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 10^th Anniversary of the E-Gov Act Event:  This week marked the 10^th 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 3^rd 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.

  Name: Gunnar Hellekson
  Title: Chief Technology Strategist
Company: Red Hat

Gunnar Hellekson is the Chief Technology Strategist for Red Hat’s US Public Sector group, where he works with systems integrators and government agencies to encourage the use of open source software in government. He is co-chair of Open Source for America and one of Federal Computer Week’s Fed 100 for 2010. He is also an active member of the Military Open Source working group, the Freedom 2 Connect Technical Council, New America’s California Civic Innovation Project Advisory Council, and the CivicCommons Board of Advisors. He is especially interested in cross-domain security, edge innovation, and interagency collaboration through the open source model.

Home town: Honolulu, Hawaii

First job: Slaving away on an AS/400 for Louis Vuitton’s Honolulu operation when I was in high school.

What are you currently reading? “Industry and Empire”, by E.J. Hobsbawn

All-time favorite music: Reggae. I’m from Hawaii, so that’s mandatory.

What is the best meal you have had recently? The “Heather” from Taco Deli in Austin.

What is your next (dream) career? I’m doing it right now.

Hobbies: My wife, my dog, and fancy cocktails.

What do you think is the hot button issue for the software & services industry going into 2013? The elimination of customization and craftwork, and the introduction of standardization and automation.

The SIIA is excited to launch our NextGen program for its 8th year. This program showcases the competitive nature of what truly makes a company the next generation of young companies to watch. We are calling all companies that are transforming the software and services industry. By being selected as one of the NextGen companies, you will receive:

• SIIA issued press release announcing the 2013 NextGen Companies distributed and supported by the SIIA public relations firm.
• NextGen Companies will have the opportunity to be coached on their product pitch by our NextGen Selection Committee.
• Full conference registration to AATC 2013.
• CEO is invited to participate on the NextGen panel at AATC 2013, May 7-9, in San Francisco. Panel will be moderated by a partner at a leading advisory firm.
• CEO is invited to the VIP dinner at AATC 2013.
• Company will be featured in the NextGen Pavilion at AATC 2013.
• Company and contact information will be featured on the SIIA and AATC 2013 websites.
• Company and contact information will be distributed to all AATC attendees in the attendee bags.
• SIIA 2013 NextGen Companies will be recognized in front of your peers at the 2013 CODiE Awards Luncheon on May 9, 2013 in San Francisco.
• Each company will be featured separately in a SIIA blog post in 2013

Apply today to gain industry exposure, secure funding, form strategic partnerships, gain new customers, or form your exit strategy.

Organizations must fully develop an enterprise mobile strategy that considers both employee and customer facing aspects of today’s continually expanding use of mobile technologies. It is important to consider the customer experience as they launch new products, services, and applications. Grant Thornton LLP brings the perspective of working with both ISVs and the consumers of their products in a business advisory capacity. This recorded webcast focuses on several key aspects of an enterprise strategy:

• Key criteria for an Enterprise Mobile Strategy
• Application architecture- Is it ready for mobile
• Planning for BYOD within the enterprise
• Deployment interface
• Importance of security

Click here to download the slides.

Presenters
Tony Hernandez, Principal, Business Advisory Services, Grant Thornton LLP
Mike Barba, Manager, Business Advisory Services, Grant Thornton LLP

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.

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.

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.

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.

What is the first round review?

For the first round review, two judges review each product in each category. For example, products nominated in two categories will be assigned four judges. During this first round, judges participate in product demonstration s given by the nominees. Two options are available for the products demonstrations:

– Live product demonstration: Nominations walk through their product webinar-style with the judges participating as they do the walk-through

– Recorded product demonstration: Nominees may already have a video product demo that can be sent to the judges to watch.

We recommend that the nominees keep the demos to under an hour. If it is a live demo, remember to leave time for Q&A with the judges.

The first round review also includes product access. It’s beneficial for the judges to get a feel for the product on their own, as a supplement to the guided demo. Product access can happen in several forms, including temporary online login information or by sending the physical product to the judge.

I also suggest sending as much additional information as you would like to the judges. This can be additional links to PDF’s, videos, news releases, etc.

Who are the judges?

We take great care in selecting the industry experts who volunteer as judges. Each division reviews every judge application to determine if he/she is qualified. We want to ensure there are no conflicts of interest.

For our software and content categories, the judges consist of industry executives and analysts, members of the media, bloggers, investors, and even some customers.
For our education categories, we use educators and administrators as our judges. They are the users of these products and can best determine what products may work the best in their classrooms.

Judging is a great experience because it gives the customers a chance to review the products and provide feedback that the companies can use to make improvements.

How can you help?

We are still looking for judges in several of our categories in Content, Software, and Education. If you are interested in judging or can recommend a colleague please complete our brief judge application.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wendy Tanner is CODiE Awards Coordinator. Follow the CODiE Awards on Twitter @CODiEAwards

• Organizational entrenchment and disruption
• Software-defined networks
• Bigger data and storage
• Hybrid cloud services
• Client and server architecture

For the full list see the report from Forbes.

Top IT Trends, Part II: Now that we know what the top overall IT trends are for the next five years, what can we expect for government in 2013? According to the Government Business Council, the research arm of GovExec, it’s more of what we have been seeing over the past couple of years. That means: cloud, big data, data center consolidation, mobility, cybersecurity and health IT. Read the full report here.

OMB reporting big savings from PortfolioStat: OMB savings estimates resulting from the coordinated effort to identify and eliminate wasteful IT spending across government will total $2.5B over 3 years as a result of PortfolioStat. The savings come by reducing federal commodity IT spending and leveraging innovative tools like big data to maximize the efficiency of existing IT resources. See more on the OMB blog.

Sequestration makes its way into final Presidential debate: As Washington continues to try and figure out the potential impact of “sequestration” on agency budgets, should Congress and the White House fail to reach a deal to avoid it, President Obama vowed Monday night that it would not happen. The proposed cuts, totaling $120B, which go into effect on January 2nd, are already reportedly slowing contracting by some agencies, as uncertainty causes concern. Politico has a story.

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