This post will be cross-posted at Halfofthespear.com With Denis Blair soon to depart as the Director of National Intelligence, the engine driving the speculation over who his replacement will be is in high gear. One of the more unusual names to surface: former President Bill Clinton. Two intelligence professionals and former colleagues – Bob...
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The 2010 DoDIIS Worldwide Conference will be held 23-27 May in Phoenix Arizona.  This venue is hosted by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Directorate for Information Management and Chief Information Officer.  The focus is on topics relevant to mission success for the Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS).  DoDIIS is all about facilitating the...
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Carahsoft is a unique, trusted firm that helps government find and rapidly acquire the right technologies and helps high tech firms successfully interact with government (which has famously onerous processes for businesses that want to serve the federal mission).  Carahsoft is a client of my firm and one of the things I’m particularly proud...
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The World Intelligence Review (WIRe) held its 2010 Conference Feb 24-25 (see: https://thewireconference.com ).  I was allowed to provide some thoughts to the folks gathered there and used the briefing below to help generate some discussion. I hope the briefing made the key point that users are responsible for articulating requirements and for ensuring...
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This is the concluding post on enhancing IT innovation in support of the Counter Terror effort.  The first part focused on the challenge and importance context relevant to design criteria.  This post focuses on design criteria and proposes next steps. Transforming the Challenge Into Design Criteria: The legacy IT environment of the counter-terror community...
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I’ve just received word that Dawn Meyerriecks, one of the great’s of American technology, has just returned to federal service. Dawn has delivered real capability into some of the nation’s largest, most complex enterprises. And she has built communities of technologist as she did that, giving many of us someone to look up to...
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The next big Gov2.0 event is the 21-22 July 2009 Open Government & Innovations Conference (OGI).  The list of speakers includes some of the greats from the federal IT scene, including: Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO Tim O’Reilly, Visionary of the Web2.0 movement David Weinberger, Berkman Center for Internet and Society,...
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I previously mentioned the DoDIIS Worldwide Conference, which was held 17-21 May 2009.  I took lots of notes from the conference: enough, in fact, to fuel this blog for a long long time.  My associate Ryan Kamauff took even more (and more relevant) notes on the sessions there, and both of us kicked the...
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I just read an article that seems designed to keep spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about the US government and the NSA.   The article is titled “Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue “.  It starts with an assertion stated as if it were a fact that says “The National Security Agency has been campaigning...
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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...
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