Kevin Paschuck

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management, is an important move in the right direction. With cloud technology positioned prominently at the center of the initiative, we are beginning to see a real shift toward recognizing the major benefits, including significant cost savings and decreased implementation times, that government can realize from cloud-based solutions.

The plan outlines a ‘Cloud First’ policy, which mandates that each agency identify, within three months, three ‘must move’ IT services and move one of those services to the cloud within 12 months. The remaining services should transfer to the cloud within the next 18 months.

Additionally, approval is reserved for major IT programs that utilize a modular approach, with new customer-facing functionality provided every 6 months.

This is an important...

Since the passing of the healthcare reform bill in March, policy makers, health care providers and even patients have begun to take a keen interest in health care IT.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise since health care IT is now touted as a way to achieve that most elusive of goals: improving health care outcomes by equipping health care providers and patients with more information — all while holding the line on costs.

We have all become accustomed to having answers and resources at our fingertips — be it through an online search, website visit, email, phone call, or chat forum. Healthcare providers and patients are right to ask why they can expect this level of anytime and anywhere access to information in nearly all aspects of their lives, bar one: health care.

But promising new technologies — like cloud computing — can indeed boost operational efficiency and...

Cloud computing, enhancing citizen engagement, cyber security, enterprise transformation, health IT, federal enterprise architecture, data center consolidation, workforce management, citizen dashboard and enterprise reporting, securing government systems, identity management, USA spending, Data.gov and the list of FY11 government priorities and initiatives goes on and on and on. 

 How can one single company provide expertise to address all government priorities and requirements? 

 It can’t.  Nor would government want to rely on a single company.  In FY11, the federal government will spend an estimated $79 billion on IT alone, which equates to more than 7,400 individual IT projects.  And in 2014, US Federal government IT spend is forecasted to be $90.3 billion.  These astonishing numbers simply validate that there are plenty of opportunities to go around for all of us who have a stake in providing IT products, services and...

Social media is the fastest growing channel where citizens are engaging with government agencies, and it demands real-time attention. The government has successfully adopted Web 1.0 technology concepts like search, connecting web pages and one-way broadcasting of information over the internet and through email.  Likewise, they are on the right path with social media concepts and tools including blogs, government participation on social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Did you see that the Defense Department released an official social media use policy that allows open access for all agency components?  We’ve also seen the concepts the government is implementing under the Open Government Directive (transparency through information sharing, collaboration) which I like to refer to as Level 1 participation.