A lack of incentives for House members, and a declining count of professional committee and member staff with the necessary experience, are combining to dampen oversight activities in the House, panelists said Nov. 16 at an event organized by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). […]

In a letter released Thursday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., questioned the Trump administration’s commitment to election security and pressed administration officials to communicate more clearly with Congress about the issue. […]

The private sector is the prime driver for Congress to take up data privacy legislation in 2019, industry panelists said Thursday at an event organized by Bloomberg Government. […]

Speaking at an event organized by Bloomberg Government, Rep. Eshoo indicated that her concerns are rooted in the impact of social media and other content that inspires or leads to violence such as the Oct. 27 murders at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. […]

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, who will be stepping aside in January as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee after leading the panel since 2013, said today he expects the committee’s core policy interests and aims will continue under the direction of the panel’s incoming chairman, presumably the current ranking member Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. […]

Senior officials from the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security (DHS) told House members on Wednesday that they are busy working out details of a recently finalized cybersecurity coordination agreement focused on improving Federal government cyber defenses generally, and specifically the cyber defenses of critical infrastructure components on which DoD facilities rely, among other areas. […]

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., highlighted the benefits of broadband services for rural areas, and with Democratic control of the House coming in January, offered an optimistic view on the prospects of bipartisan broadband expansion legislation. […]

The House Committee on Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Technology Modernization met today to review the first 180 days of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program, with members of Congress anxious to see evidence of progress in the program and VA officials offering some details that point in that direction. […]

With a new session of Congress–and a power shift in the House–looming in January, big tech companies are looking toward 2019 and possible new privacy legislation that will alter the shape of their business models. […]

In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has yet to implement a full one-third of GAO’s information security recommendations issued to OPM in recent years. […]

Two House subcommittees will convene a hearing tomorrow, Nov. 14, at 3 p.m., to hear officials from the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security (DHS) discuss how the two agencies cooperate on cybersecurity issues. […]

The race between Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s IT subcommittee, and challenger Gina Ortiz Jones, is too close to call, according to media outlets. […]

As Congressional members celebrate and lament the results of yesterday’s midterm elections, Federal IT leaders face a changed landscape on Capitol Hill, with a new party in charge of the House and close elections for several members key to initiatives like FITARA, Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM), and IT modernization. Here are some of the key races and their results: […]

TechCongress, a nonpartisan initiative, is using a $1 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to “increase government knowledge of emerging technology issues and inform policymaking,” according to a Knight Foundation press release dated Nov. 2. […]

Thomas Hicks, commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, said today that EAC has developed a set of voluntary voting system guidelines to aid local election authorities, but the commission currently lacks a quorum to vote on the standards and distribute the guidance to localities. […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported Friday that S. 3437, the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act of 2018, would cost less than $500,000 a year to implement. […]

In a letter released Thursday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the “prevalence of digital advertising fraud and inaction by Google to curb these efforts.” […]

A Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee staffer suggested Tuesday that the many and sometimes disparate elements of industry and academia that make up what could be considered the artificial intelligence (AI) sector should take action to present a more united front to Congress if they hope to convince legislators to create laws that would benefit the sector. […]

A bipartisan group of three senators–Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Cardin, D-Md.–last week introduced Protect Our Elections Act, which aims “to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require states to take steps to ensure domestic ownership and control of election service providers.” […]

Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer in an Oct. 9 letter whether the company has ever found evidence of tampering of components or firmware that targeted the company’s products, among other questions stemming from a Bloomberg Businessweek article reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and allegedly used by numerous U.S. companies and government agencies were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China.  […]

Blockchain technology, along with cryptocurrencies based on that technology, received decidedly mixed views at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Thursday where witnesses debated the usefulness of blockchain to institutions like banks and government agencies, and shared divergent views on whether the technology has promising potential use cases. […]

Three Senate Democrats asked Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Joseph Simons in an Oct. 10 letter to open an investigation into Google’s disclosure earlier this week that it discovered and patched in March a vulnerability in its Google+ social media platform that may have exposed profile data on up to 500,000 accounts, but did not inform users of the vulnerability in a timely way. […]

The chairmen of the House Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform committees have asked for classified briefings from top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies on a recent Bloomberg Businessweek report that Chinese hackers infiltrated numerous U.S. companies and government agencies through a supply-chain hardware hack involving implantation in network equipment of a chip that can route data back to China. […]

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee heard testimony today detailing the workings of data privacy laws in Europe and California–specifically the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)–amid a growing groundswell for Congress to work on a national data privacy law for the U.S. […]

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he is eyeing the post-midterm election “lame duck” period for further movement through Congress of his 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) bill that would empower Federal agency CTOs and CIOs to modernize and improve their websites and citizen services. […]

Apple told congressional leaders in a letter dated today that a story last week by Bloomberg Businessweek–reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and used in Apple equipment were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China–is “not true.” […]

The Senate passed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act (CISA Act) on Wednesday by unanimous consent but included some amendments, setting up a few remaining steps before the bill reaches President Trump’s desk. […]

Congress is getting behind the push to develop artificial intelligence technologies and policies with recent calls for research and development that may overlap efforts already underway. It also reflects the kind of “whole of country” approach that some leaders have said is necessary to keep up with the Chinese. […]

A group of 24 technology organizations banded together to urge the Senate to pass S. 3157, the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act. In a letter released today, the group said the legislation “will modernize wireless infrastructure regulations for next-generation 5G wireless networks” and will unlock “significant consumer and economic benefits.” […]

Andrew Saul, the White House’s nominee for commissioner of Social Security, noted his commitment to continue the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) IT modernization efforts during a Senate Finance Committee hearing yesterday. […]