Democratic and Republican policy advisers in the House are meeting this week to craft a bipartisan compromise that would combine the key elements of two major IT modernization bills introduced earlier this year into a legislative package that sources say has the backing of Republican appropriators and stands a good chance of being signed into law before President Barack Obama leaves office. […]

The White House released the Federal Source Code Policy to help with access to custom software code created for or by the Federal government. The policy allows source code to be made for sharing and re-use across all agencies, since several agencies have already begun using custom-made source code without restrictions, according to the policy. […]

The White House issued a memorandum requiring that agencies take new steps to improve their procurement and management of mobile devices and services. […]

he White House released the Data Center Optimization Initiative, which requires agencies to consolidate inefficient infrastructure, update existing facilities, boost security, save money, and transition to cloud services or inter-agency shared services. […]

The Cyber Security National Action Plan announced in February is aiming to recruit people with broad skill sets to work in Federal government cybersecurity. U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott spoke Thursday at the Federal Forum in Washington, D.C., about recruiting people with knowledge on specific domains, economics, and human behavior. “Our approach needed strengthening,” Scott said. […]

Government IT has a problem with planning better solutions, not coming up with ideas for those solutions, according to Federal CIO Tony Scott. “Ideas are not the problem in Washington; Washington is full of ideas. What Washington doesn’t have…is a good implementation plan for those ideas,” Scott said at a Citrix cybersecurity event. […]

In his keynote speech at the 2016 Cloud Computing Brainstorm, U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott recalls his time working with the legendary Steve Jobs during Disney’s acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios, outlines his plan for modernizing the government’s aging IT infrastructure, and offers the possibility of staying in the CIO role longer. […]

Time may be running out on the Federal government’s plan to replace and modernize billions of dollars’ worth of legacy IT systems—some of which date back more than 40 years and control critical programs, including the U.S. military’s nuclear arsenal. […]

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. […]

Applicants for Federal security clearances may want to double check their Twitter feeds, as agencies could soon be moving forward with investigations into applicants’ social media accounts. The biggest obstacle to these investigations, however, is not privacy concerns, but rather data security. […]

The White House on Wednesday called on all Federal agencies to establish so-called acquisition innovation labs to improve how the government purchases information technology products and services. […]

Federal CIO Tony Scott might have set the tone for the day when he said the essence of cloud is speed. Cost savings are great, and agility is cool, but speed is what will make the biggest difference, he said. If you didn’t catch Tony there, you can still see him here. But he was […]