In Depth Show Blog – Jan. 2, 2013

Your agency should move toward a more proactive cybersecurity posture in 2014. Continuous monitoring is the term most people use to describe how agencies should do things, but there are other terms too. The terms, though, are less important than the results. Scott Montgomery, vice president and chief technology officer of public sector at McAfee, was Francis Rose’s guest on Industry Chatter.

The potential problems of adding mobile devices to a federal cloud system could outweigh their potential benefits. Dave Wennergren, vice president of Enterprise Technologies and Services at CACI and former assistant deputy chief management officer of the Defense Department, is writing about that intersection in his Top 3 for 2014.

1. The Nexus of Mobility and Cloud Computing. The power and peril of mobility/BYOD coupled with the promise of cloud computing could create a perfect storm as organizations grapple with fulfilling the pledge to provide the right person with the right information — from anywhere at any time. With a shift in approach to security, opportunities exist to both drive down costs through the effective use of cloud and mobile solutions as well as delivering more effective information sharing within and across organizations. The bringing together of mobile devices and cloud computing will also provide an opening to consider the potential disruptive force that BYOD could have on an organization — delighting the user, reducing the organization’s costs and creating a changing mindset where the employee gets to pick out not only the car they drive and the suit they wear to work, but the computing device they use too!

2. 3-D Printing and Distance Support – Revolutionizing Maintenance and the Supply Chain. Some organizations are already recognizing the potential to both reduce costs and implement solutions faster by replacing labor and travel intensive maintenance solutions with Web-based distance support solutions for logistics/maintenance operations. With the continuing maturity of 3-D printing (including the move to use other materials like metal in addition to plastic), distance support maintenance solutions could be augmented by on-site “part fabrication” to dramatically speed up turnaround times and dramatically reduce costs. Beam me up, Scotty.

3. Data is King. Large organizations (public and private) are sitting on treasure troves of data that are still not being leveraged effectively for business intelligence and knowledge sharing. Efforts to decouple data from legacy applications, tag data to help provide data-level security (opening the door for the alignment of identity management, attribute-based access control and data) as well as leveraging advances in analytical tools to array data in more meaningful ways will make the difference between mission success or failure.

The problems with HealthCare.gov are fading, but the post-mortem on how they happened is just starting. Congress will look at those problems more when it comes back from recess next week. Federal News Radio’s Tom Temin says he’s not sure those lessons have sunk in across government.

Competition should get tougher this year for business with the federal government. Charles Tiefer, a professor of government contracting law at the University of Baltimore Law School and a former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, is writing about competition in contracting in his Top 3 for 2014.

1. The need for robust suspension and debarment.

2. The rise, and now the fall, of government employee furloughs.

3. The struggle over getting certified cost or pricing information (from contractors)

You only have about two weeks left to nominate someone for the next round of Service to America medals. But before you do it’s important to know who qualifies for the prestigious award.

Related Story: How to Write a Winning Sammies Nomination

The Homeland Security Department wants to build networks of trust with state, local and federal government partners as well as with international and private sector organizations. The goal is to make information sharing easier and more secure. One of the only ways to do that is through federated identity management. Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller tells us how DHS is putting the pieces in place to ease the burden of managing so many different identities.