Digital Discourse / Software / Government

SIIA Applauds Cybersecurity Commitment Announced in Tonight’s State of the Union Address

February 12, 2013 By

SIIA congratulates President Obama and his Administration for making cybersecurity a priority. We appreciate the President’s efforts to seek broad input in crafting the Executive Order signed today. We are particularly pleased that the Executive Order excludes commercial information technology products and consumer information technology services from the definition of ‘critical infrastructure at greatest risk.’ The Administration is clearly seeking to advance American innovation with this effort, however, the way in which the Order is implemented will be critical in determining its success or failure.

As we work with the Administration on implementation, a priority for our industry will be to avoid rigid regulations that impede the innovation that is essential for effective cybersecurity.

A regulatory approach seeking to cover a broad, rapidly-evolving cross-section of industry would have the unintended consequence of slowing technological innovation and limiting our collective cybersecurity preparedness. Therefore, it is essential that the Administration work with industry to implement the Executive Order in a way that retains necessary flexibility. Technological innovation must be allowed keep up with rapid developments pertaining to both cybersecurity threats and protections.

To that end, we look forward to continuing to work closely with the Administration and congressional leaders to implement this policy.

Ken WaschKen Wasch is President of SIIA. Follow the SIIA Policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPolicy.

Share|
Filed Under: Government, Policy, Policy - Cybersecurity, Security, Software Tagged With: , ,

SIIA Announces Commitment to Data-Driven Innovation as a Top Policy Priority in 2013

January 17, 2013 By

The SIIA Government Affairs Council met Wednesday to outline the organization’s policy priorities for 2013.  In addition to identifying the specific initiatives it will pursue in the year ahead, SIIA and its member companies expressed a commitment to making data-driven innovation a top policy priority in the year ahead.  The SIIA Government Affairs Council includes: Reed Elsevier, IBM, Adobe, Cengage, Dow Jones, Intuit,  Kaplan, Kiplinger, Google, McGraw Hill Education, McGraw Hill Financial, Oracle, Pearson, Red Hat, SAS, and Thomson Reuters.

A key theme unifying the work of SIIA on behalf of its members is an increased focus on advancing the effective collection and positive use of data. It is essential that public policy recognizes that innovation and business strategies are increasingly driven by data. Importantly, data-driven innovation not only holds the promise of advancing economic opportunity and jobs, but of providing tremendous consumer and societal benefits.

With so much at stake, SIIA is committed to actively promoting the economic and social value of data-driven innovation. Our efforts will involve direct outreach to legislators, along with a White Paper that includes recommendations for policymakers and governments. Our goal is to make certain that public policy helps enable the tremendous societal and economic benefits of data-driven innovation.

With members in both technology and information services, SIIA is uniquely positioned to highlight and address the public policy issues that arise from the increased salience of data-driven innovation. We began to focus more strongly on this issue in 2012, and it will be an even more important part of our work in 2013.

SIIA also announced its general tech policy priorities for 2013, along with policy priorities in the areas of: intellectual property; public sector IT, and; education technology. [Read more...]

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud/Gov, Content, Education, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, Policy - Cybersecurity, Policy - Intellectual Property, Policy - Privacy, PSIG, SIIA News, Software, Software Events

This Week in Public Sector Innovation

December 21, 2012 By

OMB Delays Passback Creating Uncertainty for CIOs:The ongoing debate on Capitol Hill over how to resolve the looming fiscal cliff has delayed OMB’s budget guidance, also known as passback, making it difficult for agencies to plan expenditures for the remainder of FY2013 and budgets for FY2014.  Particularly in limbo, according to this Federal News Radio article are agency CIOs who have been tasked with modernizing IT systems, enhancing network security and moving commodity IT to shared service centers but feel they haven’t been provided enough information to effectively plan.  Further complicating this is that once the situation is resolved, the timeframe for requests, negotiations and appeals related to the FY2014 budget cycle will be compressed.

DHS Releases Continuous Monitoring RFQ:  In cybersecurity news, DHS, working through GSA, released a final RFQ this week seeking bids to meet requirements  of the new Continuous Diagnostic and Mitigation program and for continuous monitoring as-a-service.  The BPA includes 15 tools and 11 task areas aimed at improving DHS’s IT security.  The BPA has an estimated value of $6 billion and responses are due January 28, 2013. Federal News Radio has the details.

PSIG Members Featured in 10th Anniversary of the E-Gov Act Event:  This week marked the 10th anniversary of the E-Gov Act and SIIA PSIG Members Doug Bourgeois of VMware, Mark Forman of Government Transaction Services and David Mihalchik of Google all were featured prominently in the event marking the anniversary.  Other SIIA members were included as well, including Dan Chenok of IBM and former Congressman Tom Davis, now of Deloitte.  C Span covered the event, which focused on the advances made in government technology since passage of the E-Gov Act.  See the video here.

