Finally the federal government is not the last one to grab onto the newest trends in technology. Yesterday the White House unveiled its new plan to integrate cutting-edge technology into the way they reach citizens and overcome governing obstacles. The efforts are based on words from President Obama himself, who proclaimed, “I want us to ask ourselves every day, how are we using technology to make a real difference in people’s lives?“.
Essentially, the new digital strategy attempts to accomplish three things:
* Enable the American people and an increasingly mobile workforce to access high-qualitydigital government information and services anywhere, anytime, on any device.
Operationalizing an information-centric model, we can architect our systems or interoperabilityand openness, modernize our content publication model, and deliver better, device-agnostic digital services at a lower cost.
* Ensure that as the government adjusts to this new digital world, we seize the opportunity to procure and manage devices, applications, and data in smart, secure and afordable ways.
Learning from the previous transition or moving information and services online, we now have an opportunity to break free from the inefficient, costly, and fragmented practices of the past, build a sound governance structure for digital services, and do mobile “right” from the beginning.
* Unlock the power of government data to spur innovation across our Nation and improve the quality of services for the American people.
We must enable the public, entrepreneurs, and our own government programs to better leverage the rich wealth of federal data to pour into applications and services by ensuring that data is open and machine-readable by default.
These are the overarching principles driving the transformation:
* An “Information-Centric” approach moves us from managing “documents” to managing discrete pieces of open data and content which can be tagged, shared, secured, mashed up and presented in the way that is most useful for the consumer of that information.
* A “Shared Platform” approach helps us work together, both within and across agencies, fo reduce costs, streamline development, apply consistent standards, and ensure consistency in how we create and deliver information.
* A “Customer-Centric” approach—Influences how we create, manage, and present data through websites, mobile applications, raw data sets, and other modes of delivery, and allows customers to shape, share and consume information, whenever and however they want it.
* A platform of “Security and Privacy” ensures this innovation happens in a way that ensuresthe safe and secure delivery and use of digital services to protect information and privacy.
Take a look at the introduction to the initiative:
Mission drives agencies, and the need to deliver better services to customers at a lower cost—whether anagency is supporting the warfighter overseas, a teacher seeking classroom resources or a family figuring out how to pay for college—is pushing every level of government to look for new solutions.
Today’s amazing mix of cloud computing, ever-smarter mobile devices, and collaboration tools is changing the consumer landscape and bleeding into government as both an opportunity and a challenge. New expectations require the Federal Government to be ready to deliver and receive digital information and services anytime, anywhere and on any device. It must do so safely, securely, and with fewer resources. To build for the future, the Federal Government needs a Digital Strategy that embraces the opportunity to innovate more with less, and enables entrepreneurs to better leverage government data to improve the quality of services to the American people.
Early mobile adopters in government—like the early web adopters—are beginning to experiment in pursuit of innovation. Some have created products that leverage the unique capabilities of mobile devices. Others have launched programs and strategies and brought personal devices into the workplace. Absent coordination, however, the work is being done in isolated, programmatic silos within agencies.
Building for the future requires us to think beyond programmatic lines. To keep up with the pace of change in technology, we need to securely architect our systems for interoperability and openness from conception. We need to have common standards and more rapidly share the lessons learned by early adopters. We need to produce better content and data, and present it through multiple channels in a program and device-agnostic way. We need to adopt a coordinated approach to ensure privacy and security in a digital age.
