Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) officially launched a Special Salary Rate (SSR) in July to increase the basic bay for thousands of its IT and cybersecurity employees; however, this pay raise is set to expire in 2027, under the VA’s PACT Act authority. […]

DHS

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Joint Requirements Council (JRC) aims to help different parts of the agency to find common solutions or “joint capabilities,” but a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that agency leaders are not regularly engaging with the council. […]

Federal money spending government
generative AI, ChatGPT

Government tech execs at the Federal and state level offered advice and tips on how they are approaching the pressing need to recruit more data scientists into their organizations as reliance on data-centric technologies like artificial intelligence continues to grow. […]

Air Force
CX Customer experience -min

The General Services Administration’s (GSA) ninth annual Mission-Support Customer Satisfaction Survey is out for 2023, and the bottom-line finding is that the development, enhancement, and modernization of IT is one service that leaves the most room for improvement. […]

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa., is calling for Federal government workers to return to in-office work, as well as an investigation across agencies to determine the “impact of telework on the delivery and response times of services” provided by the government. […]

The FBI and the Justice Department (DoJ) said on Aug. 29 that they have successfully disrupted and dismantled the malware and botnet known as Qakbot, which has been responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to individuals and businesses. […]

PMA

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) unveiled its latest President’s Management Agenda (PMA) quarterly updates today, highlighting the successes under the second priority of the PMA: delivering excellent, equitable, and secure Federal services and customer experience. […]

The rise of generative AI has sparked a widespread public debate about what this emerging tool may mean for the future of the creative industry. With the lack of concrete AI regulations from Capitol Hill, significant questions have been posed for the future of the nation’s copyright system.  […]

Army
generative AI, ChatGPT

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) is seeking to develop and incorporate “novel technologies” that will efficiently probe large language model (LLM) AI services – like ChatGPT – in an effort to detect and characterize an emerging tool’s threat modes and vulnerabilities. […]

Air Force

While zero trust security has become headline news for government agencies since 2021, the Department of the Air Force has been working and learning in that space for several years and is being guided by several roadmaps that incorporate zero trust principles on a strategic level, a senior Air Force tech official said this week. […]

DoD Pentagon Military

The Defense Department’s (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is teaming up with the U.S. Space Force in a newly issued solicitation focused on creating a “tactically responsive” space system prototype that can be deployed and utilized within 24-hour notice. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has put out a call for industry expertise and technology products that will help support the agency’s Accelerate Adoption of Digital Identities on Mobile Devices project – which has the ultimate aim of creating a digital identification equivalent for use on mobile devices than can replace physical ID cards. […]

Critical infrastructure

Although the Federal government has made progress in protecting U.S. critical infrastructure through a largely voluntary approach, Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Chris DeRusha today called for minimum cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure. […]

Jen Easterly, CISA

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly called on Congress today to reauthorize the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program – which the cybersecurity chief said has resulted in improving the security posture of high-risk facilities by 60 percent. […]

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.

The recently established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which is housed within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has launched a new project to better protect the U.S. healthcare system’s IT infrastructure. […]

water, tap water, safe drinking water
General Services Administration GSA

We snagged 30 minutes on the phone with the General Services Administration’s (GSA) long-time CIO David Shive and came away a whole lot wiser about how not only GSA – but the entire Federal enterprise that it serves – can manage both the unavoidable challenge of putting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to work, and also how to evolve the government tech workforce to meet the demands of the next evolution in tech thinking and practices. […]

CDC
DoD Pentagon Military

The top official leading one of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) most important modernization initiatives plans to retire soon, an official from the Air Force confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

military healthcare, veterans healthcare

The Defense Health Agency (DHA) has released a new plan to modernize and stabilize the U.S. military’s healthcare system with the goal of improving the delivery of medical services for the Department of Defense’s (DoD) civilian and military employees for the next five years. […]

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