Government rarely gets credit for the tremendous range of innovation it drives. But as the winners of our 2019 Government Innovation Awards make clear, amazing things are happening at all levels of the public sector.
The 40 Public Sector Innovations below include everything from AI-powered mission enablers to cloud-based reinvention to cybersecurity workforce development. In some cases, the technology itself is transformative, while in others creative use of readily available tools is the game-changer. All, however, show how IT and innovation can dramatically improve government.
And while these examples are impressive enough on their own, they're just one part of our larger Government Innovation Awards program. A joint effort of GCN, FCW, Washington Technology and Defense Systems, these awards also recognize the companies supporting the government’s transformation and the individual Rising Stars who are driving change across the public sector.
Read full story at GCN…
first published week of: 10/07/2019
Agency IT leaders need to figure out how applications will perform in the cloud before they migrate them there.
Despite all the talk of better strategies and procurement practices in the Cloud Smart era, federal agencies are still struggling with their cloud migrations. Half of federal CIOs believe the cloud is only partly delivering on anticipated benefits, while 16 percent think cloud technology is hardly delivering at all.
The culprits are most often the complexities of extending legacy apps to the cloud, as well as determining what workloads are best suited for a cloud environment. That means the problem isn’t whether agencies are ready for the cloud, but whether their applications are.
Migrating to the cloud can be simpler and smarter with a better understanding of everything in your IT ecosystem and how each component interacts with application performance, including networks and end users.
Here are four ways federal IT leaders can prepare their applications for the cloud.
Read full story at FedTech…
first published week of: 12/09/2019
The usual suspects, California and New York, lead technology employment, but there is at least one surprise on CompTIA's list.
As macroeconomic events — like trade wars, privacy watchdogs and a tightening federal budget — influence the technology industry, the United States tech workforce grows.
In 2018, net tech employment increased by nearly 261,000 jobs, according to the 2019 CompTIA Cyberstates tech workforce report. There are about 11.8 million net technology jobs in the U.S. as of last year.
The 2.3% year-over-year increase was shaped by consistent changes in the modern infrastructure and the growing reliance on software as a service.
CompTIA in part credits the following for spurring new tech jobs:
Cloud and the Edge
Internet of things and ambient computing possibilities
"Hyper" personalization for unique customer experiences
Distributed technology models
Digital-human models for integration in the workplace
The continuation of a skills gap sparks "creative solutions" for hiring requirements
Read full story at CIO Dive…
first published week of: 04/01/2019
U.S. regulators estimate that as many as 10,000 lives could be saved every year by reducing 911 response times by just one minute.
( Watchara Phomicinda/SCNG/Zuma Press)
But there’s room for improvement: ‘I can get Uber in some parts of the country faster than I can get an ambulance,’ says one fire chief
Taking a page from corporate-technology managers, 911 emergency call centers are tapping new software tools to share data generated by hundreds of computer-aided dispatch systems across the country.
But like most corporate data-integration initiatives, that is no small task. Americans make roughly 240 million 911 calls every year, routed through some 8,900 dispatch centers, according to the National Emergency Number Association, a professional organization.
Nearly all of these centers are operated and managed on a local level, “often in siloes and with an independent approach,” according to a congressional report last year, which said data integration and analytics were especially challenging.
Read full story at Wall Street Journal…
first published week of: 06/17/2019
Discomfort over the collection and sale of personal data led to a flurry of consumer data privacy bills in 2019, as state legislatures vied to follow California’s lead in giving users more control of personal information.
But the legislative year ended with more of a whimper than a bang as well-funded tech giants and other business concerns rushed to oppose the bills, and even California is scrambling to fix details of its data privacy law before it takes effect in January.
Of the 24 states that considered data privacy legislation this year, only Illinois, Maine and Nevada enacted new laws.
Read full story at GCN…
first published week of: 08/05/2019
A video surveillance camera hangs from the side of a building on May 14, 2019, in San Francisco, California.
( Justin Sullivan-Getty Images )
Inquiring lawsuits want to know for what the DOJ, DEA, & FBI are using the tech .
