Will students pay for news online?

Steve Kelman learns about attitudes to the New York Times' pay model through conversations with students.

Calibre team provides IT, other support to Army National Guard

Calibre Systems Inc. has won a five-year blanket purchase agreement worth up to $45 million for IT and program management support to the Army National Guard.

Former political powerhouses join Partnership's board

The Partnership for Public Service has elected former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and other key figures to its board of directors.

5 mobile technologies you have to master

Technologies for your phone, laptop and tablet are leading a revolution in computing. Are you ready?

Energy site knocked out by Amazon cloud failure

A cutting-edge Energy Department collaboration website hosted by Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud remained unavailable well into the second day of the company's Web services failure.

$130M up for grabs in DOE research grants

Breakthroughs in biofuels, rare earth alternatives and solar power electronics are just some of the areas DOE will focus on.

Twitter outpaces Facebook in terror alert sign-ups; also, federal virtual worlds conference coming up

More people are signing up for DHS' new terrorism alert system on Twitter than on Facebook. And you can attend the upcoming federal virtual worlds conference in the virtual world.

35 firms to divvy up $2.5B Army contract

Thirteen large contractors and 22 small businesses have been named to the Army’s $2.5 billion Operations, Planning, Training and Resource Support Services prime contract, known as OPTARSS II.

Obama donations proposal would hurt acquisition process, critics say

President Barack Obama's attempt to have businesses show whom they support politically goes against the intent of a merit-based procurement system by putting seemingly irrelevant information before the contracting officer, officials say.

SRA leads quintet of DOD BPA awardees

SRA International Inc. and four other contractors will vie for tasks under a newly announced Defense Department blanket purchase agreement that has an estimated value of $100 million over five years, if all options are exercised.

In defense of federal employees (Washington Redskins, beware!)

FCW blogger John Klossner does his part to restore the self-esteem of feds who have been the target of so many congressional attacks.

Small biz wins $49M DOD disaster recovery software BPA

Virtual Corp., a New Jersey software and consulting company, has secured a $49 million Defense Department blanket purchase agreement for its disaster recovery software solutions.

NCI award continues DOD medical IT support for Gulf area

NCI Inc. will continue providing IT support to the 81st Medical Group's Air Education and Training Command at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., under a five-year follow-on task order worth $11.1 million.

Is Amazon's cloud crash a cautionary tale for government?

Amazon's extended outage at one of the data centers that hosts cloud services could be of concern for agencies being ordered to move some applications to the cloud.

Raytheon tasked with systems integration for DARPA project

Raytheon Co. has been awarded a $7 million contract from the Defense Department to provide systems integration services for DARPA.

Contractors required to disclose political contributions: draft order

The White House is considering how to require contractors to declare their political contributions when submitting a contract bid, according to a draft executive order.

Riddle becomes GPO CIO

Charles Riddle is the new CIO at the Government Printing Office, according to a report on Federal News Radio.

Good advice on past-performance from Wartime Contracting Commission

A recent report from the Wartime Contracting Commission reminds Steve Kelman of his regret over a decision he made in the 1990s.

Federal IT spending to increase 5 percent, analyst says

Market research firm Input estimates annual federal IT budget will rise 5 percent annually despite proposed freeze in discretionary spending.

Is pay for performance doomed to fail?

Pay for performance may be coming back, even though past efforts have failed. Do you think it stands a chance in the federal government?