Implementing Equitable Data To Ensure Government Works for the Public
U.S. Digital Corps Fellow, Meredith Brown, reflects on her journey to civic tech and her impactful work supporting the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Infrastructure
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News and Events on Infrastructure
18 posts
Making Infrastructure Less Invisible
Over the last year, there has been a constant stream of activity at the .gov registry, but most of it hasn’t been on display. This post highlights some of the work to make .gov the most boringly secure, conventionally unconventional domain for governments. — via DotGov Registry
GSA’s New Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Cloud Guide Helps Agencies Make Better Decisions About Cloud Architecture
GSA’s New Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Cloud Guide Helps Agencies Make Better Decisions About Cloud Architecture—Agencies need informed strategies to understand, anticipate, rationalize, and optimize major cloud architecture decisions. To facilitate the decision process, the GSA Data Center and Cloud Optimization Initiative Program Management Office (DCCOI PMO) is pleased to announce the release of the Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Guide, developed in collaboration with the Cloud and Infrastructure Community of Practice (C&I CoP). This guide is another example of GSA’s commitment to creating simple, user-friendly information and resources to help federal agencies use technology to meet their missions in an effective and efficient way. — via General Services Administration
GSA’s Fedramp Celebrates 10 Years of Impact on Cloud Security
GSA’s FedRAMP Celebrates 10 Years of Impact on Cloud Security—Today, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) celebrates its 10-year anniversary. On December 8, 2011, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) signed a memo establishing FedRAMP to provide a cost-effective, risk-based approach for the adoption and use of cloud services. This landmark reflects GSA and FedRAMP’s commitment to protecting public and federal information through supporting IT modernization and securing IT infrastructure. Over the past ten years, the program has seen an incredible increase in the adoption of FedRAMP-authorized services and will play a critical role in improving the nation’s cybersecurity. — via General Services Administration
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The Data Briefing: Ten Years of Digital Transformation—Lessons Learned
Since 2007, a major consulting firm has conducted an annual survey on organizations’ “Digital IQ.” In the ten years of organizations grappling with digital transformation, what has been learned?
Vets.gov: A Modern Software Development Environment in Government
When people think of government software, they often think of COBOL and PowerBuilder 5, with manual software deploys every three to six months on a fixed number of machines in a government-run data center. This perception is sometimes justified, but sometimes entirely wrong. Regardless, the perception makes many developers reluctant to work for the government
‘Cybersecuring’ the Internet of Things
I recently had the chance to talk with the legendary Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet. We had a wide-ranging discussion about the past, present and future of the internet, network security and what it would take to successfully, safely and reliably merge the digital and physical worlds, a concept known
To Get Things Done, You Need Great, Secure Tools
To folks new to government, one of the most surprising differences between our work and work in the private sector are the barriers in accessing commercially available software, and commercially available Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) in particular. There are good reasons for these barriers: the government places premiums on considerations such as security, privacy, accessibility, license management,
Laying the Foundation for a More Secure, Modern Government
Summary: Building on efforts to boost Federal cybersecurity & as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, today we’re releasing a proposed guidance to modernize Federal IT. America’s spirit of ingenuity and entrepreneurship created the world’s most innovative economy and keeps us dominant in today’s digital age. Indeed, in 1985 about 2,000 people used the Internet;
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
DNSSEC vs. Elastic Load Balancers: the Zone Apex Problem
This is the final post in the 5-part series, The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment. Federal websites are required to implement DNSSEC, which relies on knowing exactly what server is responding to a request. In Amazon Web Services (AWS), the problem of unreliable servers is solved by
Agency Mobile Resources at the Ready Following OMB Memo
Note: This is a guest blog post by Amando E. Gavino, Jr., Director, Office of Network Services, ITS/FAS/GSA. He is responsible for a portfolio of telecommunication acquisition solutions that provide government agencies the ability to meet their diverse set of telecommunication requirements. Acquisition solutions include Networx, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions – EIS (the future replacement for
Let’s Encrypt Those CNAMES, Shall We?
This is post 4 in the 5-part series, The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment. This post references the previous posts frequently, so please read those before reading this one if you haven’t done so already. In addition to the DNS challenges created by offering “masked” domains such
A Domain by Any Other Name: CNAMES, Wildcard Records and Another Level of Indirection
This is post 3 in the 5-part series The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment. “All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except of course for the problem of too many indirections.” – David Wheeler The simplest of our four requirements was
Quality, Speed, and Lower Costs: Yes, You Can Have It All
This is post 2 in the 5-part series The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment. The last major infrastructure upgrade that DigitalGov Search had was in 2010. Not only has technology evolved significantly since then, but so have business models for right-sizing costs. Moving to Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Making Modernizations and Migrations Successful
Summary: Today, we’re launching the M3 Framework to provide agencies with leading best practices for mission-support function modernizations and migrations. The government’s internal operations have a powerful impact on service to its citizens, and this Administration has made transformation of management practices within the Federal Government a key priority. By sharing and streamlining mission support services
The Right Tools for the Job: Re-Hosting DigitalGov Search to a Dynamic Infrastructure Environment
This is the first post of a 5-part series. DigitalGov Search is a commercial-grade search engine provided as a shared-service by the United States General Services Administration. We power about 2,300 search configurations for hundreds of federal, state, and local government agencies. Using our platform, agencies can easily configure a search experience for the public that
Modernizing Federal IT Part 5: Modernizing Software Architecture
This is the fifth in a series describing how the Social Security Administration is working towards a more modern IT infrastructure. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here and part 4 here. In the next three posts we will consider the problem of modernizing old legacy software. In this post we will start a
