Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
Cyber workforce

Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., reintroduced the Accountability for Acting Officials Act last week – co-sponsored by nine other House Democrats, including Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. – that would make a series of changes with respect to the appointment, tenure, and qualifications of acting officials of executive agencies. The June 30 legislation aims to […]

TMF
DoD Pentagon Military

The Defense Department (DoD) said it plans to take a lengthy list of actions to improve internal data security protocols – including some “immediate” improvements on physical security and data sharing – following a 45-day review launched in April to examine how secret information is handled and managed by the military. […]

CMS

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB) found in its latest evaluation report that the board needs to clarify its cybersecurity incident response processes to effectively respond to cyber incidents at institutions that FRB supervises.   […]

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is failing to track and remediate thousands of critical vulnerabilities to its environmental and radiation data in a timely manner, according to a new watchdog report that claims the security deficiencies could put the EPA’s data at risk of being exploited by threat actors. […]

General Services Administration GSA
CISA

President Biden on July 3 announced his intent to nominate Henry Kerner as a Republican member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), whose addition would bring the board’s roster to its full complement of three members. […]

Air Force

The United States Air Force has awarded Maxar a $20 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to boost the capabilities of its Red Wing geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) platform through new algorithms and other advancements including AI tech. […]

VA, Veterans Affairs
CISA
Pentagon DoD Defense Military

The Department of Defense (DoD) has published a list of foreign entities engaged in what the Pentagon views as “problematic activity” – including interfering or influencing DoD-funded research and development (R&D) efforts at higher education institutions – in advance of additional restrictions that begin next year on funding academic research that does not guard against foreign influence.  […]

The White House released the 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy almost 20 years to the month that the George W. Bush administration released its National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace in 2003. MeriTalk sat down with Simon Szykman, senior vice president for client growth at Maximus and a contributor to the 2003 strategy, to discuss the similarities and differences between the strategies and assess the work that still needs to be done to strengthen our nation’s cybersecurity. […]

DOD ICAM and IL5: Mission-Critical Cloud Security

The U.S. military is preparing to publish a new doctrine later this month that will help accelerate its joint warfighting and modernization efforts, and according to a top Pentagon official, a new Joint Futures organization could help push those efforts forward for the long term.  […]

DoD Pentagon Military

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., – chairwoman of the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation – sent a letter to Pentagon officials requesting information on the cancellation of a $374 million contract aimed at replacing the agency’s Defense Travel System (DTS), according to a press release from the committee today. […]

GPS
CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is looking to add a “select number” of critical infrastructure (CI) partnerships with industry to its CyberSentry program, CISA Associate Director for Threat Hunting Jermaine Roebuck wrote in a June 29 blog post. […]

White House

President Biden on Friday named Christian L. Tom to serve as director of the White House Office of Digital Strategy, a role in which he will oversee the president’s online communications and manage WhiteHouse.gov. […]

NSF
supply chain risk management process automation

Tech giant International Business Machines (IBM) has called on the government to establish a shared service center of excellence to develop protections against supply chain disruptions, according to a recent report it released in collaboration with experts from government, business, academia, and the nonprofit sectors. […]

Sharks are no longer the only threat to undersea cables. According to cybersecurity researchers, the Russia-Ukraine war, the United States’ rising tensions with China, and insatiable data demands are driving up the risks for communication cables within the oceans. […]

Federal money spending government

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report that the government is missing out on generating up to $182 billion in savings and financial benefits for taxpayers because Federal agencies are slow to implement – or won’t take action at all – thousands of recommendations from the government watchdog agency. […]

us passport government publishing office gpo

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., plans to introduce new legislation that would address the State Department’s passport applications backlog that now stands at over three million, giving the agency more support in its efforts to trim down the backlog. […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) launched a $30 million program to assess gains from research and development (R&D) related investments, and to predict how the U.S. could strategically fund future research in emerging technologies. […]

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