cloud computing

Federal IT Managers Embrace Cloud, But Not Cloud-First Mandate

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One year after Cloud First, federal agencies are embracing the cloud. But they want it to be safer and more transparent. Above all, they don’t want to be locked into just one kind of cloud or a nothing-but-cloud approach.

That’s what we found in an exclusive survey conducted for SafeGov.org by the Ponemon Institute. The survey found that federal managers are working diligently to comply with the Office of Management and Budget’s Cloud First initiative, but are not yet convinced cloud applications are safe enough or will lead to significant cost savings. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 30, 2012 at 11:25 AM

Google’s Government Customers Mostly Immune From New Privacy Policy

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While the news that Aneesh Chopra is stepping down from his White House post as chief technology officer may have earned the most chatter on government IT blogs this week, the bigger buzz behind the scenes was the controversy over Google’s new privacy policies and what it would mean for government employees.

If the controversy began with Google’s announcement Jan. 24 that it plans to follow the activities of users as they move across Google’s various websites and platforms, it escalated quickly the following day with an article by Karen Evans and Jeff Gould. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 27, 2012 at 4:40 PM

Government Needs a ‘Big Data First’ Initiative

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The White House’s recently launched “Future First” initiative marks a milestone in the federal government’s effort to invigorate the implementation of new technologies. As Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel begins to roll out new initiatives like “Shared Services First,” agencies should ask themselves “What technology will help us better manage systems amidst the current data explosion?”

The answer lies in the ability to handle large volumes of machine-generated data, also known as big data. Agencies need to automate how they manage large volumes of machine data because the growth of data is outpacing human capacity to monitor and understand its relevance. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 24, 2012 at 1:00 PM

NOAA Abandons BlackBerries for iPhones, iPads

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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 →

 /  Published January 23, 2012 at 11:00 AM

How Tablets Are Helping Government Employees Get More Stuff Done

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Consider this: At the beginning of the day you’ve got two computing devices sitting in front of you, a laptop and an iPad. Which do you turn to first?

The laptop’s undoubtedly more powerful, but to use it, you’ll likely need to press the power button, wait a few minutes for it to fire up, wait a few more minutes for various programs to load, then take a few more minutes to find what you’re looking for. The iPad, on the other hand, sips energy ever so slowly and hardly ever needs to be powered down. Everything is easily accessible with the touch of a finger, and apps launch almost instantaneously. And, as portable as the laptop is, the iPad is even more so. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 19, 2012 at 2:45 PM

Resiliency: The Future of Global Cyber Power

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2011 could very well be called “Year of the Cyber Attack” given the thousands of reported and unreported hacking events. There is no doubt cyber threats facing governments and companies have certainly increased, but they’ve been met by host of powerful new ways to respond to them. Like a sickness to the body, industry and government have been working hard to build immunity with varying degrees of success.

Virtualization and cloud strategies now allow large and small companies to manage their data architecture with a flexibility that was impossible a few years ago. New collaboration software allows them to share documents more reliably on secure storage spaces. Modern data centers allow them to make their data continuously available to those who should have access to it, and invisible to those who don’t. The exponential growth of mobile devices drives an exponential growth in security risks. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 18, 2012 at 11:02 AM

One Cloud To Rule Them All: An IT Dream At DISA

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The Navy and Marines have a network. The Army has its knowledge online. The Air Force wanted to be the cyber czar. The Joint Staff has a network. NSA has a really big network. And then there’s the Department of Homeland Security and everyone else in government. Everyone has a network.

 /  Published January 18, 2012 at 10:19 AM

Virtualizing “The Wild Blue Yonder”

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Email and SharePoint are no brainers for CIOs looking to move parts of the computing operations to the cloud. But what’s next? Not surprisingly as the Air Force drives to consolidate data centers and move apps to the cloud, IT executives are looking to virtualize as many applications as make sense.

But “sometimes it is difficult to determine what should actually be virtualized,” said Frank Konieczny, Air Force Chief Technology Officer, during a recent Federal Executive Forum on Emerging Technologies. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 16, 2012 at 8:00 AM

NOAA Eyes Ten-Fold Increase In Data In Expansion To Cloud Computing

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Joseph Klimavicz, CIO at NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), spends his time trying to deliver as much technology as he can securely both to the agency and the public.

To deliver, he is focusing on how NOAA can take advantage of cloud solutions and cloud services. “We’ve got a whole host of things we are pushing to the cloud,” he said during a recent Federal Executive Forum on Emerging Technologies. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 13, 2012 at 10:11 AM

Coast Guard Academy Tacks To The Cloud For Email Services

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When an electrical transformer blew out at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., last spring, the campus was without power for a week. Generators helped keep critical services up and running, including the school’s computer systems. Still, the academy suffered a disastrous loss of email when the on-premise servers reached capacity.

As it happened, however, about a 100 staff members were piloting a cloud-based e-mail service that week. They were the only people on campus who didn’t lose the use of e-mail during the blackout. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 10, 2012 at 9:01 AM
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