precious natural resource of the digital economy. It’s valuable because it’s scarce, yet critics charge that it is egregiously mismanaged by the government. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, today introduced legislation that would direct the FCC and National Telecommunications Information Administration to conduct […]

The Senate Commerce Committee today voted unanimously in favor of Gary Locke’s nomination for Commerce Secretary, sending the matter to the full Senate, where he is expected to clear easily. In his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Locke [spoke](/government/article.php/3811086/Locke+Clears+Questions+on+Security+Broadband.htm) in wide generalities about the importance of broadband and government transparency in response to the softballs lobbed […]

Cybersecurity experts warned a Senate panel today that the nation is ill-prepared to deal with emerging threats to the nation’s digital infrastructure, advising Congress to elevate information security to the highest priority and promote education in the field. “The simplest way to state this is the nation is under attack,” said Eugene Spafford, a professor […]

It’s got to be a weird thing to have to write your own obituary. Yet there they are in Seattle, the reporters and columnists of the now-defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer eulogizing the 146-year old newspaper as it succumbs to the digital age. The watered-down P-I now exists only online, another major daily to shut down its […]

President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee for his job interview this morning, outlining his plans to turn the department into an “engine of job growth and economic renewal” in a congenial confirmation hearing that seems likely to put him on the fast track for taking a seat in the […]

Vivek Kundra is back on the job as the federal government’s CIO following a leave of absence stemming from corruption charges surrounding his former employees. Kundra stepped aside last week after the FBI raided the office of the CTO of Washington, D.C., and arrested Yusuf Acar, a security official who oversaw contractor agreements. They also […]

Members of the news media have been taking it on the chin of late, first for their slowness to warm up to the Web, then for an often clumsy embrace of new media. But never let it be said that these Blogger-Come-Latelys aren’t trying. We’ve seen news organizations team with social networks to gloss up […]