How the Federal Government is Slowly Embracing Mobile

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Mobile computing, primarily smartphones and tablets, is one of the most disruptive technologies today. Increasingly sophisticated portable personal computers are providing unprecedented opportunities to work from anywhere and access solutions wherever and whenever they are needed, leading to great productivity gains. Yet mobile computing in the enterprise also brings security risks by introducing many new attack vectors such as outside … [Read more...]

Department of State’s Consular Systems and Technology: A Track Record of Innovation

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The Office of Consular Systems and Technology (CST) leads the State Department's IT efforts.  This is an amazing organization that has been delivering high quality, high throughput systems and solutions for years. This group really is our first line of defense against threat actors so we should all be thankful the team here performs at this level. Don't just take our word for it.  Consider the incredible amount of recognition this small team has … [Read more...]

AFCEA Fall Intelligence Symposium, 13-14 October 2010.

I'm hoping to run into CTOvision.com readers at the upcoming AFCEA Fall Intelligence Symposium.  This conference is already sold out (they have a track record of always being standing room only events).  If you can't be there perhaps you can track down someone who is going and get a debrief from them on how it goes.  It will be very hard for me to print info here from the conference because of the classification the event runs at.  But, if I find a … [Read more...]

The Honorable John G. Grimes: AFCEA Sarnoff Award Winner

On September 15th, 2010, The Honorable John G. Grimes was presented with the AFCEA David Sarnoff Award. This award was established by AFCEA as the organization's highest honor, to recognize individuals who have made lasting and significant contributions to global peace. Recipients have demonstrated a sustained and personal commitment to furthering communications, electronics, and information technologies toward achieving a more secure tomorrow. More … [Read more...]

Some “Must Attend” Events in the Federal IT Space

Good conferences can really help you get things done.  You connect with people you need to meet, learn new trends, gain insights into customer perspectives and keep improving your own abilities.  But you already know that.  You probably also know that you can go overboard with conferences. You can spend so much time in them it can detract from getting your job done. So the trick is finding the right events/conferences/meetings to go to.  I list some … [Read more...]

Cloud Computing and Net Centric Operations

I've just posted a draft paper on my site on the topic of Cloud Computing and DoD's Net Centric Operations.   My intent with this paper is to keep beating it up till it is in condition to publish, and I would value your comments on the paper.  Please check it out at: Cloud_Computing_and_Net_Centric_Operations-3 [late entry: for an updated version of that paper see: http://www.whitehouse.gov/cyberreview/documents/ ] One of the things I learned while … [Read more...]

Tips for the new CTO: How to engineer a miracle

I ran into so many friends at the AFCEA solutions conference this week.  One guy I have not seen in person for years is  Mike “Ziggy” Steinmetz.  Ziggy is a great leader and thinker at Northrop Grumman.  He is also a tremendous collector of wisdom and a teacher who helped prepare me for my position as CTO of DIA.  Seeing him made me think I should share some of these lessons with you. The lessons come from the true story of the 1980 US Olympic … [Read more...]

CTOs, Global Cyberwar and Our Collective Future

If you are a technologist, please take a moment to download the PDF of the report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity.  This report, titled Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency, is the best proclamation of the challenges of cyber I have read.  It is also a roadmap that will help any trying to navigate these very tough issues. I've been involved in things cyber for a long time.  My deepest involvement began in December 1998, almost 10 years … [Read more...]

Three Events of Federal CTO Interest: Will You Be At These?

FYI, in case your schedule will allow us to connect in person I wanted to update you on a few events I plan on being at over the next few weeks. The Advanced Technical Intelligence Association TECHINT conference will be held 9-11 Dec 2008.  This conference focuses on the technical dimensions of intelligence, and has a theme of "integrated performance."  The theme refers to the need to integrate capabilities from all the agencies engaged in national … [Read more...]

The Technology Implications of the Obama Win

There are several megatrends sweeping the technology industry today.  Some of them are about to be accelerated. I like to use five key topic areas to track megatrends in IT: - Convergence and trend towards unified communications and user empowerment - Globalization and increasing internationalization of IT and demographic shifts - Increasing open development of software and hardware - Power, Cooling and Space (PCS) impacting data centers and every … [Read more...]