shared services

Procurement is emerging as one of the most significant issues facing federal information technology leaders as the Obama administration begins its second term, a top ranking government IT official said this week.

More and more federal agencies are making the leap to cloud computing, adopting mobile technologies and developing APIs to share information. But agency IT leaders remain hampered from moving faster by contracting constraints that make it hard to make cross-agency buys, said Richard Spires, chief information officer for the Department of Homeland Security and vice chairman of the Federal CIO Council. Keep reading →

Like all CIOs, Ivor D’Souza at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) wears many hats, spending countless hours taking care of both NLM’s internal and public-facing IT requirements.

He never thought of himself as an iPad app developer; nor an innovative exhibit planner. Now he is both. Keep reading →

Though efforts to consolidate government IT services have failed in the past, experts indicated at a summit on the topic Monday that those lessons will contribute to the ultimate success of the more recent and updated approach known as shared services.

Nearly 200 industry and government executives gathered to learn about the business case for shared IT services and governing the process toward the effort at the Government Information Technology Executive Council (GITEC) Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. Keep reading →

Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel is expected to release the details this week of a long-awaited digital strategy document, laying out his vision and direction for how federal agencies should expect to use information and mobile technologies moving into the future.

Agency CIOs and others who’ve seen the document aren’t saying what’s in it. And VanRoekel didn’t tip his hand Sunday evening during a keynote speech to a group of government and contracting executives gathered in Baltimore to attend the Government Information Technology Executive Council (GITEC) summit. Keep reading →

The White House Office of Management and Budget issued new guidelines to federal agencies Wednesday on ways to share information technology services.

The Federal IT Shared Services Strategy, provides federal agency Chief Information Officers and key stakeholders takes aim at IT services as way to eliminate waste and duplication and reinvest in innovative mission systems. Keep reading →


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will save thousands of dollars by trading its fleet of BlackBerries for iPhones and iPads in the next few months.

CIO Joseph Klimavicz told Breaking Gov the change, expected to take place by June 1, would save substantial costs associated with managing BlackBerry devices. He declined to specify savings other than to say it would be “thousands of dollars” now spent on managing close to 3,000 devices. Keep reading →


Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel described his path forward for federal IT in a policy speech in Silicon Valley this October and again in the draft Federal IT Shared Services Strategy released just this month. He articulated a “Shared First” paradigm that will lead agencies to root out waste and duplication by sharing IT services, infrastructure, procurement vehicles, and best practices.
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This article originally appeared on GSA’s Great Government Through Technology blog.
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