Steve Cottle's Blog (23)

This summer, GovLoop hosted its first ever multi-week social online training, called “Your Path to Leadership: Mastering Core Competencies to Get Ahead in Government.” The course examined 10 traits of a great leader, each of which corresponded to one of the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) of the Senior Executive Service (SES). The course consisted of the following elements:

• Course workbook with…

The Series

Welcome to the final of three posts intended to help you get the most out of GovLoop's new leadership guide: 10 Traits of a Great Government Leader.

Each of these posts covers a different theme and, taken…

The Series

Welcome to the second of three posts intended to help you get the most out of GovLoop's new leadership guide: 10 Traits of a Great Government Leader.

Each of these posts covers a different theme and, taken…

The Series

Welcome to the first of three posts intended to help you get the most out of GovLoop's new leadership guide: 10 Traits of a Great Government Leader.

Each of these posts will cover a different theme and, taken…

GovLoop is excited to announce its new guide: 10 Traits of a Great Government Leader.

Recently, GovLoop wrapped up its first multi-week online social learning course, titled Your Path to Leadership: Mastering Core Competencies to Get Ahead in Government. The course examined the ten traits of a great government leader listed in this guide. The three week course was grouped into the context of weekly themes and the…

This week on the 
DorobekINSIDER, Chris spoke with Karen Evans, the national director of the
 US Cyber Challenge. Evans discussed her organization and its mission and unique approach to improving U.S. cybersecurity efforts.


The US Cyber Challenge is an online talent competition, developed to help move 10,000 people into…

This week on the 
DorobekINSIDER, Chris Dorobek spoke with Karen Evans, the national director of 
US Cyber Challenge.

Among other cybersecurity…

Yesterday I attended a discussion put on by the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. The event, “Lessons from our Cyber Past: The First Cyber Cops,” featured a panel that included:

• Steven Chabinsky, Deputy Assistant Director, Cyber Division, FBI;
• Shawn Henry, former Executive Assistant Director, Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, FBI;
• Christopher Painter,…

Last year, GovLoop and Young Government Leaders (YGL) launched the "Rock Your Resume" project, which has already grown to over 1200 members. What began as peer reviews has evolved to leverage the experience of two top-notch expert reviewers - Camille Roberts & Andrea Boulanger Lowe - who are reviewing 8 resumes each month. To date, almost 150 people have received resume reviews and hundreds…

Chris Dorobek recently interviewed David Behen, the Chief Information Officer at Michigan’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget on the DorobekINSIDER.

I've been following discussions on GovLoop over the past several months on whether government should fund innovation initiatives and how it could do so during tough fiscal conditions, so I was really interested in hearing about Behen's experience of getting the innovation fund off the ground in a state that has been hit hard…

I attended the cloud conference keynote by Ryan Berg, a Senior Architect for Security Research at IBM. The presentation, titled “Cloud Security - A Business Transformation Nirvana or Security Nightmare?” examined the move towards the cloud and the associated implications and opportunities for security.

Berg began his presentation by looking at the environment in which we now find ourselves. There is a clear move towards the cloud, which means many things to many people. To some…

Government Executive reports that Senator Akaka (D-HI) has introduced the 2012 Senior Executive Service (SES) Reform Act into the Senate. Rep. Moran (D-VA) is expected to introduce similar legislation to the House of Representatives. 

Among other reforms, the legislation would:

• Reduce the percentage of non-career SES appointees from 25% to 15%

• Increase the number of career SES principal deputy assistant secretaries

• Introduce changes to…

Last one! The closing keynote speaker was David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know. Great speaker on a complex topic. I hope I do him justice here... if anyone else heard and wants to jump in, please do!

Weinberger argues that in the olden days, facts used to be separable bits of knowledge (think: bricks). Now, facts are often released as linked data, which is the exact opposite of a standalone fact (i.e. not a brick). When you put…

The afternoon’s plenary panel looked ahead 5-10 years to imagine what social media will look like and discuss what we can do now to prepare for the huge volume of data it’s bound to entail. The panel was moderated by Rob Zitz (SAIC) and consistet of Lou Martinage (Microstrategy), Rand Waltzman (DARPA), and Patrick Meier (Ushahidi). Here are some takeaways from each of the presentations.

Tapping into Social Data…

I attended the breakout session: Drinking from the Fire House, which looked at the impact of and strategies and techniques for dealing with the explosion of data. John Kelly (Morningside Analytics) moderated a panel that consisted of Jason Hines (Recorded Future), Eddie Smith (Topsy), Jonathan Gosier (Metalayer), and Adam Sharp (Twitter).

The presentations were a bit sales-pitchy and the Q&A quite wide-ranging, so I’m taking great liberty in providing some of the nuggets I found…

Clay Johnson, author of “Information Diet.”

The U.S. started with a constituent to representative ratio of 60,000:1 and is now somewhere over 700,000:1. There will be a crisis if government can’t take the huge and growing amount of information from people and interpret it and use it in an effective way. With more and more channels popping up, the volume keeps getting turned up. When the volume is up too high, it’s impossible to hear, making the government deaf. New…

The first panel of the day was on how various organizations use social media and internet-enabled data to create real-time awareness. The panel was moderated by Dr. Linton Wells (National Defense University) and included panelists Robert Bectel (Department of Energy), Robert Kirkpatrick (UN Global Pulse), Ahmed Al Omran (NPR), and Clark Freifeld (HealthMap.org). Each discussed what real-time awareness meant in their own organizations.…

I’ll be live-blogging tech@state’s Real-Time Awareness throughout the day. To keep tabs on what’s going on, you can check out #techatstate on Twitter, or watch the livestream here: http://www.livestream.com/techstate.

The opening keynote address was given by Craig Fugate, Administrator of FEMA. Fugate discussed the role of social media in disaster response and…

The State Department is hosting the next tech@state tomorrow. This installment's topic is real-time awareness and, with such a great line-up of speakers and panelists, tickets have sold-out. However, there's no need to fear! There are still several ways you can follow the action:

• I'll be live-blogging (or, if my multitasking skills/technology fail me, just regular blogging) from the event tomorrow, right here on GovLoop
• You can follow the discussion on Twitter…