Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

Microsoft on Tuesday announced new advancements to its government cloud offerings, which will expand its ability to store Department of Defense data and increase the number of regions in which their data centers are available. […]

Pentagon, DoD

The Department of Defense is leveraging the Pentagon’s Digital Service Team to develop a public vulnerability disclosure program that will launch in the next few months, according to Lisa Wiswell, an official from the digital service team. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency receives notifications for about 800 million alarms a day while providing support for 146 mission partners, and Maj. Gen. Sarah Zabel, vice director, said the agency is trying to grant all 146 partners access to the commercial cloud. […]

Pentagon, DoD

In the Defense Department’s new strategy document outlining the department’s vision for its future IT environment, CIO Terry Halvorsen argues the complex enterprise network is too difficult to defend, too costly to operate and maintain, and hampers effective information sharing between the military services and the nation’s allies. The strategy outlines eight major goals. […]

The Office of Personnel Management announced today that it has hired Dave DeVries, the principal deputy chief information officer at the Defense Department, to become the agency’s next permanent CIO. […]

The Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing asks participants to create a computer that can learn from data and remember information while using the same amount of energy as a human brain. The challenge is a collaboration among several agencies including the National Institute of Science and Technology, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and members of the Intelligence Community. […]

The Federal government should focus more on defensive cybersecurity measures, work around the regulatory culture of government, and hire more in-house cybersecurity professionals, according to Alex Levinson, information security specialist at Uber. […]

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released its National Strategic Computing Initiative Strategic Plan, which outlines its effort to improve high-performance computing. […]

BlackBerry received approval for its phone management system and latest phone model to be used by the Department of Defense and its crisis communication software to power the Sergeant at Arms’ Joint Emergency Mass Notification Systems for five years. […]

The Department of Defense needs to improve its data about cost saving and streamlining opportunities, according to a June 30 Government Accountability Office report. […]

Politics and blame stand in the way of Federal IT modernization, according to comments made at the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on legacy IT systems. Congressmen said they were disappointed and baffled over the degree of outdated technology in Federal agencies, some in mission critical systems. […]

The Defense Department likes to hit its targets. So you can imagine the frustration that the department’s chief information officer, Terry Halvorsen, must have experienced when he realized that he wasn’t even going to come close to reaching the Federal mandate to close at least 40 percent of the department’s data centers by 2015. […]

Microsoft Azure was selected for a FedRAMP pilot program that will establish a high-impact baseline for cloud-computing services. This essentially allows Federal agencies to move more sensitive data onto contracted cloud-computing services, enabling the sensitive data to operate on the more technically advanced level that is already possible for low-impact data. […]

The Department of Defense is ready to upgrade all Windows-based legacy systems to Windows 10 by January 2017. Nearly three months after Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen issued a new policy requiring the upgrade, a verbal execution order has gone out that puts the unprecedented migration effort into motion. […]

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. […]

DoD

Perennially defending itself against cyberattacks, the Pentagon will go on the offensive and unleash its cyber-arsenal against hackers. […]

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