SIIA Digital Discourse Industry Blog

Public Sector Innovation Roundup: Sequestration & IT Acquisition Reform

March 1, 2013 By Mike Hettinger

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Pushes IT Acquisition Reform: The big news this week was the hearing held in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Chairman Issa’s IT acquisition reform legislation, known as FITARA. The bill, which was released in draft form to the public last fall, seeks to empower CIOs, improve the overall speed and agility of the acquisition process, and reduce wasteful IT spending, is expected to be formally introduced before Congress goes home for its Spring Recess in about three weeks. Chairman Issa acknowledged that his committee has received comments from more than 20 organizations on the specifics of the bill and that his staff is working to amend the bill to address many of the concerns industry has raised. The hearing itself focused a good deal of attention on the need for a better trained and equipped acquisition workforce, another area addressed in the bill, as well as the need to shift attention away from IT as a capital expense and toward IT as an operating expense. We will continue to track the development of this bill closely and look forward to the next iteration. The hearing received a good deal of press attention, including this summary from FCW.

Sequestration’s Impact on Federal IT: With sequestration now just hours away, Jason Miller from Federal News Radio interviewed Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel on the potential impact of sequestration on federal IT. The long and short of it is that we know federal IT will be impacted, but unlike the programs themselves where they are expected to take an across the board cut, IT by its nature is woven into the fabric of these programs, not a program itself, so its impact is uncertain. This according to the interview is creating a confidence problem for IT. New investments will also be put on hold. Read the article and listen to the interview from Federal News Radio here.

Sequestration’s Impact Going Forward: In addition to the automatic cuts associated with the sequester that occur March 1st at 11:59pm, there is another looming funding crisis in the federal government – the expiring Continuing Resolution for FY 2013. The CR officially expires on March 27th so Congressional leaders will have to find a way to address this situation as well. Word from Capitol Hill this week is that the House Appropriations Committee is preparing a rest of the year Continuing Resolution at post-sequester levels, meaning much of the spending included in this bill would be rolled back to pre-2008 levels, the last year of the George W. Bush Administration. GovExec has more.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

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Filed Under: Policy, PSIG Tagged With: IT Aquisition, Sequestration

A college course shows the potential of eLearning

February 28, 2013 By Ronn Levine

We were fortunate to have GamblingCompliance CEO Greg Kilminster stop in this week for a chat during a visit to their Washington office. Headquartered in London, GamblingCompliance is your classic online publishing business, putting out strong content that they sell through the various channels.

We’ll have more on Greg in a future member profile. One thing in particular that struck me is his commitment to eLearning. While the rest of the world conjures who should work in pajamas vs. the possibilities of my innovating with my co-worker Katrina in the kitchen at lunch every day, I feel the potential of eLearning should register higher for us. I’m staring at a headline in The Washington Post this week: “U-Va [University of Virginia] embraces the online lecture model.” Says Professor Philip Zelikow: “True, it’s a lot of conversations to have with the professor, and you don’t get to talk back directly. But on the plus side, you get to stop, pause, fast forward, rewind—or if you get tired of the professor, just turn him off. So, welcome to The Modern World.”

What seems to make eLearning so attractive these days is just what SIPA members often speak about in a more general sense—it fits into customers’ workflows. They can watch it any time, and as Zelikow—who served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission and is a member of President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board—mentioned, you can go back and forth as other technologies and real life interrupt.

Zelikow refers to the advantage of being able to “read particular passages from a textbook or another source just as that information is most relevant: when a student is about to watch a related lecture.” This struck me as very similar to what SIPA is doing with our Book of Models webinars. If you’re signed up for this Wednesday’s webinar, you get the related chapter in Dan Brown’s highly regarded book. This reinforcement can be a crucial tool for learning. Zelikow is also delighted to be freed up to lead discussions with his students every Tuesday, instead of just reciting the material. He calls it the “most powerful design” in his 20 years of teaching.

How do you get started? If you’re doing webinars, you’re probably more than halfway there. There was a wonderful SIPA webinar given by Jonathan Ray of Access Intelligence and Bradden Blair from Contexo University last March that members can access on our website. (Both the recording and transcript are there.) You can be sure there will also be much discussion on eLearning at SIPA’s Annual Conference, June 5-7 in Washington, D.C.

