Federal agencies must shift fully to electronic records management by December 2022, when the National Archives and Records Administration will stop accepting new paper records. Successfully making that transition entails far more than simply digitizing existing documents. Meeting the goals set by M-19-21 demands changes to current business processes, dramatically different approaches to content classification, new systems that are digital thr...

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), the government-wide plan to secure cloud products and services, is almost a decade old. It is still evolving, however. Early in 2021, the House of Representative passed a bill that would have codified a number of its provisions into law, standardizing its processes for agencies to on-ramp cloud computing technologies. To date, the Senate has not acted on the bill. At the same tim...

The Department of Defense's cloud strategy aims to transform virtually every aspect of the warfighting effort, and has resulted in a rapidly growing ecosystem of both general-purpose and fit-for-purpose clouds. Some of those efforts are unique to DOD, reflecting the scale, missions and austere operating environments of military operations, while others are readily transferrable to most any agency. All, however, hold valuable lessons for those...

Government agencies generate and collect massive amounts of data, but have long struggled to extract value from all that information. Now the Federal Data Strategy provides a 10-year framework to “leverage the full value of federal data for mission, service and the public good,” and the signs of agencies’ seriousness are everywhere. Developing workforce data skills remains a challenge, while legacy systems continue to complic...

It’s been a decade since "Cloud First" was put forth as a formal goal of government. In that time, agencies have moved from wary experimentation to straightforward "lift and shift" efforts to, increasingly, enterprise as-a-service solutions. The question is no longer whether to leverage cloud servicers, but how best to do so. Yet as the easier moves to the cloud have been made, the remaining systems and workloads require decidedly more c...

Two years after the White House issued an executive order creating a national strategy for artificial intelligence, agencies are moving past pilot projects and are looking for the next level of AI in government. Although some of the most visible projects are at NASA, DOD and IRS, many agencies are working on developing AI projects that support services, improve mission effectiveness and decision making and automate repetitive tasks. There is a...

As technology evolves, so do the threats to its security. The remote work shift caused by the continuing pandemic has pressed security teams to reassess how they verify and allow access. Zero Trust is a strategy, not a product, which reimagines the way access is granted to users, to data and to applications. Devices, which used to be central to identity, now include personal computers and home internet connections, which are not government iss...

In October of 2020, then-Defense Secretary Esper defined defense readiness as "our military’s ability to answer the nation’s call, and to fight and win, anytime, anywhere. … The question we must answer is this: if called upon to fight tonight, are we ready?" Ensuring that answer is "yes" demands change in every corner of the Department of Defense, and especially in the technology that will power tomorrow's military. Cybersec...

Whether it's delivering better care for veterans, transforming internal business processes to make federal employees more effective and efficient, or improving the citizen experience on federal websites, digital government aims to enable better government. New tools and technologies are an essential part of these efforts, but the true transformation takes place in the analog world -- rethinking business processes, changing the workplace cultur...

Most government agencies have made the journey to cloud since the Cloud First and Cloud Smart strategies came from OMB starting in 2010. Many organizations have more than one cloud. The challenge becomes blending the different types of cloud and service models to provide access to needed data, while at the same time protecting a much enlarged attack surface created by the large number of workers who are accessing the data remotely. If there is...