Federal agencies have embraced cloud strategies as foundational to their transition to digital government, but their approaches come in many different flavors of cloud. As they’ve come to see the benefits, more agencies are adopting a hybrid cloud structure – one or more public and private cloud services that operate as separate but integrated entities. Hybrid cloud provides the cost optimization, agility and scalability of public...

Cybersecurity usually is at a disadvantage against bad actors. It must focus, first and foremost, on defense – protecting assets and information – while hostile interests keep finding new ways to launch their attacks, such as the rise of ransomware. Of Gartner's top seven trends in cybersecurity for 2022, a majority of them are about risks and playing defense. To strengthen defenses, the infrastructure law signed by President Biden...

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in federal civilian agencies could be considered fairly widespread, if the label includes such applications as robotic process automation and machine learning. But these are just baby steps – AI has the potential to provide resiliency to agencies, whether responding to disruptions in operations or providing better customer experiences. Incorporating AI into agencies’ digital operations requir...

The Department of Defense can only transform itself as fast as its slowest workflow. At the foundation of DoD’s various warfare capabilities – including cyber, electronic, and information – is the push to transform its administrative advantage in “Workflow Warfare.” These elements of warfare are the backend processes that make a large agency run effectively and connect IT, HR, finance, procurement, workplace, and...

For states and localities looking to automate repetitious work, reduce paper-based tasks and streamline processes, artificial intelligence (AI) holds a lot of promise. The National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) in their recent report on AI and machine learning drew upon a Deloitte assessment that categorized the benefits of automation into four groups: relieve, split up, replace, and augment. The challenge for state and local agencies is...

When the FBI released its 2021 Internet Crime Report, one statistic showed that ransomware attacks increased about 50% from 2020 levels, targeting everything from healthcare and education to law enforcement and municipalities. The rapid growth of ransomware attacks can damage your agency beyond its impact on downtime and the financial burden of recovery. Your agency’s reputation with its customers can be damaged. Taking steps in advance...

According to the National Association of State CIOs, the top two enterprise risks faced by state governments in 2022 are cybersecurity and technology. Cybersecurity includes everything from data protection and ransomware to identity theft and stolen network credentials. Technology risks include aging or obsolete systems, data management, and handling cloud portfolios, to name a few. State and local agencies face a particularly difficult challe...

There is a lot of emphasis on IT modernization in the federal government, from the push to grow funding for the Technology Modernization Fund to Army efforts to modernize IT for multi-domain operations. On another track, the President's Management Agenda identifies workforce transformation as its top priority. There is a clear connection between these two broad initiatives – modernizing IT is a way to streamline how programs are managed...

When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was signed into law in November 2021, it allocated $1.2 trillion for infrastructure initiatives across the country. While the focus has been on large tranches of funding allocated for sweeping categories of infrastructure – roads and bridges, internet connectivity, water systems, etc. – less attention has been paid to the role of digital transformation within these groupings. F...

Headlines across the country have shown that ransomware can target organizations of any size, from the smallest town hall to major state agencies. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law earlier this year included $1 billion for grants to be awarded to state, local, or tribal governments to address cybersecurity risks and threats such as ransomware. At the same time, cyber insurance providers have been raising their premiums...