 Appian Receives FISMA Moderate Certification from GSA:  Appian announced this week that it had received FISMA moderate certification from the General Services Administration for a major business process management application, built on Appian Cloud.  Appian Cloud is built on Amazon Web Services.  See the press release for more information.

Federal News Radio to host live chat with CBP CIO:  Our friends at Federal News Radio are hosting a live chat on January 3rd at 11am with DHS Customs and Border Protection CIO Charlie Armstrong and are encouraging interested parties to submit questions in advance.  See the link for more details.

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

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud/Gov, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software, Software Events, Uncategorized

This Week in Public Sector Innovation

December 7, 2012 By

OMB to push Strategic Sourcing: This week OMB issued a memorandum expanding the use of strategic sourcing to include commodity IT purchases. In addition the memo establishes Strategic Sourcing Accountable Officers within the CFO Act agencies to be appointed by January 15, 2013. It also establishes a Strategic Sourcing Leadership Council (SSLC), chaired by OFPP, with representatives from DoD, Energy, HHS, DHS, VA, GSA and NASA and requires the SSLC to submit to OMB a set of recommendations for management strategies for goods and services to insure the government receives the most favorable offer. Lastly it requires the SSLC to identify at least 5 products or services for which new government-wide acquisition vehicles or management approaches are needed and requires GSA to implement 5 new government-wide strategic sourcing solutions in each of FY13 and FY14 and increase transparency of prices paid for common goods. Read the memo here.

GSA pulls the plug on Apps.gov: The federal government pulled the plug on Apps.gov this week. The cloud application storefront, which was the brainchild of former Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, was intended to provide a one-stop-shop for cloud apps for the federal government and make it easier for federal IT personnel to acquire cloud services. The initiative never took off as intended. GSA didn’t give a reason for decommissioning the initiative, but noted that everything that was available through Apps.gov, would still be available through Schedule 70. Information Week has a story.

NextGov Prime highlights procurement reform, big data: NextGov held its first-ever Prime Conference at the Ronald Reagan Building this week. The event included a keynote panel featuring Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-VA), ranking member of the panel’s Technology Subcommittee, two leaders pushing an update to the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act. The intent of the legislation, which SIIA has been tracking closely and which is expected to be introduced early in the next Congress, is to improve the speed and efficiency of federal IT purchasing. FCW has the wrap up. The event also had a heavy focus on big data and how data analytics can make the government more effective. FCW covers that angle as well.

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

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud/Gov, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, Software, Software Events Tagged With: , ,

Digital Policy Roundup: Senate Cmte. Passes Communications Privacy, Looks to Mobile Privacy, Trade Talks Continue on TPP

December 4, 2012 By

Senate Cmte. Passes Communications Privacy, Looks to Mobile Privacy This Week

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed Chairman Leahy’s (D-VT) ECPA reform legislation (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) with strong bipartisan support. The revised proposal passed with minimal amendments, in what was a huge victory for SIIA members and a wide range of supporters, as it was the first official strong bipartisan showing of support for legislation to level the playing field for access to remotely-stored email and electronic communications. While the next step for the legislation is uncertain in the waning days of the 112th Congress, at minimum it provides an excellent starting point for enacting legislation next year.

Continuing to move forward with targeted privacy proposals, Chairman Leahy has scheduled a markup of the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 (S.1223), legislation that would require app providers to seek affirmative “opt-in” consent from consumers before using their location information. This is another proposal that is unlikely to advance this year, but it is likely to draw broad support and put additional pressure on the NTIA-led multistakeholder discussions that have been ongoing since July.

Major Trade Talks Continue with Little Fanfare, Overshadowed by World Telecom Conference

While much of the world is focused on the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) taking place in Dubai this week, the 15th round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks launched yesterday, where officials from the 11 countries participating in the negotiations will try to move toward the goal set by some TPP leaders last month of completing the deal by the end of next year. Intellectual property rights are one of the key issues of interest to the technology community during the ongoing trade talks.

Additionally, in the multilateral arena, World Trade Organization members this week will engage on a wide range of topics, including government procurement, the status of the Doha round and the race to select a new WTO chief. Current Director-General Pascal Lamy will step down next September, and Dec. 1 marked the date WTO members could begin formally submitting names for candidates to succeed him.

SIIA Internet Governance Event This Week

Just a reminder, this Thursday, Dec. 6, SIIA is cosponsoring an event with GW University and several other groups to examine how countries use trade policy to advance cross border information flows, and how these trade discussions could impact Internet freedom. SIIA’s Mark MacCarthy will moderate a panel on the challenges associated with IPR, Privacy and Internet Freedom.

