U.S. thinking about open data is outdated, according to Taavi Kotka, CIO of Estonia, one of the first countries to go fully digital in its government information. […]

White House officials championed the Obama administration’s programs and advances in open data at the first White House Open Data Summit as a means of inspiring further open data innovations in the coming years. […]

Creators of a new open data app are encouraging the public to take advantage of tools created through government data, particularly through their Ecological Marine Units Map, which uses National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data to map the physical and chemical properties of the world’s oceans. […]

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act , a rule passed in 1998 dictating that parents must grant consent before allowing their children under 13 to access certain websites, must adapt as technology develops, the FTC said. […]

The White House Office of Management and Budget collected initial data from agencies to gauge the impact of the Generation Indigenous Initiative. The initiative seeks to improve educational outcomes for native students, increase access to quality teacher housing, increase Internet access, support the Indian Child Welfare Act, reduce teen suicide, and grow tribal control of criminal justice. […]

The National Parks Chesapeake Explorer mobile app was the fourth app to be approved by the National Park Service in 2012, before it was taken off the market recently without notifying its creators why it was disapproved. […]

The U.S. Census Bureau awarded General Dynamics Information Technology a $430 million contract to support the 2020 Census Questionnaire Assistance program. […]

The White House launched the Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness (PREP) and Joint Declaration on Harnessing the Data Revolution for Climate Resilience to use open data to combat climate change. […]

The White House released a progress report on its third Open Government National Action Plan and added new commitments to the plan. […]

The Office of Personnel Management has 70 terabits of stored data that it plans to use for behavioral analysis. “We spent a lot of money to get those logged files,” said Clif Triplett, senior cyber information technology adviser for OPM. “We want to try to harvest the value.” […]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the first two contracts of its Commercial Weather Data Pilot program. […]

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 Department of Homeland Security’s immigration system’s transition from a paper system to online databases has caused more than 800 immigrants to be mistakenly granted citizenship. […]

GasBuddy, an app that lets people find the cheapest gas prices near them, has seen a 40 percent increase in members due to a massive gas line leak in Alabama on Sept. 9. […]

Data scientists should have a strong moral compass in order to handle big data, according to DJ Patil, deputy chief technology officer for data policy and chief data scientist at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. […]

The Drone Advisory Committee defined the problems that need to be addressed surrounding unmanned aircraft systems but decided not to tackle them at this time. […]

Many Federal agencies struggle with whittling down their cybersecurity priorities. Meeting with individual organizations within an agency to gauge their priorities is a solution that can be transferred from the private sector to the Federal world, according to Rocky DeStefano, cybersecurity subject matter expert at Cloudera. […]

Most Federal agencies are drafted to be defensive and reactive rather than offensive and predictive, Federal officials said. […]

Federal information sharing is key to combating terrorism and cyber threats, according to law enforcement representatives from several states. […]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has announced the winners of the Use of Blockchain in Health IT and Health-related Research Challenge. […]

The National Center for Atmospheric Research selected Juniper Networks to provide infrastructure for a new supercomputer that will perform 5.34 quadrillion calculations per second. This new supercomputer will be installed at NCAR’s Wyoming Supercomputing Center this fall; it will be operational in 2017. […]

The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s First Responders Group is creating software designed to help search-and-rescue groups. In a partnership with dbS Productions, FRG developed FIND to track lost individuals, some of whom may be children or people with disabilities. […]

Join us on Sept. 22 at 1:30 p.m. ET for the “Preparing for the Federal Data Deluge” webinar to discuss key Federal data challenges – and how agencies can best store, protect, and manage data. CPE credits are available. […]

Jon Froehlich at the University of Maryland is working with a team of graduate students on Project Sidewalk, an online tool through which users can view their Washington, D.C., neighborhoods with Google Street View and label areas that may be inaccessible to those with impaired mobility. […]

The Department of Transportation launched its National Transit Map, which includes transit data, a participation map, and interactive mapping apps. The map includes data from 270 transit agencies that provided information on more than 398,000 stops and 10,000 routes. […]

The Baton Rouge Department of Information Services on Aug. 19 created an interactive map to track damage as the Louisiana city dealt with disastrous flooding. Within hours, 10,000 people, including rescue teams, had used the map. […]

The Cloud Security Alliance published a list of the 100 Best Practices in Big Data Security and Privacy to help big data service providers strengthen their infrastructures as the amount of data rapidly grows. The list offers 10 solutions for each of the 10 biggest challenges in big data security and privacy. Check out our condensed list, presenting one recommendation for each challenge. […]

Donald Trump’s campaign app, America First, puts users’ contacts at risk. The app, which is available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, requests access to users’ phone address books, which puts this information at risk if the campaign were to be hacked. This is a legitimate concern, given the number of hacks already reported during this election season. […]

Big data can be analyzed more efficiently when it’s structured properly, according to government experts. […]