Agriculture Department

Hitting The Reset Button In Federal IT

By

For the fourth straight year, federal IT spending was about even with the prior year’s budget – and it seems very clear that trend will come to an abrupt halt in 2013. The Professional Services Council (PSC) stated the “Addressable IT Budgets” in Fiscal Year 2012 added up to $121.7 billion – a total the Council estimates will drop to $115.5 in FY13, with budgets for IT equipment expected to drop 19% in FY13.

With the so-called “fiscal cliff” looming, the new year began promptly with a deal that largely addressed the tax portion of the so-called “fiscal cliff” equation, but delayed measures addressing the spending portion of the “cliff” that include raising the debt ceiling and sequestration spending cuts. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 14, 2013 at 7:00 AM

VA Takes Initial Steps Moving 400,000 Email Users To Cloud

By

The Veterans Affairs Department’s move to a cloud-based email system for its employees is nothing if not meticulous. When fully rolled out, in 2014, the new platform will give about 400,000 VA users — and eventually up to 600,000 — an array of collaborative tools and eventually yield tens of millions of dollars in savings on IT infrastructure for the department, VA officials expect.

But for the near term, in a carefully planned first phase, the department plans to migrate 15,000 users to Microsoft 365 for Government within a separate community cloud, by the end of March, said Charles De Sanno, VA’s executive director of enterprise systems engineering. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 17, 2012 at 2:00 PM

New IT Proposals: The Rise Of 21st Century Seat Management?

By

The new computing generation has burst on the federal scene in a big way. The latest manifestation is solicitations coming from two cabinet agencies.

But they remind me of a scene many years ago. I spoke at the retirement party of a federal executive who had briefly worked on a program called seat management. I joked that more people were attending the party than had signed up for seat management, and got a roar of laughter.

“Seat”, as people called it, meant a contractor would supply to federal agencies a PC and all of the required software and services, charging a per-user, per-month fee.

_____________________________________________________
This article originally appeared on FedInsider.com. For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, like us on Facebook.
_____________________________________________________

Seat management, touted as the biggest thing since computers, went over like a lead balloon. But it turns out, the concept might have simply been ahead of its time.

Today, agencies one by one are putting their productivity applications in the cloud. Separately, they are providing mobile devices or letting employees bring their own under BYOD plans.

Marry cloud and BYOD and you have the 21st century version of seat management. The difference today is the seat can be in someone’s car or kitchen, at the beach or in an airplane.

About those two new request proposals demonstrating what is going on: Keep reading →

 /  Published September 13, 2012 at 7:01 AM

White House Expenses Dwarf Controversial Conference Spending

By

The scrutiny over what federal employees spend to attend work-related conferences has continued to escalate after a recent salvo of letters to the secretaries of the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services and other agencies.

The letters, from Congressman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee he chairs, ask for a detailed accounting of travel spending in connection with 150 conferences. After analyzing “thousands of documents,” the committee concluded that the General Services Administration was hardly alone when, in 2010, it permitted employees to spend an average of $600 per day per employee to attend an over-the-top regional training conference in Las Vegas. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 30, 2012 at 7:01 AM

Military Adapts Pro Sports Software To Speed Decision Making

By

What do the Green Bay Packers and the Army Installation Management Command have in common? They both use the same computer software to make critical decisions.

The Packers use decision-making software from Decision Lens Inc. to more systematically weigh a variety of criteria in evaluating potential draft picks. Depending on priorities, those decisions can often be too close to call. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 23, 2011 at 11:35 AM