The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) held a launch event today for its STRATUS program – a suite of government-wide basic ordering agreements (BOAs) to provide rapid access to cloud capabilities – and teased an annual forecasting tool for the program. […]

Three Federal chief information officers (CIO) said this week that the current surge of interest in AI technologies presents an opportunity for the Federal government to reform its hiring processes to meet demand for a larger AI workforce. […]

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently in the early stages of developing its artificial intelligence strategy and hopes to go public with the strategy in the coming months, an agency technology official said. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in line to receive modest funding to boost IT and citizen experience modernization efforts in fiscal year (FY) 2024 under the FY2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill released by the Senate and House Appropriations committees on Sunday. […]

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture Digital Service (USDA DS) is launching – along with the agency’s Office of Customer Experience (OCX) – a new fellowship that will help recruit some of the brightest minds for digital service delivery, procurement, and customer experience work at the agency. […]

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has released its data strategy for fiscal years (FY) 2024 through 2026, with the mission “to realize the full potential of USDA’s data and workforce to make better decisions, maximize the impact of citizen-facing programs, and provide the public with easier access to data that can solve national problems and spark innovation.” […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched the first two of three major cloud solicitations under its STRATUS program, taking the first steps toward creating a set of enterprise wide cloud contracts. […]

Feds are “growing good in government” this new fiscal year by partnering with industry and academia to build the feedback loops of the future. […]

The Biden Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have announced $714 million in grant funding aimed at connecting thousands of rural residents across the U.S. with broadband technology. […]

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is well along in a “reimagining” how the department is handling and improving its customer care experience, said Simchah Suveyke-Bogin, chief experience officer at the agency, today. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Labor (DoL), and the Department of Treasury have not fully applied cloud security practices, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to drive cloud adoption across the department with a new centralized cloud basic ordering agreement it calls STRATUS, according to a pre-solicitation notice USDA released last week. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has named L’Tonya Davis as its first permanent chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO). […]

Officials with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) and the Agriculture Department’s Research, Education, and Economics (REE) organization explained this week how their agencies are focusing on making government data more accessible to the public. […]

In a bid to increase government transparency, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched the Rural Data Gateway. […]

A bipartisan group of senators – Sens. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M.; John Thune, R-S.D.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and Deb Fischer, R-Neb. – have reintroduced the Rural Internet Improvement Act. The legislation would “streamline and bolster U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development broadband programs and ensure that their funding is being targeted to rural areas that need it the most,” according to the bill’s cosponsors. […]

Chief information officers (CIO) from the Departments of Justice (DOJ), Energy (DoE), and Agriculture (USDA) discussed their agencies’ best IT and security moments of 2022, and their top priorities going into the new year. […]

The Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Utilities Services (RUS) stated in a Federal Register notice that they have implemented the provisions of the 2018 Farm Bill that authorizes the agency, for the first time, to provide loans for stand-alone cybersecurity projects in rural communities. […]

A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) needs to set specific performance goals for its broadband service funding program, and improve security measures to protect the program from fraud. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded $53 million in modernization grants to tackle technology modernization goals for the agency’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children – otherwise known as WIC. […]

Three officials from Federal agency high-impact service providers discussed new and innovative ways their agencies are reimagining customer experience (CX) by harnessing emerging tech as they drive toward the far-reaching CX improvement goals set out in President Biden’s executive order issued late last year. […]

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) today announced $94.94 million of new project funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to advance network security projects. […]

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) today announced $13.5 million of new project funding to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to improve citizen service through better records delivery, and to the Agriculture Department (USDA) to speed cybersecurity improvement efforts. […]

JaNelle DeVore has been selected to serve as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), bringing to the role over 30 years of professional experience in Federal continuity programs, various cybersecurity work roles, the private sector, and the intelligence community. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded Lumen Technologies an 11-year task order worth more than $1.2 billion to modernize the agency’s IT infrastructure with “a fully integrated wide-area data transport service with secure remote access, contact center, and cloud connectivity solutions.” […]

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued an expanded plan for telework and remote work through a new FAQ page on its website, allowing eight days of telework per pay period.  […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a major initiative to modernize its IT operations back in 2017 by launching Farmers.gov to provide online self-service applications. However, improved oversight of the site is necessary to improve customer service for farmers and ranchers. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced that its three-year partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) helped the agency avoid more than $50 million in costs. […]

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is launching a new Civil Rights Management System (CRMS) to manage civil rights discrimination complaints against its programs and partners. The new system will replace the agency’s current Program Complaints Management System. […]

The journey for an agency to modernize its data management strategy with the cloud begins with having a plan and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have both plans and projects in motion to modernize their data. […]