Federal agencies, both civilian and military, are seeing opportunities to expand their mission to serve the public through the application of new technologies. Leading the way: Unlocking the potential of 5G to power leading-edge IoT applications. Many agencies now have multiple sensors and edge computing devices that need blazing fast, low-latency, stable connections, particularly if they are in remote or hard-to-reach locations. For instance,...

“Workflow warfare” is a term within the Department of Defense that calls attention to and places value on back office functions, which serve a critical role in mission success but can be overlooked when considering modernization and digital transformation. That concept is applicable beyond the boundaries of the military, however; accelerating those workflows will allow faster transformation and provide advantages in meeting any age...

In May of 2021, the White House issued the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, mandating that federal agencies begin taking decisive steps to modernize their approach to cybersecurity, with zero trust as the foundation. In that time, federal agencies have been diligently working to meet the Executive Order’s mandates. Last month, the Office of Management and Budget released M-22-16 Administration Cybersecurity...

The Top 10 list of enterprise risks facing CIOs in state, local, tribal and territorial agencies is both comprehensive and disturbing, covering everything from cybersecurity to compliance to workforce. High on that list is the technology, including how to manage and work with their cloud portfolios. These public agencies are looking to manage their data in public and private clouds, hybrid clouds or multi-clouds, whether on a daily basis, thro...

State and local governments identify moving to the cloud and incorporating artificial as high on their list of priorities. For instance, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency started using AI and analytics to import weather data in real time and develop a base analysis, which the agency’s meteorologists review and revise. This creates forecasts for weather alerts that can be sent quickly to vulnerable populations, including locations ou...

Cyber threats to federal agencies continue to evolve, requiring equal agility in defending against them. To address the scope of the risk, the White House released Executive Order (EO) 14028 on improving the nation’s cybersecurity in May 2021. It outlined security best practices, including how the federal government must advance toward a zero trust architecture to keep pace with today’s dynamic and increasingly complex cyber threat...

The Office of Management and Budget issued its guidance in January on meeting the requirements for agency networks to implement a zero trust architecture strategy. The purpose of the mandate is to defend against sophisticated penetrations by adversaries, whether nation-states or criminals, and it emphasized that identity management and access controls are key components. Taken together, identity and access controls mean that privileged access...

Federal agencies have embraced cloud strategies as foundational to their transition to digital government, but their approaches come in many different flavors of cloud. As they’ve come to see the benefits, more agencies are adopting a hybrid cloud structure – one or more public and private cloud services that operate as separate but integrated entities. Hybrid cloud provides the cost optimization, agility and scalability of public...

Cybersecurity usually is at a disadvantage against bad actors. It must focus, first and foremost, on defense – protecting assets and information – while hostile interests keep finding new ways to launch their attacks, such as the rise of ransomware. Of Gartner's top seven trends in cybersecurity for 2022, a majority of them are about risks and playing defense. To strengthen defenses, the infrastructure law signed by President Biden...

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in federal civilian agencies could be considered fairly widespread, if the label includes such applications as robotic process automation and machine learning. But these are just baby steps – AI has the potential to provide resiliency to agencies, whether responding to disruptions in operations or providing better customer experiences. Incorporating AI into agencies’ digital operations requir...