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Daily Archives: January 23, 2017

Wall St 24/7 – 15 Companies Making the Most From the Government

“U.S. government federal contract spending totaled $436.9 billion in 2015, with an estimated 64% of the spending going to national defense contracts. The U.S. defense budget is by far the largest in the world, and the government relies heavily on the private sector to meet its needs. Likewise, many contractors rely on the government for a substantial share of their revenue. To determine the companies profiting the most from the U.S. government, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed contract data from the Federal Procurement Data System. Companies were ranked on total payments received from U.S. government contract obligations in the 2015 government fiscal year…”

CourtListener – free legal research website – millions of legal opinions from federal and state courts

“Search millions of opinions by case name, topic, or citation. 418 Jurisdictions. Sponsored by the Non-Profit Free Law Project. With CourtListener, lawyers, journalists, academics, and the public can research an important case, stay up to date with new opinions as they are filed, or do deep analysis using our raw data.” Continue Reading

Summary Report on Audits of Security Controls for TSA Information Technology Systems at Airports

DHS OIG – Summary Report on Audits of Security Controls for TSA Information Technology Systems at Airports, December 30, 2016. OIG-17-14. “Our previous reports identified numerous deficiencies in security controls for TSA’s IT systems and equipment at airports. These deficiencies included inadequate physical security for TSA server rooms at airports, unpatched software, missing security documentation,… Continue Reading

NY Fed – Measuring Americans’ Expectations Following the 2016 Election

Liberty Street Economics – “While consumer confidence as measured by various surveys has increased sharply since the national election, the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) has shown little notable change in expectations. In this post, we show that the difference may partly reflect systematic compositional changes whereby respondents who answer a survey… Continue Reading

The State of Digitization in US Public and State Libraries

Advancing the National Digital Platform: The State of Digitization in US Public and State Libraries – Highlights: Ninety-two percent of public libraries have locally significant, unique physical collections More than 37.6% of libraries have engaged in digitization activities in the last three years In addition to the common barriers of time and ongoing funding, 61.4%… Continue Reading

FTC Releases New Report on Cross-Device Tracking

“The Federal Trade Commission has released Cross-Device Tracking: An FTC Staff Report that describes the technology used to track consumers across multiple Internet-connected devices, the benefits and challenges associated with it, and industry efforts to address those challenges. The report concludes by making recommendations to industry about how to apply traditional principles like transparency, choice,… Continue Reading

Panel on End-of-term crawl and collection of vulnerable government information

James A. Jacobs – FreeGovInfo: ” Panel on End-of-term crawl and the collection of vulnerable government information – January 23, 2017 “I was honored last week to be part of a panel hosted by OpenTheGovernment and the Bauman Foundation to talk about the End of Term project. Other presenters included Jess Kutch at Coworker.org and… Continue Reading

Report – Amplifying Human Potential Towards Purposeful Artificial Intelligence

Via Infosys: “For the purposes of this research, AI was defined as an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities that computers with AI are designed for include image and speech recognition, learning, planning and problem-solving. Examples of applied AI technologies… Continue Reading

Report on Distributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for Securities Industry

FINRA – “This paper provides an overview of distributed ledger technology, highlights some key applications being explored in the securities industry and potential impact of the technology, and discusses key implementation and regulatory considerations for broker-dealers.  FINRA welcomes an open dialogue with market participants to help proactively identify and address any potential risks or hurdles in… Continue Reading