Tech Talks
The GSA CTO team hosts in-depth Tech Talks, where presenters discuss technology topics affecting the agency. Each Tech Talk is a 30-minute informal meeting with an audience of internal GSA members. Demonstrations are often provided along with follow-up Q&A. Registration is limited to internal GSA personnel. To register to attend a Tech Talk event, please contact Joe Novak at Joseph.Novak@gsa.gov.
For general questions about the Tech Talks, please contact the GSA CTO team at cto@gsa.gov.
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GSA IT Strategy with Balanced Scorecard
March 8, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 3143
Who
Peter Lenentine and Roland Chan
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know about SLACK But Were Afraid to Ask
March 1, 2018, 1-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 5115
Who
Monica Fitzgerald
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Manufacturing your infrastructure with Terraform with Aidan Feldman
February 8, 2018, 11a-11:30a
Objective
“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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 4232
Who
Aidan Feldman
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Taxonomy with Angela Pitts
January 25, 2018, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 4143
Who
Angela Pitts
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Conducting an Agile Project with Alicia Cyrus
January 11, 2018, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 4113
Who
Alicia Cyrus
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Privacy with Richard Speidel
December 7, 2017, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 2213
Who
Richard Speidel
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Github with Sara Cope
November 16, 2017, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 3211
Who
Sara Cope
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TBM with Megan Sikora
November 2, 2017, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 3334
Who
Megan Sikora
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GEAR with Chris Campbell
October 26, 2017, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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!
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 3334
Who
Chris Campbell
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Data Sciences October 5th with Amirah Aziz
October 5, 2017, 1p-1:30p
Objective
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.
Location
Virtual and 1800F Room 5213
Who
Amirah Aziz
