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 →
The Federal Chief Information Council today released a new version of its website CIO.gov, involving what it described as a complete overhaul under the hood. The new site, however, is still in need of tweaking.
In a notice posted to the site, viewers were informed: Keep reading →
There has been a lot of activity from the Obama Administration this week in the name of innovation and best practices.
There was a double-post on the White House Blog by Federal CTO Todd Park and the Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel about two new initiatives that would seem to be related, but it is not clear how. The first was a prelude to White House’s Plans To Announce Presidential Innovation Fellows and the second was from VanRoekel touting the progress of the Digital Strategy Progress. The latter featured the use of the term “building blocks.” Keep reading →
Three months after the White House’s release of the Administration’s Digital Government Strategy, Federal Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel used the occasion to reiterate the need for government to rethink its approach to providing information and services to the public and declared “agencies are making great strides” toward a vision of digitally-delivered services.
Writing in a White House blog posted this morning, VanRoekel cited the Census Department’s release of a mobile application, and and an application programming interface, aimed at developers, as an example of the progress agencies are demonstrating in moving forward on the Digital Government Strategy released in May. Keep reading →
The White House announced it plans to introduce the inaugural members of its Presidential Innovation Fellows program in a ceremony Aug. 23, at 10 a.m. (EDT) that will be streamed live on WhiteHouse.gov/live.
“This new initiative is bringing in top innovators from outside government to work with top innovators inside government to create real and substantial changes that will in a very short time frame benefit the American people, save taxpayers money, and help create new jobs,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park. Keep reading →
Among other points, he announced an “aggressive and accelerated procurement for new EPA collaboration tools”: one month to advertise, one month to decide, and four months to implement, so it is ready by November. Malcolm deserves credit on a number of fronts for pushing these ideas forward and quickly.
But it also reminded of a point about government that I experienced many times during my 30-plus years of government service at EPA: namely, senior managers in government repeat work that has been done in the past either because they do not know about it or choose to ignore it and start from scratch again.
I asked him if he was also working on the two functions that I had found important in my experience with doing this, provisioning content and dealing with limited bandwidth, and he said they were.
But I know from my experience at EPA that those two things are not going to happen in a short period of time. It took me three years to prepare EPA’s best content in a collaboration tool that supports limited bandwidth use on both desktop and mobile devices.
In my government experience, the 90-9-1 rule applies… only 1% will really use (new tools) and be doers and evangelists.”
I would have also felt better about what Jackson announced if he had mentioned it supported and followed the standards outlined by Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel in his Building a Digital Government Strategy.
One can do these things from the top down: That is, respond to the need for collaboration tools for an agency that work on mobile devices, procure them and hope that the employees put their content in them.
Or one can work from the bottom up: Use what employees are already using to put their content in to collaborate with others and see if those tools will scale up and federate.
We have all seen organizations procure yet another set of collaboration tools, only to then have a massive migration problem with legacy content and users still continue to use their tools of choice. For example, mobile has evolved from “This is the only tool we offer” (e.g. BlackBerry) to now Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) (e.g. iPhones, iPads, etc.)
So what should Malcolm and others in his situation do?
First, I would go around asking and looking for what has already been done and ask the real productive people at EPA, who are collaborating with others inside and outside the agency, what they are using (at EPA or outside of EPA) or would use if they had permission, and encourage others at EPA to try those pockets of excellence first.
Keep reading →
In a first by a federal financial regulator, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has launched a public database of consumer complaints about credit cards – including the name of the company issuing the card.
“No longer will consumer complaints only be known to the individual complainant, bank, regulator, and those in the public willing to pursue this information through the Freedom of Information Act,” said CFPB chief of staff and acting assistant director,blog posted June 19. Keep reading →
The Defense Department’s release of a new mobile device strategy late last week provides a revealing snapshot of how much work lies ahead for Defense officials in rationalizing the rapid adoption of smartphones, tablets, and mobile devices across the Department. It also highlights the urgent challenge to secure the use of those devices on Defense networks – even if it fell short of describing how and when DoD planned to tackle ongoing security concerns.
While the new strategy is seen as “a huge step forward,” as Jeff Sorenson, former U.S. Army/G-6 CIO and now partner at AT Kearney, sees it, it also also reflects the continuing gap that exists between DoD’s ability to integrate commercial mobile technology compared to other, faster-moving organizations. Keep reading →
The new digital government strategy released Wednesday by the Office of Management and Budget covers a wide range of initiatives that go beyond what Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel initially proposed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, during which he declared that 2012 would be the year of mobility in government.
In the flurry of releases that accompanied this morning’s announcement of the new digital strategy was VanRoekel’s own take on the importance and role of mobile technology in government. Keep reading →
“We want to disrupt the U.S. Government and we want your help,” declared an ever-animated Todd Park, the chief technology officer for the federal government at a New York technology start-up event today.
“We’re looking for some bad-ass innovators to work on some game changing projects,” said Park, walking back and forth on a stage set inside a cavernous building on one of New York City’s Hudson River piers. Keep reading →