Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel to Keynote SIIA Cloud/GOV

SIIA is happy to announce that Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel will keynote Cloud/GOV – the leading conference on cloud computing in the public sector. The conference, which will take place February 12 in Washington, D.C., will gather policymakers, government executives and private sector technology companies to share information and develop solutions as federal agencies continue transitioning to data-driven cloud computing.

VanRoekel joins a roster of other influential policymakers and government IT executives presenting at Cloud/GOV, including:

  • Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman, Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives
  • David DeVries, Deputy CIO, Information Enterprise, U.S. Department of Defense
  • Dawn Leaf, Deputy Chief Information Officer, United States Department of Labor
  • Peter Tseronis, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Energy

Cloud/GOV will offer a comprehensive look at the challenges and opportunities federal agencies face in their transition to the cloud. Government CIOs who have already made the switch to cloud computing will discuss the lessons they learned and provide advice for other federal executives. Presentations will also address emerging FedRAMP-related issues, including the convergence of the cloud and “big data” analytics. In addition, the conference will include a comprehensive look at federal policy changes that could impact cloud computing in 2013.


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

Webinar: 2013 Federal IT Predictions

Webinar Description
The past several years have brought a great deal of change to the federal IT market, and 2013 will be no exception. One thing is for sure, 2013 will bring a convergence of issues impacting agencies from budget uncertainty, IT mandates and acquisition policies, to oversight and human capital issues. With all of those issues at hand, what will be the top federal IT predictions for 2013? Listen to this pre-recorded webcast to find out.

Panelists:
Susie Adams
Federal Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft

Kevin Plexico
Vice President Information Solutions, Deltek

Mike Binko
President and CEO, kloudtrack

This Week in Public Sector Innovation

Cloud/GOV 2013 to feature keynote address from Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel: SIIA’s annual Cloud/GOV Conference announced earlier this week that Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel will provide the opening keynote address at the association’s the 7th Annual Federal IT Conference. VanRoekel joins an already impressive list of keynotes that includes David DeVries, Deputy CIO for Information Enterprise at DOD and Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The conference will also highlight the latest developments in federal IT with panel discussions on FedRAMP, choosing the right cloud solution for your agency, the convergence of data and cloud and the ever popular CIO Panel. Attendees can expect to network with attendees and speakers from DOD, DHS, DOL, DOE, the RAT Board and many others. See the full agenda.

USPS moves ahead with cloud ID management program: The US Postal Service continues to solicit proposals for a cloud-based ID credentialing hub pilot project. The program seeks a software-as-a-service solution that would provide access to non-government providers of ID credentials who have been approved under the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) initiative. Responses are due February 11th. GCN has more.

OFPP to push contractor past performance reviews: The Office of Federal Procurement Policy announced an aggressive effort to ensure that all contractor past performance information is entered into the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), aiming for 100 percent compliance by 2015. The effort comes on the heels of a recent report from DOD that showed only 67.5 percent of required contractor reviews at DOD were added to the system. By making this push OFPP hopes to achieve better outcomes for taxpayers by ensuring that contracting officers better understand specific contractor performance. Read more.

Dell announces Project Ophelia cloud key: This week Dell announced what they are calling a cloud key, which looks to me like an operating system in a flash drive. The idea is to allow you to carry your desktop functionality with you and plug into any device with an HDMI jack, allowing you access to what is now only available on your desktop or laptop. GCN asks whether this is the future of remote computing.


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

Rep. Issa & Other Leaders to Keynote SIIA Cloud/GOV, the Leading Forum on Federal Adoption of Data-Driven Cloud Computing

SIIA is announcing today that Cloud/GOV – the leading conference on cloud computing in the public sector – will take place February 12 at the Westin City Center Hotel in Washington, D.C.  By gathering policymakers, government executives and private sector technology companies, Cloud/Gov will help all parties develop solutions and share information as federal agencies continue transitioning to the cloud and harness data analytics.

This year’s event will feature discussions from a diverse group of influential government IT advisors, leading software executives and policymakers, including:

  • Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman, Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives
  • David DeVries, Deputy CIO, Information Enterprise, U.S. Department of Defense
  • Dawn Leaf, Deputy Chief Information Officer, United States Department of Labor
  • Peter Tseronis, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Energy

The conference will also gather a panel of government CIOs to discuss their move to the cloud and provide advice for other federal executives with organizational concerns. Other presentations will address emerging FedRAMP-related issues, the convergence of the cloud and “big data” analytics as well as a comprehensive look at federal policy changes that could impact cloud computing in 2013. Additionally, vendors representing all segments of the public sector will highlight the latest innovations in cloud-based government IT.

For a complete schedule of events, visit http://www.siia.net/cloudgov/2013/


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

This Week in Public Sector Innovation

SIIA’s Cloud/GOV Conference to feature FedRAMP, Big Data and Cloud: The agenda for SIIA’s Cloud/GOV 2013 is really coming together. All of the sessions are timely and right in line with the topics we have been talking about via this blog and in the Public Sector Innovation Group for the past six months. I am particularly excited to announce the Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has agreed to keynote the afternoon session. He’ll be discussing his proposed legislation to reform federal IT acquisition.

