In the early 20th century, you could only listen to music by attending live performances. Then you could listen to it on recordings. Then radio, vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, Napster iTunes and now through various streaming services like Pandora, Rdio, and Spotify. If the technology to record and listen to music evolves so rapidly, whyRead… Read more »
No longer are we at the end of an IT lifecycle – we’re at the beginning of a new one In this day and age, we expect our financial transactions, social networks, cars and even our televisions to operate at lightning fast speeds, enable unlimited connectivity and deliver services at the push of a button.Read… Read more »
As the market for talent acquisition software evolves, government agencies typically move through a process of identification, proposals, testing and selection to determine the best fit for their organization. There are the usual RFIs, RFPs, solution bake offs and pilot testing, with the goal to bring in the solution that will best help the organizationRead… Read more »
Improper payments are always an area of concern for the federal government. These include overpayments, underpayments, payments made to ineligible recipients, or even payments that weren’t properly documented. While fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are the result of fraud. For example, improper payments can be a result of mismanagement, errors, orRead… Read more »
It was great to see the recent blog of US General Services Administration (GSA) CIO Sonny Hashmi in which he establishes “open source first” as an agency policy: “Simply put, any solution developed using taxpayer dollars should be in the taxpayer’s domain (open source). At GSA, we believe that all code we developed should beRead… Read more »
When I meet with agency customers, I hear about the struggles we face to get IT acquisitions done efficiently and smoothly. Most government agencies–federal, state or local—face similar acquisition problems: How do we acquire IT faster? How can we continue to find savings? Can you make it easier to acquire mission-critical IT solutions? Can youRead… Read more »
This week it was announced that the U.S. federal government is creating a U.S. Digital Service team led by Mikey Dickerson with a goal to “improve and simplify the digital experience that people and businesses have with their government.” Personally, it’s exciting to hear about the announcement of this division (with some decent staffing fromRead… Read more »
You want every selfie and status update to get attention from your friends. But are all your friends seeing your posts? If they are, are you engaging them? Government organizations face this same challenge. Given Facebook and Twitter’s popularity in the last few years, federal, state and local organizations have worked to engage people onRead… Read more »
The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) mandates very detailed security practices. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has an entire division focused on creating security guidance documents. As security becomes more of a focus the nomenclature of these documents seeps into your daily lingo. FIPS 199 and 200 describe the levelsRead… Read more »
In response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began a strategic transformation from a law-enforcement to a threat-focused intelligence agency. A case study1 of the progress in the transformation at the FBI shows how strategic resources propelled by inertia, along with theRead… Read more »