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 →
Now that usage of mobile apps has overtaken browsing on the desktop web, it’s starting to challenge television, the analytics firm Flurry says. The San Francisco-based mobile analytics startup says that consumers are spending 127 minutes per day in mobile apps, up 35% from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year. At the same time, desktop web usage actually declined slightly by 2.4 %from 72 to 70 minutes.
This means that U.S. consumers are spending nearly two times more time in mobile apps than on the web.
The dramatic growth carries a variety of implications for government agencies focused on improving citizen services, how citizens interact with government, and the adoption of mobile technology.
The growth also has implications for the television industry as a whole. The time spent on mobile apps is now starting to challenge time spent watching TV. Flurry estimates that the average U.S. consumer watches 168 minutes of television per day, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2010 and 2011.
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This article was originally reported by Kim-Mai Cutler and our colleagues at TechCrunch. 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. Keep reading →
The relatively rapid adoption by government organizations of big data analytics, cloud computing social business and mobility is expected to propel the use of “smart strategies” in 2013, according to a leading research group.
IDG Government Insights, in its annual “Top 10 Predictions” for government information technology in 2013, predicted as a result that more than 40% of U.S. local governments will be in research and evaluation stage for “smart city” pilots/projects and 50% will begin implementation in 2013. Keep reading →
How networks of public and private sensors can change how the public sector operates during routine or emergency operations.
It’s 1991, and some computer science professors are tired of walking into their computer lab of the University of Cambridge only to find an empty pot of coffee. Their solution: install a camera and connect it to the server so they could ascertain the status of the coffee pot from their desks. The rest is internet history. Keep reading →
State and local governments are using social media solutions for IT in virtually every area of government, according to a new report from Deltek.
The new report, Social Media in State & Local Government, a New Paradigm for Engagement and Innovation 2012, also suggests state and local governments will likely need help from contractors to do more, particularly in a handful of functions. Keep reading →
How will the wide-scale adoption of always-on connected devices change the environment for federal leaders?
Of the five trends I outlined in my last post, the first, always-on connected devices, is so fundamental, so important, so paradigm-shifting, that it is quickly becoming invisible. Keep reading →
This one in a series of profiles featuring 2012 U.S. Government Information Security Leadership Award (GISLA) winners. The winners received the awards in October from (ISC)2 a nonprofit serving certified information security professionals and administrators.
As chief information officer of the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Janet Stevens understands why cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and malware protection. Keep reading →
Social media and a renewed emphasis on innovation and DIY – exemplified by the Maker Movement and the rise of intrapreneurs – is transforming how government agencies operate and how they interact with citizens. Within the past four years, the number of networked computers that can connect to public or private sensors and feed into or draw from massive databases has exploded, both in terms of absolute numbers and relative to the population.
The effect of these converging factors is that governments at every level are finding new ways to improve three critical tasks: Keep reading →
“If people do not emit or discuss their behavior, it’s hard to find out what they are going to do,” declared Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, speaking recently at the huge annual conference of intelligence professionals called Geoint.
The U.S., he made clear, did not have tactical warning of the Benghazi attacks. He also noted that anti-American protests were taking place in 54 countries when the attacks occurred, clearly implying the intelligence community was hearing a lot of noise that day.
While it’s true, it’s hard to predict what people will do, it’s also increasingly true that people worldwide do emit and discuss their behavior through online social media and that can be monitored and analyzed in nearly real-time.
Companies such as intelligence analysis contractor Recorded Future, which is backed by Google, the CIA, and others for this very reason, offer examples of that on a routine basis. Recorded Future, for instance, tracks protests occurring around the world by extracting references to those events and their locations from online media.
One of their measurements records “intensity” of references to protests in online media and social media, with color coded indicators signifying heavy discussion of protests, little or no discussion at all. One can also see the list of terms associated with protests in a selected country during the selected week and protests planned for the future.
There are certainly caveats to be kept in mind with these data sets and visualizations. The protest metric is not perfect, and not all protests are comparable. Much has been made of the role of social media in facilitating protest movements in the Middle East and China, but it could also be amplifying their impact.
Dr. Melissa Flagg, a senior Department of Defense manager at the RFUN event noted how analysts are starting to use Recorded Future to guide future DoD science and technology investments by tweeting: “We have to tell the story of the long term to the people who only care about the next three minutes.”
Recorded Future CEO Chris Ahlberg and inventor of Spotfire, says that Recorded Future is the only comprehensive source of past, planned and predicted events on the web and the world’s first Temporal Analytics Engine. His goal is to eventually provide access to everything on the Web in nearly real-time. This of course would be an example of really big data analysis, using the cloud like the National Security Agency has talked about.
Recorded Future is also stressing the importance of data science and data scientists in all of this. Their event featured Drew Conway (@drewconway) speaking about the joys, challenges, and power of data science. Among other insights, Conway showed some results that suggest the peaks in country protests are related to food shortages.
As a data scientists having also worked with Recorded Future on things like Visualization Of The Osama Bin Laden Letters, I could not resist checking and building on their analysis of trends in global protests (see table below.)
It shows, for instance among the top 10 countries for protest intensity, registered in the Recorded Future data set for October 1, 2011, to October 11, 2012, the United States is the most frequently mentioned term – showing up in five of the top 10 instances.
The chart also includes comments worth noting.
Keep reading →
For all the progress made advancing integrated intelligence with data from the days of Desert Storm to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Dawn Meyerriecks says the intelligence community must embrace analytics and mission-focused technology to stay on an innovative track.
She made the declarations during a keynote at a conference incorporating key players in cybersecurity, cloud computing and mobile government in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. She also said the US government has to reach outside its borders for most of the necessary talent. Keep reading →