IT

Healthcare is experiencing an unprecedented transformation.

Motivated by the need to meet new regulatory requirements in the U.S., including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and to receive incentives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA’s) Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provision, many healthcare providers are investing to modernize their legacy IT infrastructure and clinical applications. In addition to meeting compliance issues, these early adopters are discovering numerous advantages from their investment in IT – not only in cost savings, but also in improved patient care, tightened information security, advanced collaboration, increased transparency and trackability, and ‘connected care.’ Keep reading →


A few years ago I was headed into a meeting with the president of a critical infrastructure provider when I saw and photographed a picture of a yellow Post-it note with the user name a password written on it.

As with most people reading this blog I was angered that this could happen in 2007 after all the efforts and training that had occurred to increase the level of user security awareness. Here we are some 5 years later and I am sorry to say we have not made that much progress. Keep reading →

MeriTalk has released a report that reveals how federal IT managers view the barriers, current status, and future plans related to moving mission-critical applications to the cloud.

The report, released this week, also reveals that government could save an estimated $16.6 billion annually if all agencies move just three mission-critical applications to the cloud. Keep reading →

Make the rounds with government agency CTOs or at any public sector technology conference these days and two words are likely to emerge in the conversation very quickly: big data.

Whether the discussion is around Hadoop, MapReduce or other big data tools, the focus to date has been largely on data analytics and how to rapidly and efficiently analyze extremely large and unstructured datasets. big data analytics is important for government agencies seeking to gain better insights into their data and make more informed decisions based on this insight, but analytics represents the tip of the iceberg in making big data work. Keep reading →


Cybersecurity is on the top of many public and private sector IT agendas these days. But while organizations focus on the software and hardware to police networks, they often don’t consider the standards necessary to have all those defenses working together, or the possible cost savings that can be achieved through improved cybersecurity.

Standards and guidelines are often overlooked in the cybersecurity space in favor of cost savings, said Donna Dodson, deputy cybersecurity advisor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Keep reading →


A new, enterprise-class IT backbone in a box has become the latest solution for a highly digitized U.S. military and first responders to access tactical data networks quickly and maintain connectivity wherever they are.

Developed to operate in a variety of environments where infrastructure is lacking or nonexistent, Dell’s Tactical Mobile Data Center (TMDC), is a completely customizable, air deployable data center that can be loaded onto transport planes, ships, trucks or slung under helicopters. Keep reading →


There’s a battle brewing in the agency IT world, and for once, it has nothing to do with cloud computing — at least on the surface.

This fight is over hypervisors – a key component of a virtualization strategy and one that forms the basis for a successful private or hybrid cloud implementation. Specific battle lines are drawing around the various hypervisor “flavors” and which, if any, federal IT teams should standardize upon. Keep reading →

While officials are making progress implementing upgrades at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (FHCC), a GAO report has cited costly IT delays for the VA and DoD.

Despite an investment of more than $122 million for IT capabilities at the FHCC (pictured above), the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense have not completed work on all components required by an Executive Agreement, which were to have been in place in time for the FHCC’s opening in October 2010. Keep reading →

Government contractors with higher contract win rates are expecting to see continued growth in the future, especially for those who assess opportunities in cyber and cloud early. In addition, trade shows, conferences and thought leadership marketing play major roles in winning contractors’ positioning and success strategies.

Market Connections, Inc. released these findings from the 2012 Government Contractor Study on Thursday at the Government Marketing Forum 2013 Contractor Outlook Event at the Tysons Corner Marriott in Vienna, Va. Keep reading →


As government organizations continue to deal with budget cuts, IT solutions can often save money while improving efficiencies and productivity. Automation of manual processes can deliver real results, quickly.

The automation of case management processes in the healthcare field is an example of this, as dealing with manual processes leads to many problems with visibility and control. Successes from the corporate world in this area translate easily to the government arena, particularly for large enterprise organizations where security, agility, and the ability to serve a significant constituent base are imperative. Keep reading →

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