Strategies for successful cloud management and implementation.

GSA's Login.gov identity service is now available to city and state governments! This is literally the biggest and most important govtech news to come out in the last five years!

If you're like me, you may be having trouble keeping up with all the new Executive Orders and OMB Memos that the Biden Administration is putting out. To help, I've created a little bot to look for changes on specific pages of the White House website: @EOPbot!

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Robotic Processing Automation (RPA), and other related predictive algorithm technologies continue to gain attention. However, at the moment their promises are far greater than the reality, and instead of successes we continue to see the worst of ourselves reflected back.

Since the Reagan era, government agencies have outsourced more and more IT tasks to contractors and vendors, under the false promise of reduced risk and increased savings for taxpayers. This effort has lobotomized government by eliminating subject matter experts, reducing its ability to manage change, and as a result has greatly increased — rather than reduced — the risk for Federal agencies.

The work improving technology in government through policy initiatives over the last twelve years has been very successful, however there will always be more work that needs to be done. Today, there are several key steps that the Biden Administration could immediately address and work on over the next four years to continue to build trust and drive maturity in technology across government to “Build Back Better” — not just at the Federal level, but state and local as well.

I don’t mean to call anyone out, but I want to talk about programming tests in hiring and contracting. Stop doing them.

I see many of my former technology-colleagues now suddenly eager to return to government- or join for the first time- and I’m very excited to work with you all again! That being said, here are a few thoughts from someone who stuck around for the hard parts over the last 4 years.

Many lengthy books and articles have been written on how to be fulfilled at work, good management, and keeping your staff engaged and excited. However, I’ve found one simple equation that is the secret to all of these.