[LINK] US IT Policy - "shared first" and a "future first"

[Marghanita da Cruz]

> October 25th. 2011 
> I'll focus on my plan for doing more with less and devising solutions with a "shared first" and a "future first" perspective to yield a higher return on our IT investments, increase productivity, and improve the way the government interacts with the American people.
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/25/watch-vision-federal-information-technology>

> When forced to do more
> with less -- when there is no alternative but to create a better way to get things done -- that is
> when the real breakthroughs occur. In tough times, visionaries and risk-takers can tap into
> underutilized human capital, technology, information and other resources, picking up the
> pieces to reassemble them into something completely new.
..
> That's why we're shutting down duplicative, underutilized data centers and optimizing the
> remainder. We recently announced that we are expanding the scope of of data center
> consolidation plans and creating these efficiencies even faster -- 962 data centers by the end of
> 2015, exceeding the original goal of 800, and 472 by end of next year -- and we expect to yield
> $3 to $5 billion in savings in out years.
..
> To help close the productivity gap in government, we need a "future ready" workforce
> equipped with the modern tools and technologies they need to serve the American people
> effectively. We need smart telework policies that give our employees increased flexibility while
> also reducing our real estate footprint and better enabling the government to function
> effectively during an emergency. 
...
> Traditionally, it has taken years for an IT solution to move from planning to budgeting to
> procurement. Too often we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no
> longer needed by the time they launch. And because of how they are architected, modifying
> these systems to meet emerging needs has often cost more than building a new system from
> scratch.
> Going forward, we need to embrace modular development, build on open standards, and run
> our projects in lean startup mode. We also need to work with Congress to change our approach
> to funding technology to better support these principles.
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/svr_parc_speech_final_0.pdf>

-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
Ramin Communications (Sydney)
Website: http://ramin.com.au
Phone:(+612) 0414-869202