5 commandments of cloud preparation
By John Mooney and Jeanne Ross
Talk of the cloud has stirred up a lot of excitement. A 2011 mandate from the government CIO to move toward a cloud-first strategy has managers hoping that public cloud solutions will provide a quick...
Portability challenges for government agencies moving to hybrid clouds
The inaugural IDC Government Insights report, released earlier this year, paints a revealing picture of how the U.S. Federal Government is spending and planning to spend information technology (IT) dollars on cloud solutions.
The...
Government agencies need to scale data storage, but up or out?
As government agencies sit at roughly the midway point in their march to meeting the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) target to consolidate at least 1,200 data centers by 2015, there is evidence of tangible...
Striking the right balance between BYOD and security
There is little indication that the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend at government agencies will abate anytime soon. This presents a challenge for agencies seeking to rapidly extend policy and security controls to smartphones...
In era of sequestration, data storage optimization key for government agencies
Today, many government agencies – civilian and defense – find themselves in a technology quandary: the volume of data that must be stored is growing rapidly, while shrinking budgets are limiting capital expenditures (i.e. –...
Ridding ourselves of poor translations
Have you ever plugged a sentence into a machine translation software and received a result that was so bad it blew your mind? The Bad Translator app can generate a perfect example of what can happen to a sentence when you run it...
The futuristic marriage of machine translation and speech recognition
Speech recognition, executed without mistakes, is the Holy Grail of translation. If we could talk into our smartphones and have vocalized a flawless translation into any language of our choosing, be it Pashtun or Portuguese, the...
Counterfeit parts have real consequences
By Matt Hartzell, Smith & Associates
Counterfeit components pose a growing problem in the electronics supply chain -- the same supply chain that brings us everything from our personal phones and tablets, to workplace...
A broadband solution to fiscal crises
By Reed Hundt and Blair Levin
After Congress and the White House close the gap between the Democratic and Republican approaches to the “fiscal cliff”, there is another gap that they need to bridge: the gap between how the worlds...
Making trends transparent across languages
There’s a data revolution afoot, and both business and government are in the thick of it. In corporate IT, hardly a day goes by where you don’t hear about analytics. For the first time ever, executives can make decisions based on...
Dynamic balance: BYOD and martial arts
The bring your own device (BYOD) movement is constantly the topic of discussion in tech publications, on social media and at industry conferences. At a recent Ba Gua (Chinese martial arts) class a new spin on the topic came to me...
Translation as fuel: How government translation memory will evolve
The United States dollar is weak, driving an increasing orientation towards global exports. The Korean manufacturer Samsung and America’s Apple are in a patent war over mobile phones. The average annual income in China has...
Don’t let bad numbers fail your good project
Innovative people usually fail. Yes, with persistence, innovators in technology, business and government also succeed – and there is plenty evidence to prove both points. So how do we measure new ideas with old numbers?
First,...
What Tebow-mania can teach us about measuring success
No person in sports today is more polarizing than Tim Tebow. Just mentioning his name awakens a reaction from the sleepy morning crowd by the coffeepot. Even football naysayers confidently offer their opinions - - especially on...
What do business, government and sports have in common: Numbers
“Numbers never lie.” This mantra has become the all-encompassing truth that business executives, government technology leaders, security analysts, academic gurus and even sports historians universally accept.
Experts tell us to...
How the war on terror changed translation in government
In today’s post-9/11 era, almost every U.S. government agency has been affected by the war on terror. For consumers, TSA security checks and the presence of the National Guard at major events are continuing reminders of the...
Golf and security: A lesson in risk and reward
Working in the information technology/security field over the last 15 years, I have given many small gifts to customers, associates and colleagues. Just last week I received one of my first gifts from a customer. It was a book...
The time is right for the International Cybersecurity Dialogue
Ever since I became Michigan's first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) in 2002, I have noticed a disturbing gap between front-line users, security technologists and many senior policy makers. While both public and private...
Verifying identity for crowdsourced translation: Moving forward
“The simple definition of globalization is the interweaving of markets, technology, information systems, and telecommunications networks in a way that is shrinking the world from a size medium to a size small.”
-Thomas Friedman,...
Partnering with neighborhood experts
Last month I blogged about the partnerships you should build inside your organization. In keeping with that tone, it's time we discussed expanding that partnership mentality to include some of the best technical resources you can...
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