After my maternity leave, I found myself coming back to work just in time for the Great Earthquake in Washington, D.C. and the northern Virginia area. Not a good omen, haha! While everyone seemed a bit shaken, I was still enjoying the hustle and bustle of being back to work. Clear blue skies in Washington, smelling the crisp air, hearing the noises of the city, walking on the uneven concrete in DC with the canopy of trees lining Constitution Ave it was great to be back! I was feeling empowered to make change. While now is a challenging time in Government, it is also an exciting time. Interestingly enough, the three meetings I had recently were different but the same – meaning, there was a common theme that bubbled to the top. I participated in the Public CIO Roundtable, then I attended FedScoop’s 3rd annual how to reduce IT government spend, and then attended and participated in a briefing conducted by our Symantec Research Labs (SRL) team. The overall theme that ran through all three events was that government agencies continue to struggle with doing what the public expects given all the mandates and requirements put upon them daily and balancing that with efficiency for the future. They look at creating more efficient processes and creating more efficient technologies by consolidating vendors or solutions. By improving these two things, people’s roles change and they also become more efficient. The CIO’s job continues to be all about keeping the lights on and reporting up that those lights are indeed on. The thought I was struck by is how can we expect them to look to the future if they are underneath that kind of constant operational burden? Instead of focusing on doing more with less -- which more often than not means buying the cheapest thing or cutting an important program that eventually comes back with bigger costs -- let’s give them the opportunity to innovate. Let’s use these constraints as an opportunity to focus on modernization through innovation. Then and only then can we create smart business and a future for the benefit of our country. Operational efficiency was also the theme of our technology briefing conducted by Symantec Research Labs. Amidst the massive effort by federal government agencies to adopt the cloud as part of their operations, the SRL team has developed a new technology that provides a secure process for moving information in and out of the cloud, regardless of device, network or location. More information can be found at the following link: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/08/25/betting-on-the-next-wave-of-cyber-security/