September 6, 2006

Good history of US federal government IT contracting

Over 95% of TCG’s work is with US federal government agencies. Washington Technology has just published a history of US government contracting that provides a pretty good background of the marketplace and how it’s changed over the last 20 years. Here are…

NIST publishes secure Web Services

NIST has published a paper (Special Publication 800–95)that addresses the problem of deploying Web Services in an SOA while maintaining security. Some of their recommendations:  Using XML encryption to ensure confidentiality. Using XML signatures to ensure integrity. Using Security Assertion Markup…
September 5, 2006

E‑Gov at Five Years, Part Five

In the final part of his review of US federal e‑gov activities Daniel Pulliam looks at the lines of business initiatives, which many regard as the next phase of e‑government. The Grants Management Line of Business and Grants.gov are mentioned…
September 1, 2006

E‑Gov at Five Years

GovExec has a series of articles ( 1, 2, 3, 4) reviewing the history of US federal government e‑gov initiatives — their genesis, funding, and results. It’s a good review for anyone playing catch-up, and Grants.gov makes an appearance a couple of times.…

S.2590 — A month of procedural nonsense

It’s been quite a month for S.2590, the bill that proposes to establish an easily searchable database of all federal grants and contracts, and about which I’ve blogged several times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The bill had a hold put…
August 21, 2006

GAO report panel discussion — got questions?

The National Grants Partnership is planning to host a panel discussion about the GAO’s last report about grants streamlining on September 12th. It looks like I will be moderating the panel, so if you’ve got a question that you’d like addressed to some…

US slips in e‑gov rankings

As reported on GovExec’s Fedblog: U.S. Leapfrogged in E‑Gov Rankings The United States government has slipped a spot in the world-wide rankings for electronic government compiled by Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy. Researchers analyzed nearly 200 countries to come…

GSA to study agencies’ service to citizens

While its focus will be on call centers, e‑mail responses, and web sites, it’s still good to see the GSA studying how well agencies are servicing citizen’s information needs. The first iteration of FirstGov was an amalgamation of sites but…
August 12, 2006

OMB seeks proof of e‑gov cost savings

Following Congress’s action to reduce funding for e‑gov, OMB is now asking for agencies to identify e‑gov costs and savings. This is going to put more pressure on folks in CIO offices to gather yet more data. It’s data that…
August 9, 2006

Measuring government ROI

InfoWorld reports that SAP executives have said that “struggle to define and measure the economic, social and political returns of government-funded technology programs”. At the root of this, of course, is the desire of vendors like SAP to help government…