Cloud/Gov News 
This Week in Public Sector Innovation
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:49
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.
This Week in Public Sector Innovation
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:34
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.
Digital Policy Roundup: Senate Cmte. Passes Communications Privacy, Looks to Mobile Privacy, Trade Talks Continue on TPP
Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:54
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.
