last couple of weeks have been busy, heavily involed in privacy and web 2.0 research. working a number of architecture projects. going to start working on web 2.0 and privacy in the federal market as some new blog posts. Also considering a series on using new media and social networking to promote enterprise architecture.
Bagpipe and the trombone
May 25, 2009While I generally focus this blog on technical areas in the management consulting space I wanted to add some discussions about music, particularly the trombone and bagpipe, both of which I play. My hope is this blog entery will find other bagpipers who play trombone and vis versa and we’ll be able to collaborate on issues and music.
Bagpipe
I’ve only been playing the bagpipe for about 8 months but I find it a fun instrument to play. I’ve started with a basic chanter (see my facebook page) but I’ve also added a set of kitchen (small) pipes. I find that the low G is different on the chanter vs. the pipes (fingering is further apart) but all in all the biggest challenge with the pipes is keeping enough air in the bag. As a trombone player this is a challenge because my air doesn’t necessarily correspond to the notes (for the pipes) and it makes a greater use of the cheeks to blow and push air whereas a trombone player does not puff out their cheeks.
more to follow
GovTrack: S. 920: Text of Legislation, Introduced in Senate
May 21, 2009GovTrack: S. 920: Text of Legislation, Introduced in Senate.
New Federal IT spending legislation
Microsoft’s Beginner’s Guide To Cloud Computing – Plug Into The Cloud – InformationWeek
May 20, 2009Interesting article on cloud computing.
More on Federal IT spending
May 20, 2009Recently I discussed several areas that need to be focused on it one really wants to get a handle on Federal IT spending. Today I want to expand on my thoughts and talk about collaboration and sharing of IT investments.
In order to reduce IT within the government collaboration will need to be achieved. This is a simple concept, (i.e. exeryone works together and shares their solutions) but is difficult to obtain. Why is id difficult to obtain? My opinion is that the Federal IT community trys to go for programs and initiaitives that are just too big. The newest thoughts on cloud computing, for example, would imply that agencies would share the same infrastructure. A difficult task at best considering most agencies have invested 100 of millions of dollars into infrastructure projects. an example of where collaboration has worked is the Budget Formulation and Execution Line of Business (LOB). This LOB has been able to collaborate and share solutions because they kept their goals and inititives focused and achievable. I am currently working on ideas for keeping solutions achievable but would be interested in any ideas.
Security and privacy
May 16, 2009Starting to work on an approach to security and privacy from a web 2.0 perspective.
Approach from a web 2.0 perspective
Good source of EA information
May 13, 2009Forrester is publishing an EA blog.http://blogs.forrester.com/ea/
Check out Jeff Scott’s posts
Federal IT spending – new approach needed
May 11, 2009i-Lighted Content A new approach is needed to managing federal IT spending
Just saw this new article, and while I agree that Federal IT spending needs to be analyzed and reprioritized it needs to be done so in some news way. I would encourage Mr. Kundra to:
1. Look at the operations and maintenance side of IT, too many budgets look at cutting new items when it fact it is O&M that is where the spend is.
2. Put some hard stakes in the ground about consolidation. where agencies have redundant IT investments they should be forced to reuse.
3. Make performance a real part of the analysis. what measures are the invesments using? are they real? Many investments have circular performance metrics don’t really tell you anything about how well the investment has been used/deployed.
4. IT within programs must also be on the table. Just because a large program is considered mission based it may have 100’s of millions of dollars in IT investment, many of these programs may never get into the IT review process.
More to come…
