Shawn P. McCathy

Shawn P. McCarthy is an IDC Government Insights research director. He launched and manages the U.S. Government IT Infrastructure Strategies research advisory service, which includes technology recommendations and key cost control proposals for government IT systems. He also issues IDC’s semi-annual U.S. Government IT Spending Guides (federal, state and local) and he created the annual U.S. Federal Line of Business Budget Guide, which tracks detailed spending buy federal department, program and more.

Mr. McCarthy is responsible for analyzing primary end-user data and budget data collected both from officially published sources and through surveys of IT managers in government and university offices. Mr. McCarthy determines IT investment priorities for the public sector and identifies and forecasts emerging technologies and opportunities for both government offices and technology vendors who work with the government.

Mr. McCarthy regularly contributes in the government IT infrastructure blog in the IDC Government Insights Community (http://idc-insights-community.com/government). His Twitter handle is Shawn_McCarthy.

He has given presentations in multiple countries and chaired many panel discussions at FOSE, MacWorld and other large IT conferences. As a government employee, he helped build databases and curriculum libraries at The Smithsonian Institution.

Prior to joining IDC Government Insights, Mr. McCarthy served as program manager for Government & Education within IDC's Vertical Industry Research Group. Before that he headed his own IT consulting firm, and served as a group product manager for four years at Lycos, the Internet search engine. He also was a senior editor at Government Computer News and he still writes the monthly Internaut column for GCN.

He graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University with a Masters degree in educational technology leadership. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism/mass communication from St. Bonaventure University and has a certificate in project management for IT programs. He occasionally teaches graduate-level project management classes.

Mr. McCarthy is frequently quoted by trade publications that are read by government IT mangers, and is the author of two books: Engineering Your Way to Success written for the National Society of Professional Engineers, and The Art of .COMbat: Ancient Wisdom for the Competitive Economy, published by John Wiley & Sons.