Ray and Blair said the key to getting into eLearning is getting to know the ADDIE model, an instructional design standard with five phases—analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. They go into exceptional detail in the webinar. They also delve into instructor compensation, pricing—they sell programs per seat—and engagement, where they agree with Zelikow about the importance of a live component. Said Blair: “I think the empirical research out there on just human learning and cognition has shown that the more that you can engage the learners and ask them to do something in response to that content, the greater likelihood there is going to be a retention.”

Zelikow’s massive open online course (MOOC) offers people around the world a free dive into higher education at its best. In all, about 47,000 people registered for it. Yes, it’s free—it’s a huge industry; Coursera, edX and Khan Academy are some of the huge players—but for specialized publishers offering their highly niched content, the profit potential is obviously high.

It can also create some personalities in your ranks, never a bad thing. And the bottom line—well, besides the actual bottom line—is that both students and instructors seem to prefer eLearning. Even the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William Kirwan, said both factions are “more satisfied.”

As Kilminster left our office—excited about SIPA’s London Conference in September—we were excited to see a member looking to take his classic publishing business in new directions. We’re happy to both lead, as we did with the webinar, and follow closely as he and other members pursue this road. More reports to come.

Subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily for more specialized publishers industry news.

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @RonnatSIPA

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Filed Under: SIPA

State of the States: What Governors are Saying about Digital Learning

February 28, 2013 By Lindsay Harman

State policies, budgets and regulations have a significant impact on school implementation of educational technology. Since the beginning of the New Year, governors across the country have been delivering their State of the State speeches and presenting their budget proposals for the next fiscal year. As outlined in a new SIIA members-only report, education including technology was a key theme for many governors.

Many governors spoke of the importance of literacy and competency by 3^rd grade, and some proposed additional spending for that goal. Common Core transition was less mentioned. There was more funding proposed for scholarship funds than for internal investments in higher education institutions and systems. Performance based funding was also a hot topic amongst the governors, and many proposed shifting of more funds into performance based formulas, especially in higher education. Flexible funding was another topic that many governors focused on and proposed in both speeches and budget proposals.

Specific digital technology funding and initiatives came from the speeches and budget proposals. Both Ohio and Arizona proposed $20 million in funding for 21^st century assessments (PARCC & SBAC). Increased IT infrastructure funds were mentioned in budgets by Georgia, Arizona, & Florida. STEM education initiatives were proposed by Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Many governors encouraged in speeches or through funding the continued development of virtual higher education resources.

SIIA has produced a summary of the policy agendas and budgets from governors of the 15 most populous states, with a focus on their proposals regarding education technology. SIIA members can download the SIIA State of the States summary document for a state-by-state breakdown with links to the budget proposals and speeches. The importance of state funding is another topic to look for at the SIIA Ed Tech Government Forum April 9-11 in Washington DC, members should register to learn more.

Lindsay Harman is Market and Policy Analyst for the SIIA Education Division.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Policies, Education Policy Tagged With: budget, education technology, ETGF, ETIS, Speeches, states

SIIA Urges U.S. Trade Representative to Promote Digital Trade, Legislation Introduced to Prevent Abusive Patent Suits, and House Panel Considers Federal IT Reform

February 27, 2013 By David LeDuc

SIIA Urges U.S. Trade Representative to Promote Digital Trade & Protect IP

SIIA filed comments today with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) urging the agency to use the negotiations for a new International Services Agreement (ISA) to lower barriers to trade in digital services and to maintain a high degree of intellectual property protection and enforcement. In our comments, SIIA pointed out that sustainable growth in the 21st century economy relies upon the unrestricted flow of information and data, as our domestic IT businesses reach across the globe. Therefore, removing barriers to the establishment and delivery of digital IT services will enhance economic performance.

