Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has proposed establishing a new health data agency to improve access to impartial and objective public health data, with the payoff of bolstering infectious disease intelligence and preparedness. […]
Gerald Caron, chief information officer (CIO) and assistant inspector general (IG) for information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said this week that sustainability and continuous authentication are two of the keys to creating a robust identity and access management (IAM) strategy as part of how Federal agencies move to comply with President Biden’s 2021 cybersecurity executive order that requires migration to zero trust security architectures. […]
The Chips and Science Act approved by the House and Senate last week – and expected to be signed by President Biden next week – has generated a lot of headline news on the chips side of the legislation, including $52 billion of government funding to incentivize semiconductor makers to build new plants in the United States. […]
Angelica Phaneuf, Chief Information Security Officer at the Army Software Factory, explained some of the steps that her organization has been taking to meet the needs of zero trust security mandates at an August 2 event entitled Securing Identity in a Zero Trust Environment and hosted by Federal News Network. […]
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved by voice vote on August 3 two cybersecurity bills whose next stop is consideration by the full Senate. […]
The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) today announced over $26 million of new project funding to the Department of Labor (DoL), AmeriCorps, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). […]
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved by voice vote on August 3 the Advancing Government Innovation with Leading-Edge (AGILE) Procurement Act of 2022, which aims to make simpler Federal government processes for buying technology products and services. […]
A new report from the Partnership for Public Service finds that the workforce attrition rate across all Federal government agencies rose to 6.1 percent for the 2021 fiscal year, up from the 5.5 percent attrition rate in FY2020. […]
The Senate on August 2 voted to approve a bill that addresses conflicts of interest within the Federal contracting community. […]
The focus on Federal agency cybersecurity scores in the 14th edition of the FITARA Scorecard released last week – and the lack of enough data from the government to allow the House Oversight and Reform Committee to get a good fix on how agencies performed on cybersecurity during the first half of 2022 – caught the eyes of private sector technology executives who said the government needs to do more to help agencies boost security. […]
Jay Ribeiro, the chief information security officer (CISO) at the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, plans to step down on August 26 after serving in the post since September 2018. […]
Federal agencies are hard at work developing strategies to overcome data challenges and ensure they’re meeting critical mission needs, Federal data experts from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said during the Databricks Data and AI Summit 2022 in late June. […]
In a recent MeriTV “IT In Depth” episode, Robert Costello, Chief Information Officer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Bill Wright, Splunk’s Director of Public Sector Affairs, said new event logging requirements pose a series of complicated tests for Federal IT managers. The mandates stem from the August 2021 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo M-21-31, which outlines a four-tier system for logging events and describes logs on Federal information systems as “invaluable” in fighting cyber threats. […]
New legislation filed in the Senate today would prevent any future attempts to undertake wholesale reclassifications of Federal civil servants and replace them with political appointees without the consent of Congress. […]
David Shive, the chief information officer (CIO) at the General Services Administration (GSA), apologized to the vendor community today for the agency’s challenges in transitioning to a new online identification system for the Federal government’s awards process. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) on July 29 put out a request for information seeking market research that will help the agency move forward with its Ascend Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) to simplify and standardize the way that Federal government agencies buy cloud products and services. […]
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have introduced new legislation that would reauthorize the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI), which provides cybercrime training to state and local law enforcement agencies. […]
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) continues to be plagued with problems in data collection and assessment of sexual harassment incidents that occur within the agency, according to a recent follow-up report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) needs to do a better job at strengthening collaboration between Federal agencies on science and technology issues. […]
John Roese describes himself as a “technology optimist.” The Dell Technologies Global Chief Technology Officer illustrated that spirit at the MerITocracy American Innovation Forum on July 21, displaying enthusiasm about a U.S. wireless industry that he acknowledged has fallen far behind foreign rivals. […]
General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) has appointed former Army Major Gen. Garrett Yee vice president and general manager of the company’s Army sector. […]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on July 28 that she plans to introduce new legislation aimed at combating what she called cryptocurrency and digital asset “scams” aimed at novice investors. […]
Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced bipartisan legislation on July 28 to strengthen Federal data center security to protect against cyberattacks, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks. […]
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has announced that Abraham Denmark will serve as his senior advisor on the tech-heavy Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security partnership. […]
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he plans to introduce a bill that will develop a pilot program across agencies to enhance the government’s use of metadata. […]
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report details how the Department of Defense (DoD) still has only been able to meet 11 out of the 14 key requirements for its Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (FCCS). […]
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee voted narrowly on July 28 to approve the nomination of Arati Prabhakar to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). […]
Proposed legislation released on July 28 by the Senate Appropriations Committee augurs well for the eventual approval of a 4.6 percent pay raise for Federal civilian government employees for 2023. […]
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts relies on IT systems to manage information to support its lines of business, including court administration, probation, and pretrial services. However, insufficient oversight and incomplete IT management guidance have hampered the agency’s overall operational success, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced an extension of its Thunderdome Prototype zero trust security project, increasing the total length of the pilot program to 12 months with a new expected completion date in January 2023. […]