Trump signs cyber EO promoting IT modernization, shared services

From time to time GovEvents will come across information we feel our members and audience would benefit from. Here's something we wanted to share:

Agencies should no longer be on an island when it comes to cybersecurity. The White House is requiring agencies to take an enterprise approach to cyber risk assessment and mitigation, and stop protecting their networks and data as if their efforts don't impact their fellow departments.

President Donald Trump signed the much anticipated and long-waited executive order refocusing the federal cybersecurity efforts around three broad categories:

  • Protecting federal networks
  • Protecting critical infrastructure
  • Securing the nation through deterrence, international cooperation and the workforce.

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High Tech, Low Budget: Tech-ing Up Your Event

The vast majority of events listed on GovEvents are technology related. However, the events themselves tend to be manual and paper-based. This reliance on the "old-school" way of doing things is often driven by time and money (or lack thereof).

Events as marketing tools are an expense so keeping spending in check is critical to producing a return on the investment. Often, these events are organized by a small staff with other job responsibilities beyond planning the event. Knowing this, it's understandable to default to the "way we've always done it." This "status quo" thinking might keep the expenses low but ROI will continue to fall as less people attend a show they see as stuck in the past.

We've pulled together some ideas on how to affordably add tech to your events to increase your relevance without increasing bottom line spending.[Tweet "Ideas on how to affordably add tech to your events. #GovEventsBlog #EventTech"] Continue reading

Public Service Recognition (PSRW) – Celebration Toolkit

Each year the President and Congress designate the first full week of May as Public Service Recognition Week in honor of the men and women who serve America as federal, state, county and local government employees. We hope you will join GovEvents in celebrating our civilian and military public servants this year. Public Service Recognition Week highlights the accomplishments of the dedicated public servants who work tirelessly on behalf of all Americans and who rarely get the credit they deserve.

 

The Partnership for Public Service and the Public Employees Roundtable (PER) have developed a guide to help you observe Public Service Recognition Week, taking place May 7-13, 2017, in your communities. GovEvents would like to share that guide with our members and audience:

 

There are many ways to celebrate public servants in your community during Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW). Ideas range from sending letters to public employees to organizing a celebration showcasing the work of government agencies in your local area. To help you get started, we put together our top 10 celebration suggestions. For our full list of suggestions, please download the complete How to Celebrate PSRW Guide.

 

We hope this online toolkit will help you observe PSRW in a simple, fun, low-cost way while honoring public employees that work so diligently on our behalf every day. We've included resources to help facilitate your participation in PSRW whether you are from a government agency, Federal Executive Board (FEB), military base or school. In particular, these are ideas and tools to help you reach out to your community, educators and the media.

 

We invite individuals and organizations alike to participate in our PSRW White Board campaign. Start by downloading the White Board guide from the PSRW Resources in the right-hand column of this page. You can also find examples on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

Behind the Curtain: AWS Public Sector Summit 2017

As federal, state, and local agencies look to implement cloud solutions, either in response to mandates or in an effort to reap cost savings and IT efficiency, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been in the forefront of helping government make the move to cloud. Now in its eighth year, the AWS Public Sector Summit brings together innovators who are changing the world with cloud computing to share their successes and lessons learned to guide wider cloud adoption in government. The conference aims to send attendees back to their office with new strategies and techniques for kicking off new projects, maximizing budgets, and achieving mission goals.

We highlighted the history of the event last year and, once again, Tricia Davis-Muffett, Global Public Sector Marketing Leader for AWS, took some time out from planning the Summit to share what is new for 2017 and what first-time attendees can expect.[Tweet "Behind the Curtain: AWS Public Sector Summit. @AWS_Gov #GovEventsBlog #AWSPSSummit"] Continue reading

A Picture is Worth 140 Characters

With shorter attentions spans, the ubiquity of high-quality cameras in our phones, and multiple platforms to share images, photos are becoming a critical marketing tactic for events. Images can convey the mood of an event with more authenticity than any carefully worded tweet. The images taken at an event show what is really happening and hopefully make people want to be a part of it. While it's not critical that images be National Geographic quality, some thought should go into how photos from your event will look. Create an environment that encourages and enables great photos.[Tweet "Images can convey the mood of an event with more authenticity. #GovEventsBlog"]

We've pulled together a couple photo-centric considerations to add into the event planning mix. Continue reading