Tech
   Talks

This tech talk will cover two related topics

First we'll discuss Agile basics and how to get started in adopting Agile practices, as well as some of the benefits. Second, we'll outline some ways in which Agile practices can enhance accountability and transparency.

Qualtrics is a customer experience management platform that allows users to create surveys, dashboards, and graphics, in addition, to analyze and synthesize data.

This presentation will focus on Qualtrics as a platform and how to effectively create a survey. Surveys should be built with the user in mind, utilizing best practices based on behavioral science research

Responding correctly to the National Alert and Accountability System (NAAS) notification messages is important for GSA’s accountability.

This tech talk will discuss details of notification types and your responsibility in responding>

Lightning Experience is Salesforce’s intuitive, intelligent interface, designed to support the way you work and help you be more productive.

With Lightning users can find insights more quickly, work more efficiently, and be connected across all devices.

During the Lightning Experience Tech Talk, Annie Egan from the ICPA team, will provide an overview about what Lightning is, highlight new and exciting features of the interface and discuss the Salesforce COE’s strategy for transitioning GSA to Lightning.

This presentation will focus on account and network security for teleworkers.

We'll discuss keeping your networks and accounts safe.

We will also provide Information on the measures that should be in place as a teleworker.

Join us for some basic home user tips on remaining data aware and keeping the cyber criminals out.

Google Hangouts Closed Captioning and related features Tech Talk

Learn how to close caption a video to post to InSite or gsa.gov.

Learn a shortcut using Google Drive and Caption Colorado if distributing via email.

Join us for this informative tech talk

This presentation will focus on how the home user can work safely using their GFE mobile device as well as their BYOD and personally owned mobile device

We will also discuss some of the basic requirements in operating these devices in the various operating environments.

Please join us for some basic mobile device safety tips to help protect GSA's data as well as your own.

What’s new with IT Standards?

The IT Standards team is back!! We want to share updates, proposed changes, and tips to make the approval process easier.

Did you know that not all IT requests need to go through the approval process? How are we working to improve the GEAR IT Standards list? Can I search for an approved software by using the Category?

The IT Standards team wants to hear from you! Please join us at the Tech Talk and bring your questions.

We look forward to seeing you on October 25th!

This Tech Talk presentation will focus on how the home GSA user can work safely on their computers; both Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) and personally owned computers.

We will discuss the ways in which you can connect safely to GSA’s network and applications while remaining data aware.

Join us for some basic home user tips to aid you in working safely and keeping the cyber criminals out.

Did you know?

Use case of GIS enterprise tools: GSA Publishes First Map of Executive Branch-owned and Controlled Real Property

GSA published recently a geographic information system (GIS)-enabled map of the federal government’s centralized inventory of real property.

The Federal Real Property Profile (FRPP) Management System data, lists property under the custody and control of executive branch agencies, and is posted in accordance with the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act of 2016 and represents the federal government’s inventory as of September 30, 2017.

The interactive map includes search and filter capabilities to view and assess the federal government’s real property holdings.

The public can use the tool to search for federal property in a certain geographic area, sort by federal agency and access information including whether the property is utilized, underutilized or not utilized.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is automation of a manual process that is largely rules based, structured, and repetitive using software robots (bots).

There are two pilots being conducted at GSA right now.

Come join us to learn more about this technology and how GSA stood up a working solution for a pilot and learn where we are headed next!

Learn more about how the Taxonomy is used and managed within the GSA EDMS (Electronic Document Management System). We will pick up the discussion where we left off in the previous EDMS Tech Talk and Taxonomy Tech Talk.

During the presentation, we will focus on the EDMS Team’s taxonomy governance process by showing how changes to terms and structure are identified and implemented.

Finally, we will discuss how GSA can readily use and share existing taxonomies and authority control sources to enhance metadata and achieve interoperability.

Learn more about the GSA's EDMS system and how you can use it to help formalize the way you manage documents and electronic records.

During this presentation, we will explain what an EDMS is and how it can help your organization be more efficient. We will also explain the difference between EDMS and Google Drive and when you should use each tool.

Finally, we will show the process for moving your content onto the EDMS so that you can prepare to work with the EDMS team if you are interested.

Have you ever been interested in machine learning but didn't know how to start? Lindsay Young will share her tribulations in making a simple machine learning app.

