Social media has so rapidly become a ubiquitous part of our day to day lives. In 2008, only 29% of adult internet users said they used a social networking site, and now according to Pew Research that number has risen above 65%. Now more and more organizations are realizing the significance of social media. If this resource is not utilized not only will your organization miss out on the myriad of benefits that emerge from it, but your organization will also fall behind the rest. Customer Service optimization is one of the attributes of social media that can be extremely useful, and still many organizations utilizing social media don’t take advantage.

n a recent mobile strategy document released by the Department of Defense (DoD), they addressed the need to strengthen the efficiency of its workforce and operations and construct its business to be more relatable to today’s modern workplace and clientele. The document went on to explain this implementation would involve addressing 3 major goals for the department; “Advance and evolve the DoD Information Enterprise infrastructure to support mobile devices, institute mobile device policies and standards, and promote the development and use of DoD mobile and web-enabled applications.” This strategy “identifies the vision and goals for capitalizing on the full potential of mobile devices and supports the end-user services approach in DoD Information Technology Enterprise Strategy and Roadmap,” states Chief Information Officer, Teri Takai. In order to evolve into this developing strategy, the Department has stated that it must better familiarize itself with management methods of better utilizing available spectrum and also “develop mechanisms for rapidly transitioning technologies into programs of record.” DoD’s new enterprise infrastructure and wireless networks must have the capability to support both unclassified and classified high-bandwidth traffic, a critical up kept stream of wireless coverage to in-building and terrestrial locations, and also various networking architectures. This architecture must maintain a security between the interface of DoD networks and commercial networks by empowering a proper management of mobile devices, applications, and network connections.

Recently, a new wave of trends has emerged in the Human Resources (HR) market. Regardless of industry, HR organizations, departments, and leaders are focused on leveraging technology in new and creative ways to accurately manage and secure a tremendous amount of company and employee data while facilitating employee access to company and benefit information. As a result, they are turning to their internal IT departments for help streamlining and automating their complex human resource business processes. These technologies are showing improved process adherence and policy compliance, as well as increased employee satisfaction while reducing workload.

A recent Bloomberg Government study reminds us that Federal Government spending on multiple-award contracts (MACs) rose 49 percent to $121 billion over the last four years, more than double the growth rate of all other contracting programs within the Federal Government.

David McClure, Associate Administrator at GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, announced at the AFFIRM event on April 13th that the third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) will be announced in May 2012. This is a major step for FedRAMP, which will start the process for cloud service providers to obtain the provisional authorizations. These 3PAOs are an important part of the FedRAMP process, because they will be validating the cyber security control requirements for service providers. While the review is being handled mainly by DHS and GSA, the entire Joint Authorization Board (JAB) will have the final say on who will be a 3PAO. The JAB consists of the Chief Information Officers from GSA, DHS, and DOD. Department of Homeland Security Chief Information Officer, Richard Spires, said that once the 3PAO’s are picked in May, he expects the program to take-off in June of this year.

FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is led by GSA and is a soon-to-be mandatory government wide program that standardizes the government’s approach to authorizing cloud services for use by federal agencies and monitoring those services to ensure that they continue to meet federal cybersecurity requirements.Once a service goes through the initial FedRAMP authorization process, it will get a stamp of approval that all agencies can use to sign off on the service’s ability to meet federal security requirements. FedRAMP is still in pre-launch stage. The launch of its initial operational capabilities is scheduled for June 2012, and the focus will be on infrastructure as a service and e-mail as service. Full operational capabilities are scheduled for the second quarter of fiscal 2013. At this stage, FedRamp will include more diverse products and services. By 2014 the government will move to full implementation with on-demand scalability and all federal agencies will be required to use the FedRAMP process for assessments.