Collaboration and Innovation Top of Mind at NASCIO Conference

October 31, 2019 by Leave a comment

By Rachel Eckert, SLED Manager

The overwhelming theme at this year’s NASCIO conference centered on the idea of innovation. Throughout the event, state CIOs shared their innovative approaches to managing IT and the business of government.

One of the innovative approaches was increasing collaboration with local governments. Collaboration between state and local government isn’t necessarily new, but today it means much more and goes way beyond funding and MOUs.

Shared Goals

One innovative approach state and local governments are taking to collaboration involves a shared goal. For example, in the wake of the many recent high-profile ransomware attacks, state CIOs shared that they’d received an increase in support requests from their local governments. Read more of this post

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Military Health IT Modernization: What Lies Ahead – Part 1

October 24, 2019 by Leave a comment

Toné Mason, Senior Analyst

Health technology and health services continue to represent a significant part of DOD spending, requiring acquisition planning to keep pace.

The next wave of deployments for MHS GENESIS, the new electronic health record for the Military Health System (MHS), is slated to begin in 2020. By 2023, GENESIS will be deployed across all MHS. Meanwhile, the Defense Health Agency (DHA) is taking a closer look at acquisition vehicles and focus areas. With limited funding and enterprise contracts essentially status quo through 2020, agency executives are encouraging vendors to prepare now for 2021.

These were some of the takeaways from the recent 2019 Defense Health Information Technology Symposium in Orlando, Fla. Among the sessions, Tom McCaffery, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, discussed the future of the Military Health System. Read more of this post

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Beyond Cyber Hygiene

October 17, 2019 by 1 Comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.

By Lloyd McCoy, Market Intelligence Manager

Helping agencies lock the door to keep external threat actors out of IT networks, combined with education and training, can only go so far in protecting government assets. There will always be vulnerability.

Public sector networks, with their treasure trove of sensitive information, face vigorous targeting by nation states and cyber criminals looking to steal anything they can get their hands on. Cyber-attacks remain one of the clear and present threats of our time with an intensity that shows little signs of abating.

So, how can those selling security solutions to government help mitigate threats when good cyber hygiene isn’t enough? Read more of this post

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The Business Benefits of Outsourcing FedRAMP Compliance

October 10, 2019 by 1 Comment

By Ryan Gilhooley, Enterprise Cloud Solutions Manager

If you are new to the federal government market, you are no doubt wrestling with how to ensure your products and services are compliant with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). This government-wide program standardizes security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.

If you’re making a decision to move forward with FedRAMP authorization, it’s important to understand your options from the beginning. It’s tempting to try to do it all yourself, but the complexities of compliance can quickly send the cost of doing it yourself sky high, while delaying your time to market by years.

Getting to authorization requires deep expertise in compliance, IT security, engineering and more, which means a heavy investment of expensive resources extended over a long period of time.

For example, many ISVs don’t understand that hosting their software applications in a FedRAMP-compliant cloud does not make the actual applications FedRAMP authorized. To earn FedRAMP authorization for software as a service, both the environment and the application must be authorized. Read more of this post

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IT Modernization Means Collaboration for New Jersey CTO

October 3, 2019 by Leave a comment

By Rachel Eckert, SLED Manager

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear from New Jersey’s Chief Technology Officer, Chris Rein, while listening in on a Corporate Leadership Council meeting hosted by NASCIO. Rein took over the job of CTO 16 months ago following the election of a new governor.

One of Rein’s biggest challenges will be updating and modernizing many of the outdated legacy systems. They “have some very old and spotty technology infrastructure,” with the oldest systems being nearly 50 years old, Rein explained during the call. Saying you need to replace these legacy systems is one thing but actually being able to fund a replacement system is whole different animal. Rein has been working with the state’s treasurer to develop a strategy to modernize these systems and speed up the RFP process as well. Read more of this post

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Network Optimization Is a Key Focus of DHS CISO

September 25, 2019 by Leave a comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.

By Lloyd McCoy, Market Intelligence Manager

At a recent summit (sponsored by immixGroup), DHS CISO Paul Beckman, discussed challenges related to network optimization and outlined the steps the agency is taking to ensure both security and operational efficiency.

DHS is taking a close look at its Security Operations Center (SOC) optimization, from maturity standards to contracting. The agency is also looking for “network monetization” through the GSA’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract, in the form of regaining lost workforce hours through automation.

DHS has 16 “loosely federated security operation centers spread geographically throughout the entire country, with varying degrees of maturity.” Beckman’s challenge lies in how to bring them all up to the minimum baseline of security standards.

His first attempt, which focused on consolidation, “didn’t go over too well with my colleagues,” as neither cost effective nor beneficial, Beckman said. That’s when the effort shifted to optimization. Read more of this post

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Key Opportunities in Electronic Records Management

September 18, 2019 by Leave a comment

By Jessica Parks, Analyst

Good news for those who have been trying to sell solutions that facilitate digital government. A little over 2 months ago, OMB and the National Archives (NARA) issued memo M-19-21, informing federal agencies that they must manage all permanent and temporary records electronically by 2022. While this memo is not out of the blue – it was built upon the previous M-18-12 directive – it does lay out a specific timeline for agencies to follow.

Here are a couple of key technologies playing a role in the government’s transition to fully electronic records and how you can approach potential customers.

Automation
Automation will likely play a big part and may even free up agencies to explore emerging technologies such as AI. As agencies face a large volume of records to digitize and then manage, technology that reduces the amount of manual work will be a plus. For example, CMS recently implemented a robotic process automation-based tool to review medical records for Medicare payments. In combination with AI and ML algorithms, this tool has drastically reduced the time it takes to find the necessary data, from about one hour per document to just one minute. Read more of this post

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