Is Government’s ‘Cloud First’ policy more like ‘Cloud When?’ – Plus the DorobekINSIDER’s 7 stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• More than 20 million people each week sit down to watch Sheldon Cooper and his group of brainiacs search for answers to life’s most challenging puzzles on the Big Bang Theory. Those big brains are just what the government needs to stay on the front lines of research and innovation. But how do you recruit the brains to the federal workforce? Insights from Booz Allen Hamilton’s Ron Sanders.

But Up First: Big Data

The New York Times today reviewed the book, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier. On GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER earlier this year, we spoke with Mayer-Schönberger: Big Data revolution, changing the way we live, work and think.

NYT Writes:

• To their credit, Mr. Cukier and Mr. Mayer-Schönberger recognize the limitations of numbers. Though their book leaves the reader with a keen appreciation of the tools that big data can provide in helping us “quantify and understand the world,” it also warns us about falling prey to the “dictatorship of data.”
• “We must guard against overreliance on data,” they write, “rather than repeat the error of Icarus, who adored his technical power of flight but used it improperly and tumbled into the sea.”

The SEVEN stories that impact your life

1. For critics, government’s ‘Cloud First’ policy reads like ‘Cloud When?’ The Wall Street Journal reports, two-and-a-half years after the White House mandated all agencies “take full advantage of the cloud,” critics say the program’s success is difficult to assess because key indicators were not tracked. “What’s the extent that we’ve migrated to the cloud and what are the savings?” David Powner, director of information management issues for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, tells the WSJ. “We don’t know the magnitude because the right metrics aren’t being tracked.”
2. Sen. Rob Portman is demanding answers from the Veterans Affairs Department following revelations that nearly half a million electronic records, including active loan files, were deleted from a VA computer system last month as a result of human error, reports Federal Times.
3. Federal contractor Booz Allen stock tumbled Monday at one point by as much as 5 percent after the company confirmed it employed Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old Maryland man who has claimed to be the source of new details about classified U.S. surveillance programs. Federal Times reports, Snowden’s leaks to the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers have shed light on government programs collecting data on millions of Americans’ phone and Internet usage.
4. The website that is supposed to track agencies’ performance on key missions is having an identity crisis of sorts. The Government Accountability Office says the White House has yet to clarify what Performance.gov is supposed to do or what audience it is meant for. For example, are agencies supposed to refer to the website to coordinate their strategies? Or is the site for the public? The Office of Management and Budget says the site is becoming more public-facing and citizen-centric, reports Federal News Radio.
5. George Washington University honored 13 feds for career achievements. GW hands out the Arthur S Flemming awards to current federal employees with between three and 15 years of service. The winners included top scientists, three Justice Department attorneys and an intelligence expert on disruptive events, reports Federal News Radio.
6. At least a dozen children or other relatives of Energy Department officials have received summer jobs at the department. Inspector General Gregory Friedman says the jobs are an apparent violation of federal nepotism rules. Friedman says one senior official called a dozen colleagues, looking to place his three college-aged children in jobs.
7. And on GovLoop: Here is a staggering stat: 130 millions Americans own a smartphone, including roughly 1 out of 2 adults. That’s a technology that wasn’t even around 5 years ago. So how can government leverage this technology to connect, engage and empower government employees and the general public? Tune in to find out with the DorobekINISDER LIVE panel on June 26th at noon ET. Register for the free online webinar now.

DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder

• CIOs Gain Prominent Role in Data Governance
  • The chief information officer is responsible for data governance at a growing number of companies, though the broader c-suite still doesn’t have a deep understanding of data-security policies at most companies, according to a report released today by consulting firm Protiviti. Only 30% of respondents said c-suite executives at their firms understood the data-retention and destruction policy “very well,” the report said, up from 22% in 2012. That may be why nearly one in four of those surveyed said their organization didn’t have a written information-security policy and an even bigger number said their company didn’t have–or didn’t know if it had–a data breach response plan in place.
• Vendor lists top banned apps. Fiberline, a mobile-device management technology vendor, tapped the 2 million devices it secures to get a handle on what apps corporate IT is most likely to ban. On the no-no list: apps like DropBox that allow users to store and share data, bandwidth drains as exemplified by Netflix Inc. ’s video streaming service and productivity inhibitors like Facebook. Jonathan Dale, director of marketing at Fiberlink, tells CIO Journal that DropBox and other file-sharing apps that allow workers to store work documents on third-party services pose the most risk to CIO fears such as data leaks. Last August, for example, Dropbox Inc. admitted that some of its user accounts were compromised. Also on the list, Angry Birds.
• Top 10 Blacklisted Apps: iOS Devices
  • Dropbox
  • SugarSync
  • Box
  • Facebook
  • Google Drive
  • Pandora
  • SkyDrive
  • Angry Birds
  • HOCCER
  • Netflix
• Top 10 Blacklisted Apps: Android Devices
  • Dropbox
  • Facebook
  • Netflix
  • Google+
  • Angry Birds
  • Google Play Movies & TV
  • Google Play Books
  • Sugarsync
  • Google Play Music
  • Google+ Hangouts
• Top 10 Whitelisted Apps: iOS Devices
  • iBooks
  • Adobe Reader
  • Google
  • Citrix Receiver
  • Numbers
  • Dropbox
  • Pages
  • itunes U
  • Keynote
  • WebEx
• Top 10 Whitelisted Apps: Android Devices
  • NITDroid
  • Adobe Reader
  • Lookout
  • Google
  • Skype
  • Citrix Receiver
  • Android Translator
  • Antivirus
  • ZXing
  • Google Maps

Want More GovLoop Content? Sign Up For Email Updates