Dave Nyczepir
Dec 1, 2020 | FEDSCOOP

Efforts to improve contract data must be led by the Office of Management and Budget, if its category management initiative is to improve, according to the Government Accountability Office.

GAO found OMB‘s category management initiative focused too much on how to buy things — at the expense of helping agencies determine what goods and services they actually need — when it assessed data for 28 agencies, reviewed guidance for four and interviewed officials.

The category management initiative saved $27.3 billion in three years by having agencies use existing contracts to buy similar products and services like those in the IT Category, but billions more could be saved if OMB pursues governmentwide solutions to data challenges.

“Agency officials told GAO that data challenges—particularly challenges in collecting, analyzing, and sharing data on their spending and the prices they pay—have hindered implementation of the category management initiative,” reads GAO’s congressional report released Monday. “OMB is aware of these…

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The recent report on Global Risk Assessment Software Market is a compilation of factual market data and insightful data points drawn from it to better understand the prospects of Risk Assessment Software in global market scenario. A host of factors that are directly, indirectly, positively, or negatively influencing the performance of market have been subject to critical assessment to evaluate their extent of impact on market growth. This section not only helps readers to learn about the top growth supporting factors but also notifies them about the equally important challenges facing them in market place.

The report also sheds light on competition structure analysis of the global Risk Assessment Software market that provides valuable information about the prominent companies operating in industry, along with their financial status, revenue share contribution, key developmental strategies, growth milestones, key offerings and market positioning, adoption of technological advancements, and global and regional client base. The analysis offered in report is extensive and allows for deep-dive understanding of market scenario, which further facilitates strategy planning and…

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Risk Workshops and Governance

But how does this help with the CAF? Firstly, any good risk assessment sets up the context, involving the stakeholders and those who need to be informed of the outcome. This allows one to identify the governance (CAF A1) structure required and name responsible individuals and risk owners. To help with the context it is always best to include some user input. With the stakeholders, users and risk owners attending an on-site or virtual workshop, lessons learnt, incidents from the past, real fears and worries can be put in the melting-pot and risks can be prioritised. This covers the last part of the CAF, D2. The outcomes between A2 and D2 involve controls. Choosing, selecting and investing in controls will follow analysis of lessons learnt in the risk assessment. The risk workshop can give a sense of priority, which are the real concerns can be targeted and equally one can identify the ‘low hanging fruit’, those quick wins, low cost achievements that will show progress and drive momentum. It also provides a view of the opportunity risk – the business opportunities to be exploited, why some actions are followed and some are not, which risks can…

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As buildings begin to reopen and building projects resume, there is an increased emphasis on creating healthier and more productive working environments.

In many instances, new technologies coupled with various IoT devices will be used to implement new protocols, enhance on-premise safety and hygiene, and offer more connectivity options to remote and on-site workers. That puts an additional premium on managing the security of these connected devices and systems.

If there is a weakness or vulnerability into these devices, for example, it may breakdown communication in systems designed to make buildings safer and more efficient.

The cybersecurity threat landscape continues to evolve and requires the use of innovative security models and sophisticated prevention techniques to protect the devices in facilities and commercial office buildings. In the Internet of Things (IoT) industry alone, attacks against devices increased more than 200% in 2018¹.

To adapt, all entities, stakeholders, suppliers and vendors need to redefine their cyber strategy, bringing security into the center of any project and ensuring that any products used in facilities include the highest possible…

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Today, data analytics, automation, connectivity, and remote monitoring have made great progress and have brought innovations in every sphere of modern civilization.

The digitization in day-to-day human activities has been revolutionized by the Internet of Things (IoT). Based on Gartner’s Forecast database, we can expect that there will be approximately 14 billion devices connected to the internet by 2022. With more devices connected, it will change the way we do business and use resources.

For example, monitoring the cows on a farm can help farmers obtain health reports and plan more efficient feeding strategies. Also, being able to track the behavior of complex industrial machinery enables organizations to prevent accidents and shorten the downtime for maintenance.

There are many examples of how IoT is facilitating human activities. All kinds of devices can gather and share information from their environment. A world where all things are connected will potentially bring endless opportunities for most human activities.

In this blog, we are going to walk through the impact of IoT on some of these different industries.

Manufacturing

IoT has enabled smart manufacturing that…

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