Category Archives: Event News Media

Event News on GovEvents Blog includes videos, podcasts, press releases & other media directly pertaining to Government & Military Event News.

Amidst the Pandemic, Government Still Gathers: How Professional Events Are Adapting

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The events market was among the first industries to feel the impact of the coronavirus and will continue to feel its effects for months to come. GovEvents looked at the impact on the government events market and found that 22% of events listed on the site were canceled with no plans to reschedule in 2020. This means many missed opportunities for professional development, best practices sharing, and introduction to new technologies for public sector professionals. But as with many industries, the events market is quickly adapting and finding ways to provide education, development and collaboration for government professionals hungry to learn.

The Event Is Canceled, but Learning Is Not.

Organizations that had events planned for early March through this summer had to decide whether to cancel, postpone, or move their events online. For many, canceling their government events was not an option. They had enthusiastic government speakers with stories to share and an audience thirsty for information. In fact, 26% of live events on GovEvents scheduled for March 16 or later moved to virtual.

DataRobot's AI Experience conference was scheduled for March 19. This one-day, in-person event brought together government leaders to discuss how they were using and how they wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI) to further their mission. DataRobot had planned to live stream the event as early as February since they were already getting news that registrants would not be able to travel so they had a streaming company and equipment ready to go. On March 11, gatherings of more than 250 were prohibited and DataRobot already had 550 registered so they began moving to a virtual format. A few days later it became clear they would not be able to get the speakers to the venue either, so they pivoted once again and moved it all to a remote stream.

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When Telework Stopped Being a Remote Possibility

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Man Working Using Laptop on Coffee TableAt the beginning of 2020, the idea that the vast majority of the federal workforce would be working from home seemed like a remote (pun intended) reality. However, due to shelter-in-place orders across the U.S. this spring, much of the public sector work was being done from kitchen tables, guest bedrooms, and home offices. This fast pivot to remote work left agencies scrambling to get devices to employees now separated from their desks, develop reliable and secure connections to enterprise systems and applications, and re-engineer decades-old processes to accommodate fully virtual teams. Some examples include:

  • The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created a workaround to give employees access to systems when they could not use their PIV card. An alternative credential process was created in under a month, enabling DHS to issue credentials that included logical access tokens to give employees and contractors access to DHS networks only. Unlike a PIV card, this credentialing system doesn't have the employee or contractor's photo ID or allow physical access to a DHS building.

  • The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued Temporary Procedures for Personnel Vetting and Appointment of New Employees During Maximum Telework Period Due to Coronavirus COVID-19. These procedures included deferring the fingerprint requirement for background checks and opened the door to PIV card alternatives like the one created by DHS.

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Entering a Brave New World of Government Acquisition

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We've covered how government procurement is evolving to meet the way agencies implement and consume technology. From agencies' use of public cloud platforms to agile development methodologies, old acquisition methods are unable to keep up with the pace and process required by modernization and digital transformation goals across government. In fact, the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act was implemented to allocate funds specifically for the update of legacy IT systems to help agencies improve service delivery to the public, secure sensitive data and systems, and increase efficiency. To meet these mandates, procurement processes and technology have to change to be more in tune with the digital transformations happening at the operational level.

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Is work culture the biggest roadblock to improving government IT?

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Originally posted on FedScoop by By Greg Otto

Be it deciding between issuing a device or allowing employees to bring their own, or moving agencies' data centers to the cloud, a group of public and private sector IT professionals said real change will come to federal IT when the government recognizes today's work culture is changing as quickly as technology is improving.

More than 350 IT professionals attended Citrix's Mobility 2014 conference Tuesday to talk about what agencies are doing to integrate new technologies and how agencies are moving past the PC-era.

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New White Paper Emphasizes Importance of Networking

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Originally posted on SuccessfulMeetings.com by Matt Alderton

There's no denying the value of social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter. But there's no substitute for face-to-face networking, according to Dyanne Smith, marketing manager at The National Conference Center in Leesburg, Va., which last week published a new white paper on the importance of face-to-face networking.

"With the amount of online resources readily available to us on our desktops and smartphones, blindly attending events and 'hoping for the best' becomes obsolete," Smith writes. "We must remind ourselves that social media does not replace face-to-face networking but instead is a supplement and provides the tools for instantaneous two-way communication."
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