Putting the pieces together for intelligence gathering or crime fighting is often likened to searching for needles in haystacks. And increasingly, those needles are digital traces in a sea of data. Keep reading →
big data
Government leaders have a unique opportunity to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing challenges – and reduce the federal deficit by as much as $220 billion – by taking more progressive steps in adopting innovative IT practices and other measures, says a prominent public-private partnership organization.
But to accomplish that, agency leaders will need to more fully align and integrate information technology with their mission and business operations, according to recommendations in a series of policy briefing papers released today by the ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation. Keep reading →
The push to adopt continuous monitoring as a more advanced means for ensuring network security can only work if other network technologies are made secure, said a leading computer scientist from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Agencies need to understand the underlying security issues, beyond what continuous monitoring can offer, because adversaries can take advantage of weaknesses to bring down network capabilities, said Ron Ross, senior computer scientist and fellow at NIST. Ross (pictured above, seated far left) made the remarks at the recent Symantec Government Symposium on government security practices. Keep reading →
The power of big data – like cloud computing and mobility – has emerged as a transformational technology force, but one that poses a host of planning questions for senior government agency officials. Peter Mell, a senior computer scientist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, devoted many months assessing the potential and the pitfalls of big data for NIST. He recently shared what he learned and what executives need to understand about big data in an interview with AOL Government’s Wyatt Kash.
Mell outlined some of the misunderstandings and tradeoffs associated with large scale data sets agencies are likely to encounter as they move beyond classic relational databases. He also talked about the importance cloud computing plays in facilitating big data analytics. And he shared with our readers a comprehensive slide presentation that puts many of the questions about big data and related security implications into perspective. 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 →
Federal information technology professionals are confronted with a management landscape that is perhaps as complex as any have seen in a generation.
That’s due in part to the convergence of three transformational technologies – cloud computing, mobile devices and big data analytics. The benefits of each technology are generally expected to outweigh many of the associated challenges of implementing them. Keep reading →
Managing any large project is a challenge. Imagine managing a project involving 15 different groups, spread across multiple university labs across the country, dealing with massive amounts of information.
This is the challenge facing the National Human Genome Research Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health, which launched the third iteration of the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project early in October. Keep reading →
For state chief information officers, life at the office has become delicate high-wire act. While under pressure to continue delivering legacy information technology services that are critical to day-to-day operations, CIOs still have to keep up with the surging demand for new IT services, such as mobile- and cloud-based computing.
That’s a central theme from the results of a just-released survey of state CIOs by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), TechAmerica, and consulting firm Grant Thornton LLP, said Doug Robinson, NASCIO’s executive director. Keep reading →
The Department of Homeland Security continues to deliver more services via cloud computing in an innovative hybrid model to leverage big data and further integrate its 22 organizations.
Greg Capella, Deputy Executive Director, Enterprise Systems Development Office in the DHS Office of the CIO, offered an update on the cloud efforts and advice for other agencies at a conference Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Keep reading →
How well are you doing and how do you know?
For many federal agencies, answering these questions can be intimidating, because, frankly, measuring mission impact is hard. Keep reading →