Emerging Tech

The Data Briefing: It Takes an Online Community to Digitally Transform an Organization

The open source movement has changed how we develop software, create content, and even do science. Using a community to help complete projects and bring about change has become so ubiquitous in the last ten years that it has even earned a name — crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a powerful tool and is now being used to help

Bill Brantley

Nov 23, 2016

A New Prize Challenge for Virtual and Augmented Reality Learning Tools

The Administration has launched a new competition for virtual and augmented reality developers to create learning tools to support career and technical education.

Erik Martin

Albert Palacios

Nov 18, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: Americans’ ‘Digital Divide’ on Tech Savviness and Digital Learning

The Pew Internet and the American Life Project released a report recently that analyzed the use of digital tools for different groups of tech literacies.

Will Sullivan

Nov 15, 2016

The Data Briefing: Four Steps to Becoming a Data-Driven Organization

As the Federal government agencies begin the digital transformation journey, becoming a data-driven organization is even more vital. What does it mean to become a data-driven organization? According to one definition, “[a] data-driven company is an organization where every person who can use data to make better decisions, has access to the data they need

Bill Brantley

Nov 09, 2016

The Data Briefing: Learning from the U.S. Cities on How to Implement Big Data Initiatives

A recent study of big data initiatives in 65 cities has interesting guidance for Federal big data initiatives. The researchers studied how data is collected and then used for decision making in what they called “the framework for Big Data initiatives.” There are two major cycles in the framework: “The data cycle governs the tools

Bill Brantley

Nov 02, 2016

Trends on Tuesdays: Mobile Phone Camera Upgrades Offer Interesting Opportunities for Government Agencies

Professional photographer and early “iPhonography” pioneer, Chase Jarvis coined the phrase, “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” The recent jumps in mobile phone photo technology presents interesting opportunities for government agencies to consider as mobile phone cameras are starting to rival and surpass professional gear. When Google and Apple both announced their

Will Sullivan

Nov 01, 2016

The Data Briefing: Help Predict the Future of Federal Government Data

In December, I plan to write two postings detailing a scenario analysis for the next ten years of the Federal government’s data technologies. Governments are on the cusp of amazing technological advances propelled by artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, and the Internet of Things. Also, governments will face new challenges such as the recent global cyber

Bill Brantley

Oct 26, 2016

GSA launches new AI, Virtual Reality, and Authentication Programs

Today we’re launching three new initiatives powered by GSA Digital Communities that leap federal agencies ahead on some of the most innovative new capabilities becoming available to our programs — Artificial Intelligence, Virtual/Augmented Reality, and the U.S. Digital Registry. These new Communities and portal are products of inter-agency collaboration and our shared commitment pushing the

Justin Herman

Oct 26, 2016

The Data Briefing: Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment the Work of Frontline Government Employees

You have probably read about the recent release of the White House’s report on using artificial intelligence (AI). As with previous technologies, AI holds much promise in the areas of education, commerce, criminal justice, the environment—almost all aspects of the American public’s life. AI also poses a danger if it is not properly managed and

Bill Brantley

Oct 19, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: The Digital Interface — Without a Face — Is Coming Fast

The seemingly sci-fi world envisioned in the movie Her is very close to becoming our reality. Several new developments merging hardware, artificial intelligence technology, chatbots and persistent audio assistants are now available, with software developer kits to expand the platforms.

Will Sullivan

Oct 18, 2016

The Data Briefing: Twenty Years of USAJOBS

I recently sat down with Michelle Earley, Program Manager, to discuss the new changes for the 20th anniversary of USAJOBS. 1) What are the three big lessons learned from 20 years of building and managing USAJOBS? I think one of the greatest benefits of being an Agile program is that we are constantly learning. In

Bill Brantley

Oct 12, 2016

The Data Briefing: The Federal Data Cabinet—Promoting Data Literacy, Cultural Change, and the Federal Data Applications Ecosystem

Last Wednesday, the White House held the first Open Data Summit to showcase the open data accomplishments of the Obama Administration. One of the highlights was the formation of a government-wide “data cabinet.” Announced by Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil, the data cabinet is essentially a community of practice comprising the Federal agency’s data professionals. As

Bill Brantley

Oct 05, 2016

The Data Briefing: A New Perspective on the Digital Transformation of Government

One day, at an unnamed agency, the Outlook server crashed. The server stayed down for the rest of the afternoon. Deprived of email and meeting calendars, employees wandered around trying to remember what meetings they had to attend. Other employees went searching for people who they ordinarily would email. There was confusion that made people

Bill Brantley

Sep 28, 2016

The Data Briefing: Should U.S. Federal Employees Become Data Science Literate?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) Digital Service has researched ways to increase data science literacy among the UK public service. Data science literacy goes further than data literacy, in that civil servants will know how to apply data science concepts and methods in their everyday work. I thought it would be useful to share the UK

Bill Brantley

Sep 21, 2016

The Data Briefing: Harnessing the Internet of Things and Synthetic Data to Provide Better Flood Warnings and Prevent Veterans Suicides

Two significant items in federal government data in the last few weeks: The Department of Commerce releases the National Water Model. The National Water Model provides a comprehensive model of river flows so local communities can better prepare for possible flooding events. What is especially amazing about the National Water Model is that it pulls

Bill Brantley

Sep 14, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: Pokemon Go-es Away Slowly

According to a recent report in Bloomberg, the wildly popular augmented reality game we reported on a few weeks ago—and the focus of a piece about government agencies using it to engage citizens—appears to have hit a ceiling and is slowly losing active fans in August.

Will Sullivan

Aug 30, 2016

The Data Briefing: Microservices and Serverless Apps — A New Direction for Federal Government Mobile Apps?

Continuing from last week’s column on DevOps and containers, I will explain two other hot trends in IT — microservices and serverless apps. For those who want official federal government guidance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a draft special publication on microservices, application containers, and system virtual machines (PDF, 660

Bill Brantley

Aug 24, 2016

The Data Briefing: DevOps and Containers and Why They Are Important to Transforming Federal Government IT

You may have heard about “DevOps” in the news or when meeting with IT professionals. What exactly is DevOps and what, if any, connection does it have with agile? Also, what do “containers” have to do with all of this? In this week’s column, I will introduce DevOps and a related technology: containers. Some DevOps

Bill Brantley

Aug 17, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: Signs of the App-ocalypse

A new report from the Mobile Ecosystem Forum shows that most users delete apps because of security concerns. The report also said that 47% of survey respondents would pay extra for an app that didn’t share personal information and that the inability to find a privacy policy is one of the leading reasons for consumers losing trust

Will Sullivan

Aug 16, 2016

The Data Briefing: FINDing Great Global Development Data Visualizations Courtesy of the State Department

Federal agencies have been releasing some fascinating data visualization tools in the last year. Recently, the State Department unveiled the Beta version of FIND or the “F Interagency Network Databank.” From the description in the FAQ: “The F Interagency Network Databank (FIND) is an online tool that enables users to explore and analyze national level

Bill Brantley

Aug 10, 2016

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