Although it got an encouraging $1 billion funding shot in the arm from the American Rescue Plan Act in early 2020, the effort to modernize and transform an aging infrastructure remains a complicated task that takes coordination, executive buy-in and detailed security and data strategies to make it work. The $1 billion set aside for the Technology Modernization Fund in the ARP smooths some modernization budgeting issues for agencies, which have...

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...

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...

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...

Eight years in, the Continuous Diagnostic and Mitigation program has matured and broadened its offerings significantly. The focus now is on deploying a threat intelligence framework for governmentwide use, integrating the AWARE risk-scoring algorithm and rolling out of security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) to automate vulnerability detection and defensive cyber operations. More extensive and sophisticated use of data in dashboa...

Transforming the IT infrastructure for an agency is a complicated task that requires coordinated and effective decision making, buy-in from key executives and detailed data and security strategies -- not to mention funding for new technology or the move to managed services. This FCW Summit will discuss new policies and guidance that will govern these changes. In addition, agencies that are well into their modernization journey will share lesso...

IT modernization is a leap into the digital future, and cloud computing is its springboard. In the federal sector, cloud is quickening the advancement of mobile technology, data analytics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, agile computing, streamlined development models and advanced cybersecurity. The outcome is growing efficiency and effectiveness in agencies’ missions, improved customer service at agencies seeking to emu...