IBM Center for The Business of Government

One of the two implications of the paradigm shift I wrote about was the movement from an information economy in which providers pushed out their content to one in which consumers pulled it into their feed.  This movement started with the advent of RSS feeds and has hit a high point in link shortening and sharing on Twitter and facebook.

A majority of the country, and virtually the entire Federal Government, now uses the Internet to do business, learn about programs, shop, talk to friends, and engage in a host of other activities.  Some 2 billion people around the world engage in online commerce that will soon exceed $10 trillion; individuals place their information and trust in the many large and small businesses that provide services over the web.  In order to operate online, both the sender and the recipient have to trust what each other is doing. 

No longer can security programs rely on “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” — adversaries could already be inside systems, stealing data or probing to get in.  Too many CIOs and CISOs have thought their systems and data were secure when in fact the opposite was true.   Security programs need effective protection of valuable information and systems to prevent data breaches, and to comply with the ever increasing federal compliance requirements (such as the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the Privacy Act, policy and guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) an

The Federal government’s recent establishment of the Unified Shared Services Management (USSM) office at the General Services Administration has propelled cross-agency efforts led by the Office of Management and Budget, by providing additional support to shared services efforts managed by the Department of the Treasury for financial management, and the Office of Personnel Management for human resources. State and local governments are also moving forward to take advantage of the benefits that shared services bring in terms of costs savings and improved performance.