Reps. Darrell Issa and Gerry Connolly say federal IT mismanagement has not only cost taxpayers billions, but has a dire effect on the economy.
The two congressmen with a history of butting heads agree sweeping federal IT reforms and giving CIOs budget authority would fix the problem. They talked about why on a stage in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Keep reading →
While Army forces in Afghanistan have more bandwidth and gadgetry than ever, bases back home still make do with archaic copper-wire telephone switches. As the war winds down and units increasingly operate out of the US, the challenge for the Army’s CIO is to move the whole service to a single set of compatible, cloud-based systems.
“How do we get the network right?” Lt. Gen. Susan Lawrence, the Army’s Chief Information Officer, aka the G-6, asked at an Association of the US Army breakfast. “We’re going to propose that [cloud-based] strategy to [Chief of Staff] Gen. [Ray] Odierno on Saturday the 17th.” Keep reading →
It didn’t take long before discussion about technology and national security Wednesday turned to this week’s Taliban violence on a Pakistani teenager.
“When reached by cell phone the Taliban claimed credit,” said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt referring to critically-injured Malala Yousufzai. “We know their phone number? Hmm. Why don’t we know where they are?” Keep reading →
For all the progress federal agencies have made toward mobile technology, CIOs still long for industry innovation that leads to a secure, virtual solution for devices other than BlackBerries.
The sentiment came through at a panel discussion Tuesday moderated by Rick Holgate at the Telework Exchange’s Fall 2012 Town Hall Meeting in Washington, D.C. Holgate is chief information officer at the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Keep reading →
Like many federal leaders today, Donald Kachman spends a lot of time thinking about security for the growing number of mobile devices in his agency.
And he’s coming up with solutions. Keep reading →
Like all CIOs, Ivor D’Souza at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) wears many hats, spending countless hours taking care of both NLM’s internal and public-facing IT requirements.
He never thought of himself as an iPad app developer; nor an innovative exhibit planner. Now he is both. Keep reading →
Federal agencies are working closely with private industry partners to embrace telework, cloud computing, smart devices, telecommunications and network technologies. But a new report suggests they fail to see eye to eye in key areas. Keep reading →
Fresh off of a splashy announcement of the new federal digital strategy in New York, Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel and Federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park described some of the details of the plan on home turf Thursday.
The pair addressed about 200 government insiders at an event hosted by the ACT-IAC and AFFIRM in a Department of Interior auditorium. (Watch the recorded video.) Keep reading →
Though efforts to consolidate government IT services have failed in the past, experts indicated at a summit on the topic Monday that those lessons will contribute to the ultimate success of the more recent and updated approach known as shared services.
Nearly 200 industry and government executives gathered to learn about the business case for shared IT services and governing the process toward the effort at the Government Information Technology Executive Council (GITEC) Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. Keep reading →
The Swiss Army Knife is a novel invention, a single pocket-sized device that includes everything from a standard knife blade and scissors to corkscrews and laser pointers. What it makes up for in versatility, however, it lacks in effectiveness – the functions themselves are never as good as actual scissors or laser pointers.
The same rule applies to federal systems administrators (sysadmins), who now serve agencies as a professional “Swiss Army Knives.” Thanks to budget cuts and decreasing staffing levels, federal sysadmins have been pushed into more and more roles, including security specialist, storage manager, virtualization manager and many more. Keep reading →