Division of Consumer and Business Education, FTC – “Scammers are using a new trick to steal your money and personal information: a bogus COVID vaccine survey. People across the country are reporting getting emails and texts out of the blue, asking them to complete a limited-time survey about the Pfizer, Moderna, or AstraZeneca vaccine. (And… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Government
LC Debuts New Video Series for 2021 Cherry Blossom Festival
“In 2020, the Library published the new book, “Cherry Blossoms: Sakura Collections from the Library of Congress,” with Smithsonian Books, featuring the rich history of the springtime celebration illustrated with prints, drawings and photographs from the national library. Artists of all ages can celebrate the season by downloading and coloring six pages of outlines from the… Continue Reading
FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) Public Dashboard
“The FAERS Public Dashboard is a highly interactive web-based tool that will allow for the querying of FAERS data in a user friendly fashion. The intention of this tool is to expand access of FAERS data to the general public to search for information related to human adverse events reported to the FDA by the… Continue Reading
Your Face Is Not Your Own
The New York Times – “When a secretive start-up scraped the internet to build a facial-recognition tool, it tested a legal and ethical limit — and blew the future of privacy in America wide open…Computers once performed facial recognition rather imprecisely, by identifying people’s facial features and measuring the distances among them — a crude… Continue Reading
COVID-19 Vaccination: Selected U.S. Data Sources
CRS Insight – COVID-19 Vaccination: Selected U.S. Data Sources Updated March 16, 2021 – “The sources below can help congressional staff track the progress of the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination campaign at the national, state, and local levels.Sources were selected for having commonly cited and frequently requested data. This list is not intended to be comprehensive.… Continue Reading
Federal Guidance Could Help Mitigate Cybersecurity Risks in 401(k) and Other Retirement Plans
Defined Contribution Plans: Federal Guidance Could Help Mitigate Cybersecurity Risks in 401(k) and Other Retirement Plans, GAO-21-25, Published: Feb 11, 2021. Publicly Released: Mar 15, 2021. “In their role administering private sector employer-sponsored defined contribution (DC) retirement plans, such as 401(k) plans, plan sponsors and their service providers—record keepers, third party administrators, custodians, and payroll… Continue Reading
How to Talk to a Real Human at the IRS Without Waiting on Hold Forever
Lifehacker – “Not all questions can be answered by a computer, especially when it comes to your taxes. But when you call the IRS, it can seem impossible to get an actual human to take your call. That’s been made worse in 2021, as the pandemic has further depleted the notoriously understaffed agency, which is… Continue Reading
CDC website has a trove of vaccine data, revealing progress and inequity
Mashable – “The stats on the CDC’s vaccine data website are cause for both hope, and — for Black and brown communities — sadness-tinged outrage. The CDC added a vaccine stats section to its COVID data hub at the beginning of January. It includes counts of vaccine doses distributed to states, those administered to people… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 27, 2021
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 27, 2021 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss, highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
Access Denied: Federal Web Governance Under the Trump Administration
The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), February 2021: “The Trump administration pushed the boundaries of rules, guidelines, and norms in most areas of governance. Manipulating public information was a key tactic, which included dramatic and damaging changes to federal agency websites relating to environmental regulations. These changes led the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative… Continue Reading
NARA – About the Papers of George Washington
“The Papers of George Washington, launched at the University of Virginia in 1968, is a scholarly documentary editing project that edits, publishes, and publicizes a comprehensive edition of George Washington’s public and private papers. Today there are copies of over 135,000 documents in the project’s document room—one of the richest collections of American historical manuscripts extant. There… Continue Reading
Forest Service, NASA upgrade online active fire mapping tool
“Today, the USDA Forest Service, in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is releasing a new online active fire mapping tool to better support fire suppression efforts in North America. The new Fire Information for Resource Management System US/Canada application will provide wildfire management teams and the public real-time access to data, maps and… Continue Reading
