Cyber attacks are on the increase across all levels of government – and state and local governments are often targeted because they have fewer resources for security. For instance, an October 2022 survey found that more than half of state and local governments faced ransomware attacks in 2021, and just one in five organizations successfully stopped the attack. Strengthening the security and resilience of these agencies’ systems req...

The universe of artificial intelligence applications is going through its own Big Bang right now. As artificial intelligence (AI) applications proliferate across the internet ecosystem, other changes are being triggered, from the commitment to R&D funding to workforce development to new initiatives in higher education. As public awareness grows of AI’s potential and how it may affect them, there still are issues to be resolved. For i...

The advent of the pandemic in early 2020 demonstrates the truth of the old saying, “necessity is the mother of invention.” State and local governments that had been hesitant to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in their IT suddenly had to cope with huge citizen demand for services such as unemployment assistance, while simultaneously providing the capability for their own employees to work remotely. A sur...

Many federal agencies, especially – but not limited to – the Department of Defense rely on warehousing as an essential part of their logistics operations and asset management strategies. The pandemic highlighted how quickly supply chain issues, especially with regard to IT, can snarl the availability of parts and finished products. Agencies dependent on the smooth flow of parts and finished products suffered in meeting their missio...

The push for digital modernization by government at all levels has been under way for several years now. State and local governments had to scramble during the pandemic to find ways to support employees working remotely, adding momentum to the modernization push. Despite the need, IT budgets haven’t kept up – from staffing issues to costly legacy infrastructure, state and local agencies are struggling to find ways to maximize the v...

Delivering excellent, equitable, and secure federal services for an outstanding customer experience is a priority that comes from the President’s Management Agenda. Achieving that goal can be helped by learning from a different mindset found mostly in the private sector – product management. Excellent experiences don’t just happen—they need to be designed in a deliberate manner. In a traditional software build, long per...

Government agencies at all levels, from the smallest town to the biggest federal offices, are struggling with filling job vacancies and retaining workers, especially for in-demand skills such as cybersecurity and IT management. For the U.S. government, strategic human capital management has been identified as a serious problem for more than 20 years. State and local agencies continue to feel the effects of both the pandemic and competition wit...

In June 2019 the Office of Management and Budget released MemorandumM-19-21, directing all Executive Branch departments and agencies to transition to fully digitize all permanent records by Dec. 31, 2022. But many agencies are going to miss that deadline. Between the scope of the requirements and the effects of the pandemic, fully one-third of agencies have indicated they are going to miss the deadline. The challenge is not simply digitizing r...

Modernizing the Federal Acquisition Lifecycle As Federal procurement policy and processes become more complex, agencies must adapt their business processes and technology solutions to better enable their acquisition professionals to maintain compliance and efficiency while executing mission-critical tasks. IT modernization initiatives empower acquisition professionals and leadership to make better-informed decisions throughout each phase of th...

Government’s Journey to IPv6 – What It Means for Agencies Federal agencies have been mandated to migrate to IPv6 – the next-generation Internet protocol, designed to replace version 4 (IPv4) that has been in use since 1983. The depletion crisis that exists with IPv4 unique addresses requires the shift to the robust, 128-bit IPv6 with its 340 undecillion or 340 trillion trillion trillion unique addresses. The explosion of Inte...