Stories about: Department of Agriculture

Making the most of natural resources of farms is critical in today’s environment, where rainfalls are becoming ever so scarce.

Microsoft could be hoping for an "Oprah effect" for its Surface tabletop computer.

At its CIO Summit, Microsoft told government and education IT managers to figure out how to do "more with less" during the economic recession.

The US House of Representatives has passed an US$819 billion economic stimulus package, with money for broadband deployment, health IT and a national electric smart grid included.

Encryption is hard. Case in point: the US government, which requires its agencies to encrypt all sensitive data on laptops and mobile devices. But according to the US Government Accountability Office, as of last year, 70 per cent of such devices didn't encrypt -- and the other 30 per cent weren't in great shape either.

Lured by the sweet taste of chocolate, IBM hopes to use the cocoa plant as an avenue to improve its business prospects in the emerging economies of Africa.

When disaster looms, who you gonna call? It could increasingly be a mathematician if IBM scientists succeed in one of their current research efforts.

While rapid-fire cost-savings and consolidation efforts typically dominate an IT executive's annual to-do list, what's getting the green light this year are multiphase projects that protect organizations from regulatory fallout and data leakage.

Adam Laurie lived a few Novembers as a dog earlier this year. By duplicating the RFID tags used to identify pets in the U.K. and sewing it into his watch strap, Laurie, an independent security researcher, re-created his dog's ID as a hacking exercise. However, this kind of virtual animal cloning could become a serious issue as industrialized countries roll out RFID-based systems to keep track of their livestock.

David Farris, IT manager at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, has been working for five years to change some of the processes within his 300-employee organization. He hopes the changes will lead to significant savings in the IT department, which now spends about US$100 million annually.