Articles by John K. Higgins

Cloud technology is supposed to greatly increase the efficiency and productivity of electronic information systems. For federal agencies, though, cloud migration has been a bit of a "catch-22" proposition. All the intense preparation work for migrating to the cloud -- including efforts to resolve important data security issues -- consumes scarce time and resources and has a potential for introducing a counterproductive element in adopting the cloud...

Software programmers work hard to produce secure, error-free code. Of course, bad things can happen -- but really, with increasingly diligent effort, how many things can go wrong? Quite a few, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Because cybersecurity is a national goal affecting both the private and public sector,...

In a rare showing of bipartisanship, members of Congress and the White House are trying to breathe new life into the effort to enact national cybersecurity legislation. In a recent flurry of activity, mainly between the Obama administration and the Senate, the issue got back on the legislative track. In addition to putting the legislation at the t...

Choppy Waters Ahead for the Federal IT Market, Part 1 A special congressional panel is facing a deadline of Nov. 23 to propose more than a trillion dollars in federal budget reductions over 10 years. If the panel fails, an automatic budget-cutting mechanism will take effect. Either way, the U.S. government will be launching a major austerity progra...

Children often focus on neighborhood role models as their first glimpse of what they want to be when they grow up. School nurse, perhaps. Or firefighter. Or police officer In a future increasingly consumed by information technology, who will be the first responders to provide first aid for a computer scrape, douse a virtual IT fire, or catch a cybe...

The big number always seems to be there. The big number is the amount of money the U.S. federal government invests in information technology. In constant dollars, that number has hovered slightly above or slightly below US$80 billion per year since 2007, according to TechAmerica That funding level is an inviting target for vendors and is frequently...

The U.S. government's plan to shift major chunks of existing and future information technology programs to cloud-based systems has proven to be easy to say but harder to do. Technical, cultural and financial issues are frequently raised by agency managers as barriers to adopting cloud technology Various initiatives have been launched to encourage c...

A market valued at nearly US$80 billion per year certainly gets the attention of vendors hoping to participate in it. For the information technology sector, the notion that the U.S. government spends about $79 billion per year for IT has gained credence as the figure often cited by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and in references from the federal chief information officer (CIO)...

Think about what has happened in information technology in the last 15 years. The inventors of Google began their collaboration in 1996 but did not adopt the brand name until 1997. The BlackBerry mobile device came on the market in 1999. And the Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA) was enacted by Congress in 1996 for the purpose of improving the way the federal government manages information technology...

The potential for saving money through data center consolidation among federal agencies is so great that the newly installed federal chief information officer has now challenged information technology managers to move further and faster to implement the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI). Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel revealed on Oct. 7, 2011, that he was "expanding the project to more aggressively consolidate our data center footprint." ...

Prospects for enacting an ambitious and comprehensive national cybersecurity protection program during this year's congressional session may be fading. That's the bad news. The good news is that various approaches to a cybersecurity agenda may be melding into a program that is acceptable to politicians of both parties and to e-commerce businesses as well.

Information technology vendors who can provide productive ways to protect against cybersecurity threats should find a welcome market among federal agencies. Cybersecurity is the major worry of government IT personnel, two recent surveys concluded. Federal IT managers polled for a Cisco-sponsored study were asked to select which of nine possible sc...

The new federal fiscal year started Oct. 1 with an old problem: an unsettled annual budget. Political wrangling over the proposed budget for 2012 -- estimated at nearly US$3.5 trillion by the Obama administration -- meant that stopgap funding bills were required just to keep the government running. Uncertainty over funding has become a way of life...

The U.S. government's program to improve federal information technology not only involves different types of electronic tools, such as cloud computing -- it also involves improving the talent pool of federal IT personnel. A new initiative designed to attract the best and brightest talent underscores the federal effort to upgrade the government IT workforce...

Federal agencies are woefully deficient in using modern information technology tools to manage their financial data. Despite calls from Congress and the White House to improve financial data management, agencies "employ a tangled web of disparate manual processes to generate the data," states a recent report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...

Providers of apps for mobile devices are just as responsible as other electronic commerce vendors in terms of protecting the privacy of customers. In a recent enforcement action, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signaled that mobile apps fall within the agency's jurisdiction, and that it will not hesitate to investigate potential privacy violations associated with mobile apps...

Federal regulations designed to protect children's privacy cover the burgeoning mobile apps business as well as other online vehicles accessible through laptops or desktops. In fact, providers of mobile apps need to pay attention to the privacy impact not only of services offered specifically to children, but also those targeting the broader community that are nevertheless accessible to children...

A major initiative to improve federal information technology management, including IT procurement, got a boost recently, even though the person behind the reform had left federal service. Just days after taking over as federal chief information officer, Steven VanRoekel posted a blog supporting a new role for federal agency CIOs. The bolstering of...

Managers of federal agency websites will be focusing on customer relations to meet the requirements of an ambitious program designed to improve the value of the government's online public resources. Over the next two months or so, agencies will be drilling down into their website mechanisms to determine whether their electronic presence truly meets the needs of the public -- in much the same way as a private sector firm measures audience satisfaction...

The U.S. government's new chief information officer wasted little time in directing federal agencies to significantly improve the way they manage information technology resources. Steven VanRoekel, who took over the federal CIO post on Aug. 4, quickly issued a directive designed to push agencies to meet an Obama administration goal for operating federal websites more efficiently.