Tag Archives: Washington

Staying Ahead of the Bad Guys: Investing in Cybersecurity

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Agencies are challenged to move more and more services online, become more transparent, and leverage new streams of data from the Internet of Things (IoT) for better decision making, all while securing the systems and the data they hold. If that is not challenging enough, cyber threats against all of these efforts are continually evolving. A series of strategies and ongoing guidance are helping agencies prioritize work and budget requests to make the most impactful investments in their cybersecurity infrastructure.

The National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) provides broad guidance to help position the United States to build a digital ecosystem that is more easily and inherently defensible, resilient, and aligned with its values. Efforts to do so are organized around five pillars:

1) Defend Critical Infrastructure

2) Disrupt and Dismantle Threat Actors

3) Shape Market Forces to Drive Security and Resilience

4) Invest in a Resilient Future

5) Forge International Partnerships to Pursue Shared Goals Continue reading →

Connecting to Data and People for Improved Citizen Service

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The Executive Order, Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government (CX EO) put a governmentwide priority on accelerating modernization efforts that impact how the government serves its citizens. A key focus of the CX EO was reducing the "time tax" by simplifying processes for applying for federal aid - particularly in areas where there was already high stress like disaster assistance, financial shock, or adding children to a family. The programs that have emerged as early solutions have focused on two key areas - understanding the journey and experience of the customer and enabling better data sharing across organizations.

Meeting Customers Where They Are

Citizens expect mobile access with personalized service when interacting with nearly any commercial entity. That expectation extends to the government and agencies working to deliver service via apps and streamlined digital portals. Continue reading →

Improving Service. Improving Trust.

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Improving customer service (or in the case of the government, citizen service) has been a focus of the Federal government for the past several administrations, most recently being named a key goal of the Biden-Harris President's Management Agenda (PMA). Despite this focus, citizen satisfaction with government service has remained low, but a 2022 report shows that the tide may be turning.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index's (ACSI) Federal Government Report 2022 showed that citizen satisfaction with Federal government services increased by 4.6 percent in 2022. Report authors attribute the increase to improved availability of digital services (spurred by the PMA and the Customer Service Executive Order) and major government initiatives including the distribution of free COVID-19 tests. Continue reading →

National Cybersecurity Strategy: Building a More Secure Future

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In March, the Biden Administration released the latest guidance aimed at improving the cybersecurity practices of Federal agencies. The National Cybersecurity Strategy builds on the Executive Order for Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity that makes cybersecurity a strategic focus of every agency. This latest guidance drills further into the actions needed to ensure that government systems and citizen data are protected against the ever-evolving threat landscape.

The goal of the strategy is to "rebalance the responsibility to defend cyberspace" and "realign incentives to favor long-term investments." To do this, the responsibility for cybersecurity must be shifted to the organizations that are most capable and best-positioned to reduce risks. It points out that, "a single person's momentary lapse in judgment, use of an outdated password, or errant click on a suspicious link should not have national security consequences." While security is the responsibility of everyone, small businesses, small localities, and individuals simply do not have the resources to support the security needed to protect systems and data. Instead, the guidance proposes new incentives to favor long-term investments in security, resilience, and new technologies. Continue reading →

How the Federal Government is Implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Practices

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Diversity, equity, and inclusion are key focus areas of the Biden administration's President's Management Agenda (PMA). Additionally, the administration issued an executive order in June 2021 directing agencies across government to implement more diversity training, rethink the use of salary history as a basis for pay determinations, and supply gender non-conforming and nonbinary and transgender employees with credentials that reflect their current names, pictures and pronouns. Finally, in November 2021 the administration offered a strategic plan to help guide agencies in diversity efforts, asking for the submission of agency-specific Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) plans by March 2023.

Diversity Today

This focus is starting to show results. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a first-ever report on the diversity of the federal workforce. It looked at hiring and retention across agencies and gave a snapshot of the administration's efforts to remove barriers for applicants from underrepresented communities. The report finds small but encouraging gains in racial diversity between 2017 and 2021 with Black employees rising from 18.15 percent to 18.19 percent of the federal workforce. Latinx made a much larger jump rising from 8.75 percent to 9.95 percent. Women's representation grew from 43.38 percent of the workforce in 2017 to 44.44 percent in 2021. Future reporting will look at nonbinary workers. Continue reading →