Writing for Civicist, Mark Headd, former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia, reminds us that the problems with government technology procurement--slow, costly, and complex--are no accident. Read his article for five ways to upgrade government tech procurement.

DevOps, or “development and operations,” is about organizational culture, not just software development. Done well, DevOps integrates culture, process, and technology into a continuous cycle of innovation and agility. GCN tells us how to get there.

There’s a new platform for governing by network. Four cities around the globe are launching the “GovCombinator,” a new co-working organization that catalyzes spontaneous ideas and solutions for more creative public policy by putting side-by-side high-level city officials, members of the social sector, business groups, and other stakeholders to work on discrete urban problems, Route Fifty reports.

As the government c-suite grows to include chief data officers, Nextgov explains why the role should expand beyond primarily finding, curating, and harvesting data to include not only managing, but doing. The proposed chief digital officer applies tech to achieve overall mission success, not just intermediate goals, straddling the line between mission and means.

The Indiana Office of Technology hopes to be a gateway to IoT benefits. Working with the private sector to evaluate potential economic gains from investing in IoT tech, the state aims to use its data analytics infrastructure to manage and learn from massive IoT generated data, StateScoop reports.

The New York Times shows how Civis Analytics, a company financed by a group of veteran data wonks who worked on the 2012 Obama campaign, is harnessing the power of cloud computing through a comprehensive set of big data tools available through Amazon Web Services. They promise to automate otherwise expensive processes in large-scale pattern finding that could be used to handle big analysis tasks with little costly customization.

The flexible operating costs and resource agility of cloud computing are also making it difficult to track and manage public dollars. GCN breaks down the developing uses and challenges of government cloud tech.

Summarizing a new report from Deloitte Consulting’s GovLab, GovTech explains the big trends affecting today’s regulators and why, to keep up with today’s rapidly changing technological environment, they must modernize their regulatory practices and increase efficiency.

In the MIT Technology Review, Kenneth Cukier, Data Editor of The Economist, considers how Big Data will change business, and business will change society--particularly the nature of privacy and employment. This has critical implications for policy and regulation: we need regulations that are suited to the new data saturated world we’re building and to remember that we must embrace data alongside a healthy respect for its limitations.That means integrating big data into human values of justice, decency, and common sense. Read the full report at BBVA’s OpenMind.