Ideas

The government is buying AI faster than it is assigning authority

COMMENTARY | Federal AI governance will become credible when agencies can answer a simple question before deployment, not after failure.

How to scale value without scaling complexity

COMMENTARY | Instead of doing more with less, organizations should have experts focus on what they do best.

Data is a strategic asset and a strategic vulnerability

COMMENTARY | Treating data a strategic asset and defending it accordingly isn't simply a matter of technology policy; it's a fundamental component of national resilience.

When the storm hits: What Hurricane Katrina still teaches federal leaders about continuity of operations

COMMENTARY | Make continuity planning an operational discipline rather than a compliance exercise.

The war against fraud should be a war for tech modernization

COMMENTARY | Combating fraud is a noble exercise, but combating longstanding systemic barriers to innovation and performance is often harder.

The hidden infrastructure challenge of the Genesis Mission

COMMENTARY | AI ambition without infrastructure alignment is just aspiration.

New methods for assuring digital identity and authenticity

COMMENTARY | Authenticity and provenance must be enforced both at the application level and at the system level so agencies can be confident that user identity and the identity mechanisms themselves are genuine and trustworthy.

The Pentagon’s ‘woke AI’ problem

Commentary | From a political bias perspective, eliminating Claude from the federal toolkit removes a model that has made significant strides toward the neutrality ideal pushed by the administration.

Consolidation in a complex and aging enterprise IT environment

COMMENTARY | If you don’t pursue IT consolidation now, it may be forced upon you.

From national AI policy to agency execution

COMMENTARY | AI dominance is not declared. It is operationalized, process by process, metric by metric, deployment by deployment.

Memo to JD Vance: Fighting the war on waste

COMMENTARY | The White House's proposed war on fraud, waste and abuse is neither new nor an assured outcome for any presidential administration, but history offers some lessons that can help get started.

The diminished state of Defense IT acquisition and how to fix it

COMMENTARY | Here’s what the Defense Department can do to improve IT acquisition outcomes.

2026 diplomacy: own the data layer before the AI layer

COMMENTARY | As global diplomacy enters 2026, infrastructure is destiny.

FPDS looks old and clunky but that only masks its power

With the Federal Procurement Data System set for decommissioning this month, market research guru Lisa Shea Mundt makes the case that we’ll miss FPDS and not just because we’ll feel nostalgic.

Navigating FedRAMP 20x and the continuous compliance imperative

COMMENTARY | FedRAMP 20x is a great step forward, but there is still work to be done.

As US celebrates 250th, CIOs turn youngish 30

COMMENTARY | What can be done to improve federal IT leadership?