The use of facial recognition has spread from photo albums and social media to airports, doorbells, schools, and law enforcement. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union wants top US agencies to share records detailing what face data they're collecting and what they're doing with it.
The ACLU in January submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the FBI seeking records relating to the agencies' "use of face recognition programs and other biometric identification and tracking technology." Almost 10 months later, the ACLU has received no response. And so the organization today filed suit against all three agencies, seeking the records.
The records are "important to assist the public in understanding the government's use of highly invasive biometric identification and tracking technologies," says the complaint, filed in federal court in Massachusetts. Through the records, the ACLU seeks to "understand and inform the public about, among other things, how face recognition and other biometric identification technologies are currently being used by the government and what, if any, safeguards are currently in place to prevent their abuse and protect core constitutional rights."
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 11/04/2019
Some agencies saw double-digit growth in pursuit of modern systems.
Federal agencies spent a record $64.7 billion on IT contracts in fiscal 2018, according to research released this week by Bloomberg Government.
The nearly $65 billion spent represents a 9.5 percent increase over fiscal 2017 levels, and includes higher levels of spending in cybersecurity ($6.4 billion), cloud computing ($4.1 billion) and almost a doubling of other transaction authority spending, to $4.2 billion from $2.3 billion.
IT spending jumped in both civilian and defense agencies. Across the Defense Department, IT contract spending grew by about 12 percent to $33.8 billion—the highest nominal spending figure ever for the Defense Department, and highest adjusted for inflation IT contract spending since 2012.
In civilian agencies, IT contract spending bumped up 6.6 percent to $30.8 billion—an all-time high in both nominal and real dollars, the report said. The departments of Veterans Affairs, Treasury, State and Education “each saw double-digit IT spending growth pursuant to their goals of infrastructure modernization and rolling out digital services to citizens and end-users.”
Read full story at NextGov…
first published week of: 02/04/2019
Proposed public-sector bans of facial recognition are often based on inaccurate misconceptions, and following through on them would harm law enforcement, school safety and technological progress.
Over the past year, a number of organizations have campaigned for policymakers to ban government use of facial recognition technology and for companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google to not sell the technology to government. Their efforts have begun to bear fruit. In February, a lawmaker in San Francisco proposed a rule that would ban all city departments from using facial recognition technology, and state legislators in Massachusetts and Washington have since followed suit with their own proposal to ban government use of facial recognition. However, these proposals are based on inaccurate or misguided concerns, and following through on them would weaken the effectiveness and efficiency of law enforcement, make schools less safe, and hold back technological progress at other government agencies.
Much of the opposition to facial recognition is based on the false belief that the systems are not accurate. But many of the most high-profile critiques of facial recognition are based on shoddy research. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has repeatedly claimed that Amazon’s facial recognition service had an error rate of 5 percent when used to compare Congressional photos to mugshots, but the error rate would have dropped to zero had the ACLU used the recommended confidence threshold of 99 percent.
first published week of: 04/22/2019
Sanders would regulate broadband as utility and spend $150 billion on networks.
Presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders yesterday released a plan to overhaul the US broadband market by breaking up giant providers, outlawing data caps, regulating broadband prices, and providing $150 billion to build publicly owned networks.
"The Internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer-funded research, using taxpayer-funded grants in taxpayer-funded labs," the Sanders plan said. "Our tax dollars built the Internet, and access to it should be a public good for all, not another price-gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon."
If enacted, Sanders' "High-Speed Internet for All" plan would be the polar opposite of the Trump administration's treatment of broadband companies and far more aggressive than the regulatory approach of the Obama administration. Sanders pledged to "use existing antitrust authority to break up Internet service provider and cable monopolies," specifically by "bar[ring] service providers from also providing content and unwind anticompetitive vertical conglomerates."
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 12/09/2019
According to a report from the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. In addition, the UN expects that the gradual shift from rural to urban areas, combined with overall population growth, could add another 2.5 billion people living in urban areas by 2050. This could lead to 43 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants by 2030.
Understanding these key trends in urbanization will be crucial for supporting and maintaining the health and safety of the urban resident. Even now, numerous city-managed systems are deemed “too critical to fail.”
Read full story at GCN…
first published week of: 08/05/2019