As the fiscal cliff deadline gets closer, your agency is still waiting to see the impact on operations. Jim Beaupre, the former head of the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council and now president of his own consulting firm, says the budget is issue one for the whole year ahead, not just the next few weeks.

Jim Beaupre's Top 3 for 2013

The outstanding issue in FY13 will be the budget and how the continuing resolutions will affect government buying. All the agencies are reluctant to spend budget dollars as they really don't know what their budget will be. The CR is currently running through March 2013 and I suspect we will have a CR throughout FY13. CIO turnover. The current administration has done an excellent job putting some good people in place but if history is any indicator there will be significant turnover in the CIO ranks. The pending CIO legislation on he Hill won't help as while it would provide more authority and responsibility to CIO's it most likely will not get passed, frustrating some CIO's who will leave their positions. This turnover is always difficult as it take at least 2 years for a CIO to have an impact on an agency. Cloud and mobility. These seem to be two issues but are really tied together and linked to budget issues. Cloud to deploy applications with less cost and mobility so the government can discontinue maintaining the hundreds of thousand of laptops and desktops deployed today. I predict these will not happen unless the budget pressures are so intense there will be no choice, otherwise the agencies will use security as the issue for not moving to the cloud or mobility.