After a decade-long initiative to expand telework, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the federal government’s workforce to cloud-based telework, practically overnight. While improving workforce flexibility seems like the obvious benefit, federal agencies can also take this opportunity to leverage the extensive ecosystem of open source partners and applications to boost their multicloud modernization efforts. Agencies that work […]

Following the release of the FITARA Scorecard 10.0 in August, discussion about sunsetting the MEGABYTE category of the scorecard has picked up. But, is that really a good idea? […]

As the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic became apparent early this year, the first matter of business for the Federal government was simply getting employees online and ensuring they could carry on with their critical work and missions. This is a unique challenge in the government space due to the sheer size of the Federal workforce and the amount of sensitive data those workers require – everything from personally identifiable information to sensitive national security information. And yet, the Department of Defense, for one, was able to spin up secure collaboration capabilities quite quickly thanks to the cloud, while the National Security Agency recently expanded telework for unclassified work. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the way agencies function, and forced many to redefine what it means to be connected and modernize for mission success. […]

When agencies began full-scale telework earlier this year, many were not anticipating it would evolve into a long-term workplace strategy. However, in the wake of COVID-19, recent calculations estimate $11 billion in Federal cost-savings per year due to telework, as well as a 15 percent increase in productivity. Agencies are determining how they can continue to modernize – and therefore optimize – to support greater efficiency into the future. […]