As one of our contributors wrote recently, it is one of the most challenging times in American history to be part of a government bureaucracy.
A dysfunctional congress offers little or no support; agency budgets face gutting as the nation stares down a fiscal cliff; hiring freezes and the looming shadow of furloughs threaten to turn the government’s talent pool stagnant.
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With talk of a fiscal cliff and sequestration, what’s already typically known as the hottest topic in government became a scorcher in 2012.
Federal Spending has taken on more scrutiny than ever before.
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Federal leaders cannot escape The Cloud.
It’s possible every conference on any federal leader’s 2012 calendar offered at least one session on the topic for very good reason.
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The drive toward mobile technology reached race car speeds this year. Keep reading →
No doubt big data has been one of government’s big stories in the past year. Keep reading →
As we reflected on our 2012 coverage, a few issues stood out as particularly pivotal in today’s government community. We’ve gathered the best of our Breaking Gov articles highlighting those hot topics.
Big data, the cloud and mobile technology were clearly at the forefront of federal minds in the past year as powerful and promising tools to reduce expenses, increase efficiency and improve services. Keep reading →
In a follow up report to the Digital Government Strategy, the Federal CIO Council conducted a survey and interviewed 21 agencies on their use of mobile technologies. The “Report on Barriers, Gaps, and Opportunities for Government Use of Mobile Technology” addresses Milestone Action 10.2 of the Digital Government Strategy which aims to “evaluate opportunities to accelerate the secure adoption of mobile technologies into the Federal environment at reduced cost.”
The results offer insight into three key considerations for the use of mobile technologies: opportunities and barriers; gaps; and risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. Keep reading →
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 →
What seemed like a simple objective, to develop and issue a standardized, electronically-verifiable identification card for civilian agency personnel, continues to encounter a barrage of technical and cultural challenges at a time when identification has become a critical component in the government’s efforts to embrace mobile and remote computing.
Despite the government’s aggressive push under the Identity, Credential and Access Management (ICAM) plan, only three departments are above minimum fielding levels and using the civilian personal identity verification (PIV) cards, said Paul Grant, director for cybersecurity policy in the Office of the DOD Chief Information Officer. And it remains unclear when the cards will be universally fielded across the civilian government. Keep reading →
The United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union sent shock waves across the Internet with an agreement approved last night which would give countries a right to access international telecommunications services including Internet traffic.
(This story was updated a 4:30 p.m. ET to include additional reporting.) Keep reading →