Big data can drive big capabilities. But it takes day-to-day practices that can help build and sustain an analytics culture.
A report released today by the Partnership for Public Service aims to educate federal managers on how agencies can do just that. The report, From Data to Decisions II: Building an Analytics Culture, examines how to best use data – not anecdotes – to base decisions. Keep reading →
Some companies, famously, have game rooms for employees. Most organizations require that their employees abstain from gaming while at work, and some go so far as to block not only gaming Websites, but many social sites as well.
When employees bring their own smartphones to work, however, and when they connect to the internet using their own networks, employers cannot simply block a site on their own server and think they’ve solved the problem of distracting technology. Keep reading →
The terrorists who attacked the Benghazi consulate, killing US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and four others, apparently maintained web, cell and radio silence before they acted, giving the US no hint an attack was imminent.
“If people do not emit or discuss their behavior, it’s hard to find out what they are going to do,” Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said at the huge annual conference of intelligence professionals called Geoint. The U.S., he made clear, did not have tactical warning of the attacks. He noted that there were anti-American protests in 54 countries when the attacks occurred, clearly implying the intelligence community had its hands full that day. Keep reading →
Companies selling to the government, and government managers who need to know about the latest technologies available from industry, are caught in a maze. But none of the paths leads us to one another. I’m talking about the communications channels so commonly used to exchange ideas and learn from one another.
Technology manufacturers have three main communications modes to support their sales efforts: business development or sales, external marketing activities, and whatever content, e.g., white papers, the company creates. Keep reading →
From background checks on truck drivers to renewing hunting licenses in Mississippi, eGovernment portals are taking consumers directly to government services through a “self-pay” fee system without either state or federal appropriations or expenditures.
For example, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has instituted a background check system that bypasses bureaucracy and delivers information directly to trucking companies. Keep reading →
WASHINGTON: NSA director and Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander stepped into the lion’s den Thursday to address the Chamber of Commerce, which helped kill cybersecurity legislation Alexander had strongly backed.
Over and over, Alexander reassured the business-dominated audience at the Chamber’s cybersecurity conference Thursday that the government sought to work together with industry as a “team” through “discussion” to secure the nation’s networks “in a way that is acceptable, and perhaps more importantly fiscally acceptable, to industry.” Over and over, he emphasized that “we don’t need the government in our networks to do this.” In other words: don’t fret about us; don’t fight against us; we won’t push a cybersecurity solution that business (read the chamber) finds intrusive or unaffordable. Keep reading →
A group of technology leaders came to the Capitol this week to make the case that the age of “big data” is not only upon us, but also represents a powerful and practical way for federal agencies to create substantially more value for the public – for relatively little incremental investment.
That comes as refreshing news compared to the relentless promises of big savings that accompanied the dawn of cloud computing, which has proven far trickier to implement. The difference is due in large measure to the fact that big data is really more of a phenomenon than a technology. Keep reading →
For all the discussion about the economy in last night’s presidential debate and on the campaign trail, one key topic that the incumbent and his challenger have largely been silent about is what to do about the once-mighty engine of housing in America’s economy – and how it might get stoked once again.
As our AOL colleague Teke Wiggin, at AOL Real Estate, notes: Keep reading →
Government is at a crossroads in having the ability to process vast volumes of data, but too few executives who understand how to tap its potential, according to a report on “big data” released today.
The TechAmerica Foundation report offers recommendations for public policy, research and development, privacy issues and overcoming barriers based on government leaders who have established early successes in leveraging big data, such as the Internal Revenue Service and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Keep reading →
Three years ago, the satirical news site, The Onion, published a story titled “Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles.”
One early paragraph reads:
Researchers were able to identify nearly 30 varieties of glowing rectangles that play some role throughout the course of each day. Among them: handheld rectangles, music-playing rectangles, mobile communication rectangles, personal work rectangles, and bright alarm cubes, which emit a high-pitched reminder that it’s time to rise from one’s bed and move toward the rectangles in one’s kitchen.
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This is the third in a five-part series examining the issues that governments and organizations need to address in the absence of a BYOD policy, originally published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. 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.
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Though the article clearly has a mocking tone, there is a clear reason for interacting as we do with those glowing rectangles: some are merely the technological membrane through which we interact with other people, while others are the entry-ways to the technological world in which we create or consume media of all kinds, from music and videos to personal and professional email and documents.
And precisely because people have access to their music, to their pictures, to their personal social networks all the time, they expect to be able to access that content and those networks all the time, even when (a) their devices cannot connect to their private network or (b) their devices alone are not able to display the media they want to consume – because their batteries are drained, for example, or because the particular device is not optimized for the type of media they need.
The Benefits of Connecting
There are numerous reasons that employees may want to connect their personal devices (BYOD) to their work computers or office networks. First, if space is an issue on their hard drives, they can play music from their MP3 players (there is debate about music’s impact on productivity). Even if the issue is not space, but rather simply installing personal applications and/or data on a work machine, connecting an external player may be seen as a good work-around.
Second, personal devices run out of power and many can recharge through USB cables. Outlet space is often limited, especially in cubicles, which now comprise 70% of office spaces according to one report. In those circumstances, it seems logical to charge devices in series rather than in parallel.
Finally, and perhaps most persuasively, work is rarely confined to a single machine and the small devices people take with them everywhere are the perfect, and sometimes preferred media for storing documents that will be edited on multiple machines. And why not? Windows phones, iPhones, and Android phones all carry gigabytes of space that are available for those large PowerPoint presentations and image files that no one wants to send through email.
The Dangers of Connecting and How to Minimize Them
There are three main perils of connecting personal devices to work computers and networks. The primary concerns, of course, are malware and spyware. These twin dangers become more apparent whenever new viruses are discovered on Android phones, or the full implications of iPhone apps are realized.
Of secondary, but not insignificant, concern is that employees could use their personal devices to skirt the spirit of the official use-policy, if not its letter. For example, sites that place a toll on an organization’s bandwidth-Pandora, for example, or YouTube-may be blocked on workstations, but employees could run similar apps from their phones-Spotify and/or Amazon Prime Videos.
> Finally, there is simply the productivity issue. Do the media and applications that personal devices bring into the workplace ultimately boost, depress, or have no impact on productivity?
As with accessing work data, there are three ways that organizations can regulate connecting personal devices to work assets.
First, organizations can ban the practice entirely. Second, they can use technological filters, for example by requiring any device to have security enable before it can connect to a network or computer. Third, organizations can have only policy filters in place.
The most important point, however, is that the leadership addresses this issue in their mobile device use-policy and that all employees understand the risks in connecting their devices to work computers and networks.
Gadi Ben-Yehuda (Twitter: @GBYehuda) is Director for Innovation and Social Media at the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
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