We hear it every day: Government needs to cut costs. But how? If government is going to continue serving the public, there are certain things like workforce, infrastructure, and technology that must receive funding. Instead of cutting vital assets, we must instead seek efficiencies. According to IBM, a primary focus area should be how weRead… Read more »
This interview is an excerpt from GovLoop’s recent guide, The DoD of Tomorrow, which explores how the department is transforming its operations, technology, workforce, and acquisitions process to confront 21st century challenges. When you think of DoD’s information infrastructure, you might think mostly of complex, secret networks. Yet the reality is that the department maintainsRead… Read more »
People are busy and our most important task is to tell a story in a way that people remember. A few, easy numbers make that task a lot easier. … In days of old, we used to have to rely on reporters to find those people, although it’s certainly within our power to help them…. Read more »
Simplifying what your agency can do with its data can actually be somewhat complicated. In last week’s online training, “Simple Ways to do more with Your Data,” topic experts explored what their agencies are doing with their data. The speakers included: Dawn Wright, Chief Scientist, Esri Brian Tisdale, Booz Allen Hamilton, NASA Atmospheric Science DataRead… Read more »
The Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program had a problem: it was paying out way too much in unearned benefits to program participants. This was happening because participants weren’t reporting their income often enough. As participants’ incomes went up, their SSI eligibility went down – but they continued receiving SSI benefits basedRead… Read more »
Database guru and 2014 Turing Award winner Dr. Michael Stonebraker is not a big fan of MapReduce. Or so we can readily surmise, based on some of the comments he made (together with co-author David DeWitt, another highly acclaimed database researcher) in a blog post in early 2008. He and DeWitt called Mapreduce a “giantRead… Read more »
Scientific data is collected from everywhere and used for everything. Research on rising sea levels, climate change, ocean science, forest preservation, energy assurance and more, rely on scientific data. But the power of scientific data can sometimes be overwhelming. One way to maximize data findings is through spatial analytics, which is the answer to aRead… Read more »
I spent last week on a review panel looking at the performance of a New Zealand university’s web team. It was an illuminating experience – and a very positive one – but it got me to thinking about the how to operate within a changing digital environment. That’s pretty vague so let me explain aRead… Read more »
Meet Kevin Kuhn, a NextGen Innovation Award finalist. For years, Kuhn has spearheaded high-risk, high-reward innovations at the EPA. His program, the Pathfinders Innovation Project, or PIP, has fundamentally altered the EPA’s former risk-averse culture to embrace big ideas that could yield even bigger environmental solutions.
Contrary to popular belief, governments have suffered from excess data- not a lack thereof. Before IT, as we know it today, revenue agencies used to rely solely on paper to store data files, most of it never to be used again. While we have come a long way from paper dependency, we still have muchRead… Read more »