MeriTalk

If federal CIO’s are judged by how well they lead by example in the social media revolution, then a new study suggests not enough of them are walking the talk.

An analysis of 31 federal chief information officers, just released by MeriTalk, reports that certain federal CIOs are much more engaged than others on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Keep reading →


Despite encryption, a study released today identifies standard email as the number one way unauthorized data leaves a federal agency.

According to the study, 80% of Federal information security managers fear data loss through encrypted email, and 58% state that encryption makes it harder to detect data leaving. 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 →

More federal managers view information technology as an opportunity than as a cost, according to a new survey released this week. But with so many other priorities on executives’ plates, and the sense that IT departments could be delivering more effectively than many are, technology leaders have their work cut out in demonstrating that IT can contribute to real cost savings or to better decision making.

More than two thirds of federal executives believe their IT departments understand their agency’s missions and grasp their agencies core challenges. Keep reading →


The Digital Government Strategy directs Federal agencies to “seize the digital opportunity and fundamentally change how the Federal Government serves both its internal and external customers.” For most Federal workers, this is less about changing behaviors and more about translating how they use technology at home to how they use it at the office.

A new report, given by MeriTalk sponsored by Google, underscores the increasing consumerization of technology tools – even in the Federal IT environment. 67% of Federal employees wish that the technology at work could keep up with the changes in technology in their personal lives. Keep reading →

Only 6% of civilian agencies and 3% Defense and Intelligence agencies currently have the infrastructure and processes in place to take full advantage of big data sets and most federal organizations will need at least three years before they can, according to a just-released survey of federal IT professionals.

The survey’s findings seem to indicate a rocky road ahead for President Obama’s “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” announced in late March. As part of that initiative, six federal departments and agencies announced more than $200 million in new big data projects. Keep reading →

Federal technology managers foresee the use of tablet mobile computing devices by agency employees will nearly triple over the next two years, from 7% of employees in 2011 to 19% by 2013, and that smartphone use will increase from 35% to 43% of employees over the same period, as agencies look for alternatives to desktop PCs, according to a new survey. Keep reading →

Government agencies are savings billions of dollars from virtualization; and those savings are projected to grow as workloads in virtualized server and desktop environments are expected to double by 2015. But agencies must overcome funding uncertainties, concerns about legacy systems and other barriers to achieve virtualization’s full potential, according to a new industry survey of government IT executives.

The new study found that 82% of federal and 77% of state-and-local IT professionals say their agencies have already implemented some degree of server virtualization, where computing work is done in artificially-created, software-controlled work spaces. Keep reading →

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