DOD CIO Goes All-In on Hybrid Cloud and Commercial Partnerships
At the AFCEA TechNet Asia-Pacific conference held in Hawaii last month, Department of Defense CIO, Terry Halvorsen, laid out his plans to move the agency to the cloud. Signaling a clear change in tone from more cautious statements in the past about the need to move to the cloud and its benefits, Halvorsen told the audience that his agency “would be completely stupid if we didn’t take advantage of hybrid cloud environment” and that it would not only “model” solutions on those provided by commercial providers, but in all likelihood use commercial services…eventually. What other infrastructure does an agency need to make most use of a hybrid cloud environment? Here’s a useful list of monitoring tools that help optimize performance.
How Can Agencies Simplify Acquisition?
Meanwhile, Army CIO, Lt. Gen. William Bender, is set on finding ways to eliminate the notorious red-tape from the acquisitions process. While we can all agree that an acquisition process that frequently ends up running for over half a decade is sub-optimal, it’s particularly troubling when you’re tasked with getting mission-critical resources to the war-fighter. Learning from Luke McCormick, CIO of the Department of Homeland Security, Bender’s acquisition and program management staff are starting by identifying those ‘things’ that inhibit speed and agility in the acquisition process and eliminating them. What sort of issues are is Bender looking to address? You can read the full article here.
Embracing Vulnerabilities to Build More Robust Security
First the Department of Defense announced its bug bounty program to speed up the identification of vulnerabilities, and now the GSA has released “a policy…that will grant people a legal way to detect and notify the agency of security vulnerabilities on a number of public-facing government websites.” Covering five of the sites it runs, including vote.gov and 18f.gsa.gov the agency has embraced an industry best practice that knowing about a security vulnerability and being able to fix it quickly creates a much stronger information security posture than going it alone. Beyond bug bounties, continuous monitoring and intuitive patch management are two other best practices to help manage the unending cyber threats faced by government agencies.
What Will Federal IT Priorities Look Like in 2017?
During the recent election campaign there was scant discussion about IT priorities – whether for the nation as a whole or for government agencies specifically. As we draw closer to Inauguration Day and as the new administration takes shape, we’re beginning to hear a bit more insight about how federal priorities will shift and may shape up in 2017. So far, it looks as though the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) bill, with its focus on streamlining, cost management, and increased agility is inline with administration priorities and will finally get a hearing in the Senate once Congress is back at work in the New Year. Meanwhile, with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, we’ll possibly see a great reliance on the private sector to provide solutions and perform work as the new administration finds ways to reduce the size of government. Interested to see what some experts think? Here are some opinions. Ready to get started on IT consolidation and streamlining? You can find resources here.
