The Federal government has been implementing a cloud computing strategy for the past year. Its goal: drive the government-wide adoption of cost effective, green, and sustainable Federal cloud computing solutions. The government has moved surprisingly fast on this.

Next up is a mobile strategy. That’s probably overdue too, but the mobile technology is only now becoming suitable for serious, large scale general work. (UPS, FedEx have had specialized mobile strategies for years.) The Feds have come up with six core objectives, which we’ll look at below.

Unlike many federal initiatives that seem to either suddenly fall from the sky or spend inordinate amounts of time in committee, this time the Feds are soliciting your ideas and comments from the start. To participate in the discussion, click here. Now let’s look at the six core objectives. more

I’ve been talking to risk management, compliance and internal auditing experts this month to get a feel for how they expect their realms to evolve during the next 12 to 18 months. I’ve heard some interesting ideas. I’ve also heard the same interesting idea repeated more than once; and, as the saying goes, “here’s how journalists (or bloggers) count to three: one, two, trend.”

Count storytelling within the realm of risk management among one of the many trends (including lean GRC, behavioral risk management, principled performance, correlations between business ethics and the bottom line and the death of SAS 70 audits) I’m examining right now. more

This year, there’s one more 1099 form to add to the mix: the 1099-K. If your business takes payments via credit cards or services like PayPal, you may find one in your mail box later this month.

The forms will be sent by payment settlement entities — typically, banks or other institutions that pay merchants and other businesses as settlement for payment card transactions — and could include payments made via credit, debit or even gift cards. They’ll also be sent by third-party settlement organizations — organizations like PayPal that are contractually obligated to make payments to participating payees or merchants, in a third-party payment network — if the gross payments to a payee exceed $20,000 and consist of more than 200 transactions. more

How do executives expect to realize their strategic objectives if all they look at is financial results like product profit margins, return on equity, earnings and interest before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), cash flow, and other financial results? These are really not goals – they are results. They are consequences. Measurements are not about just monitoring the summary dials of a balanced scorecard. They are about moving the dials of the dashboard that actually move the scorecard dials.

Worse yet, when measures are displayed in isolation of each other rather than with a chain of cause-and-effect linkages, then one cannot analyze how much influencing measures affect influenced measures. This is more than just leading indicators and lagging indicators. Those are timing relationships. A balanced scorecard reports the causal linkages, and its key performance indicators (KPIs) should be derived from a strategy map. Any strategic measurement system that fails to start with a strategy map and/or reports measures in isolation is like a kite without a string. There is no steering or controlling. more

The IPO market’s rocky performance in the latter half of 2011 is expected to continue into 2012, according to a recent survey of investment bankers by BDO USA. A year ago, nearly three-quarters of the investment bankers surveyed predicted an increase in U.S. IPOs. That number since has dropped to 50%. What’s more, bankers are predicting an average IPO return on investment of just 3%; the return predicted a year ago was 18%.

“The lack of confidence coming through in the survey is consistent with the last half of 2011,” says Brian Eccleston, partner in BDO’s capital markets practice. In fact, after eking out a 1.2% return for the first six months of 2011, the FTSE Renaissance U.S. IPO Index dropped significantly, posting a negative 23.2% return for the last half of the year, according to Renaissance Capital. Eccleston attributes the shift in performance to increased concerns about the possibility of a recession in Europe, as well as lackluster economic performance this side of the Atlantic. more