The White House announced the creation of 29 tools Thursday that use Federal and local data to address problems identified by Federal agencies as part of the Opportunity Project, an open data effort to improve economic mobility for all Americans.
With information from the Department of Agriculture’s new database, a person walking through the grocery store can use their phone to look up how many calories are in their cart. Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, announced the Branded Food Products Database, an open data partnership.
The Department of State is supporting open data initiatives to work to end world hunger, such as Feed the Future and Project 8.
The interconnectedness of the energy sector presents both increased challenges and potential, according to panelists at an Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology briefing. “The energy sector is clearly the backbone of all 16 critical infrastructures,” said Jay Williams of Parsons.
Unisys announced a $232 million award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for cloud and application modernization services. Unisys will support USDA’s Rural Development Comprehensive Loan Program.
Worldwide, 800 million people suffer from starvation every day, according to a blog post from the U. S. Department of Agriculture website. With the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Summit, USDA plans to address this problem.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture received a C grade on its Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard, which was released in May. Flip Anderson, acting executive director of FITARA for USDA, was so frustrated with the FITARA grading system that he created his own scorecard to gauge how closely the USDA complies with the act’s mandates.
The U.S. Forest Service used a Cessna 205 aircraft to discover that 26 million trees have died in California since October 2015. Instead of relying on satellite images or unmanned aerial vehicles, popular devices in today’s agriculture, the Regional Aerial Survey Program uses a more old-fashioned method of collecting data. […]
Farmers are concerned about some aspects of the Federal Aviation Administration’s recent regulations regarding unmanned aerial vehicles. Robert Blair, vice president of agriculture for Measure, one of the nation’s leading drone operators, specifically addressed the regulation that states a UAV operator must fly his or her drone within a line of sight. […]
If you are wondering what it’s going to take to get your agency in line with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, known as FITARA, look no further. Joyce Hunter, the deputy chief information officer for policy and planning at the Department of Agriculture, has been there and has done that.
The Agriculture Department’s Flip Anderson is the only known agency-level FITARA director–an indicator of both the level of importance USDA has assigned to the new law and the resources necessary to manage the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act compliance correctly.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has collaborated with the University of Montana and other organizations to use Google Earth Engine to create an interactive, online map tool that integrates layers of data to identify and pinpoint elusive species damaging western habitats.
Federal employees have greater job satisfaction for the first time in four years, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration remained the top Federal agency to work at, according to the Partnership for Public Service’s 2015 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. The Partnership released the study Tuesday. The study, the Partnership’s 10th […]