Data analytics demonstrate their value for both public safety and emergency management every day. The National League of Cities, for example, promotes the usefulness of Data-Informed Community Engagement (DICE), pairing crime data and analytics with community-driven risk concerns. Data-driven policing has been in use since the 1970s, but the advent of the cloud and edge computing has put it at the fingertips of law enforcement. Similarly, emer...

When a disaster strikes, the infrastructure needed to support recovery usually is hit hard, as well. Tornados take down cell towers, buildings, tear up roads; floods damage water treatment plants, homes, bridges; wildfires destroy everything in their path. First responders – the people going into harm’s way to save people and property – need as much information as possible about the conditions they will face. The U.S. Fire Ad...

Drones and robots can extend the capabilities of first responders. In December 2024, a search and rescue team in Colorado used drones to find a 10-year-old boy who was lost in the mountains south of Denver. The team also used a drone to deliver a plastic bag with protein bars, gel packs, water, a winter hat and a thermal blanket for him until authorities arrived at the site. In Alaska, firefighters used a robot to drop needed supplies to crews...

There have been several cyber attacks recently that were launched through users’ mobile devices, often targeting high-profile government officials. For instance, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint statement in November 2024 that their ongoing investigation into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure revealed a broad and sig...

Performance-based programs are essential for driving federal government transformation. They directly align resources and incentives with measurable outcomes. Unlike traditional models that emphasize activity over impact, performance-based approaches ensure that agencies are accountable for service delivery of results that matter—such as improved citizen services, operational efficiency, and mission readiness. Learning Objectives: Unders...

The federal government has been on a journey to modernize its IT infrastructure in support of the mission and the strategic initiatives that each executive department has identified. This commitment to modernization is driving the federal government to explore new technologies that can enhance its operational capabilities and infrastructure. The implementation of 5G promises to provide faster network speeds, ultra-low latency connectivity, and...

There are few things worse for agency efficiency – or IT employee morale – than having fragmented service requests, overwhelming workflows, and siloed knowledge. It is not that IT employees aren’t working hard to solve problems, it’s that the tools they have been using cannot scale up as fast as user needs accumulate. In today’s rapidly shifting federal landscape, agencies must modernize operations and strengthen...

Federal agencies are at a crossroads in their early-talent acquisition efforts. Approximately 30% of employees are over 55, another third is eligible for retirement in less than two years, and less than 8% are under 30. Our government faces the threat of a massive knowledge drain and loss of institutional knowledge if more members of Generation Z (Gen Z) aren’t attracted to public service positions now. This challenge is only more urgent...

When the Navy CIO released the Service’s Information Superiority Vision 2.0 last year, its focus was on facilitating the secure movement of information to support warfighters, by emphasizing three pillars – optimize, secure, and decide. For Navy IT users, “optimize” means utilizing modern software and services such as cloud adoption; “secure” refers to implementing zero trust and increasing focus on cybersec...