Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
OPM Office of Personnel Management

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued proposed regulations today to update the Pathways Programs to expand opportunities for early career professionals and better meet the Federal government’s workforce needs. […]

The Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced it has upgraded two twin supercomputers responsible for the nation’s Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS), expanding their computing capacity by 20 percent. […]

The Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) – established by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – has released its long-awaited review on the Lapsus$ hacking group, which attacked various government agencies and corporate networks from 2021 to 2022. […]

In light of the proliferation of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, the Government Accountably Office (GAO) has added one new priority recommendation – to help regulate “blockchain-related risks” – to its list of recommendations for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). […]

The National Finance Center (NFC) – a Federal shared service provider of payroll, human resources, and retirement services to more than 650,000 government employees – is suffering from a range of operational problems including woefully outdated IT infrastructure, and is “at risk without prompt action,” according to a report released this week by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is asking for public feedback on the draft version of a major update to its voluntary Cybersecurity Framework, which has become something close to a de facto baseline standard for security efforts in government and the private sector since it was launched in 2014 as a guide for critical infrastructure sectors. […]

State Department

How do you attack two big challenges for Federal agencies under the President’s Management Agenda – improving both customer experience and cybersecurity – with just one set of pilot projects focused on better device management? A good person to ask for advice on that front is Dr. Kelly Fletcher, who took over as State Department […]

FEMA
DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is delaying the rollout of its Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Provider Suite (ECLIPS), with plans to conduct a follow-up industry engagement event in October or November to discuss the status of the project. […]

FCC

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted last week to launch a notice of inquiry to better understand non-Federal spectrum usage and identify new data sources and emerging technologies – such as AI – to accomplish that task in a cost-effective way. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) outlined some of the leading practices that private sector organizations are using to create a range of “cyber-physical” products, and pointed to how government acquisition officials can learn from those practices to help frame changes in their own acquisition processes. […]

NIST
OPM CIO Guy Cavallo

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Chief Information Officer (CIO) Guy Cavallo previewed his agency’s upcoming new website on Thursday, which he said is centered around improving four specific customer experiences and helping customers quickly find what they’re looking for. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) needs to do more to improve electric grid resilience by ensuring there are adequate reserves of spare power transformers, which are susceptible to cyberattacks and other physical threats, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. […]

IRS

How long does it take to finally kill off one of the mainstays of 1970s-era records storage technology and in the process double the size of a Federal regulatory agency’s primary records database while vastly improving the accessibility and usefulness of the data contained within it? If you ask David Nelson, chief information officer (CIO) at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the answer is just shy of four years. […]

FDIC

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in an audit report released on July 25, found that the agency’s current governance and strategy controls of its cloud computing transition lack in several vital areas, posing cybersecurity risks. […]

NIST

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report indicating that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can be doing a better job at implementing some of its key practices for its National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) program. […]

Stephan Streiffer, the current interim director at the Stanford University-based SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will serve as the next director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee starting in October, according to an announcement released on Thursday. […]

CMS
CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the latest version of its Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (RVA) report, which found that threat actors had the most attack success through “common methods” such as phishing techniques in fiscal year (FY) 2022. […]

State Department

Federal agency officials made it clear that the concept of “health IT alignment” is their number one priority in the IT sphere during a July 25 webinar organized by Federal News Network. titled Federal Executive Forum Healthcare IT in Government hosted by Federal News Network on July 25. Ryan Dempsey Argentieri, deputy director of the […]

State Department
FCC

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said this week that she will begin an inquiry into sharply increasing the agency’s definition of what qualifies as a “broadband” service – with a focus on boosting service speeds for “fixed” broadband services. […]

text message, mobile phone, data
security

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has failed to consistently implement effective controls to restrict access to its network and information technology (IT) systems, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general (IG) report from last week. […]

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