U.S. federal CIO? “Someone from Google or Facebook will be eaten alive”
The selection of US Chief Information Officer must be an innovative Washington IT insider. Anyone else is doomed to fail.
Deconstructing Governments: Is Estonia the first Full Stack Government Startup?
The purpose of a government is provide services to its citizens. After all its all about ‘for the people’. Many of these services are not related to a geographical boundary – a few like fire, safety and roads are. This is why we already experience multiple government bodies – city, county, state and federal but […]
Government Mass Surveillance Will Create a Surge in Technology Spend
How the NSA hacked Google in one simple graphic. Photograph: Washington Post The Guardian has a presentation called The NSA Files that is the most brilliant rich media presentation of a complex subject I have ever come across outside of a museum. So go read it, even if it is just to see the presentation. […]
Cloud in five years’ time
Here are my thoughts on the outlook for cloud in the next few years. Growth, disruption and regulation all loom large.
Social Government?
I spent time last week at an IBM / Federal Computer Week Social Business event for the Federal Government. I tend to focus most of my time researching commercial uses of social tools, not public sector, so I was very interested to hear what government agencies were doing. In addition I hoped to get a […]
Europe Sets Course for Cloud
There’s a perception that cloud computing has become a “mature” technology, a perception shared by few but anticipated by most everyone else with the exception of those trying to preserve their self-interests. I don’t blame them – each person inherently protects self-interests. They’re wrong though. Cloud is not mature. It…
Common Worries Among Corporations and Governments
Corporations and governments are starting to worry about a common set of related issues. During the last two months I was fortunate to participate in several conversations with top corporate executives and foreign government officials all of whom are visiting Silicon Valley with increasing frequency. The conversations covered topics ranging from innovation and the rapid […]
Government and IT: A recipe for rip-offs
That’s the title of a report by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) of the UK House of Commons. It says “The Government’s over-reliance on large contractors for its IT needs combined with a lack of in-house skills is a “recipe for rip-offs”. The committee found that as a result IT procurement too often resulted […]
In Which Basab Gets UIDed
A couple of weeks back, I was in the Infosys Bhubaneswar offices. On Friday, which was my last day at work before my vacation, UID enrollment was going on on campus. SBI, one of the agencies entrusted to enroll people into Aadhar was going to be at Infosys for a week. I decided that I […]
Minnesota HealthMatch: A perfect storm for IT failure
When poor judgment and lousy communication meet genuinely bad technology, it creates an awful perfect storm where IT failure is almost certain. Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS) just closed out such a project.
