The Government Accountability Office said in a new report that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) component needs to do a better job at informing the public when it uses facial recognition technology (FRT). […]

The top Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee called the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program a “bad investment” during a July 27 hearing, and said Congress may have to “seriously consider pulling the plug” on the project. […]

A lack of required cybersecurity performance data for the largest 24 Federal agencies over the first half of 2022 left the House Oversight and Reform Committee partly in the dark as it formulated cybersecurity-related grades for the 14th version of its FITARA Scorecard issued by the committee today. […]

During a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing today to discuss the newly-released 14th installment of the committee’s FITARA Scorecard, several Federal chief information officers (CIOs) agreed the scorecard serves as a useful tool for their agencies to track IT-related performance, but also offered recommendations on how the scorecard could improve. […]

A former Justice Department official implored members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging at a hearing today to make Federal technology more accessible for people with disabilities, and called for “serious enforcement” of regulations under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). […]

Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced bipartisan legislation on July 27 that aims to cut through clutter in Federal government technology acquisition, and to beef up the government’s ranks of IT-related tech procurement specialists. […]

The latest edition of the FITARA Scorecard released today by the House Oversight and Reform Committee shows a mild trend toward declining agency grades across a range of IT-related performance measures. […]

The 24 largest Federal agencies trended toward lower grades across several IT-related performance categories on the 14th installment of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s FITARA Scorecard issued by the committee on July 28. […]

The Senate today voted to approve the Chips and Science Act by a margin of 64-33, sending the bill to the House of Representatives for its consideration. If the House approves the legislation, President Biden is eager to sign the measure into law. […]

As brutal heat waves wash over both the United States and Europe, the Biden administration has launched the Heat.gov website to help Americans and government officials understand the impact and health risks of extreme heat. […]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced that the Biden-Harris administration awarded a record $154.2 billion in Federal contract dollars to small businesses in fiscal year 2021 – far exceeding the government’s small business contracting goal. […]

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report is pointing to several different ways that the United States can help reduce semiconductor product shortages that have been plaguing the U.S. since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) component has awarded Lumen Technologies a $137 million contract to provide mission-critical communications, internet connectivity, and network services that support the law enforcement agency’s systems and facilities across the United States and overseas. […]

Barton Phillips, vice president for Public Sector at DocuSign, detailed the Federal government’s relatively slow progress to date in digitizing citizen services – and what agencies need to do to operate seamlessly in the digital landscape – during an address at the MerITocracy American Innovation Forum on July 21. […]

In the long march to implementing zero trust architectures (ZTA), Federal agencies have focused on managing user identity and made tremendous progress in implementing identity authenticators into their systems.  […]

Ken Myers, the chief Federal ICAM Architect at the General Services Administration (GSA), explained today that the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) Architecture has similar goals to the Federal zero trust architecture (ZTA) strategy, with both of them emphasizing identity. […]

The Senate voted today to limit further debate and move towards a final vote on a bill that includes the core technology-related items under USICA/COMPETES Act legislation that has been stalled in Congress for months. […]

Implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices has been an important task for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and using technology to create a lasting outcome has been key to its Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) that is in charge of implementing DEIA policy that sit at the very top of the Biden administration’s priorities. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) have issued marching orders to Federal civilian agencies to plan their cybersecurity investments for fiscal year 2024 around several priority goals. […]

The Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) has appointed Camille Stewart Gloster as the new deputy national cyber director (NCD) for Technology and Ecosystem Security. […]

Federal agencies and their Federal Systems Integrator (FSI) partners are considering how to tap into artificial intelligence (AI) to advance their missions. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence is calling on Federal leaders to double research and development spending on AI, to $32 billion by Fiscal Year 2026. As with any new technology, there is uncertainty on the best way to move from pilot projects in the lab to fully implemented production solutions. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a July 20 memo to agencies that instructs them to consider telework and remote work, as well as the status of online collaboration tools when submitting their office workspace plans. […]

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finds that the State Department is taking  action to better promote diversity and inclusion in the agency’s workforce, but still has a long way to go to reach its goals – including putting in place the means to measure its performance and increasing accountability for its diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) goals. […]

Securities and Exchange Commission member Hester Peirce said on July 21 that Congress ought to weigh in on regulatory jurisdictions that should apply to various types of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, and said those jurisdictions might vary depending on the different attributes of some digital assets. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee is set to release version 14.0 of its FITARA Scorecard on July 28, according to a notice published by the committee’s Government Operations Subcommittee, which will hold a hearing on the same day beginning at 9:00 a.m. to discuss the scorecard’s finding with three Federal agency CIOs as witnesses. […]

Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., called for members of Congress as a whole to boost their own technology-related credentials so that the Federal government can achieve greater success in tech-related innovation and efficiency. […]

Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), spoke at the MerITocracy American Innovation Forum on July 21 where he shared insights on the innovation imperative, and why he believes American innovation is a “people story.” […]

The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has awarded General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) a $65 million cloud and data integration contract to support the agency’s Integrated Data Repository (IDR). […]

While the Biden administration is pushing hard to increase broadband service access across the country, the White House needs to come up with a national strategy to do so on tribal lands where broadband access has traditionally lagged, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report.  […]

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., championed the vital role that skills-based education can play to help start filling millions of job openings in United States tech-related sectors. […]