President Barack Obama ran arguably the most technologically advanced political presidential campaign in modern politics during the run up to the primaries in November 2008. Obama assembled an exceptionally savvy campaign team, making use of social networking, YouTube, blogging and other innovative methods of communicating with his [potential] supporters. This same team of clever technologists is apparently finding it quite challenging to adapt those effective techniques to the Federal government.
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The United States Government (USG) is in dire need of strong, visionary CIO leadership to fix the myriad of Information Technology (IT) issues which plague the numerous disparate government agencies such a position is designed to oversee. The USG has long needed visionary leadership, but the current proliferation of IT assets deployed throughout the agencies is at a boiling point – a point requiring reconciliation before a major collapse occurs.
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Surveys often indicate strong positive sentiment towards IT training and certifications — proving again and again that being qualified on IT products is not only beneficial to the individual holding the certification, but that certs also substantially increase value to a company and their IT teams.
Microsoft and Apple alike back their proven business applications with extensive industry-approved IT curriculum aimed at certification in both end-user and system administrator roles.
In Part I here of ‘Microsoft Training vs. Apple Training‘ we’ll take a look at Apple’s version of a professional certification lineup.
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General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) was recently awarded a whopping $95 million dollar 5-year enterprise IT contract in support of the United States Marine Corps.
GDIT announced:
Through the contract, General Dynamics will design, build and integrate the first MCEITS Enterprise IT Center, which provides application hosting capabilities, enterprise shared services, access to enterprise-wide information, collaboration and information sharing across business and warfighter domains.
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Not a super glorious career move, but one that can set you up for a ‘foot in the door’ moment with big upward potential — consider the idea — of jumping head first into an IT Helpdesk position. (The bigger the company, the more room to grow, the better.)
If you’re asking yourself why you should start out at the [so-called] bottom of the IT food chain – here’s why:
Not only will you gain valuable experience in how the belly of an IT organization works, you have the chance to feel customer frustration first hand. Inherently this gives you a sharper and more wiser vantage point when climbing the IT support ladder — keeping you in the loop on how key solutions get implemented and ones that [if you tactfully propose to the right person] will win you a promotion.
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Taking into account the substantial improvements made in technology through to this 21st century, we can easily say the US Government is long overdue in bringing its people a transparent look into civil service dealings.
President Barack Obama appears set to reverse the tide of secrecy and ambiguity in how the US has does business — starting with — Recovery.gov.
Obama had this to say:
We’ll launch an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.
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Another day, another fine example of an IT contractor unnecessarily fleecing the government. This time we have EDS, the technology services company who administers the Navy/Marine Corp Intranet (NMCI), severely overcharging for “classified spillage” cleaning efforts.
The Navy report from October disclosed that in fiscal 2008 there were 52 incidents of classified data being placed on unclassified electronic systems, about half of them Pacific Fleet and Naval Education and Training Command systems, and a total of 37 were on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the massive unclassified computer network used for command and control on more than 350,000 military computers.
Current reports have EDS charging the Navy to the tune of approximately $5 million annually, a figure roughly 10 times the cost of merely replacing the infected hard disk drives with new ones.
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Whether you run your own home network or are part of the IT shop administering the corporate network, there are some basic information security protocols which should always be followed. These tips are designed to help you, the administrator, adequately protect the network from the myriad of attacks available today. Ensuring your network is free of compromise is vitally important for all network users because it allows for the continued, uninterrupted operation of the very network they rely upon to perform their job.
This list is, by no means, designed to be all-inclusive. It is merely a small subset of tips which should help set most people in the right direction. These tips are generally married with more complex solutions, producing a far more comprehensive effort than the mere implementation of these basics.
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Rich Chuckrey here. The agenda is simple: blog on current real-world technology employing critical analysis, fair reporting and raw opinion. The goal is to leave no IT stone unturned. We will look at topics like Microsoft’s attempt to buy Yahoo [now without the Jerry Yang roadblock], upcoming IT initiatives under Barrack Obama’s administration, current Web 2.0 vs. The Semantic Web vs. Web 3.0, and anything else technical and worthy of bringing into the TechMiso spotlight.
Involved in IT policy and planning for an organization inside the U.S. Department of Defense, I consider government a prime target for criticism and review. A good chunk of my content will also be spent targeting IT issues in and around government — Uncovering deficiencies [and efficiencies] in projects, procurement, budget, security and staffing while closely inspecting their influential factors — good and bad. I will provide comment on IT decisions made in government offices from the President on down to our small town Mayors.
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It is commonly understood that the United States government pays hand over fist for even the most minute product, regardless whether tangible or otherwise. I grew up hearing stories about nuts and bolts for production aircraft purchased by the Air Force costing thousands of dollars when the company should have charged the government orders of magnitude less. Even after being bombarded with story after story, I chalked it all up to competitor jealousy.
My entire perspective was forever changed after I started working with the government as a contractor for the United States. Even though I was in the Navy for almost 9 years, and worked hand-in-hand with many contractors, I never really was privy to what you see when you work directly for a company who has a contract with the government, especially the Department of Defense.
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