She'll go over how it works and what code libraries are available for exploration. You will get an understanding of what situations make for good machine learning opportunities, and how to evaluate your options to know if you should use it for a given task

The Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Program is coming to GSA! This new program, to be implemented across all Executive Branch agencies, will standardize the way agencies mark, handle, and share information that is unclassified but requires protection. Types of information that will be affected include PII, SBU, legal info, contracts, bids, etc. Tune in July 17th to learn more about the program and implementation plans for GSA.

GRACE is the new GSA enterprise cloud platform offering. The platform offers near full automation of IaaS capability to quickly on-board new tenants and empower them with self-provisioning capability.

So, what is it, how does it work, and how can you get started with it? Kishore from the CTO team will provide information on the core principles, architecture details, automation workflow, and core components of the GRACE platform.

We will talk about “why GRACE?” and compare it with other GSA’s IaaS offerings. We will also briefly touch on “incremental ATO process”, which is being developed in collaboration with the security team to build GRACE platform.

This is another interesting Tech Talk related to the topic of the Cloud!

Andrew Starling (IAE) and Dan Perkins (GSA IT Section 508 team) have worked together in conducting Section 508 testing during the design and development of beta.sam.gov.

This Tech Talk will provide an overview of their Section 508 testing processes and how they complement each other.

Mark Buchko (GSA IT Section 508 team) will also give an overview of the automated testing tool AMP (Accessibility Management Platform by Level Access) that is available to everyone in GSA.

This is the second tech talk related to the topic of IT Standards.

Cloud.gov is the TTS-operated platform-as-a-service for the federal government.

So, what is it, how does it work, and how can you get started with it?

Peter with the cloud.gov team will walk you through deploying a database-backed web application, and illustrate how cloud.gov is different from other cloud offerings.

In particular, the Cloud Foundry-based PaaS offloads much of the work that IaaSes require for security and compliance -- saving you money and vastly speeding up time to delivery.

Everyone talks about the Cloud and how it is important in the present and the future. Have you ever wondered where GSA IT is headed in the area of the Cloud?

Do you know that GSA will be using SaaS, IaaS and PaaS?

Navin will explain where we are and where we are heading in this technology frontier.

Come join us for the unveiling of the GSA-IT Cloud Strategy!

Have you ever needed a new software loaded onto your work laptop?

Where do you start, who do you contact, what information do you even need to begin?

Never fear the GSA IT Standards team is here!!

We will take you through the steps of acquiring the software you need. We will start in GEAR searching through GSA approved software that can be used, to searching GEAR for an alternative that may meet your need.

We will discuss our 'New Software' request form, talk about why we ask the questions we do, and how your responses can assist us in moving your ticket through the approval process.

We want to share with you the steps we must complete, the reviews that are required, and the approvals that must be acquired.

We also want to hear from you, so join us on April 26th and bring your questions

Below is this Tech Talk’s Objective. All are welcome, but it is a more Technical topic than most Tech Talks

Milner's slogan "Well typed programs can't go wrong" characterizes type-safe computation

Strongly typed languages with static type checking allow both parametric polymorphism and lifting their logic to the type system. This constructive logic is sound and complete. UML templates allow us to represent such type-safe computation in a technical architecture.

Rick will introduce parametric and logical types for programming and architecture with examples from both Java Generics and UML templates. Participants are encouraged to read Rick's paper "Parametric and Logical Types for Model-Driven Engineering" before the talk.

We will discuss the results of industrial research on static type systems used by Facebook (Flow) and Microsoft (TypeScript) with JavaScript. We will identify adoption risk of weakly and dynamically typed languages such as Perl, PHP and Python.

Paper: Parametric and Logical Types for Model-Driven Engineering

Digital Signatures Solutions (DSS) is THE enterprise wide secure signing solution in GSA today!

This tool that is used to incorporate digital signatures on all paperless transactions is known as e-SignLive..

We offer vanilla out of the box solutions to those who need it, as well as customized and integrated and API driven solutions for those who require more specific customization depending on their use case.

As of today, we have 3000+ users

We offer informal, need based individual training to user groups. These meetings are held using Adobe meeting space and can have a number of attendees ranging from 2 to close to 200. Come to the Digital Signature Solutions Tech Talk to learn more about how this product can help you and your organization.

