Chief Information Officer Blog

Apps.gov a New Frontier

On September 16, Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer, launched Apps.gov (http://www.apps.gov). Leveraging The General Services Adminstration Advantage engine the storefront offers business and productivity applications and social media tools. The storefront streamlines the acquisition process for these offerings and provides access to many Software as a Service (SaaS) products.

This is an exciting first step in making these products more easily available to Federal agencies and should foster innovation within business lines and increase productivity. Logical next steps along this path involve Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. As Government navigates through these cloud offerings an interesting paradox may unfold...how do large complex organizations foster the entreprenurial spirit and innovation that can be gained from such opportunities while balancing interoperability, enterprise buying power and other issues.

This is a great start and opportunities abound for cloud computing applications in the Federal space!

Posted at 05:58PM Sep 18, 2009 by Chris Smith in General  |  Comments[0]

Welcome!

I would like to welcome you to the USDA OCIO Blog site. I am Chris Smith, Chief Information Officer at USDA.

• Why Blog?
By leveraging Web 2.0 Technology, the OCIO’s goal is to reach out to employees and constituents and provide them news and updates as to what is going on in their government, and allow them to reach back out and provide open and honest feedback. I look to this forum to become a means to provide communications in both directions so that we may take feedback and ideas and use them to provide a more robust CIO shop as well as expanding the possibilities of ventures that provide a streamlined and well run USDA.
• From us...
You can expect an open forum where we will provide updates and answers to the questions and comments that you post. When possible, we will post up information to keep you informed of activities occurring here, at the OCIO.
• From you...
We would like constructive questions, thoughts and ideas to help us grow as an organization.
• What we do…
The CIO is independent of any other office or agency of the Department. The CIO reports directly to the Secretary and has primary responsibility for supervision and coordination within the Department of the design, acquisition, maintenance, use and disposal of information technology by USDA agencies, for monitoring the performance of USDA's information technology programs and activities, and for assuring that USDA information management is consistent with the principles of the Paperwork Reduction Act and with information security and privacy requirements. The CIO also deals with top level officials in the Office of Management and Budget, other federal agencies, and appears to testify before Congressional committees.
• We offer the following services…
• e-Government
• Enterprise IT Solutions
• Information and Technology Management
• IT Security
• Service Center Modernization Oversight
• Telecommunications Services & Operations
• Program Management

Posted at 11:55AM Aug 20, 2009 by NITC Admin in General  |  Comments[4]