Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

See the following -

President’s Budget Moves Spending Transparency Site From GSA To Treasury

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | April 11, 2013

President Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal moves control over the spending transparency website USASpending.gov out of the General Services Administration and gives it to the Treasury Department. Read More »

Proprietary Software Vendors Demand Changes To Issa’s IT Reform Bill

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | November 30, 2012

Friday’s letter also criticized Issa’s legislation for urging agencies to use open source software, which is often cheaper than proprietary software and sometimes easier to update and maintain. That suggestion “strays from the core principle that statutes should be technology neutral,” the organizations said. Read More »

Red Hat's Gunnar Hellekson On Open Government

Andrew Gregory | TechRadar | December 23, 2012

INTERVIEW Red Hat's Gunnar Hellekson on open government
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Report Highlights Positive Elements of U.S. Government Open Source Adoption

I think we've all read our fair share of reports about lessons learned and the challenges and opportunities for governments taking up open source software. Frankly, many of them seem a bit dry, and often repetitive. But one study I recently came across (that has not received much media coverage) stood out. Its predicate was different that most, recognizing the positive: open source software (OSS) "is being used in [the U.S.] government, as well as being released by the government (as both minor improvements and whole new projects), and the government is receiving benefits from doing so. However, many in government are unaware of this." In short, it appears to find the glass half filled—or better—rather than half empty...

The Health-Exchange Failure Isn't Just An IT Problem

Brendan Greely | Bloomberg Businessweek | October 23, 2013

[...] This is a culture problem, the hardest kind to fix for any organization. Which means that whatever happens with Healthcare.gov, the root cause—a culture problem—will definitely not be fixed by Nov. 15. Read More »

The IT Dashboard: Not Exactly Transparent

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | July 29, 2013

Is the Federal IT Dashboard really providing more transparency or just more fog? Read More »

The State Of The CIO

Camille Tuutti | FCW | October 12, 2012

Last year, on the 15th anniversary of the Clinger-Cohen Act becoming law, the Government Accountability Office released a rather gloomy status report on the agency CIO role. GAO found that most CIOs were responsible for just five areas of IT and information management out of 13, and they often lacked the authority to make key decisions about recruiting and IT investments. Read More »

Top 5 Misconceptions About Open Source In Government Programs

On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates 'preference' for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption... Read More »

Treating Organizational Ills Via Patient-Centered Care

Andrew Ritcheson | Government Health IT | September 6, 2012

To truly deliver “more for less” government health agencies should look to organizational advancements made by another community fraught with complexity, trying to cut costs and improve quality simultaneously — the medical community.
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U.S. Digital Services and Playbook: "Default to Open"

About this time last year, I laid out some trends I saw for the coming year in government take up of open source software. Looking back now, it appears those trends are not only here to stay, they are accelerating and are more important than ever. In particular, I wrote that "open source will continue to be the 'go to' approach for governments around the world" and that "increasingly, governments are wrestling with the 'how tos' of open source choices; not whether to use it."... Read More »

U.S. Government Seeks Reduced Use of Custom Software, Releases New Policy to 'Free the Code'

As I've written before, there has been a shift, going back almost a decade, away from the debate over whether to use open source to a focus on the how to. The release by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the U.S. Federal Source Code Policy on August 8th is the latest manifestation of this shift. It achieves the goal laid out in the Obama administration's Second Open Government National Action Plan (PDF) for improved access to custom software code developed for the federal government. The plan emphasized use of (and contributing back to) open source software to fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. It also furthers a long-standing "default to open" objective going back to the early days of the administration...

US Digital Service is Born

Yesterday, the White House announced the formation of the US Digital Service, a cadre of technology sherpas meant to inject more modern commercial practices into government IT, especially the development of websites and mobile applications. It’s obviously inspired by the Government Digital Service, a similar effort in the UK, and the early success of the GSA’s 18F team. Read More »

VA Awards Contract For Mobile Device Management, Apps Store

Jared Serbu | Federal News Radio | October 3, 2012

The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded a long-awaited contract to build a system that will manage a stable of mobile devices officials hope will eventually grow to 100,000 handhelds and tablets. Read More »

VA's Scheduling System Revamp Will Be Big Test Of Agency's Agile Approach

Jack Moore | Nextgov.com | August 29, 2014

The last attempt by the Department of Veterans Affairs to update the system used by hundreds of VA facilities nationwide to schedule and manage veterans’ medical appointments was one of those failed IT projects that have come to hog the spotlight in the post-HealthCare.gov age...

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VanRoekel Bullish On OMB Digital Service's Potential

Colby Hochmuth | FCW | May 23, 2014

As attention turned to the Office of Management and Budget with President Barack Obama announcing the nomination of Shaun Donovan as director of OMB, the office of the federal CIO at OMB was making a splash for a different reason.  

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