The Pentagon's top tech official told Congress that the push for enterprise cloud isn't for the sake of modernization or convenience – it is to leverage artificial intelligence and big data.
"The reason why I've been so vocal and energized about wanting to get to an energized cloud capability is I want to provide the Department of Defense with a way to handle that unlimited compute capacity, unlimited storage, on demand as needed with high integrity," CIO Dana Deasy said at a Dec. 11 hearing of the House Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee.
The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) will be tasked with determining the "rules of the road" for data, which will also be one of its biggest stumbling blocks, Deasy said. JAIC is responsible for unifying DOD's AI efforts and will need to standardize and "technically describe what we need to do to ingest the data," as well as determine what new tools are needed as systems develop.
Read full story at Government Cloud Insider…
first published week of: 02/18/2019
Over the years, we have seen the federal IT landscape evolve, and this year will be no different. In 2019, we will continue to see federal agencies move full speed ahead with technology that will allow government to enhance citizen experiences and prepare for emerging technology.
Key technology trends will emerge in the federal space in 2019.
Read full story at FCW…
first published week of: 01/28/2019
The intrinsic synergy between policy goals, business needs and digital transformation is a central theme underlying the 10 technology trends Gartner analysts identified as crucial to governments' ability to optimize the services they offer.
“Now more than ever, technology priorities must be established in the context of business trends such as digital equity, ethics and privacy, widening generational chasms and the need for institutional agility,” said Rick Howard, Gartner's research vice president and lead analyst for the “Technology Trends in Government, 2019-2020” report the firm released Sept. 16.
“Public sector leaders expect government CIOs to find ways technology can reduce costs, create efficiencies and improve outcomes for citizens and businesses. They also expect CIOs to consider the social, technological, economic, environmental and political trends that impact the constituents they serve,” he said.
Read full story at FCW…
first published week of: 10/28/2019
Lubbock County managed to isolate the attack quickly. Others, not so much
Few details have emerged about the coordinated ransomware attack that struck 22 local governments in Texas last week. But five local governments affected by the attack have been identified.
On August 20, the Texas Department of Information Resources revised its initial report that 23 "entities" had been affected by the ransomware attack, reducing that count by 1. And a Texas DIR spokesperson said in a statement that about a quarter of the local governments affected have been able to at least partially restore normal operations.
That includes Lubbock County, which apparently escaped major disruptions. Lubbock County judge Curtis Parrish told Magic 106.5 Radio that the county's IT department "was right on top of it… they were able to get that virus isolated, contained and dealt with in a very quick manner so it did not affect any other computers or computer systems here in Lubbock County."
Other, smaller local governments were not as lucky. Borger, Texas, which has a population of about 13,000, was one of the first to go public. On August 19, Borger city officials announced on Facebook that the ransomware attack had "impacted normal City business and financial operations and services." A continuity of operations plan had been put into effect to "provide basic and emergency services (Police, Fire, 9-1-1, Animal Control, Water, Wastewater and Solid Waste Collection)," but there was no estimate of how long it would take for full services to be restored.
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 08/26/2019
The White House CIO role, created by executive order in 2015, coordinates policy for the Executive Office of the President and oversees the IT budget and systems used by the White House.
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first published week of: 02/04/2019
The policy emphasizes the need for application rationalization in government.
On June 24, exactly 10 months after it introduced a draft version of its new Cloud Smart strategy, the Office of Management and Budget released the final version of the plan. The policy will likely guide how agencies approach and adopt the cloud for years to come, and it emphasizes the need for them to rationalize their application portfolios as they modernize their IT infrastructure.
OMB presents Cloud Smart as a recalibration that reflects how the technology has evolved since the Obama administration’s Cloud First policy was formally introduced in 2011. The policy encourages federal agencies to use cloud where it meets their mission needs and conceive of cloud “as an array of solutions that offer many capabilities and management options to enhance mission and service delivery.”