We’ll also have a great panel on FedRAMP which includes Katie Lewin from GSA and Tom McAndrew from Coalfire, a GSA certified 3PAO. The idea behind this panel is the go inside the program to understand how it works and what businesses need to be prepared for when they get into the process. We’ve also got a great session on the collision of cloud computing and big data, featuring Shawn Kingsberry from the RAT Board and Ashit Talukder from NIST, two of the government leaders in these areas. New content and speakers are being added every day so I expect a great event. We will have a couple of high profile keynote speakers to announce in the coming weeks.Check it out here.

FedRAMP Rollout Continues: Speaking of FedRAMP, we learned a little more about what GSA expects from the FedRAMP program in 2013. According to this article in FCW GSA expects 10 to 15 cloud service providers to be accredited through the program in 2013 and twice that number in 2014 when FedRAMP becomes mandatory. Some readers of this blog may recall that back in March 2012 when GSA initially spoke of FedRAMP they said they hoped they could get as many as 6 to 20 CSPs through the program in 2012. At the rate technology moves these days, having fewer than 50 approved CSPs by the end of 2014 may not do much to speed the government’s migration to cloud computing as agencies will have to look to other contract vehicles to procure what they need. From our end of things, we will continue to push GSA to move companies quickly through the FedRAMP process so that all CSPs can compete on equal footing.

NIST Cloud and Big Data Workshop: This week NIST held its latest meeting in its workshop series on cloud computing and data analytics, this time bringing together two of the hottest topics in federal IT. The three day discussion at NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland headquarters featured a keynote by Federal CIO Steve Van Roekel and a host of panel discussions about how cloud and data work together to make government more effective. FedNewsRadio has a recap.

Cloud and Data Drive State and Local IT Modernization: We hear over and over again that data and cloud hold as much if not more promise for efficiency in state and local governments as they do in the federal government. No place is this more evident than in the state of Oregon, where the Oregon Records Management Solution will provide state, city and county government officials with acces to records in a timely, efficient and uniform manner, while saving money and reducing risk. FCW has the full story.

Postal Service Plans for Cloud Computing Credential Exchange Pilot: According to a posting on FedBizOps, the US Postal Service is moving ahead with a one-year cloud credential exchange program pilot. The USPS intends to award a one-year contract for a software-as-a-service solution that will meet the federal government’s need to provide a consistent approach to authentication for citizens seeking online access to individualized federal agency systems and applications. See the full opportunity at FBO.


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

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

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...]

This Week in Public Sector Innovation

GSA Approves First CSP Under FedRAMP: While we were away, GSA met its self-imposed deadline to approve at least one cloud service provider under the FedRAMP program by the end of 2012. On December 27, 2012, GSA announced the first provisional authorization under the FedRAMP program was awarded to Autonomic Resources, a small, North Carolina-based government cloud provider, also on the Infrastructure as a Service and Email as a Service BPAs. The FedRAMP certification was conducted by Veris Group, one of 15 GSA-approved third party assessors (3PAOs). GSA reports more than 50 applications under the FedRAMP program so the expectation is that we will see more approvals throughout 2013. Nextgov has a story on the first certification and Federal News Radio one on the outlook for more approvals.

House Oversight and Government Reform Announces New Subcommittee Chairmen, Reorganization of Subcommittee Structure: In what appears to be a reprioritization of the committee’s agenda the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced a new structure this week, which included eliminating two subcommittees and combining the jurisdictions of the Government Organization and the Technology Subcommittees into a “super-subcommittee” to oversee “Government Operations”. The new subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. John Mica (R-FL), a longtime member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the immediate past Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), who had been the chairman of the Technology Subcommittee moves over to chair the Energy Policy Subcommittee, while Rep. Platts (R-PA) who chaired Government Organization retired from Congress. See the Committee’s press release here.

Fiscal Cliff Avoided, Uncertainty Looms for Feds and Contractors: For the first time in over 50 years, the Congress was in session on New Year’s Day and managed to get some work done. As I flipped back and forth between the Orange Bowl and C-Span’s coverage of the floor debate, the House passed the Senate version of legislation to avoid the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for most Americans, while delaying the “sequester” for another two months. This sets up a good deal of uncertainty for federal employees and government contractors, who are unsure about how to proceed given the looming sequester cuts, as well as the expiration of the continuing resolution and a potential fight over the debt ceiling. It could get interesting. Federal News Radio has a story.

GovWin Releases Big Data Spending Outlook: GovWin has a new (free) report out highlighting the growing demand for big data solutions in the federal government. According to the report, spending on big data and related solutions was just under $5 billion in the last fiscal year, but is expected to top $7 billion by 2017. Download the report here.


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