HealthCare.gov's new CEO, NGA's mapping contract and more

Connecticut official named CEO of HealthCare.gov

Kevin Counihan, who until recently headed Connecticut's state health insurance exchange, has been hired by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services as Marketplace Chief Executive Officer -- essentially head of HealthCare.gov and the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight division of CMS. He will report to CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

The move comes out of management changes announced by Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell in June. The Marketplace will also hire a CTO to handle the ongoing technical project management.

Leidos awarded NGA mapping contract

Leidos will provide mapping services to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in a contract worth up to $20 million, the security and engineering firm announced Aug. 25. The Reston, Va.-based firm will incorporate NGA data into geospatial-intelligence products to support NGA tools like navigation planning charts. Work will span a one-year “base period” and, potentially, two additional one-year extensions.

Leidos products under the contract will be “scale-specific graphic representations” of NGA’s Map of the World, Leidos Group President Larry Hill said in a statement. In June, FCW visited NGA to profile the Map of the World, a set of searchable databases available to agencies and contractors that the agency is gradually expanding.

Former HHS cyber official convicted on child porn charges

Timothy DeFoggi, the Department of Health and Human Services' former acting director of cyber security, was convicted on Aug. 26 of various child pornography offenses. The Justice Department announced that a federal jury in the District of Nebraska found DeFoggi guilty of "engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography, and accessing a computer with intent to view child pornography in connection with his membership in a child pornography website."

DeFoggi's sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 7.

Report: Chinese programmer may have stolen data from Arizona counterterrorism database

A Chinese computer programmer had access to Arizona’s Counter Terrorism Information Center for five months in 2007 and may have taken sensitive data back with him to China, an investigation by ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting found. The programmer, Lizhong Fan, had access to the Arizona driver’s license database, “other law enforcement databases, and potentially a roster of intelligence analysts and investigators,” the report said. Though the counterterrorism center in Phoenix monitored Fan while he worked as a contractor, no one stopped him from abruptly returning to China, the report found.

Turning the corner on COBOL

The Railroad Retirement Board wants to assess the cost and effort of transitioning its old COBOL-based computer system to a more modern solution. Washington Technology reports the agency wants its legacy applications converted to Windows Azure, and is considering a private cloud.