The Government Accountability Office found that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has not completed a modernization plan for its existing IT systems, which will make it difficult to reach its modernization goals. […]
To score a home run, you have to cover all the bases. But getting from start to finish is harder than it looks. For Federal agencies, hitting IT out of the park is even more difficult due to budget constraints, lengthy procurement processes, and staffing difficulties. And, as agencies continue to spend 79 percent of IT budgets – or $62 billion annually – on legacy systems, the window for innovation decreases every day. So how can agencies stay ahead of the curve? […]
Systems integration and exploring new functionality are two major technological challenges for states pursuing their own health care initiatives, according to Jim Hardy, Deloitte Consulting’s Medicaid advisory services lead. […]
Cyber criminals are more and more often using tools and processes already installed in target computers, called “living off the land,” to ease hacking efforts and reduce the chance of detection, according to a recent Symantec study. […]
The White House is celebrating Made in America Week, while many U.S.-based technology companies advocate for H-1B visas to sponsor foreign workers who engineer some of the nation’s most lucrative technology products. […]
The General Services Administration announced that former National Academy of Public Administration general counsel Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati is the new Associate Administrator for the Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP). […]
The United States Digital Service released its July report to Congress, detailing projects including streamlining Veterans Affairs services, modernizing the immigration system, Hack the Pentagon, and IT acquisition training. […]
The State Department’s cyber coordinator will be stepping down at the end of this month, according to reports from Politico. Chris Painter has been creating a strategic framework for cybersecurity during peacetime and gaining support from other countries. […]
Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to President Donald Trump, urging him to make digital trade a priority in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. […]
The government is counting on education, financial incentives, and minority outreach to help expand the cybersecurity workforce. The Office of Personnel Management created a Strategic Recruitment for Cybersecurity Model to complement the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Strategy, which was released last year, and plans to release the details of the model on July 25. […]
The House of Representatives adopted Rep. Gerry Connolly’s, D-Va., amendment to extend certain provisions of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. The FITARA Extension amendment continues three provisions that were set to expire over the past couple of years: Federal data center consolidation, transparency and risk management of major IT systems, and IT portfolio, program, and resource reviews. […]
Several states have started weighing alternative plans to the First Responder Network Authority’s initial outlines to create and operate a broadband network that supports first responder groups. Here’s what Arizona, Colorado, and New Hampshire are considering. […]
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released a report on ways to support innovation in the Federal government, including establishing a chief innovation officer (CINO), even though the White House still hasn’t nominated a chief information officer. […]
MeriTalk compiles a weekly roundup of contracts and other industry activity. Here’s what happened this week in the Federal Information Technology community. […]
The General Services Administration is close to awarding a $50 billion contract for its Enterprise Infrastructure Solution (EIS), Bill Zielinski, assistant commissioner for category management at GSA, announced July 13. […]
More than one-third of the Small Business Administration’s 120 circuits are overloaded. To resolve this issue, chief information officer Maria Roat plans to modernize SBA’s infrastructure by moving to a “pure Ethernet backbone.” She said Ethernet will help employees with Skype and virtual counseling, and will extend to all of the agency’s field offices. […]
The pressure is on for agencies to make the move to cloud – just 13 percent of Feds say they can deploy new systems as fast as required. However, agencies know cloud is here to stay. When it comes down to it, Feds are optimistic – 70 percent say increasing their cloud adoption pace will improve IT’s ability to innovate. That said, flying through the cloud procurement process is no easy feat. Making the cloud move is proving to be more complex than expected – but with the right planning and strategic moves, Feds can ensure they undergo a surprise-free move. […]
The secret to the Small Business Administration’s success in going from cloud launch to receiving an authority to operate (ATO) in less than three months was to burn the bridge back to the old way of doing things and commit completely to cloud migration, according to SBA Deputy CIO Guy Cavallo and CTO Sanjay Gupta. […]
The Federal Acquisition Regulation, the guidelines dictating how Federal agencies procure goods and services, is not flexible enough to keep pace with modernizing agencies, according to Jennifer Hoover, DevOps program manager for the Transportation Security Administration. […]
One of the drives for agencies to move to a mobile, cloud environment is to attract millennials, who are used to having their data on demand. […]
Cloud helps organizations focus on the important parts of their mission, rather than wasting their time on maintenance and compliance, according to Peter Cutts, senior vice president of hybrid cloud platforms at Dell EMC. […]
Members of Congress urged Defense Secretary James Mattis in a letter to incorporate cybersecurity into high school Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) programs. […]
As a Democratic senator drafts a bill to look into artificial intelligence policy, Elon Musk and Google teach machines human judgment in order to avoid the robot apocalypse. […]
The Federal Communications Commission’s authority to create net neutrality policy is uncertain, so Congress needs to draft legislation that creates a definitive authority for which actions the FCC can and cannot take for the sake of net neutrality, according to experts who spoke at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation panel. […]
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) challenged the White House in Federal court on President Donald Trump’s voting commission’s request for voter data from 50 states and the District of Columbia. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cyber Risks Economics (CyRiE) project on July 7 awarded $220,209 to the University of Tulsa to study how to quantify the value of data sharing and to promote increased sharing in the cybersecurity community. […]
While President Donald Trump talks about creating a Cybersecurity Unit with Russia, government officials told the Washington Post that Russian government hackers were behind recent cyber intrusions into the business systems of U.S. nuclear power and other energy companies. […]
FedRAMP can open business opportunities within the country and abroad for fledgling companies, according to Doug Bourgeois of Deloitte. […]
In 2012, the Office of Management and Budget listed 14 cross-agency priority goals as part of the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. One topic identified was continuous monitoring of Federal IT networks. The next year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a $6 billion program to address this: the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program. […]
How do agencies tackle cloud adoption? Everyone has a different story but the challenges are similar across state and local government. Learn how other states are navigating the challenges of modernizing IT and how these organizations have found success in adopting the cloud. […]