CSC reports 5 percent drop in public-sector revenue

CSC reports 5 percent drop in public-sector revenue (via Washington Technology)

Computer Sciences Corp.'s CEO Mike Lawrie said May 17 the company is facing the headwinds of a tough federal marketplace, leading to a very poor 2012 for the company. CSC reported $15.88 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2012, which ended March 30. It’s 1 percent down from fiscal 2011 revenue of…

---

 

first published week of:   05/21/2012

3 consumer technologies ready to disrupt the federal market
By Carlos A. Soto

Technology, in many ways, is the study of change. Our needs and wants, whether realized or otherwise, act as accelerants for technology to occur, and the result is change. If the change that occurs irreversibly reshapes the form, nature or purpose of our initial need or want, the technology is said to be disruptive.

My favorite example of this phenomenon is how music led in many ways to Apple’s ability to better penetrate the federal government. When the iPod was release in 2001, the music industry was irreversibly changed overnight. Apple’s successful iTunes platform squashed all other non-vertical competitors whom, like Sony, had fantastic hardware but horrible outsourced software that crashed your computer, was sluggish and incredibly hard to use.

The real change that Apple created wasn’t a shiny white box that played the music, but rather the iPod’s ability to fulfill our need to centralize and organize music collections while making music and purchases more accessible.

The same year the iPod was released, I had multiple sources working within IT sections of the government ordering iPods for the purpose of procuring “portable storage devices,” a little known function that these early devices were also pretty good at. In fact the ability to use these devices as portable storage contributed to the death of iOmega Jaz Drives, which were popular at the time for their ability to be Mac and Windows compliant.

Four years later podcasting took off, and a decade later Apple notebooks, desktops and various other devices are well ingrained in the federal space.
Even though we seldom see technologies this disruptive, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some pretty good contenders in today’s market. Below are some emerging technologies that, if conditions are right, could create the perfect storm of disruption.

Coming soon: video chat

It’’s no surprise that video conferencing is reshaping the way we communicate. Facetime, Skype, Tango, Oovoo … there are seemingly dozens of video conferencing apps for consumers, and now dozens of solutions for business to business and business to customer conferencing. Surprisingly, many of the companies adapting to this technology as the first line of communication between the business and their customers are financial institutes.

Traditionally, retail and travel industries have been early adapters of this type of technology, but the economy coupled with the ability for banks to meet stringent security requirements by seamlessly routing and transmitting confidential data to siloed–backend banking systems has led to banks aggressively investigate, pilot and move towards this platform.

Details Here

first published week of:   07/02/2012

3 Innovative Federal CIOs Respond to New Pressures

The role of the federal agency CIO has been the subject of near-constant debate since the passage of the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act. Congress intended the law to improve its management within the federal government by designating agency CIOs and giving them authority over and accountability for IT activities. In practice, the results have been mixed, with many agency CIOs struggling with limited executive buy-in and power.

Empowering agency CIOs is a key component of the 25-point federal IT reform plan released by former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra. Late last year, U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jacob Lew acted on one of the plan’s recommendations, releasing a memo that puts CIOs in charge of commodity IT purchasing for their agencies. And in May, the OMB released a shared services strategy, noting that agency CIOs will need to “innovate with less,” given the federal government’s current fiscal constraints and growing IT demands.

The new strategy points out that agency CIOs will be pressured to deliver solutions faster and for less money, develop future-ready business and technology architectures, and take advantage of evolving technologies to help agencies work more flexibly, efficiently and effectively.

With this in mind, we thought it appropriate to shine a spotlight on the activities of three of the federal government’s most innovative agency CIOs.

Details Here

first published week of:   06/18/2012

3 Quick Wins for your Open Gov Initiative

If you’re a government agency evaluating ways to get started with your Gov 2.0 / Open Gov / Open Data initiatives, keep in mind these 3 simple strategies for a quick win:

1. Review the terms of use

Even if your agency doesn’t have an Open Data policy, your agency’s website could have potentially restrictive terms of use policies. When looking at enabling Government as a platform, a quick win is to review and revise your site’s terms of use.

Specifically, are you explicitly preventing someone from using or even linking to your site’s information? Citizens that want to leverage and re-use public information on your site — for example, waste pickup schedules, council information or ward boundaries — may be legally bound from doing so. Ensure that this type of information isn’t restricted by “sweeping” terms of use policies, it can be as simple as revising the footer of those web pages. For more see this piece on licenses at Eaves.ca

2. Publish the original files continued…

first published week of:   12/03/2012

7 Cities Vying for Intelligent Community of the Year

Can an American city break through in 2012 and win acclaim as the world’s Intelligent Community of the Year?

Austin, Texas, and Riverside, Calif., will represent the nation’s prospects against an international field in pursuit of the Intelligent Community Forum’s annual prize, to be awarded at the think tank’s annual conference on June 8 in New York City.

The other finalists, announced this week, are Oulu, Finland; Quebec City, Quebec; Saint John, New Brunswick; Stratford, Ontario; and Taichung City, Taiwan.

The Intelligent Community Forum seeks to share best practices of communities around the globe that are embracing technology as a key ingredient for economic and social development. The annual award became a full-fledged program in 2004.

Details Here

first published week of:   01/16/2012

911 going GIS

The Columbiana (Ohio) County 911 system should know the exact location of every call by the end of the year following action taken this week by county commissioners.

Commissioners acted on the recommendation of the county 911 committee and hired Digital Data Technologies Inc. for $310,000 to provide geographic information system (GIS) mapping services. GIS is a much more sophisticated operating mapping system that will add greater detail and accuracy to the 911 map.

Under the current mapping system, which the committee does not own and costs $7,000 a year to use, 911 calls can only tell the dispatcher where the calls are coming from and little else.

Details Here

first published week of:   07/16/2012