Have you ever read an IT Strategic Plan with jargon and buzzwords that left you scratching your head and saying, "What did I just read?". When was the last time you referenced an IT Strategic Plan and remembered the goals, mission, or vision? An IT Strategic Plan should be clear, concise, and understandable to all audiences.

For our latest GSA IT Strategic Plan (FY 2018-2020,) GSA IT used a new strategic planning approach based on the industry best practice, Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced Scorecard is a system that connects an organization's strategy with performance management and simplifies how we communicate what we are trying to accomplish. A key principle of the Balanced Scorecard is how we view our IT strategy through four perspectives - customers, stewardship ($), internal processes, and organization growth (our people, tools, and technology).

This TechTalk will discuss the new strategic planning process we took to develop the GSA IT Strategic Plan and involve over 75+ employees in the strategy sessions.

Slack is a chat client that provides a centralized way to communicate in channels that you want--about projects that matter to you--without overloading your inbox. The name is actually an acronym for "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge". It will not replace our current tools such as gmail, hangouts, google docs, Chatter etc… In fact, within Slack you can share links to content from those tools in a seamless way, to work directly with team members on specific projects. For example, if you work with a core group of people on a project, you can work within a specific channel (that you can request be created) to converse, share documents, and have a searchable log of all of your activity.

"Ok, to set up this system, go to the EC2 page in the Console, then click ‘New Instance’. Oh, sorry, that button moved - go to the Instances page first. Go ahead and create- wait, you made the subnets already, right? What about the Security Groups?" Sound familiar? Manual setup and configuration of infrastructure can be time-consuming, tedious, confusing, and error-prone. Computers are really good at following instructions - why don’t we let the computers follow the instructions for us? Better yet, what if there were a tool where we tell it what we want the infrastructure to look like, and it magically figures out how to build it? This talk will make you wonder how you ever lived without infrastructure as code, and show how Terraform can be used to turn your devops up to 11.

In the world of Knowledge Management, Taxonomy is a discipline focused on the building of classically structured hierarchies of terms that are used to represent defined concepts. Typically, the hierarchy which is leveraged within a system is also called a taxonomy. The system employs the taxonomy to classify documents, digital assets and other information. In addition to categorizing content to improve findability (navigation and search), a taxonomy also allows content to be discovered. In these fast-paced times, taxonomies are expanding beyond the classic hierarchy to include semantic networks (often referred to as ontologies), thesauri and established lexicons (controlled vocabularies). Leveraging new tools, taxonomy development and maintenance can ideally fit into any Continuous Improvement plan. The use of new strategies and tools also promotes interoperability and improves the flow of information through enterprise systems. As a result, organizational barriers continue to be broken down so information can be more effectively used and reused.

Are you looking to increase cross-functional communication and transparency, while better engaging end users and showing progress more rapidly for your projects or pilots? Depending on the nature of the effort, an Agile approach can help you achieve your goals! Join us as Alicia Cyrus presents the CTO Office recommendations and resources for conducting an Agile project

Heard about the Equifax breach? Were you affected by it or any other recent cyber security or privacy incident? Ever wonder what GSA IT is doing in the area of information privacy? Come to the Privacy Tech Talk and listen to Richard Speidel and the privacy team talk about the importance of Privacy here at GSA IT and get answers to any questions you may have.

A Tour of GitHub for Non-Developers: GitHub is a collaboration platform where users can work on open source projects together. In this session, we’ll take a look at the many GitHub features and get you up to speed with version control terminology. We’ll also take a look at a few workflows in GitHub for contributing to open source projects without coding. This is a beginner friendly session for someone who has little to no experience with GitHub.

Ever find yourself always trying to answer the question of why IT costs what it does or a cost per user? Do your customers want more information as to what drives the cost of the services GSA IT delivers, but you find yourself answering questions with more question? What if there was a standard taxonomy and model that once loaded with the copious amounts of data that we possess that could answer those questions? In fact, what if those questions could be answered and we could drive both ourselves and our users to more efficient and effective uses of our IT? This answer does exist within our Cost Transparency Initiative, utilizing Technology Business Management. Please join us for this TechTalks to learn more about cost transparency and how we can shape business demand and deliver value for money.

