Kevin Jackson

The Department of Veterans Affairs is directing every chief information officer in the field to stop buying personal desktop printers, the first step to retiring these high-cost tools across the agency and replacing them with big multiuse printers.

VA spokeswoman Josephine Schuda said Nov. 29 that some regional and facility CIOs have informally gotten word of the policy shift although the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has not yet issued a directive. The policy change came after OIT studied pilots at two facilities which have shown the value of buying and using desktop printers was less than using multiuse printers. The only exception is if an office can make a compelling case to buy one. Keep reading →

Back in the 1830s, most Americans lived on farms. Many probably secured their life savings in their trusty mattress. Then a new local bank opens in town promising more security, but has no track record to prove it. People didn’t trust the bank at first; it was new to the area and skeptical farmers felt it was not intrinsically secure.

“Now fast forward to the cloud,” cloud expert and blogger Kevin Jackson said last week as a panelist at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cloud Computing Forum IV. Keep reading →

This week the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) marked another milestone in the US Federal Government’s march to the cloud with Cloud Computing Workshop IV. Held at the NIST Gaithersburg campus, November 1-3, attendees had the pleasure of hearing Federal CIO Seven Van Roekel as the first day’s keynote speaker.

Mr. Van Roekel highlighted the great partnership that has been establish between government and industry around cloud computing. He also reaffirmed the administration’s support for cloud computing, praising NIST for their effectiveness in fulfilling a unique leadership role. Keep reading →