What you clicked on the most in 2016

By Tim Larkins, Market Intelligence director

The Government Sales Insider blog that you’re now reading was just named one of the 50 Must-Read Federal IT Blogs of 2016 by FedTech magazine. It’s an honor to be named among other great sources of information and insight like “Ask the CIO” and “The Spec Blog.”

The award made us reflect on our most read posts of 2016, which is always a great lesson on what’s top of mind for the government IT community. What you clicked and shared the most varied from defense to civilian-focused posts, but two persistent themes were money and procurement trends. Any posts focused on how government organizations are spending their IT budgets and managing their IT portfolios were widely read.

Here are our top five most read posts from 2016:

5. Survival tips for DOT’s IT spending freeze

Richard McKinney, chief information officer at the Department of Transportation, announced a year ago that DOT IT purchasing would be frozen until leadership can get a handle on the department’s IT inventory. It forced DOT tech leaders to provide documentation on how they were going to spend their IT dollars. immixGroup Market Intelligence Analyst, Kevin Shaker, did a great job explaining how industry should move forward.

4. How to deal with the White House’s new software policy

The White House announced a new policy in 2016 aimed at cutting down on wasteful spending and our Civilian Agency Consultant, Chris Wiedemann, explained how the change would affect the software industry. The key takeaway was that software companies with lots of siloed, potentially redundant installs should get out in front of this shift so they could avoid arduous consolidations.

3. 3 key takeaways from the president’s FY17 budget request

Chris also enlightened us on President Obama’s final budget request, which included funding for IT modernization, cybersecurity and slight IT spending increases. Overall, 2016 ended up being a good year for our industry, with a shift also toward more spending on cloud, big data, business and operations and mobility. We’re expecting more spending increases in 2017, including enterprise mobility (up 20 percent), cloud (up 14 percent) and big data (up 13 percent).

2. The Virginia opportunity to jump on now

Halfway through 2016, Virginia unraveled its 13-year, $2.3 billion IT contract with Northrop Grumman to launch a new multi-vendor approach to procuring specific IT services at market rates with competitive conditions. Our state and local government and education (SLED) Consultant, Rachel Eckert, wrote about how the move opens the doors to many other technology companies, but only if they acted quickly. The procurement process has moved along this year and many more milestones will be met in 2017. You can find an updated schedule here.

1. What you need to know about GSA’s new cyber SINs

One of the most viewed posts of the year outlined the General Services Administration’s new cyber Special Item Numbers within Schedule 70. The new SINs cover penetration testing, incident response, cyber hunt, and risk and vulnerability assessment. immixGroup co-founder, Steve Charles, explained how these SINs would now require contractors to participate in oral cyber-scenario evaluations if they want to provide these human-performed services. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out and if other agencies adopt a similar procurement strategy.

immixGroup’s Market Intelligence team can provide more insight into the government IT market in 2017 and beyond. Missed our recent briefings? Catch them here or reach out for more guidance. Happy holidays and we wish you a prosperous 2017!