In this week's Technically News: Obama Orders Agencies to Make Data Open, Machine-Readable; Fixing Flaws in Federal Government IT Security; Hearing Set to Probe Data Center Progress; Amazon Web Services Leading Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service App Development; Driving Better Governance with Open Source; The Fully-Secure Quantum Internet System.

In this week's Technically Speaking: DDoS Attacks Triple in 2012; Amazon Cloud Adds Protection Against DoS Attacks; Two States Overhaul IT to Boost Social Services; Six Open Source Security Myths Debunked; A Checklist for Keeping Mobile Apps Secure.

In this week's Technically News: Can Open Standards Help During the Next Major Disaster; The Search Engine That Finds Everything; DISA Moving Exabytes to the Cloud; Cybersecurity Budgets Increase Across Departments; How Do You Tax the Cloud; U.S. Navy Looks to the Cloud

In this edition: Symantec CTO: Enterprise Security Still Needs Humans; As Data Centers Consolidate, Those Remaining Need to be More Efficient; Complexity is Cybersecurity’s Real Enemy; Cybersecurity Challenges in 2013; GitHub Hires First Government Liaison.

In this edition: Red Hat’s Big Data Strategy; NetApp’s FlashRay to Disrupt Enterprise Storage; Federal IT at “High Risk”; Open Data Success Requires Streamlining and Standardization; The Case for Paying for Open Source.

We live in a convergence era of infinite computation, sensors, and materials that can be combined to create brand new possibilities. The speed of making a material transition from concept to production has increased and the cost has decreased exponentially. Decades ago, it would take you years and thousands of dollars to develop a product, but now it can take you hours and less than one-hundred dollars. This has happened because digital manufacturing is now mostly open source and open design, allowing people to utilize a community to create a better product.

In this edition: Cloud Superstars Have Their Heads in the Cloud; Why You Should Pay for Open Source Software; Identity Management Is Complicated; Converged Infrastructure is the Future of Data Centers; Red Hat’s Jim Whitehurst Looks 20 Years Into the Future; 12 IT Predictions from the Federal Government.

In October, I used “We the People” as an example of how to get citizens engaged with government in an open manner. In November, those engaged citizens petitioned the government to consider building a Death Star. By January, enough signatures had been gathered to garner the administration's consideration and, in my mind, a well authored response. The exercise may have been a geeky back and forth which you may see as a joke, but I feel any citizen engagement is good engagement. Here's why.

Technically News scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a weekly source of IT news, information, and ideas that impact the public sector. This edition's articles include: Veterans Affairs Department Launches $3M Open Source Contest; Technology’s Real Value for Government; Trusted Geolocation in the Cloud; Nations Prepare for Cyber War; The Pentagon's Cybersecurity Big Data Analyzer.

Technically News is a new feature on Technically Speaking that scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a weekly source of IT news, information, and ideas that impact the public sector.

As agency data centers close, measurement tools take center stage