National Press Club presentation on cloud computing by Brand Niemann

1. Gov 2.0 Platform Data Services with Cloud
Computing: Self Service Business Analytics
Briefing at the National Press Club
GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government
“Update and Outlook”
Brand Niemann
Semantic Community
March 29, 2011
http://semanticommunity.info/
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2. Briefing at the National Press Club
• About this Briefing:
– The United States Government is the world’s largest consumer of information technology,
spending over $76 billion annually on more than 10,000 different systems. Fragmentation of
systems, poor project execution, and the drag of legacy technology in the Federal Government
have presented barriers to achieving the productivity and performance gains found when
technology is deployed effectively in the private sectors.
– All that is about to change as the Obama Administration obliges federal departments to look
to Cloud computing to cut costs and solve many of the problems that have plagued IT
deployment for decades. The problem, however, is how do federal IT managers and those
controlling the budgets go about deciding what is best for them.
• Leading experts from Government and Industry will update the press and
attendees on …
– Status of government Cloud initiatives
– Future Plans and Outlook
– Challenges and Opportunities
• Speakers
– NIST Cloud Computing Program Office
– Gerald Smith, Office of DoD Executive Agent for IT Standards
– Brand Niemann, Director, Semantic Community and former Senior Enterprise Architect and
Data Scientist, U.S. EPA
– Kevin Jackson, Director, Cloud Services at NJVC
– Bob Gourley, Founder/Author CTO Vision and Former DIA CTO
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3. Federal Cloud Computing Wiki
http://semanticommunity.info/Federal_Cloud_Computing
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4. Cloud Computing
• Define Using the Six Journalistic Questions:
– What? – Doing your own IT.
– Where? – Using someone else’s infrastructure.
– How? – Getting to the “5 Stars of Linked Open
Data”.
– Why? – Faster, better, and cheaper.
– When? – “The power of now!”
– Who? – Information architects and
preservationists, enterprise architects and data
architects, knowledge workers, etc.
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5. Cloud Computing
The Five Stars of Linked Open Data
YouTube:
10:17 Minutes
Source: http://inkdroid.org/journal/2010/06/04/the-5-stars-of-open-linked-data/
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6. FCW Articles
• 1. Making Individuals In to Information Architects
and Preservationists
• 2. Data Services - What Data.gov and Many Other
Things Should Be
• 3. Federal Cloud Computing: It can really happen
if we can do our own IT!
• 4. Gov 2.0 Platform Data Services with Cloud
Computing: HealthDataGov
• 5 What’s In a name for Open Government Data
Sets: Everything!
• 6. Gov 2.0 Platform Data Services with Cloud
Computing: OMB Earmarks Database 6

7. 1. Making Individuals In to Information
Architects and Preservationists
http://fcw.com/Articles/2011/01/31/COMMENT-Brand-Niemann-social-media-archives.aspx
For links see: http://semanticommunity.info/A_Gov_2.0_spin_on_archiving_2.0_data 7

8. John Monroe, Editor of Federal
Computer Week
• You mention that information architects should re-architect
legacy systems -- in what way should they re-architect them?:
– Great question and the answer is like I did at EPA and for interagency
programs - get the data out of the legacy systems and use it in free
cloud tools like Spotfire at:
• http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/7163/=BusinessAn
alyticsInformationalFactSheet08182010.doc
– Vivek Kundra's requiring agencies to put their high-value data sets into
Data.gov and to reduce the number of data centers can save money
and improve results if there are more people like myself that will take
advantage of that by "doing their own IT" with cloud computing tools
and becoming data scientists - see my list of data science products at:
• http://semanticommunity.info/#Data_Science_Products
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9. John Monroe, Editor of Federal
Computer Week
• You mention that information architects should
re-architect legacy systems -- in what way should
they re-architect them? (continued):
– I should add a specific example in answer to your
question: The IT Spending Dashboard took 6 months
and cost $8M for GSA to do - I re-architected and
implemented it in about 3 days for free (except for the
cost of my time at EPA) with Spotfire - of course part
of the $8M was to build the databases which I did not
have to do, but not the entire $8M - see:
• http://semanticommunity.info/Federal_IT_Dashboard
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10. 2. Data Services - What Data.gov and
Many Other Things Should Be
http://semanticommunity.info/Federal_IT_Dashboard
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11. 3. Federal Cloud Computing: It can
really happen if we can do our own IT!
See Complete Taxonomy of
Federal Cloud Computing in
the book’s Table of Contents!
Because of unprecedented demand, this book
is back ordered until the end of February!
http://semanticommunity.info/Federal_Cloud_Computing/A_Manager's_Guide_to_Cloud_Computing
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12. 6. Gov 2.0 Platform Data Services with
Cloud Computing: OMB Earmarks Database
http://semanticommunity.info/Earmarks_OMB_Database
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13. Linked Open Data Visualizations
• Cloud Computing for and with Linked Open Data Visualizations:
– “What the 5 star system does not take into account, however, is the quality of the data
itself. As with everything on the Internet, remember that even if you get your hands on a
well published Linked Open Data set, it may be incomplete, taken out of context or badly
curated. Bad content in, bad content out does still apply. This problem is especially acute
for Linked Open Data at the moment, because everyone is just starting out with creating
the ontologies and links and there is no way to do this overnight, so incompleteness will
probably prevail for a while.”
– “The basis of all visualizations is content, and the availability of Open Data certainly
helps visualization creators and data journalists to find data that lets them support and
discover the stories they want to tell. These are exciting developments and I’m looking
forward to seeing all the interesting (Linked) Open Data visualizations the visualization
community comes up with!”
• Posted My Comment: Excellent article! Please see my Linked Open Data Visualizations at
http://semanticommunity.info/#Data_Science_Products
• Also See Spotfire Community Post: http://spotfire.tibco.com/community/forums/t/952.aspx
• My Bottom Line: Do the “5 stars” and “linked data cloud” in MindTouch, Spotfire
and the Concept-Map Ontology Environment with the Data Science approach.
Source: http://datavisualization.ch/opinions/introduction-to-linked-data
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14. A Manager’s Guide to Cloud Computing
• “From 375 Cloud Musings since May 2008 to a
244 page book in February 2011, Kevin
Jackson and his word processor must never
sleep! The table of contents, which is really a
taxonomy of Government Cloud Computing, is
worth the price of the book alone. I highly
recommend this excellent resource for both
those new and experienced in this exciting new
field. Well done, Kevin!” - Brand Niemann
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