In my capacity as Executive Director of the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC), a non-profit 501(c)(3) dedicated to tackling emerging technology issues, I was pleased to serve as the staff lead for the organization's first-ever Innovation Lab, Government and the IoT. ATARC President Tom Suder and I came up with the Innovation Lab concept earlier this year. The Innovation Labs last about 10 weeks, and bring together industry, government and academia to dig de

Last week, GAO announced that they had "found" some 2000 more federal data centers, bringing the total number of federal data centers to some 11,700. The number has fluctuated between 2,000 and 9,000 for the last few years largely because the definition of what constitutes a data center keeps changing. The reality is there are only about 275 data centers that the government considers core, whatever that means. Yesterday, federal CIO Tony Scott announced he was going to take

Last week, the General Services Administration (GSA) awarded a $1 contract for the development of open source code using a new experiment called a micro-purchasing reverse auction, where the maximum amount must be less than $3,500. Many in the federal community applauded this award and the process used by GSA as an example of how the government can get its biggest bang for the buck. The movement associated with this is part of a larger push toward open source and innovation

A couple weeks ago, OMB and GSA announced the formation of a new office at the General Services Administration within the Office of Governmentwide Policy to implement financial management shared services across the government. I was there at the event at the Partnership for Public Service when the OMB and GSA leadership unveiled the plan, as were literally hundreds of others interested in shared services. As I listened to what the "new" plan my mind drifted back to 2004 when