Maybe you've heard someone talking about GEAR, and want to know what it's all about. Or maybe you've used GEAR to check if a certain technology is approved at GSA. Did you know you can export all of these reports? Do you know how to see which applications belong to a single 2-letter office? Do you know how to get incorrect information updated? The EA team will provide a demo that will walk through the basic lists managed within GEAR, as well as some less-well-known ways to search for your favorite information. Come and see how much information is already available at your fingertips!

Opportunities for data scientists—one of today’s hottest skills—are rapidly growing in response to the exponential amounts of data being captured and analyzed. Data scientists are needed in GSA to find insights into this data and to solve meaningful business problems within the agency. In this talk, we’ll explore what it means to be a data scientist as well as data science process workflow, tools, technology, and upcoming GSA training in Data Science.

Salesforce Lightning for Gmail is a brand new way to experience Salesforce right from within Gmail for CRM customers. Lightning for Gmail provides ability to integrate Salesforce with Google G Suite email and calendar applications. Salesforce team will provide demo to highlight how users can perform various actions in Salesforce from within Gmail which helps to increase productivity, efficiency and eliminates duplicate efforts.

Recently, Google App Scripts were made available for development by everyone at GSA. App Scripts yield tremendous power and can help automate many tasks that previously required manual intervention. For instance, do you want to automatically send calendar invites based on form responses? Or perhaps you want to scan a particular team folder to ensure that sharing settings are as expected. With a little bit of javascript knowledge, you can quickly start producing scripts for use by yourself and your team. In the talk, we will cover some app script basics, talk about the approval process for their use at GSA, and a quick example app.

The objective of this tech talk is to explain the use of DevSecOps framework to migrate application workloads to cloud. The CTO team is collaborating with various teams (incl. IDI, security, and application development leads) to define and build DevSecOps framework to help migrate application workloads to cloud. The goal is to ‘develop/deploy/operate’ through automation. As part of this journey, the CTO team worked closely with the D2D team to migrate D2D applications to cloud by building some of these automation pieces and work towards that final goal of developing automated CI/CD pipelines. In this presentation, we will go over the D2D migration steps in detail and understand how DevSecOps automation process can help build repeatable infrastructure/application deployments with minimal manual intervention, and shorter provisioning times.

Have you ever wondered how to create InSite pages? And perhaps why? And how you could maximize your InSite pages to improve acceptance of your program? Maybe you've wondered how you could create self help pages that for your customers - that also cuts down on phone calls, emails and meetings?

We'll quickly walk through how to request an InSite page. Then provide a quick overview of GSA's style guides that include federal guidelines and laws that you must keep in mind when creating online content.

Finally, we'll show how helping customers complete their tasks on your InSite pages can improve customer satisfaction, and improve productivity and efficiency.

Slides will be shared that will go into more depth and include:

• analyzing InSite page visits with Google Analytics
• analyzing searches and using the results to understand your customer's keywords
• improving your InSite pages' Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• using a shortcut - like insite.gsa.gov/myprogram - as an easy way to communicate with your customers and improve your branding
• using customer feedback - like "Rate This Page" to continuously improve your Insite pages by using the voices of your customer

If you're mystified by InSite and don't know where to start this talk is for you.

D2D is a GSA-wide initiative and cultural shift to bring GSA datasets together, ensure consistency of reporting, and empower employees at all levels with the outcome of building a data-driven organization. It is a capability used to aggregate data, store data securely using modern cloud technology, and develop flexible reports for your customers. During this tech talk, Kris Rowley, GSA Chief Data Officer, will present D2D's portal capabilities, offer discussion around what D2D can do to help better support our daily jobs, and answer any data related questions specific to the business. The D2D team hopes to continue contributing to the to the improvement of GSA's overall customer experience by helping reach insights quickly, collaborate meaningfully, and build a community around data.

Do you ever wonder how applications are synced across multiple devices? How you are able to receive instant updates to your mobile apps? This is possible because of Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs. APIs are software programs that enable computer programs and systems to talk directly to each other.

If you would like to understand how APIs work, then this Tech Talk is for you! Ryan Day and Joe Castle of IC and the GSA Digital Service team are going to explain APIs with particular focus on data transfer over web protocols and RESTful design with considering endpoints, nouns, and verbs. They will also demonstrate popular commercial and GSA examples while discussing the value they provide to the Agency and end consumers. Furthermore, information will be provided about GSA's API strategy, API inventory, and API standards for those wanting to create APIs.

