Human-Centered Design: A Framework for Developing Effective Federal Services marilyn.bain Tue, 12/10/2024 - 11:29 Human-centered design offers agencies a powerful approach to reduce friction and enhance trust by delivering consistent, intuitive, high-quality digital services. The framework, centered on user experience, lets agencies improve workflows and elevate employee and customer satisfaction, building stronger public connections with the constituents they serve. A key component of HCD is feedback from potential users of the service an agency is designing. “The breadth of work that f ..read more

DoDIIS 2024: Defense and Intelligence Communities Focus on Cyber Talent Pipelines mol.doak_yr9o Thu, 10/31/2024 - 11:50 The defense and intelligence communities want to create more pathways for their former data scientists and other in-demand personnel to return to government and address the cybersecurity workforce shortage. Adjusting laws and making policy changes will be critical to allowing cyber personnel to easily step away from intelligence work and later return, though government-trained cyber professionals in the private sector remain in the “asymmetric fight,” said Patrick Johnson, d ..read more

Fact or Fallacy: Platform Engineering Boosts Development and Productivity mol.doak_yr9o Thu, 10/03/2024 - 11:03 Gartner claims the goal of platform engineering is a “frictionless, self-service developer experience that offers the right capabilities to allow developers and others to produce valuable software with as little overhead as possible.” That goal is admirable, but is it realistic? With the migration from on-premises to hybrid cloud to cloud-native apps, DevOps matured from lone-wolf team aggregation to rigorous teamwork and side trips to agile, scrum and cloud-centric approaches that ..read more

When Is It Time for Government to Go Beyond the Agile Method? mol.doak_yr9o Tue, 09/10/2024 - 13:20 Agile methodology is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Though it’s proved to be a winning formula for delivering enhanced capabilities, it still must be tailored to the circumstance. Combining human-centered design methods into agile delivery allows developers to focus on user-centric outcomes. Successful product outcomes often depend on a cohesive vision that aligns various stakeholders, and utilizing HCD methods allows us to effectively prioritize our time and resources. The method also isn’t ..read more

Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box 2.0 Simplifies AI Adoption for Agencies mol.doak_yr9o Tue, 09/03/2024 - 12:02 Nutanix is providing agencies with the IT architecture and expertise needed to build and sustain on-premises generative artificial intelligence implementations, as many are leery of running models in the public cloud. The cloud computing company’s GPT-in-a-Box 2.0 and AI Partner Program, both announced in May, aim to help agencies launch secure, sustainable use cases. Most federal officials understand the transformative impact AI can have on their agencies’ missions, from national security to in ..read more

What Is ModelOps, and How Can It Help Agencies Innovate AI? laura.marlowe Wed, 08/28/2024 - 15:04 Greater artificial intelligence disruption, and opportunity, appears to be on the horizon, with agencies looking to increase the integration of the technology within their research efforts. To make the most of their AI investments, agencies need tools for managing machine learning models, governing and cleaning the data feeding into them, and adjusting them when new data becomes available. While agencies such as the Department of Agriculture already use AI to strengthen crop estimates, process ge ..read more

Why the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture Must Evolve mol.doak_yr9o Fri, 07/19/2024 - 09:40 U.S. Cyber Command finds itself at a crossroads with the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture, which must meet current operational needs while also evolving to integrate with more systems. Further integration of the cyber warfare platform depends on shifting software development from the traditional waterfall approach to one that’s more agile. The Senate Committee on Armed Services wants to limit funding for the JCWA until CYBERCOM provides “a plan to minimize work on the current JCWA architecture a ..read more

How to Build a Software Factory mol.doak_yr9o Tue, 07/09/2024 - 11:25 The Department of Defense develops software factories to enable continuous integration and delivery of new applications amid its ongoing software modernization push. An assembly line comparison is apt: DOD defines a software factory as having distinct pipelines — each with its own tools, workflows, scripts and environments — and sets of automated activities throughout the development lifecycle. DOD has about 50 software factories as part of its Software Modernization Strategy “to evolve faster and be more adaptable than our ..read more

How CDW’s Strategic Application Modernization Assessment Is Helping Agencies mol.doak_yr9o Tue, 06/18/2024 - 15:25 Federal IT leaders looking to jump-start application modernization within their agencies should first conduct assessments of their app portfolios to create a game plan, according to Greg Peters, the founder of CDW’s own assessment. Peters says automating such an assessment, as CDW’s Strategic Application Modernization Assessment does, further speeds up modernization efforts. Embracing app assessments is critical with only 27 percent of organizations moder ..read more

NVIDIA Supports Federal Data Scientists and Developers with AI Training Models mol.doak_yr9o Fri, 02/02/2024 - 16:54 The Department of Defense and other agencies want to incorporate graphics processing units as they ramp up their IT infrastructure with additional capacity to support artificial intelligence applications. Agencies have turned to accelerated computing to enable virtualization and production-grade AI software. Furthermore, the government is no stranger to high-performance computing environments. For decades, they’ve been a mainstay at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable ..read more