Government Bits

Tracking how technology is transforming interaction between governments and citizens.

Bell Canada’s Private Cloud
Powers Adobe Connect

- outside of the reach of the US Patriot Act

I spent a few days working in the Bell Canada’s Private Cloud infrastructure, (Infrastructure as a Service from Bell Canada), setting up virtual machines, networks and firewalls. I setup the environment after meeting with some Canadian Government agencies where I quickly learned how important it would be to Adobe Connect available in the private cloud – all in Canada.

Now, the Canadian government will be able to test out this Adobe Connect deployment that is “all in Canada”. I’m pretty sure other governments around the world (and some individuals) will also be very interested in this new deployment option.

This week, Adobe made some exciting and industry-changing announcements at the MAX 2013 Conference in Los Angeles. Here is Adobe’s letter addressed to our Creative users across all markets and disciplines about these changes, and below is a quick recap of the key announcements:

1) Major Updates to the Creative Cloud: Adobe announced a significant update to Adobe Creative Cloud, our flagship offering for creatives. Available in June and packed with new features, Creative Cloud reimagines the creative process through a stunning set of “CC” desktop applications and sophisticated cross-device collaboration and publishing capabilities.  See the full press release here.

2) Accelerating our Shift to the Cloud: Adobe has seen enormous industry-wide adoption of its Creative Cloud solution, and we have decided to focus our creative software development efforts on that platform moving forward.  While Adobe Creative Suite® 6 products will continue to be supported and available for purchase, the company has no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products. Focusing development on Creative Cloud will not only accelerate the rate at which Adobe can innovate but also broaden the type of innovation the company can offer the creative community. See the full press release here.

Also released was a comprehensive description of Adobe’s Creative Cloud for Enterprise offering, as well as an Enterprise FAQ and a short, succinct Government FAQ section.

Adobe MAX Recap for Government

For our Government customers at MAX, the Adobe Gov team hosted a Reception (pictured above) and several lecture sessions, some of which will be available shortly on the MAX website for preview. In the meantime, make sure to catch up on the Key Announcements on video replay, take a look at some of the interesting Technology Sneak Peeks presented, have a look at my photo gallery, and check out this short explainer video about the Creative Cloud vision:

Adobe Government Webinars Coming Soon

Adobe Government also has a short series of webinars planned in upcoming weeks that will address the Creative Cloud vision, value, top features and integration points specific to our Gov customers, as well as new licensing, procurement, IT security and deployment considerations specifically for Public Sector personnel. Please stay tuned to this blog for dates, times and details.

If you haven’t already noticed, Adobe recently leaked a whole bunch of Sneak Peeks of our core Creative Cloud applications, including refreshed versions of all the Professional Video Tools, plus Dreamweaver, Edge Reflow, and of course yesterday’s sneak peek into the future of Photoshop…

Law Enforcement, Forensics and Intelligence agencies across the world have been waiting for this feature since MAX 2011, when Adobe first revealed the above capabilities in an early private Photoshop beta.

This year, Adobe MAX 2013 will be the premiere venue to learn about the latest Creative workflows for print, web, video and mobile design. If sequestration has limited your travel, you might be able to convince your manager with this “Why Attend MAX?” list, which notes a complimentary one-year Creative Cloud subscription for all attendees.

If you can’t convince your manager, make sure to check out our upcoming Digital Government roadshows for the Defense Department, Federal Civilian agencies in Baltimore and Atlanta, as well as our ongoing Executive and Technical Webinar series. If you can’t attend MAX, we will bring it to you!

If indeed you ARE going to Adobe MAX 2013 and are a GovBits reader, you are cordially invited to attend any & all of the Government-specific events taking place at the conference!

Over the past week, my family has been observing the Passover holiday, during which my daughters (ages 7.5 and 5.5) are learning all about the Hebrews’ journeys through the desert of Sinai. During those 40 years, the Hebrews were provided shelter, nourishment and guidance by “Clouds of Glory” which followed their meandering path unceasingly, and became enshrined in the liturgy, ritual practice and common identity of modern Hebrews.

Of course, those Clouds and “the Cloud” we typically discuss in technology provide identical benefits: security, stability, omnipresence, and mobility. These days, without “the Cloud,” our modern technological society would cease functioning; our documents, data, and identities have been inextricably bound into the nebulous digital ether, in which 99.99999% uptime isn’t good enough, and only infinite redundancy is sufficient. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the Cloud is no longer a dream for some Government agencies; it’s happening. This week, Business Insider reported that a large Intelligence agency plans an unprecedented, 10-year relationship with Amazon Web Services as a “private cloud” implementor. This is the first of such news from the Intelligence sector, but it’s surely not to be the last.

I engage with a variety of civilian agencies as they prepare to rollout their telework program.  Everyone is looking for a tool to support their mobile worker and provide them with an interactive, rich environment that includes video, audio and desktop sharing among many other features.  Multiple device and cross operating system support is also a requirement.  You never know who you will need to collaborate with online!

