Thinking back on my previous article, a thought occurred to me: Those of us in the blogosphere, and certainly those of us assisting with governmental IT missions, need to maintain a stricter code of engagement that needs to first and foremost deal with what is needed, not just wanted, from the people that we try to inform. We can do this by applying some of the basics of the journalistic code to all our communications and recommendations:

Government IT has been characterized by long term monolithic systems that fail to deliver. Part of the problem is approaching IT as a complex durable good, like a battleship, with complete specifications, known life-cycles, and defined missions. Fighter aircraft have six generations of evolving technology and missions, each having known maintenance cycles, life spans, and changing requirements based on future planning and doctrine, as well as, mission feedback. IT has none of that because it has no duty cycle or doctrine. IT can be obsolete on delivery, regardless of development timeframe. IT delivery can redefine all previous requirements. IT has very little longevity, even if successful on delivery.

DLT’s Greg Agana provides a friendly reminder for everyone out there that troubleshooting difficult software application issues doesn't have to be as hard as quantum mechanics. When you run into an issue, like you would in Solaris or RHEL, there are a few steps we go through to figure out what exactly is causing the problem.

When having what seems to be a complex network connectivity problem, sometimes the best method to tackle the issue is to implement the KISS Method. Look for the simple stuff first and keep these tips in mind when troubleshooting network connectivity.

Top 10 Tips for Troubleshooting Network Connectivity

The below blog was written by Aaron Dun and published with permission from Percussion. Percussion provides Web Content Management (WCM) software that helps businesses increase traffic, drive conversion, and improve social interaction. The Percussion Marketing Blog discusses web content, engagement, SEO, inbound marketing, and social media. In June President Obama took to the airwaves to announce an ambitious campaign to reduce waste. The Campaign to Cut Waste sought to identify pointless Federal spending and eliminate it as rapidly as possible. As of June, as much as $33B was estimated as potential savings.

Last time we talked about standard operating environments and how they can reduce stress and give back time. Now we'll talk about managing not only systems but the SOEs themselves. Repeatable, reproducible, and remote are the watchwords for managing our environments.

In a traditional Information Technology (IT) model, new IT assets are acquired in support of specific applications. This model has had the unfortunate side effect of casting IT into the role of a cost center. As such, there has been little flexibility within IT to make broad platform changes such as the adoption and deployment of private cloud technologies.

The below blog was written by and published with permission by Steve O’Keeffe. Steve O’Keeffe is the founder of MeriTalk –www.meritalk.com – the government IT network. MeriTalk is an online community that hosts professional networking, thought leadership, and focused events to drive the government IT dialogue. A 20-year veteran of the government IT community, O’Keeffe has worked in government and industry. In addition to MeriTalk, he founded Telework Exchange, GovMark Council, and O’Keeffe & Company OMB OMG Is Fed IT better after Kundra? Are cloud, data center, and cyber working? Where should Steven VanRoekel focus? As Fed IT makes it through year end, is Dell down and Amazon up? We put these questions and more to the Fed IT community at Innovation Nation on August 23. The new study, Over to You Mr. VanRoekel, gives the new Fed CIO a sense for his inheritance.