COMMENTARY – Transparency, accountability and auditability are central to the federal push for open government. Nowhere is the need for improvement and reform greater than in the federal procurement process.
Procurement professionals, however, are hamstrung from being able to answer even the most basic Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) audit questions, in terms of the procurement and delivery of services. Keep reading →
For a number of years, there has been a certain relationship between different segments of the federal information technology market. But those relationships are changing as agencies have had to come to grips with stark new budget constraints, which are expected to be reflected in the new federal budget being released by the White House today.
Those changes are already having an important implications for the companies competing for federal IT contracts as well as for the federal and military leaders responsible for acquiring and operating the IT technologies that support their civil and military agency mission requirements.
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This article was adapted from introductory remarks made Feb. 13 at the 25th Annual Federal Networks by conference chairman, Warren Suss, president of Suss Consulting. For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, follow us on Twitter @AOLgov.
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The Defense Information Systems Agency has opened a program office to manage Defense Department mobile devices and the applications that run on them, according to David Bennett, DISA’s acting component acquisition executive.
The new agency will also run an online store providing DOD users with applications and mobile device management (MDM) services, Bennett said, according to a Jan. 27 report by Government Computer News. Bennett commented on the initiative at an IDGA Network Enabled Operations conference in Alexandria, Va., Jan. 24. Keep reading →
The Department of Defense has taken on the challenge of determining the safest, most appropriate way to deploy modern smartphones to warfighters while maintaining information security.
The consumerization of IT phenomenon–in particular with smartphones–has indeed posed unique challenges to U.S. federal government IT departments. While users would like to take advantage of the smart gadgets that they often also use for private use, there are substantial Information Assurance (IA) concerns regarding the use of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives. Issues of authentication, authorization, accounting and auditing are paramount. Keep reading →
The U.S. Army’s efforts to move to new, single enterprise email service would be halted, at least temporarily, if language in the 2012 defense authorization bill approved by House and Senate negotiators Monday goes into effect, according to a report by Federal News Radio.
The legislation orders Army Secretary John McHugh to designate the service’s enterprise-email transition as a formal acquisition program, which would be overseen by the Army’s assistant secretary for acquisitions, logistics and technology, rather than under the direction of the Army’s G-6 CIO office. Keep reading →
When it comes to buying and delivering government technology projects, few approaches seem to have caught the attention of federal officials the way agile development has.
And there’s good reason, according to management specialists from the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, the FBI and the General Services Administration who spoke at a Washington forum Oct. 14 about how agile development is making inroads in government. Keep reading →