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.

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud/Gov, Digital Policy Roundup, Government, Policy, Software

How the Election Will Impact Federal IT

November 7, 2012 By

Now that the campaign is over it’s a good time to take a look at what the future holds for federal IT. Here are a couple basic things we know: There is continuing pressure on federal agencies to deliver better services to citizens, while reducing the overall cost of government. IT has and will continue to play a role in this effort. We also expect to see moderate overall cuts to federal IT spending, somewhere in the 5 percent range, so agencies will have to reprioritize some ongoing IT initiatives.

All of this bodes well for “innovation” and we expect to see a continuation of the effort to move agencies to cloud computing, consolidate the existing data center infrastructure and better leverage government data. We also expect to see a continued focus on performance and mission-oriented goals and increased attention paid to the need to reform federal IT procurement.

As for federal IT personnel, we know there will be changes at the agency CIO level and probably at other places like GSA and OMB where federal IT policy is driven – we just don’t know what they are yet. All indications are that Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel is planning to stick around for a while as should Federal CTO Todd Park (pure speculation on my part, but I haven’t heard anything to the contrary). We know that President Obama will have to appoint a permanent OMB Director sooner rather than later and that could trigger a reshuffling of some responsibilities and priorities at OMB.

On Capitol Hill, there will be a significant change to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee leadership, as current HSGAC Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) retires and current Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-ME) has to step down as RM because of term limits. Tom Carper (D-DE) appears to be in line to be Chairman and Tom Coburn (R-OK) to be Ranking Member. Both Carper and Coburn have focused in the past on reducing government waste and maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of government, so we can anticipate some focus there. Sen. Carper’s ascension to the Chairmanship, along with Sen. Coburn’s new role leaves vacancies on the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee. Sen. Brown’s (R-MA) reelection loss and Sen. Akaka’s retirement leave a couple of other subcommittee spots to be filled. Other members of the Senate who can play a key role in government technology are Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and newly elected Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), both of whom represent the tech heavy Commonwealth of Virginia.

The House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee will be more stable than its Senate counterpart with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) remaining Chairman and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) remaining as Ranking Member of the full committee. The key Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement will continue to be led by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), with Gerry Connelly (D-VA) likely to remain as Ranking Member.

The Government Reform Committees are going to play a significant role in the look and shape of federal IT over the next two years as Chairmen Issa and Lankford move forward with legislation to reform federal IT acquisition. The bill, known as the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) which has yet to be introduced seeks to empower federal CIOs and speed the acquisition process. This bill will likely draw a lot of the federal IT community’s attention next year and I expect Rep. Connelly to play a key role in this debate, with his newly drawn 11th Congressional District heavily populated by tech contractors.

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

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Cloud/Gov, Government, PSIG, Software

This Week in Public Sector Innovation

November 1, 2012 By

Cloud Computing Praised Following Hurricane Sandy: In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, federal efforts to transition existing data centers and other IT assets to the cloud are being lauded for their contribution to keeping government operations up and running. According to reports from Federal Computer Week the Federal government saw limited disruption in IT operations and agencies like GSA credited recent transitions to cloud computing for providing them with a more robust, geographically diverse and redundant infrastructure helping them weather the storm. The big question going forward is will natural disasters like this most recent event spur more agencies to adopt the cloud or update their aging IT infrastructure?

EPA Awards Contract for Email, Collaboration in the Cloud: On October 31st, EPA awarded Microsoft and Lockheed Martin a $9.8 million contract to migrate existing EPA email and related applications to Microsoft 365, their cloud-based email and communication platform. Under the terms of the contract award more than 25,000 users will be transitioned to Microsoft Office 365 for Government, a new multi-tenant service that stores U.S. government data in a segregated community cloud and includes e-mail, calendars, scheduling and collaboration tools for internal and external use. See the press release here.

Next 4 Years to Bring Continued Innovation to Government IT: Nextgov has a profile on what the next four years will look like for Federal IT, regardless of who wins next week’s election. Their point and it’s an accurate one, is that four years ago as President Obama came into office, there was little discussion about cloud computing, agile development, mobile apps for agencies, or bring your own device. Today, agencies have moved mission-critical applications to the cloud and we continue to debate a host of key IT issues such as BYOD, collaboration and how to better empower federal CIOs. Read the full take from Nextgov.

Cloudy Election? Did you know that some states, including battleground states Virginia and Florida allowed residents of their state living overseas to cast their primary votes using LiveBallot, an online balloting website based on Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform? No word on whether or not the general election will allow that same technology. Information Week has the story from earlier this year.

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

Share|
Filed Under: Cloud/Gov, Government, PSIG, Software, Software Events
« Older Posts