Agencies should be “equipped to evaluate their options based on their service and mission needs, technical requirements, and existing policy limitations,” the policy states. Further, computing and technology decisions should also consider how users will be impacted, balanced against costs and cybersecurity risk management. Agencies must consider “the long-term inefficiencies of migrating applications as-is into cloud environments against the immediate financial costs of modernizing in advance or replacing them altogether.”
The policy notes that federal agencies will rationalize their application portfolios to drive federal cloud adoption. This will involve reducing their application portfolios by both “assessing the need for and usage of applications” and “discarding obsolete, redundant, or overly resource-intensive applications.” Agencies will then be free to focus on improving service delivery by optimizing their remaining apps.
Read full story at FedTech…
first published week of: 07/29/2019
Kratsios, who currently serves as the country’s deputy chief technology officer, will be the first person to hold the title since the Obama administration.
President Trump on Thursday announced he would nominate Michael Kratsios to become U.S. chief technology officer, a position that’s sat vacant since the beginning of the administration.
As deputy U.S. CTO and deputy assistant to the president for technology policy, Kratsios has been the primary arbiter of the White House’s tech agenda since early 2017. He also served as the de facto head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy until meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier took over the organization in January.
In the announcement, the president also said he will officially name Kratsios as OSTP’s assistant director.
During his tenure, Kratsios has frequently and forcefully touted the administration’s research-heavy, regulation-free approach to technology. He was heavily involved in crafting White House initiatives to advance 5G and quantum computing, and promoting the national AI strategy the administration released last month.
His nomination was well-received across the tech community, with cabinet secretaries and prominent CEOs praising Kratsios’ commitment to maintaining the country’s edge in the global tech market.
Read full story at Nextgov.com…
first published week of: 03/25/2019
San Franciscans have long complained that tech workers ruined their city, driving up rents and homelessness and eliminating diversity. Now even the tech workers agree
It was a beautiful winter day in San Francisco, and Zoe was grooving to the soundtrack of the roller-skating musical Xanadu as she rode an e-scooter to work. The 29-year-old tech worker had just passed the Uber building when, without warning, a homeless man jumped into the bike lane with his dog, blocking her path.
She slammed on the brakes, flew four feet into the air and landed on the pavement, bleeding. “It was one of those hardening moments where I was like, ‘Even I am being affected,’” she recalled.
It should be noted that Zoe, who asked not to be identified by her real name because she was not authorized by her employer to speak to the press, is not the stereotypical tech bro who moves to San Francisco for a job and immediately starts complaining about the city’s dire homelessness crisis. She arrived in 2007 to study at San Francisco State University and had a career in the arts before attending a coding bootcamp and landing a job at a major tech company.
Read full story at The Guardian…
first published week of: 07/08/2019
With an emphasis on commodity-enabling services that can be used either on-site or in the cloud, the CIO-Commodities and Solutions (CIO-CS) contract is squarely aimed at providing agencies with limited IT budgets with the IT they need to modernize infrastructure while keeping costs as low as possible.
The $20 billion contract vehicle known as CIO-CS IDIQ makes it easy for government agencies to order IT commodities – just like its predecessor, Electronics Commodities Store (ECS) III. Yet CIO-CS IDIQ, awarded April 2015, does much more.
Since CIO-CS launched, we’ve seen steady growth in terms of orders and contract awards have tripled Bridget Gauer, director of the NIH IT Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC)
With an emphasis on commodity-enabling services that can be used either onsite or in the cloud, CIO- Commodities and Solutions is squarely aimed at providing agencies with limited IT budgets the IT they need to modernize their infrastructure, while keeping costs as low as possible. Despite those lofty goals, the contract didn’t leap out of the gate. It posted just under $179 million dollars in its first year of operation, yet it has been a strong and consistent performer.
“Since CIO-CS launched, we’ve seen steady growth in terms of orders and contract awards have tripled,” says Bridget Gauer, director of the NIH IT Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC), which runs the contract. “We expect this trend to continue.”
GovTribe, a company that collects and collates government procurement data, puts the combined current value of all awarded task orders on the contract at around $1.24 billion, slightly more than 6 percent of the contract’s ceiling.
Read full story here…
first published week of: 06/17/2019