The National Archives and Records Administration’s strategic plan for 2018-2022 includes digitizing 500 million pages of records by 2020. NARA would make the records available to the public online through the National Archives Catalog. NARA also will stop accepting analog records from agencies by Dec. 31, 2022, and will accept records only in electronic format and with the appropriate metadata. […]

The White House American Technology Council IT modernization report, released Aug. 30, emphasizes the need for updated IT infrastructure and shared services. The ATC said that the Federal government should invest in two to three cloud platforms to support all of the agencies. […]

For the Navy to gain the most insights from its operational pause day, fleets could use data analytics to make faster, more informed decisions. Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, ordered an operational pause across the U.S. Navy, following the collision of the USS John S. McCain with an oil tanker near Singapore. Each fleet is tasked with taking one day off, as they see fit, to look into “operational tempo, performance, maintenance, equipment, and personnel.” […]

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials tapped IBM to bring Watson into their software. APCO recently announced that APCO International’s new guide card software called APCO IntelliCommä will use IBM Watson Speech-to-Text and Watson Analytics to improve the scripts used by 911 operators. […]

The National Security Agency gave Columbus State University in Georgia a $174,000 grant to develop a cybersecurity training tool. “We are building a tool that people across the nation can use to develop cybersecurity training, which guarantees compliance with government and industry standards for cybersecurity workforce development,” said Shuangbao “Paul” Wang, a professor in CSU’s TSYS School of Computer Science. […]

Wipro announced that its big data analytics platform will be offered on Microsoft Azure. Wipro and Microsoft have collaborated on parts of the solution, including engineering, solution enhancements, and market strategy. […]

Modern demands are changing the way the government purchases, builds, and delivers data center solutions. Federal agencies are calling for a data center transformation that empowers IT and accelerates mission performance. Converged infrastructure promises simplicity and speed, responsiveness, dependability, and affordability to offset data center demands. […]

The Department of Defense is following the Federal push to move toward an enterprise structure by using Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS), an effort by the Defense Information Systems Agency to acquire Software-as-a-Service at a DoD enterprise scale. DoD plans to move 4.5 million users to the cloud, using this approach. […]

The IEEE Standards Association recently announced that it will be teaming up with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop principles for cloud interoperability or federation. […]

The General Services Administration on Aug. 1 awarded a maximum 15-year, $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract to 10 telecommunications companies. The awardees include AT&T, BT Federal, Qwest Government Services (doing business as Centurylink QGS), Granite Telecommunications, Level 3 Communications, Manhattan Telecommunications, and Verizon. […]

The best way for agencies to begin their transition to the cloud is to talk to agencies that have been through the same experience. “It’s always good to talk to people who have gone through it,” said Craig McCullough, vice president of Commvault Federal. […]

Federal agencies that amass multitudes of data because of drone use have had to think about how to store and protect that data. Agencies that use drones are caught between following the regulations in place for aircraft and following the regulations for IT systems, since drones contain properties of both categories. […]

Federal agencies are working on ideas to reorganize and streamline, as requested by the Office of Management and Budget and President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on a Comprehensive Plan to Reorganize the Executive Branch.
“Many manual processes remain, especially when it comes to processes that cut across multiple departments. Initiating a cross-cutting, agencywide approach to service delivery is necessary but challenging, especially when we look at holistic service delivery that marshals the data stored in legacy systems,” said Bob Osborn, chief technology officer for ServiceNow Federal. […]

IBM released its new mainframe, IBM z14, which offers encryption for 100 percent of user data and achieves the highest level of government security standards currently on the market. The mainframe will be made available in mid-September and IBM is working with the Federal government to integrate this technology into its IT strategies. […]

MeriTalk recently connected with Bob Osborn, Chief Technology Officer, ServiceNow Federal, to discuss President Donald Trump’s Executive Order (EO) for a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch and what’s ahead for agencies charged with implementing modernization initiatives. […]

The General Services Administration is close to awarding a $50 billion contract for its Enterprise Infrastructure Solution (EIS), Bill Zielinski, assistant commissioner for category management at GSA, announced July 13. […]

More than one-third of the Small Business Administration’s 120 circuits are overloaded. To resolve this issue, chief information officer Maria Roat plans to modernize SBA’s infrastructure by moving to a “pure Ethernet backbone.” She said Ethernet will help employees with Skype and virtual counseling, and will extend to all of the agency’s field offices. […]

The secret to the Small Business Administration’s success in going from cloud launch to receiving an authority to operate (ATO) in less than three months was to burn the bridge back to the old way of doing things and commit completely to cloud migration, according to SBA Deputy CIO Guy Cavallo and CTO Sanjay Gupta. […]

The Federal Acquisition Regulation, the guidelines dictating how Federal agencies procure goods and services, is not flexible enough to keep pace with modernizing agencies, according to Jennifer Hoover, DevOps program manager for the Transportation Security Administration. […]

One of the drives for agencies to move to a mobile, cloud environment is to attract millennials, who are used to having their data on demand. […]

Cloud helps organizations focus on the important parts of their mission, rather than wasting their time on maintenance and compliance, according to Peter Cutts, senior vice president of hybrid cloud platforms at Dell EMC. […]

FedRAMP can open business opportunities within the country and abroad for fledgling companies, according to Doug Bourgeois of Deloitte. […]

As the needs of Federal employees push agencies to move more and more services to the cloud, join MeriTalk and Government Acquisitions Inc. for the Federal Focus: The Cloud Generation event on July 12 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the best practices and results of Federal cloud migration. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., co-author of FITARA and IT reform advocate, will keynote the lunch session at the event. […]

You don’t need the Modernizing Government Technology Act to tell you that we spend too much money on legacy IT. However, the toughest part of transforming your organization is often addressing legacy IT issues, and knowing where to start is half the battle. How do we embrace the modernization opportunity to achieve digital transformation across government agencies while reducing costs? Join MeriTalk for a discussion on the shape of things to come where digital transformation and cloud collide. […]

Cloud computing allows both small and large manufacturers to use new production systems, including 3-D printing, high-performance computing, and the Internet of Things, and robots, an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report found. […]

Cloud computing services can keep pace with the fast-moving nature of private sector workplaces, according to Conrad Unciano, systems engineering manager for CSRA. He said CSRA recently migrated four of its key applications using Amazon cloud services. […]

Eighteen technology company CEOs are expected to attend the White House Tech Summit on June 19 to talk about modernizing the government’s tech infrastructure and keeping its computers safe from cyberattacks. The technology leaders could benefit if the government moves to modernize with the help of their hardware, software, and cloud-computing services. […]

When moving to the cloud, government customers must think about the many moving parts that make up such a project including the resources they need to sustain their applications as well as the resources required to complete the actual migration. They also must consider the architecture, security policies, and model for operations and maintenance, as well as scope the size of the environment. […]

Over the past few years, the department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has started using cloud computing services. Michael Giardinelli, a senior software engineer and technical team lead at PNNL, said the lab’s 16 counterparts across the nation have embarked on similar cloud journeys. “A lot of them are moving in same direction as us,” Giardinelli said. “One key thing is collaboration amongst labs, like when working through the power grid.” […]

Cloud infrastructure may be the safest place to store an agency’s most sensitive data, department of Justice officials said at an AWS Public Sector Summit. “I’d say it’s a pretty good place to put your crown jewels,” said Karl Mathias, chief information officer for the United States Marshals Service, adding that commercial clouds may end up being safer than an agency’s own data centers. […]