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Guest Post and Webcast: From Emerging Trends to Horizon Scanning – What’s Next in Government Computing?

Posted: 24th April 2013

By: CHRIS

Guest Post and Webcast: From Emerging Trends to Horizon Scanning – What’s Next in Government Computing?

Guest author AJ Clark is President of Thermopylae Sciences and Technology which offers web-enabled Geo, Mobile, and Intel solutions for Government and Business. AJ is the featured speaker at our webcast next Wednesday, May 1, at 1pm ET, where he’ll discuss macro technology trends in the Government computing environment. In concert, Bill Ladd, Chief Data Scientist at Recorded Future, will present Recorded Future’s technology horizon scanning work in categories such as mobile, cloud, social media, and big data.

REGISTER for the webcast now!

Below, AJ introduces some of the emerging tech trends that are reshaping Government computing:

The U.S. has a technological advantage in many arenas, but in particular we excel at search technology (i.e., Google) and in social media technology (i.e, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). One of our challenges is turning that technology advantage against our adversaries. For example, how are we using social media technology for intelligence collection? What kind of real-time intelligence is out there from these unclassified networks?

Combining this search and social media advantage, with leading geospatial and mobile technologies could be the cornerstone of tomorrow’s intelligence capabilities.

The need for real-time intelligence has never been greater than it is today. Whether supporting the warfighter on the battlefield, responding to natural disasters, or providing humanitarian support, actionable insights drive the success of any mission. By leveraging a web-based geospatial framework that allows for the rapid development and integration of the Google Earth API, it is possible to integrate existing data sources as well as open-sourced data into one location. The convergence of these technologies allows for instant and powerful visualization and knowledge-fusion capabilities that provide the actionable data necessary for today and tomorrow’s missions.

By combining the open source intelligence of social media networks with the search and geo capabilities of technologies like Google Earth, we can achieve intelligence awareness unlike any other tool that exists today. This data is available, insightful, and comes to us in never-ending streams, reporting on trends and events around the world. In addition, trends in mobility have only further enhanced our ability to gather data more quickly and provide a new source for sharing information.

Since all of these tools and sources of data are already out there and ready to be integrated into new intelligence tools, we need to think outside the box as we approach ‘sharing’ in the future.

About AJ Clark:

AJ Clark is the President of Thermopylae Sciences and Technology (TST). He works directly on programs that provide enterprise architecture support for Geospatial Systems, Mobile Frameworks, Cyber Security Programs, Disaster Relief Management, and Cloud Computing Solutions. Mr. Clark has over 15 years of experience in program management and systems integration for multiple organizations including the U.S. DoD and DoS. Mr. Clark has experience within the Joint Military community where he provided support to the U.S. Southern Command, leading their technical response to the Joint Information Operation Center planning effort. Mr. Clark’s active duty military experience includes work in support of CENTCOM focused on analysis for counter terrorism.