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Staring Over Financial Cliff: Preparing For IT Budget Cuts Across The Board

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With sequestration looming, and 2013 federal IT spending requests having have dropped $1 billion over fiscal year 2012 levels, contracting dollars especially for IT are expected to come under intense scrutiny, and in many cases get shuffled to meet changing needs next year.

Those who follow federal IT spending are already aware that the fiscal 2013 federal IT budget request is approximately $78.9 billion, down from the prior year’s $79.7 billion. However, Congress’ continuing resolution and potential sequestration are likely to lower IT spending to between $73 to $74 billion. Keep reading →

Published November 2, 2012 at 1:15 PM

Transforming American Governance

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Our nation faces a large — and growing — long-term fiscal imbalance driven by an aging population, which will dramatically increase health care and retirement costs. And while it is just one of many challenges, it is central to a question of whether the nation’s government will adapt new approaches to the management of government itself.

“The government is on an unstable path,” says the recently released Federal Government’s Financial Health. This report, prepared by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget (with the assistance of the Government Accountability Office), puts the challenge in stark terms: Keep reading →

Published April 17, 2012 at 10:02 AM

Cloud First Policy Spurs Innovation At Department Of Education

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In today’s era of budget austerity, every federal agency must improve processes, cut costs and deliver value quickly. BPM (business process management) is one technique that can help develop applications that achieve these objectives.

Combined with cloud, mobile, and social technology, BPM becomes even more powerful, creating an environment to make good on the government’s “Cloud First” policies and taking federal agencies to new heights in mission-critical functions, delivering value in record time. Keep reading →

Published December 23, 2011 at 11:06 AM

Information Security Leaders Saluted For Federal Work

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Behind the IT systems that support civilian and defense agencies are a corps of administrators and information security specialists charged with operating those systems securely.

And behind them are organizations that help train and certify them and, as one organization did last night, recognize their efforts. Keep reading →

Published October 19, 2011 at 9:46 AM

Collaborative Telepresence Is Not Your Father’s Video Teleconferencing

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I recently visited the Crystal City, Va., office of one of the technology companies we work with and learned what it takes to display many sources of brilliant video across a surface of any size without the unsightly black grids that once defined video walls. The technology, referred to as collaborative telepresence or CTP, was developed and battle-tested in the rough-and-tumble oil and gas industry. It is now finding its way into high-end collaboration environments in the government.

Instead of multiple monitors or projectors separated by a grid of dividing lines, like traditional video teleconferencing or command and control systems, Cyviz mounts high power projectors with pixel-perfect alignment so there are no “seams” in these stunning video walls. Keep reading →

Published October 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM

How To Fix A Leaking Wiki

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Among all of the many breaches of data over the past year across both the public and private sector, none seems to strike more fear into the hearts of federal agencies, managers and security personnel more than Wikileaks. To be sure, the Wikileaks incidents have caused more than their fair share of reputational damage, embarrassment to federal officials, criminal response, and calls from angry Congressmen to establish yet another layer of regulation and auditing to help prevent this type of issue in the future.

But what’s really insidious about Wikileaks is the nature of the crime: unlike the external attacks perpetrated by Anonymous, LulzSec, and other third parties by breaching security controls, Wikileaks was allegedly committed by an insider who already had access to the information he is suspected of leaking to Wikileaks. Keep reading →

Published August 16, 2011 at 3:10 PM

Mobile Mania: Securing The New Frontier

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Mobile computing technologies represent a true paradigm shift for organizations, providing an unprecedented level of autonomy and productivity for users by eliminating geographical barriers.

The traditional model of centralized applications and data are rapidly fading away as users continue to exploit the value of on-demand information regardless of geographic boundaries. From the user’s perspective, mobile technology is fantastic. Keep reading →

Published July 26, 2011 at 8:01 AM