We knew that it was coming, directions from the White House through OMB regarding the use of games and contests to spur innovation. This administration is a proponent of deploying contests such as those initiated by Federal CIO Vivek Kundra when he was chief technology officer for the city of Washington, D.C.  His Applications for Democracy contest solicited the creation of open source mash-up applications to provide the public with easy-to-use-and-view information, such as "D.C. Historic Tours," an application that allows tourists to create custom walking tours by combining Google Maps with Flickr feeds and Wikipedia comments; "iLive.at"  provides neighborhood information including demographic information, locations of the nearest convenience store and post office, and so forth, as well as recently reported neighborhood crimes; and "Park It" provides real-time information on available street parking spaces and free versus paid meters.

Transparency is all the rage in government these days...it's "good government."   Federal and state governments are rushing to put it all out there, but I think there's not enough focus on how to get the most out of transparency.  I recently moderated a panel at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) annual meeting and had the opportunity to present polling questions to the audience, which was made up of state CIOs, state agency representatives, and IT vendors that serve government markets.  To my point about everybody doing it, 85% of the state respondents have transparency initiatives underway.  Why?  When asked, it came out to three camps of roughly equal size: 1) to report ARRA spending, 2) to better engage citizens, and 3) because the governor or legislature mandated it.  So there you have it.  Governments see many things in transparency, but not particularly from the same angle.  Considering the current state of government budgets (and the economy in general), I think transparency needs to be more strategic and focused.  After all, it takes precious resources to set it up.  Go where you can get the greatest return - bringing down costs.

In recent years system and data center consolidation has been a hot topic In the federal government. But how does a government agency actually embark on such a complex journey? Since everyone’s systems and long term IT needs are different, it has been difficult to recommend one unified approach to trimming system complexity and redundancy.

Finally, there is a process in place for federal agencies. The Office of Management and Budget, along with the Federal CIO Council and Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, has outlined some very specific steps that agencies should follow in order to plan for long-term changes to the way they use, manage and grow both large and small data centers.

Per a recent edict from Kundra al major U.S. Federal agencies are developing action plans which will outline how they intend to assess and eventually consolidate their data centers. The need is substantial because, as the CIO points out in a memo to Agency CIOs, the number of federal data centers has grown from 492 in 1998 to over 1,100 in 2009. there is too much space, too many redundant systems and too much power consumption.