Articles by John K. Higgins

Vendors of cybersecurity offerings are finding that the U.S. government is serious about improving the protection of federal IT assets. A steady stream of data protection contracts has been flowing to providers, including some notable high-value transactions during the last half of 2016 One example is a Department of Homeland Security contract, wit...

United States government agencies will continue to invest hefty sums in cloud computing technology over the next five years. After that period, spending on cloud is likely to moderate, but the amount of investing will remain at impressive levels Cloud computing is far from mature within the federal government, but it has reached a point at which i...

Providing cybersecurity that is adequate to meet increasing threats has proven to be a perpetual catch-up process. Public sector agencies are particularly sensitive targets, with high visibility not only to the citizens they serve, but also to cyberattackers Despite the emphasis on cyberprotection spurred by a major breach at the federal Office of...

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has a lot of catching up to do in dealing with innovative information technology, as it affects not only conventional finance, but also new channels of e-commerce made possible through advances in IT. These channels include cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, related "blockchain" technologies, and other Internet-driven financial services...

The U.S. Commerce Department recently launched a new effort to jump-start more efficient ways to manage the vast amounts of data that reside within the federal government and put it to productive use. The National Technical Information Service, a unit within the department, is leading the effort. NTIS has selected 35 joint venture partners, or JVP...

The United States Federal Communications Commission last week adopted privacy rules for both wired and wireless broadband ISPs aimed at giving consumers greater control over their data, more privacy, and stronger security safeguards for that data The rules implement Section 222 of the Communications Act. They establish a framework of customer conse...

Just when most of the country is on vacation -- including the U.S. Congress -- federal government agencies become active in awarding contracts. The federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and many agencies wait until the last quarter of the year to make acquisitions. The last few months have brought billions of dollars in federal contracts for information technology providers.

The U.S. government plans to initiate an updated contracting vehicle for the acquisition of cybersecurity information technologies for federal agencies this month. The purpose of the program is to make it easier and more efficient for federal agencies to obtain cyberprotection services Specifically, the General Services Administration will include ...

U.S. government agencies spend an overwhelming amount of their annual information technology budgets simply to maintain old and out-of-date systems. As a result, the amount of money available for investing in modernizing IT keeps shrinking, thus depriving vendors of major marketing opportunities at the federal level The official federal IT budget h...

Technology vendors that support the different missions of U.S. government agencies may have a major opportunity to provide innovative IT assistance for a task that is common to all: preparing the payroll for 2.3 million federal workers The General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management have been sifting through responses fro...

U.S. government agencies have been directed to share with each other software code that has been developed on a customized basis for individual governmental units. Much of the code involves commercial vendor offerings. In addition to interagency sharing, government units are required to share portions of their customized code with the general public, a move characterized as promoting an open source approach to software utilization...

The U.S. Department of Defense plans to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a project that is designed to further the incorporation of commercial cloud capabilities into DoD's information technology operations. Vendors have been asked to submit bids for the project, known as "Mil-Cloud 2.0." The procurement is one element of a comprehensive stra...

U.S. government agencies gradually have been getting a handle on utilizing the potential of big data and data analytics. At the same time, the Obama administration has recognized that significantly more investment will be required for federal big data research in order to guide agencies toward maximizing the value of processing huge chunks of data...

The U.S. government is in the process of hiring a small army of information technology specialists to bolster its efforts to protect data held at federal agencies from cybersecurity threats. The federal government hired 3,000 new cybersecurity and IT professionals in the first six months of the current fiscal year. In addition, the government is "...

Federal agencies will continue to spend heavily on information technology over the next five years, but the pace and direction of spending will be complicated by shifting priorities, congressional constraints and a presidential election The bottom line is that the overall rate of IT spending will be above US$98 billion each year for next six federa...

With breaches of consumer data occurring all too frequently, who could be against proposals to improve privacy on the Internet? Well, a broad swath of the e-commerce sector, ranging from CTIA-The Wireless Association to USTelecom and the National Retail Federation, is strongly opposed to a recent proposal from the Federal Communications Commission ...

Software vendors who sell their wares to the U.S. government soon will face a significantly different marketing environment in terms of how federal agencies acquire the programs and technologies that keep IT systems going. Federal agencies spent nearly US$9 billion in 2015 on software, according to a recent congressional report The Office of Manage...

In the five years since the U.S. government put a clear emphasis on utilizing cloud technology, federal procurement offices have engaged in seemingly endless tinkering of contracting vehicles to promote cloud adoption The core element of virtually every type of federal cloud procurement contract is the service level agreement, upon which billions o...

Selling information technology to the U.S. government is never easy, and it's even harder when a vendor cannot highlight the qualitative differences it believes separates its competencies from other providers competing for the same work Yet a major contracting tool federal agencies use in seeking IT products and services tends to smother those diff...

What's not to like about the U.S. government offering information technology vendors $17.5 billion for products and services? The opportunity is attractive, and many vendors have expressed interest in a U.S. Department of Defense contract that covers the acquisition of a broad range of IT capabilities. Offered through the Defense Information System...