Articles by John K. Higgins

The U.S. government is learning quickly that achieving the next big thing in information technology depends upon implementing a huge number of little things. For federal IT managers, that big thing is the cloud Federal agencies have busily pursued cloud solutions since December 2010, when the government adopted its "Cloud First" policy, requiring a...

E-Commerce buzz words sound great in theory, but innovation often founders on the shoals of "getting there from here" as IT managers slog through the details of converting to new systems and programs There has been a significant of amount of buzz at the federal level as agencies have been turning to shared services, data consolidation, commodity IT...

President Obama initiated an Open Government program on his second day in office, pledging to make government information more accessible to the public. Three years later, that program has achieved significant success in many forums, including major improvements in the use of electronic channels for disseminating government information. However, ...

Information technology vendors seeking business from the federal government are well advised to keep an eye on the requirements of big agencies such as the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security. Within big departments, there are big components -- such as the Food and Drug Administration or the Bureau of the Census. Most of t...

Federal agencies will be moving significant portions of their annual IT spending to "commodity" type procurement vehicles by the end of 2012. As part of continuing reforms in IT acquisition and management, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has directed agencies to immediately begin the process of consolidating IT procurement, with a focus on shared service arrangements...

Managers of information technology systems in both the private and public sectors have had their hands full dealing with security breaches that come from hackers invading IT systems. Increasingly, however, IT systems are becoming vulnerable from another channel -- the actual supply chain sources of both hardware equipment and software programs Fed...

The market for mobile information technology will grow sharply in the next few years as employers increasingly embrace both "at home" telework solutions and the use of other remote access capabilities, including smartphones and tablets. In a February forecast on mobile data traffic, Cisco Systems predicted that such traffic will grow at a compound annual rate of 74 percent in the U.S. between 2011 and 2016. The compound annual rate over that period for smartphone traffic will be 110 percent; for tablets, 91 percent; and for laptops, 34 percent...

The notion that the U.S. government workforce is a huge, deskbound bureaucracy is the typical stereotype, but that vision is only part true. The federal workforce is huge, and it may be well be bureaucratic -- but federal workers are not always deskbound Many federal jobs require mobility. Agricultural and industrial inspectors, Border Patrol agent...

Information technology leaders in the U.S. government have been promoting cloud technologies for more than a year. In December 2010, the federal chief information officer launched an IT reform plan that required agencies to start adopting cloud technologies. At the time, some agencies had already implemented cloud solutions, and since then many others have initiated cloud programs...

As the U.S. economy shows modest signs of recovering, and with forecasts for the overall information technology market also showing modest growth, vendors can at least count on one big customer to provide a steady stream of revenue for the next year or two: the U.S. government Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel has been promoting th...

Google has hired veteran lobbyist and former member of Congress Susan Molinari to represent the company. Molinari served as a Republican member of the House of Representatives from New York between 1990 and 1997. Since then, she has represented major businesses as a lobbyist Molinari, who will be based in Washington, D.C., "will become Vice Preside...

The Obama administration's program to modernize federal information technology operations is now in its second year, and the momentum for reform is continuing at a high level. "We are seizing on the power of 21st century technology to consolidate data centers and moving to lightweight, shareable technologies, such as cloud computing, while also di...

Federal agencies charged with improving the efficiency of information technology operations are embracing data consolidation, the cloud and mobile devices. One of the major factors involved in these efforts is the use of virtualization technologies that enhance the productivity of computer operating systems. Federal agencies are now under the gun ...

Identity theft and privacy breaches are reported almost daily. For example, on Jan. 23, two utilities in New York reported that an employee of a software contractor allowed unauthorized access to a database containing social security, date of birth and other information. There was no indication the records were misused, the utilities said. That sa...

The sharp growth in the use of smartphones and tablets has spurred the U.S. government to keep pace with the private sector in the use of mobile devices. While federal agencies have been incorporating mobile technology for several years, the rate of adoption could be -- and should be -- far greater, contends Steven VanRoekel, the federal governmen...

It's one thing to have a computer system at a major bank, retailer or government agency invaded by cybercriminals. At best, such hacking incidents cause minor annoyances, and at worst, they result in high-cost privacy invasions. But what if the hackers get into the power systems that make the entire Internet possible? The cost of such an invasion ...

The routine is almost universal. Every day, millions of workers turn on their computers, take a second or two for a sip of coffee as their desktop or laptop "boots up," and then get to work. In those few seconds, the basic input-output system (BIOS) of the computer loads the protocols that actually run the PC -- in effect, acting the same as the shot of coffee that helps the worker wake up and start functioning. Pretty simple...

Just how much information about the U.S. government is available on the Internet is anybody's guess. But U.S. citizens should be comfortable knowing that if they are persistent enough, they should find much of what they are looking for regarding the federal government online -- whether it's tax information from the Internal Revenue Service, benefits data from the Social Security Administration, or some obscure economic table...

Cybersecurity is such a pressing issue that the U.S. government will be dedicating a good chunk of its annual information technology budget to protecting data systems from breaches, hackers and other threats. The number of cybersecurity incidents reported by federal agencies has increased from 5,503 in 2006 to 41,776 incidents in 2010, an increase of over 650 percent, according to a recent report from the General Accountability Office (GAO)...

Federal information technology managers -- often cited for poor execution of procurement practices -- now have some project role models to follow for successfully managing IT investments. The federal General Accountability Office has issued a report on seven case studies of successful government IT procurement projects. GAO initiated the report in...