Tech

DoD Takes On Social Media | Gets All Branches Under One Policy

The Department of Defense has implemented an encompassing “Responsible and Effective Use of Internet-based Capabilities Policy” last week to get everyone under their large umbrella on the same “social networking” use page (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Web-Services-Web-20-and-SOA/Pentagon-Loosens-Reins-Over-Use-of-Facebook-Twitter-Web-20-Apps-448094/). As one could imagine the DoD was going to have to do something sooner than later to get the different organizations underRead… Read more »

Barriers to Adopting New Technologies In Government

Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, describes the inefficient use of technology of federal government at a recent speech. Inefficiencies such as forms that are entered online, printed out, passed around in manila folders, and then rekeyed into another computer system. This is nothing new and federal employees are quite aware of these inefficiencies. So, why don’tRead… Read more »

Acquisition 2.0 Starts With FAR 2.0

Originally posted on BetterBlog, this official blog of the Better Buy Project. Let me first apologize to Andy Krzmarzick, as I have been promising a post on performance-based contracting and how it relates to the Better Buy Project and the Acquisition 2.0 initiative. I actually started that post, but put in on hold a bitRead… Read more »

Now playing: “This Week in Participation” (TWiP)

We’re in the process of launching “This Week in Participation” (TWiP), a new podcast slash interview series slash internet radio show on, you guessed it, participation. The first couple of episodes went live earlier this week: TWiP 1: Urgent Evoke (11 minutes) http://twipcast.com/blog/2010/03/02/twip-1-urgent-evoke/ TWiP 2: Crowdstorming (14 minutes) http://twipcast.com/blog/2010/03/04/twip-2-crowdstorming/ The format is pretty casual. WeRead… Read more »

Kudos to Michigan

Yesterday, the State of Michigan rolled out a major update to the Michigan.gov portal. CIO Ken Theis, quoted in Government Technology magazine, suggests, “Visitors to the site can [now] access five times the amount of information without leaving the home page. It’s a more useful and pleasing site and it positions Michigan with one ofRead… Read more »

2010 Legislative Session in Utah

Each year, our legislative session is a real event. For many state leaders, much of what they normally do is temporarily put aside while they collaborate and work on the issues associated with budgeting and bill-making. I’m actually glad to see our legislature more engaged and interested in the issues associated with digital government. ThisRead… Read more »

Tech Expo Top Secret Hiring Events: NEXT WEEK 3/9 Linthicum, MD – BWI Marriott 3/10 Tysons Corner, VA – Ritz-Carlton

Hundreds of job opportunities are available this March! Bring many resumes and interview for your new career in information technology, engineering, aerospace, telecom, project management, intelligence, operations, homeland security, research & more at TECHEXPO Top Secret’s March job fairs. Tuesday, March 9, 10am – 3pm BWI Marriott 1743 West Nursery Rd. Baltimore, MD 21090 (410)Read… Read more »

Designing Government for the People

I was talking to a co-worker about our office’s reconfiguration plans, which involve merging divisions and training employees to handle a wider variety of customer needs. It’s a nice plan, and it is likely to benefit our customers by removing the layers they have to dig through to get to the services they need. InRead… Read more »

Gary Vaughan’s Blog

Gary Vaughan is a retired career FSO, now a Sharepoint guru at the Department of State. We are college classmates. At lunch last month we were discussing the way Microsoft and open source tools are being used for similar tasks on the social web.One output was his commitment to increase his blogging frequency.The second wasRead… Read more »