Like many Americans, I am enjoying the 3-day holiday weekend. I’m taking advantage of Labor Day promotional sales, watching college football games, and relaxing with family and good food on the BBQ.
On this Labor Day, jobs are critically important to government leaders at all levels:
National government with President Obama’s Jobs Council Listening and Action sessions in Portland and Dallas in advance speech coming later this week
State goverment such as in California where the jobless rate is currently at 12%
Although federal agencies have made tremendous progress in reversing a sustained decline in telework participation, the objective of creating a more productive, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient federal workforce remains a work in progress.
The U.S. Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 dramatically improved the odds of success by creating Telework Managing Officers (TMOs) responsible for telework policy development and implementation in every agency. The first cadre of TMOs faces an exciting-and daunting-opportunity to create lasting impact in their agencies. They should interpret their roles broadly, to include not only the promotion of traditional telework arrangements, but also the development of mobility strategies that contribute meaningfully to agency business objectives such as productivity, inclusion, resilience, and sustainability.
Doing so will require engaging agency leadership on a range of different topics to develop an integrated plan.
VMWorld 2011 comes to an end and four days of meetings, keynotes and exhibits and parties are behind us. It was certainly an eye-opening experience and also a reafirmation that virtualization and Cloud are having a positive impact in the industry and our customers.
We were lucky to talk to many customers at the Cisco booth and demonstrate our latest technologies, including the UCS, our orchestration and automation products, VDI, etc.
It’s hard to summarize the whole show, but some of the higlights of the show include:
VDI Deployments with more than 100,000 clients are a reality
As our country continues to face budget woes, it seems especially imperative for state and local governments to implement TechAmerica’s IT policy recommendations, covered last week by Sarah Rich of Government Technology. The first priority listed was for the public sector to, “Implement policies and actions that will increase collaboration and communication between the private sector and state and local government in all areas of technology acquisition, deployment and service delivery.”
We have already seen rapid adoption of innovative programs, like telepresence technology, being implemented by some government agencies, as it is critical for enhancing collaboration among agencies and departments and increasing efficiencies. The role of technology is changing – it is no longer a support role but a driving force to save costs, increase performance and enrich the workplace. With telepresence, high definition video and audio allow reduce travel-related costs, productivity, costs of downtime, all while creating a more collaborative environment that encourages innovation. The Department of Transportation in Alabama is a great example of how telepresence can increase productivity and reduce expenses, using the technology for everything from new hire trainings to external meetings. The Federal government is also adopting this innovative technology to help keep the Department of Defense running smoothly amidst the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiative, ensuring federal workers are still able to communicate in real time with the Pentagon offices. Read More »
Like many Americans, I am enjoying the 3-day holiday weekend. I’m taking advantage of Labor Day promotional sales, watching college football games, and relaxing with family and good food on the BBQ. 
