David Valdez Posts

The Obama Administration’s Small Business Jobs Act is kicking in $5M for a small business mentoring program. The Small Business Administration is providing grants ranging from $250K to $500K for organizations to provide support and mentoring for small businesses.  The deadline for submitting grant applications is April 11, and the grant recipients will be announced soon after the deadline. The program is open to profit and non-profit organizations that have at least three years of national exper ...

The National Institute for Science and technology announced its next cloud workshop scheduled for April 7-8 in Gaithersburg, MD. Last year NIST convened a series of workshops on cloud computing to develop a roadmap for federal agencies to migrate to the cloud.Specifically, NIST stated, “Federal CIOs need and want answers to practical operational questions. How does an agency protect its data if it doesn’t physically control the hardware and software used to store, transport and process the data? ...

Yesterday, the Senate Science Commerce and Transportation Committee held a hearing on the “State of Online Privacy”.  This was the first of two heating hearings focused on whether additional legislation was needed to protect consumers from how companies manage consumer data collected online. There were was testimony from several private, not-for-profit and federal agency stakeholders. Senator Kerry plans to introduce a bill sometime soon, which he hopes will solve several issues: Websites sellin ...

As national policymakers observed the protests in Egypt unfold, an interesting fact emerged.  Egypt’s President Mubarak ordered the utility companies and Internet Service Providers to restrict Internet traffic, ultimately shutting down access to the Internet.  Consequently, Egyptian citizens had no access to social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook or Google that were being used to organize and mobilize protesters.Interestingly enough, on February 15, Senators Lieberman and Carper intro ...

Does the Department of Defense have a role in the event of a major cyber attack on critical infrastructure?This is the question that Rep. Mac Thornberry, chair of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threat and Capabilities, raised.  Today, the Congressman convened a group of cybersecurity experts from academia, not-for-profits and the private sector to assess the vulnerabilities due to cyber vandalism, theft, crimes and warfare of the country’s critical infrastructure. Although the panel of experts off ...

Yesterday, the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held the first (of possibly several) hearings focused on scrutinizing the rollout of the $7 billion fund administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Development Agency. Testimony from the Inspector Generals from each respective agency indicated that there was concern that the Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program (BTOP) will need greater scrutiny going forward to avoid fraud and abu ...

The Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold hearings next week on the spending practices under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for Broadband deployment. Witnesses have not been announced, but we expect representatives from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to be present, as well as recipients of the broadband deployment grants.This hearing may set the tone for the public policy discussion legislators will have in the coming months on issues ...

Cybersecurity continues to be an important issue on Capitol Hill.  Last week, Senate Majority Leader Reid introduced the Cyber Security and American Cyber Competitiveness Act of 2011.  Among the goals of the bill are to “safeguard critical infrastructure, including the electric grid, military assets, the financial sector and telecommunications networks. It urges incentives for the private sector to assess the risk of cyber terrorism and take action to prevent it and promote investments in the Am ...

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend the “State of the Net” conference hosted by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus held in Washington, D.C. The event was very well attended and there were numerous panels on a variety of public policy issues related to technology. Read on for a summary of the panels I attended.Online Privacy on Trial: Has Congress Given Industry Self-Regulating Long Enough?The discussion largely focused on providing a history of the developm ...

It’s a new year and a new legislative agenda prevails in the House. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the new chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, and he has named his subcommittee chairs: Subcommittee on Manufacturing and Trade Chair Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Chair Greg Walden (R-OR), Subcommittee on Energy and Power Chair Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy Chair John Shimkus (R-IL), Subcommittee on Health Chair Joe ...