Specifically, SIIA’s comments urged USTR to maintain the following two objectives in the services agreement: (1) governments should not prevent businesses that supply services in other countries, or customers of those suppliers, from electronically transferring information domestically or across borders, accessing publicly available information, or accessing their own information stored in other countries, and (2) Strong IP protections for software and digital content have been an essential element in fostering explosive technology growth and a wider variety of educational materials and information products that increase productivity, effectiveness and knowledge. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse blog.

Legislation Introduced to Prevent Abusive Patent Suits

Today, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. House to take on the persistent issue of patent trolls, one of the major challenges to the U.S. patent system that was not addressed in the recently enacted America Invents Act. The Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act (SHIELD Act), sponsored by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) seeks to limit cases brought by trolls by shifting the legal fees to the losing party when patent trolls lose their patent infringement cases. SIIA welcomed the legislation with a strong statement of support. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

House Panel Considers Federal IT Reform

As promised by chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is moving forward on this issue, holding a hearing today. The legislation, the Federal IT Acquisition Reform act (known as FITARA), still in draft format, seeks to reform the Federal IT acquisition process and would be the first major Federal IT update since the E-Government Act was enacted more than ten years ago. SIIA supports reforms that would enable the government to more efficiently acquire innovative IT products and services, and we are working closely with Chairman Issa as he seeks to introduce this legislation in the next couple of weeks. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse blog.

David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy. Follow the SIIA public policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPubPolicy.

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Filed Under: Digital Policy Roundup

This Week in IP Enforcement

February 27, 2013 By Keith Kupferschmid

Copyright Alert System Goes Into Effect (The Washington Post)
The Center for Copyright Information launched the Copyright Alert System this week, with the cooperation of five major Internet service providers, in an attempt to curb copyright infringement online by going after consumers instead of pirates.

Software Firms Go to Washington to Defend Patents (CIO)
Representatives from various software companies said in a Capitol Hill briefing that lawmakers and judges shouldn’t solve current controversies by eliminating software patents altogether, but instead look at ways to improve patent quality, make it tougher for patent licensing firms to file infringement lawsuits and require companies to be transparent about the patents they hold.

New Internet Domains to Start Rolling Out in Mid-2013 (PCMagazine)
ICANN, the Web’s governing body, will open a trademark clearinghouse starting March 26 in an effort to resolve any trademark disputes when new generic top-level domains (gTLD) are rolled out mid-2013.

Indie Bookstores Sue Amazon, Big-6 Publishers for Using DRM on Ebooks (paidContent)
Three independent bookstores have filed a class-action lawsuit against Amazon and the big-six publishers, alleging that the proprietary DRM Amazon uses on ebooks creates a monopoly.

RIAA Not Impressed With Google’s Anti-Piracy Efforts (PCMagazine)
The RIIA says it has found no evidence that Google has followed through with a plan to demote sites with pirated content, despite millions of copyright removal requests over the last six months.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Anti-Piracy, Policy - Intellectual Property

SIIA Applauds Issa’s Commitment to Reform Federal IT Aquisition

February 27, 2013 By Mike Hettinger

SIIA has worked closely with Chairman Issa and his staff on the draft legislation to reform federal IT acquisition known as FITARA, and we applaud his efforts to advance the debate. While technology has changed dramatically in the last decade, it’s been more than ten years since the E-Gov Act was signed into law and more than 15 years since enactment of Clinger-Cohen. An update to IT acquisition regulations is clearly overdue.

As today’s hearing clearly showed, there is a great deal at stake in this debate, and a thoughtful and methodical approach is needed. An estimated $20 billion of the federal government’s $80 billion IT budget could be spent on cloud computing and related innovative IT services. With that, it is essential that the government develop new and innovative ways to acquire these services, reducing time to market and maximizing value.

While SIIA is strongly supportive of the objective of legislation to reform federal IT acquisition, we have concerns with several provisions as proposed in the discussion draft. We have shared our concerns with Chairman Issa and his staff and hope that these concerns will be addressed in the revised bill that the Chairman announced today will be “published” prior to the Congressional Spring Recess. We look forward to continuing to work with Chairman Issa and members of the Committee to address these issues and help advance effective, bipartisan legislation to help the Federal government continue to keep pace with IT innovation.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

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Filed Under: Policy, PSIG

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