innovation


It’s easy to take all the comforts of our modern lives for granted. Cars are basically parking themselves these days, and Wi-Fi on airplanes allows us to watch our favorite shows as we zip across the country in a matter of hours. Mobile devices can talk to and interact with us like humans – not to mention letting us securely accomplish our work from anywhere and at any time.

We sometimes forget that things haven’t always been this way. December 17 marks the 10-year anniversary of the E-Government Act of 2002 – America’s first step toward a modernized and accessible IT infrastructure.
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With attempts to push through comprehensive cybersecurity legislation dead for this year, a pending executive order will likely include many of the features of the failed bill.

A final attempt to pass a cyber bill introduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) was defeated this week in a 51-47 vote. The bill was blocked by senate republicans who believe that the legislation would lead to more federal regulation of business. Keep reading →

As Designers could be given an opportunity to build an app and participate in potentially life-saving projects through the White House’s latest contest seeking the best and brightest talent to help further technological innovation in the federal government.

As our colleagues at AOL’s TechCrunch report, candidates are invited to join the White House’s Health Design Challenge to give the electronic medical record a much-needed redesign. Right now it’s “an abomination” – all courier font and hard to read. The challenge winner gets $25K and their design rolled out to 6 million VA patients and open sourced for all the world’s doctors. Keep reading →

Last fall, Oregon became the first state in the nation to utilize tablet technology in elections. Now in the state’s latest technology move, Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown has arranged to provide Samsung Series 7 PC tablets, featuring the Windows 8 operating system, to be used by Oregon voters with disabilities in Tuesday’s general election.

“Specifically, in this pilot project, Oregon voters with disabilities will be encouraged to test their own accessibility devices with the brand-new technology that should increase the use and confidence in our accessible voting system,” said Secretary Brown. Keep reading →

This week, millions of voters will confront not only the decision of who to vote for, but also the more mundane questions of where and when to vote, whether they need to bring identification, and who or what exactly will be on the ballot.

Despite the march of technology that makes that information available online to more and more people, finding the correct information for a given voting district has been a continuing challenge for veteran and prospective voters alike, as well as state and local election officials. Keep reading →

This is the first in a series of articles about innovation at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A collaborative effort to combine data previously scattered across multiple federal agencies has led to a single portal where veterans can access key benefits. Keep reading →

Using analytics to make better decisions is taking root in agencies across the government, notes a new report, which explores how a dozen pioneers did it. The report, by the Partnership for Public Service and the IBM Center, also offers advice from leaders of some of those organizations that shows how others can make better decisions using analytics as well.

Investing in, and using, program evaluation has been a hard sell in many agencies for years. While evaluation is important for long-term program assessments, it can be expensive and take years to complete. But with new technology and greater availability of data, many agencies are beginning to take advantage of the value of existing real-time administrative data. This movement is called “data analytics.” And the immediacy of results is appealing to many executives. Keep reading →


Government agencies and departments are learning to live with travel restrictions and discovering innovative alternatives amid an anti-conference trend brought on by budget restrictions and well-publicized abuses.

But some managers fear the trend will inhibit federal workers’ ability to stay current with new technology field advancements or to consult with experts in the private sector via site visits, professional seminars and annual conferences. Keep reading →


The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has contracted with Lockheed Martin and Microsoft to migrate the email and collaboration systems supporting approximately 25,000 employees to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 system, according to a joint announcement released by Lockheed Martin and Microsoft today.

The collaboration and communication service is expected to improve EPA employees’ access to communications and mobility tools and result in expected savings of $12 million over the four-year contract period. Keep reading →

For the past three years, we’ve been studying how the consumerization of IT has been impacting enterprises, including government. As Unisys’ third annual Consumerization of IT research study indicates, the growth of mobile device use in government and the private sector continues – with 44% of workers now using smartphones at work. That’s a 300% increase from three years ago, according to Forrester Consulting, which conducted the study for Unisys.

Tablets, which were rarely used at all two years ago, are now increasingly becoming the computing device of choice for many in today’s workforce. Driven by the adoption of new end user mobile technologies, government agencies are beginning to create innovative new ways of conducting business. Keep reading →

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