1. USPS Mobile by the United States Postal Service This app is great for shipping holiday presents. You can schedule package pick up, track your shipments, and look up zip codes among other features. 2. Smart Traveler by the U.S. Department of State If you plan on travelling abroad during...
This is the seventh in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. We have spent some time talking about how to modernize legacy applications, but no time describing what a modern application looks like. In this post we will outline the...
This blog entry was originally published on October 27th, 2016 on the White House blog. America’s spirit of ingenuity and entrepreneurship created the world’s most innovative economy and keeps us dominant in today’s digital age. Indeed, in 1985 about 2,000 people used the Internet; today, 3.2 billion people do. What...
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently held a highly successful cybersecurity hiring event and I want to share some of the lessons we learned in hopes that others might be inspired to try it for their agencies. The most important lesson learned from our experience is the value of...
As the first U.S. Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), I am honored to be a part of a dynamic community across government working to improve our country’s cybersecurity posture. Throughout my career in military and federal service, and a few stints in the private industry, one of the most important...
This is the sixth in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. This post is sort of about IT Modernization, but mostly about a part of Agile software development; and Agile is critical to IT modernization. Here we will consider the...
This blog entry was originally published on October 31st, 2016 on the GSA blog. Some of my friends have asked what could possibly have gotten me to leave the life I love in the Bay Area and take a government job in DC. My answer is straightforward: I believe the...
This blog entry was originally published on October 19th, 2016 on the GSA blog. This month over one hundred government data center representatives from around the country participated in the second meeting of the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) Community of Practice (CoP). The CoP is a forum driven by...
As the Department of Justice (DOJ) Chief Information Officer, I am often asked which new products or technology advancements will support our critical missions of litigation and law enforcement. Although I frequently engage with industry and government agencies about products or services to best suit our immediate and future needs,...
In February, President Obama announced a Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) that takes a series of short-term and long-term actions to improve our cybersecurity posture within the Federal Government and across the country. The CNAP builds upon a comprehensive series of actions over the last nearly eight years that have...
This blog entry by the GSA Blog Team was originally published on August 29th, 2016 on the GSA blog. The General Services Administration (GSA) is known for managing federal real estate and leveraging the government’s buying power to get the best deal for taxpayers, but it also drives and leads...
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is working with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and workforce experts across the Federal Government to implement dynamic initiatives to recruit, hire and develop the cybersecurity workforce necessary to tackle persistent cyber threats to the nation’s information technology networks and data. This...
This blog entry was originally published on August 10, 2016 on the GSA blog. Last week, we announced that GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP) will serve as the Managing Partner for OMB’s Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) to help federal agencies implement the data center provisions of the Federal...
This blog entry was originally published on August 1st, 2016 on the White House blog. “If we can reconceive of our government so that the interactions and the interplay between private sector, nonprofits, and government are opened up, and we use technology, data, social media in order to join forces...
Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the third in a series of information technology (IT) policies aimed at making the acquisition and management of common IT goods and services more efficient and saving taxpayer dollars. Joining the Administration’s policies on workstations and software, today’s memorandum will help...
This blog entry by Tony Scott was originally published on August 1st, 2016 on the White House blog. Today, the Administration is taking action to accelerate efforts to increase the efficiency of Federal data centers, reduce costs, and improve the overall information technology (IT) security posture of the Federal Government....
On Tuesday, July 12th OMB and OPM published the first ever Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Strategy, which is now available on the WhiteHouse.gov. The Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Strategy details a series of near-term actions to identify, expand, recruit, develop, retain, and sustain a capable and competent workforce in key functional areas...
This blog entry by Tony Scott and Anne Rung was originally published on June 2nd, 2016 on the White House blog. Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the second in a series of information technology (IT) policies to make the acquisition and management of common IT goods...
This is the fifth in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. In the next three posts we will consider the problem of modernizing old legacy software. In this post we will start a discussion about why modernizing software is important...
This is the fourth in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. In this post we will consider how to develop a modern data architecture to underpin the modernization of your code base. Systems developed before the year 2000 were often...
This is the third in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. This post will start to tease out the different technologies that we might modernize. In the previous two posts of this series, we considered how the advance of technology...
This blog entry was originally published on the White House blog. Here are a few answers to questions you might have about the President’s new Cybersecurity National Action Plan. “I’m confident we can unleash the full potential of American innovation, and ensure our prosperity and security online for the generations...
This is the second in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. Most of you who are reading this series will expect to see an approach that forces a migration to modernization. You are likely expecting an expensive march to transform...