Last week, I attended the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) - National Capital Area (NCA) chapter meeting featured a panel of government experts describing the “elephants” of digital health strategies, communications, and engagements.

I've been thinking about government IT requirements lately. In my mind, the process of getting something purchased in the government is a little like the following analogy.

The first three practices are all about helping you identify all systems under management, standardizing the way you manage these devices, and protecting them from harmful changes. Let’s now build upon this by talking about the remaining two and why they are important. These practices support the thesis that you can eliminate the leading cause of network downtime: simple human error.

In this installment, we will talk about three specific best practices that will help you improve network uptime and operational success and save you time and money.

You may be thinking, “If network configuration is months of boredom, then why should I read this?” The short answer is, “So you never have to experience those moments of extreme terror!” Today, we will be talking about why network configuration management is so difficult and what’s at stake. This article is a three-part series that will look at five best practices for improving your network configuration management.

My point is you need to change your focus to get application uptime in a cloud environment. In fact, you need to realize that your fancy and expensive HA solution was nothing but a band aid.

Vendor lock-in is either a key technology problem or an overhyped marketing missile depending on the point of view. I think there's a definition problem at the heart of the agita over in the issue. John Dewey remarked, "A problem well put is half-solved," so I aim to reframe the question while trying to avoid bikeshedding. The heart of vendor lock-in is the obscene nature of the problem, by which I mean "I know it when I see it" a la Potter Stewart's famous opinion on obscenity laws. You can almost hear the start of a Jeff Foxworthy routine...

Crazy times. Furloughs froze contracting shops and requiring organizations. Last year's playbook for year-end opportunities is no good. Everybody – inside and outside of government – trying to work out what September will bring. Here's a take on how the Army will close ranks – from a fella who's spent some time in the foxhole.

We’ve reached the halfway point of 2013, which also signals the beginning of the federal fiscal year end (FFYE). This is a good time to take a second and survey what we’ve seen so far and what we can expect over the next six months. This is part two of my CEO Insight in which I'll talk about cybersecurity, state and local, financing, and the federal fiscal year end.

Seems like Fed IT innovators are tied to the rails as the big-iron locomotive careens down the track. A new MeriTalk study, “Innovation Inspiration: Can Software Save IT?,” tells us what we already know - we spend too much money updating and maintaining legacy systems. But, this isn’t all a doom-and-gloom story - there’s a glimpse of a super-hero option.