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The US Army in Afghanistan is using Adobe Connect to provide a place to meet 24/7/365 for the people and organizations involved in trying to keep the peace. This includes 20 or more base clusters and many NATO partners. The main room typically has 20 or more attendees in it at all times of the day – keeping in touch with what is going on. The main focus is sharing a map of current incidents and deployments. Breakout rooms are used when attendance in the main Connect meeting room begins to grow and various side conversations develop.

(The map gives all attendees on the team excellent situational awareness)

I can’t pretend to understand the many twisting, churning governmental machinations behind Sequestration, or even Snowquestration, but my imagination paints a number of closed-door, deeply-partisan and highly unpleasant confrontations between legislators who pride themselves on one-upmanship, not unlike how Congressman Francis Underwood deviously masterminds passage of Education Reform in Netflix’s House of Cards. In this case, I believe life likely imitates art, not the other way around.

Regardless of the opaque political process behind cutting $1.2 Trillion from Government agencies over 10 years, uncertainty and discomfort have reverberated across all sectors of Government since Monday. One notable example has resulted in the cancellation of the Defense Intelligence Worldwide conference, which has been a critical hub for industry interaction with the US Intelligence Community for years. Adobe looked very much forward to hosting many of our meetings at our 20×20 booth with bleeding-edge demonstrations, try-it-yourself kiosks and (of course) swag giveaways, so we share the frustration and disappointment that the conference organizers, technology vendors and Gov IT personnel must be feeling right now.

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As baby boomers in the US reach retirement age and Health Reform extends affordable coverage to many newly insured citizens, healthcare facilities are staying competitive by optimizing workflow efficiencies and hiring the best medical professionals.

This also places significant pressure on healthcare staffing leader CHG Healthcare Services. With a goal of engaging the best-qualified recruits and matching them with corresponding needs, the agency turned to Adobe Digital Marketing Suite to optimize its online presence and convert site traffic into business results.

“Adobe Digital Marketing Suite offered solutions that helped us look closely at our online interactions, create quality experiences, and drive conversion,” says Kyle Power, director of online marketing at CHG.

To anyone passionate about applying technology to drive transformative change and improve the way we live, this week is shaping up to be a tough one to beat in the public sector. It’s been like receiving a gift-wrapped box of energy, laser focused on government innovation and modernization.

Yesterday, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of all US executive departments and agencies calling on them to leverage “technological advances to fundamentally change how they serve their customers.”  

The memo, entitled "Building a 21st Century Digital Government," goes on to explain:

“For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across different Government programs in order to find the services they need. In addition, at a time when Americans increasingly pay bills and buy tickets on mobile devices, Government services often are not optimized for smartphones or tablets, assuming the services are even available online.”

As a follow-up to Executive Order 13571 (Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service) which he signed in April 2011, the president’s memo also announced the release of a new Government-wide strategy developed to accomplish the monumental goal of enabling “more efficient and coordinated digital service delivery” across all agencies.

Simultaneously, yesterday in New York City at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012, Steven Van Roekel (US Chief Information Officer) and Todd Park (US Chief Technology Officer), launched this landmark initiative to thousands of attendees excited to learn the details.

The comprehensive accompanying strategy, entitled “"Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People", includes a 12-month road map that emphasizes three priority actions:

•  Encouraging agencies to deliver information in new ways that fully utilize the power and potential of mobile and web-based technologies
•  Ensuring the safe and secure delivery and use of digital services to protect information and privacy
•  Requiring all agencies to establish central online resources for outside developers, and to adopt new standards for making applicable Government information open and machine-readable by default

In today’s interconnected global economy, such leadership will likely provide a blueprint for similar international efforts as government enterprises worldwide mobilize to optimize efficiency and offer citizens digital experiences on par with those offered by their private sector counterparts.

To that end, we recently hosted the first annual Adobe Government Assembly (AGA) for Canada. The recent creation of Shared Services Canada, a new agency dedicated to optimizing service delivery, has brought new attention to efforts there to "improve the efficiency of IT services across the Canadian federal government and ensure value for taxpayers' dollars."

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South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW) began nearly 20 years ago as an annual music festival in Austin, Texas. The event has since evolved into an incubator for all things digital, now featuring five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new web technologies, video advancements and startup ideas the “interactive” community has to offer.

From hands-on training to a big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW has become the place for thousands of attendees to experience a preview of what is unfolding throughout the world of technology. In fact, Twitter and Foursquare both gained initial traction at SXSW in years past.

As public sector enterprises aggressively strive to offer citizens and inter-agency customers a digital experience that rivals that of their private sector counterparts, events like SXSW are becoming more relevant to them as well.

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We recently hosted the daylong Adobe Creative Camp onsite at SXSW 2012 to delve into a long list of trending hot topics from web-to-mobile development, to providing sneak peeks at the next generation of Adobe creative solutions.

If you were unable to join us, check out the following links for a sample of what you missed…