President Barack Obama is directing the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to deliver a strategy within 90 days that will expedite the deployment of modern technologies that could help keep children, criminals, and the mentally ill away from guns. […]
Federal agencies could save $40.7 billion in annual productivity by switching from legacy voice systems to a Unified Communications solution, a new MeriTalk survey found. […]
Contractor Unisys said the Department of the Interior has completed the migration of its SAP-based financial and business management system (FBMS) to the cloud, making it the first Federal agency to do so. […]
The Government Accountability Office, in a new report, said the Small Business Administration needs to do more to upgrade IT security. The SBA, which hands out billions in loan guarantees to small businesses, said it has fixed more than 30 recommendations. […]
A MeriTalk survey finds that Federal agencies are in need of an efficiency jump-start, and 78 percent of Feds believe DevOps will help agencies innovate faster responses and services. Legacy systems are slowing agencies down, and new apps just add to the inertia. […]
Will the Federal government’s embrace of Silicon Valley actually achieve anything of importance? In a column published in Federal Computer Week, Cisco Systems executives Alan Balutis and Stuart Robbins raise concerns about a government partnership with Silicon Valley that is in danger of producing little more than a few new shiny apps and websites. […]
The Veterans Benefits Administration is falling short in the way it is managing the progress of its Veteran’s Benefits Management System (VBMS), a system that was responsible for processing $63 billion in claims in 2014, Valerie Melvin, director of information technology at the Government Accountability Office, told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. […]
U.S. agencies should renegotiate an international agreement to limit the export of surveillance and intrusion software because the deal handcuffs cybersecurity efforts, critics told a joint hearing of two House of Representatives subcommittees. […]
A new report by the Congressional Research Service found flaws in keeping track of the size of Federal agencies, and noted that the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security are having trouble recruiting and training cybersecurity professionals. […]
Juniper Networks announced that it has been selected as the original equipment manufacturer on four contracts to modernize the U.S. Air Force network infrastructure, partnering with Affigent and ThunderCat Technology. […]
Shawn Kingsberry, who led the first Federal technology system, Recovery.gov, to the cloud, will head Unisys Corporation’s global government practice division. Kingsberry will provide guidance to Federal clients as they transition from manual and analog processes to digital government techniques. […]
The Office of Personnel Management is relieved of the duties of conducting security clearances. Those duties instead go to a brand new agency, the National Background Investigations Bureau. […]
FedRAMP Fast Forward, a Federal IT industry advocacy group, today published a six-step plan to reform and improve the cloud security certification process known as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). […]
The State Department’s Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources has redesigned its main Web portal for making data on U.S. government foreign aid available to lawmakers, international aid organizations, and the general public. But a major effort is underway to improve the quality of the data collected and the site’s analytics capabilities. […]
The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved updated cybersecurity standards for the nation’s electric utilities, aimed at preventing attacks. FERC’s seven updated critical infrastructure protection reliability standards require large utilities to conduct cybersecurity training at least once a quarter and to deploy two or more physical access controls outside their security perimeters. […]
The Data Transparency Coalition is changing its name to Data Coalition and opening a new research center as it gathers steam to push to standardize and publish all government information as open data. […]
In a new report, the Government Accountability Office said some of the definitions provided to Federal agencies for reporting spending data under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 are inadequate, and “could lead to inconsistent reporting.” […]
Ashkan Soltani, the former CTO at the Federal Trade Commission who joined the White House in December to advise U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, is stepping down after being denied a security clearance. Soltani played an active role in the Washington Post’s reporting on the National Security Agency surveillance programs leaked to the media by Edward Snowden. […]
“Some studies say that cruelty to animals is a precursor to larger crime,” so the FBI will now track animal cruelty in the same way it does armed assault, arson, burglary, and homicide. […]
Members of the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned why Danny Harris, the department’s chief information officer since 2008, was pursuing outside work while the agency has repeatedly received low cybersecurity grades from auditors. […]
The White House is threatening to veto HR 1675 if it passes the Senate, after the House of Representatives passed the Small Company Disclosure Simplification Act that would not require most U.S. companies to file machine-readable financial statements. […]
The word “other” and other vague terms have infiltrated the naming convention of Federal spending categories and could wreak havoc on project budgets, according to one International Data Corporation official. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving aggressively to institute a new system to plan and manage IT projects, effectively replacing the agile development methodology championed by former chief information officers Roger Baker and Stephen Warren. VA CIO LaVerne Council told a MyVA Advisory Committee meeting last week that she has hired the second of three senior executives to lead the new IT Account Management organization. […]
Unisys received a contract from NASA Langley Research Center to continue to deliver advanced hardware, software, and systems integration for flight simulation projects at the agency. The Reston, Va.-based tech firm will “design, test, integrate, operate, maintain, and modify systems” that support Langley’s flight simulation research. […]
The National Security Agency announced Monday it is moving ahead with a massive reorganization plan that will consolidate offensive and defensive hacking operations under one command—a move that privacy and civil liberties groups, as well as a presidential review board, have warned would create potential conflicts of interest. […]
President Obama unveiled plans for addressing Federal cybersecurity issues, including a 35% increase in the cybersecurity budget. But Tom Kellermann, Chief Cybersecurity Officer for Trend Micro, worries that the plan is “completely insufficient” to address the cybersecurity needs of the nation. […]
The White House is looking to fill the Federal CISO position in the very near future. The posting for the job, which is designed to establish the direction of Federal cybersecurity policy and strategy in accordance with the Federal CIO, closes on Feb. 26. […]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission awarded Salient CRGT a task order with a two-year contract for roughly $1.44 million to provide the agency with Master Data Management and Enterprise Data Exchange services. Maureen Conley, NRC public affairs officer, said, “This project utilizes a private cloud, not a FedRamp compliant service.” […]
Encryption was a hot issue this week. FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee about the struggle of both counter-terrorism and law enforcement efforts in accessing information on encrypted devices, such as cellphones. And Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, introduced the ENCRYPT Act as a means of combating the push for decryption. […]
Alongside the release of the proposed 2017 budget, the White House released its annual Analytical Perspectives of that proposal. MeriTalk spotted five important trends in the IT world and describes how the Federal government plans to address them. […]