Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
Google Cloud

As the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) moves toward the bidding process for its Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract, Google said it wants an opportunity to get in on the deal. […]

Pentagon Military Defense DoD

With the House consideration of the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) – Democrats’ $1.75 trillion-plus budget reconciliation bill – pushed to this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that the Senate will begin consideration of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week. […]

In the wake of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report encouraging the Departments of Education and Homeland Security (DHS) to update K-12 cybersecurity guidance, several Democrat senators have written to both agencies urging them to heed GAO’s recommendations, and establish critical infrastructure council structures to advance the issue. […]

Telehealth
broadband
Cybersecurity

President Biden on Nov. 11 signed the Secure Equipment Act, which will prevent equipment manufactured by Chinese state-backed firms such as Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua from being further utilized and marketed in the United States. […]

telework
Cybersecurity

Sponsors of two major pieces of legislation that would make formative changes to the way that private sector companies report cyberattacks to the government – and how Federal government agencies conduct their own cyber defenses – are hitching their hopes for passage to annual defense spending legislation that traditionally gets strong bipartisan support from lawmakers. […]

While the COVID-19 pandemic pushed forward massive advancements in telehealth, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has taken it one step – or more – further and is using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in nearly 50 sites for clinical care, an official said Nov. 8. […]

With K-12 educational institutions increasingly targeted by ransomware and other cyber attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is pushing the Department of Education to update its plans – which currently date from 2010 – for addressing cyber risks faced by schools. […]

The Pentagon is a very large building that houses a lot of the authorities for the U.S. Military. It's big. This photo doesn't do it justice, but they're kinda rightly concerned about people flying drones around there.

With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated at disguising themselves as legitimate network users, a top Defense Department (DoD) IT official said this week that the Pentagon’s move to zero trust security architectures gives the agency a “fighting chance” to detect and eject hackers before they can do much damage. […]

 Following a November 10 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the U.S. will sign onto a three-year old framework offered by the French government as an international framework for cooperation on cyber and supply chain security. […]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has embarked on a new initiative to assess the status of geographic information systems (GIS) within the 911 community, with a goal of defining what is required to achieve interoperable GIS data sharing nationwide. […]

After its passage by the House of Representatives Nov. 5, President Biden plans to sign the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Monday, Nov. 15, authorizing billions of new funding for broadband and cybersecurity, in addition to traditional infrastructure, the administration announced Nov. 10. […]

workforce federal workers industry-min
CISA

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly said November 10 that the agency’s Binding Operational Directive (BOD) issued earlier this month to Federal agencies to remediate against a list of 300 known exploited cyber vulnerabilities appears to be getting a good reception from government and industry as an effective roadmap on how to prioritize action against prevalent cyber threats. […]

supply chain

The Department of Transportation has been tasked with seeking private sector input to create standardized data exchange requirements for goods movement in the transportation supply chain, according to a White House announcement of administration plans to fund ports and waterways improvements aimed at improving supply chain resiliency. […]

Cloud

With an international focus on climate change after the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, Department of Energy (DoE) CIO Ann Dunkin said today that data center consolidation is helping to reduce the agency’s carbon footprint, and pointed to the further use of scalable cloud-native apps as the next step in that campaign. […]

VA
CX Customer experience -min

Federal CIO Clare Martorana urged government technology leaders this week to take a page from the “Undercover Boss” television program and discover first-hand the experiences and viewpoints of their customers in order to better understand where government needs to make improvements in how citizens best interact with government services. […]

GPS
FCC

The Federal Communications Commission announced today that it will commit more than $421 million in the latest round of funding for the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF), bringing total program commitments to over $3.05 billion and 10 million students connected. […]

DoD Pentagon Military

Bipartisan legislation introduced last week directs the Department of Defense (DoD) to make its datasets publicly and easily accessible via a strategic pilot program in order to advance software and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities beyond the Pentagon. […]

Cyber America Connected Internet of things

After more than two months of angling and dealmaking, the House of Representatives voted to approve the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework – on November 5, sending the bill along with its $2 billion in cyber funding and $65 billion in broadband appropriations to President Biden’s desk for final approval. […]

Richard Grabowski, acting program manager for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program, explained at a November 4 event organized by FCW that new memoranda of understanding (MOA) that the program has been signing with Federal agencies are a key component to enabling better cyber threat hunting by CISA across agency networks. […]

The House of Representatives is expected to hold votes on its fiscal year (FY) 2022 reconciliation package – known as the Build Back Better Act (BBB) – as well as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) – today after the House Rules Committee finalized a rule for debate on the now $1.75 trillion “soft” infrastructure legislation late on Nov. 4. […]

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