IT applications are getting more robust and complicated each year. Applications developers are expected to deliver more features while improving application performance for end users.

This can be a challenging endeavor without the right tool to baseline and track application performance and identify where the bottlenecks are occurring.

During this tech talk, Phil Klokis and Allen Samuel will present how PB-ITS has used Riverbed ARX to improve application performance and identify usage of the application in supporting application rationalization activities.

As organizations embark on Agile transformation, many traditional project managers or business and technical leads are often assigned the Product Owner role with limited (or no) training or even an understanding of what the new role truly entails. In the midst of changing environments, conflicting mindsets, and other change-related issues, they are expected to start operating within a Scrum team after a few days of CSPO training and perhaps some reading. So, what are some of the tools and real-life experience required from a Product Owner?

During this Tech Talk, Alicia Cyrus will explore the differences between product ownership and traditional project management, and share some approaches on how Product Owners can effectively manage relationships and the responsibilities of their new role.

Did you know that PBS at GSA uses The Internet of Things for Their Smart Buildings? The next Tech Talk on May 17th at 1 pm will have GSA-PBS IT’s Charles Matta and Andrew Vanjani sharing their insights into this very exciting topic.

They will talk about PBS and smart buildings, and The Internet of Things within the building industry, PBS, Federal Facilities and the real estate industry. How it works, Applications, Risks/Rewards, Cybersecurity, Contracting, Innovation and Opportunities will all be discussed.

Version control software allows multiple people to manage changes to a project at the same time without getting in each other's way. At GSA, we use it to help share and collaborate on open source software but it can be used for many other things as well. In this session, we'll talk about the basics of version control, look at how you might use it on your projects and take a tour of the GitHub ecosystem. This is a beginners session and no coding experience is required.

Please join Sara Cope from the CTO Office in this Tech Talk for a friendly introduction to Version Control and GitHub.

DevOps is a growing collection of practices that unify software development, QA, IT operations, and security. These practices are primarily focused on two areas: cultural change and process automation. By applying DevOps principles to our IT products, we can realize better product quality, lower costs, shorter lead time to release changes, increased reliability, and happier customers.

Please join Jeff Fredrickson from the CTO Office for this Tech Talk to learn more about DevOps and how GSA can benefit from it.

Like most organizations, GSA IT is embracing the shared services model to optimize common IT functions to more efficiently meet GSA's mission of delivering best value in real estate, acquisition and technology services. This means re-evaluating the way GSA IT defines and creates IT solutions and investment strategies for the enterprise.

In 2016, GSA IT established Solutions Strategy Division within the Office of the CTO to partner with you to innovate, guide and architect IT solutions that fit your needs and support GSA IT's shared services model.

Please join Akanksha Sharma from the CTO Office in this Tech Talk to learn more about how Solutions Strategy is helping GSA move to a shared services model. Furthermore, she will explain how to engage with the division for assistance with your current and future projects.

Like most organizations, GSA is embracing Agile to more effectively respond to rapid market opportunities, and is investing in approaches that facilitate the delivery of business value and quality products to its internal and external customers.

So, is there a "right" way to becoming Agile? Should an organization care about "going" Agile or better business results?

Please join Lulit Tesfaye and Alicia Cyrus from the CTO Office in this Tech Talk. They will discuss what Agile behaviors look like at the Team, Program and Organization level; enabling a supporting environment and share resources from coaching pilot Agile teams across GSA organizations.

Technology in the federal sector is rapidly changing with focus on new technologies to meet emerging customer and end user needs. Design elicitation, rapid and continuous software deployments, open source technologies, sprint management cycles, etc., are the new norm. This talk will provide insight into Digital Services at GSA, how it started, its focus, and current projects.

In this Tech Talk, Joseph Castle and Jeffrey Fredrickson from the Digital Services Division provided an overview of the OMB and GSA policies, discussed implementation and measurement, and discussed the importance of OSS to the agency.

The Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is responsible for driving innovation and modernizing technologies for GSA. In this Tech Talk, Navin Vembar, GSA CTO, provided the CTO vision for the future of technology at GSA, what services the office provides, and information about the projects currently underway.