The United States is partnering with Australia, Denmark, and Norway on an export controls and human rights initiative over the next year to prevent the proliferation of software and other technologies that enable human rights abuses. […]

The White House’s new executive order that aims to improve the ease and effectiveness of how citizens interact with the government touches most of the larger Federal civilian government agencies, and takes specific aim at agencies that provide 35 types of service that the order defines as “high impact” for citizens based on volume and types of services delivered. […]

President Biden released an executive order (EO) today with requirements for 17 different Federal agencies to make customer experience (CX) improvements across 36 areas. The order as a whole broadly focuses on ways Federal government agencies can create more seamless interactions with the public, Federal officials said on a press call explaining the White House directive. […]

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., expressed “serious concerns” regarding wide-scale government telework in a Dec. 8 letter to leadership at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of Personnel Management, and the General Services Administration. […]

The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and the General Services Administration’s (GSA) 18F program must coordinate more consistently on developing agency guidance to eliminate overlap or duplication of guidance or conflicting guidance, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a statement on Dec. 11 with guidance for organizations to protect themselves against the “log4j” critical vulnerability that surfaced over the weekend. […]

President Biden today issued an executive order that broadly supports new efforts by the government to improve the quality of citizen interactions with the government, and requires17 Federal agencies to make customer experience (CX) improvements in 36 areas ranging from accessing retirement benefits to renewing travel passports. […]

An all-female panel of Federal agency leaders acknowledged on Dec. 9 that while women have made a significant gain in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations, they continue to face challenges. […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in the process of working through a long list of network security fixes recommended by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this year, but doesn’t expect to get done with addressing all of those until the end of 2022. […]

While a good bit of the focus on the conferenced version of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act has centered around the lack of incident reporting and other legislative items that were cut from the bill, the defense spending bill that passed the House of Representatives last week continues to retain a variety of important cybersecurity and tech-related provisions. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) held its inaugural Cybersecurity Advisory Committee meeting Dec. 10, focusing heavily on how CISA and the committee can increase the Federal and national cybersecurity workforce. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) held its first Cybersecurity Advisory Committee meeting today, in which agency officials laid out their expectations for the committee and called for actionable cyber recommendations from committee members that CISA can implement. […]

Advances in digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) hold great promise to boost economic prosperity, but academic leaders warned this week that the technologies also are reshaping growth and distributional dynamics in ways that can increase economic inequality. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is concluding in a new report that the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has historically cost more to run than it collects in fees from agencies that it awards funding to, and that most of the savings estimates from older funded agency projects continue to be unreliable. […]

The Better Cybercrime Metrics Act – legislation that aims to improve cybercrime data collection and give Federal law enforcement more tools to stop online crime – was approved this week by the Senate via unanimous consent, and by the House Judiciary Committee via voice vote. […]

President Biden’s December 8 executive order on steps the Federal government will take to reduce carbon emissions across the government features provisions that direct Federal agencies to evaluate supply chain sustainability and supplier emissions as part of that larger effort. […]

The Office of the National Cyber Director has hired Joe Croce as its senior budget advisor, according to Croce’s LinkedIn. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) data strategy already provides an overarching vision, focus areas, guiding principles, essential capabilities, and goals necessary to transform the DoD into a data-centric enterprise. Yet, according to DoD officials, another very necessary element to making this strategy work is clear communication throughout the entire department. […]

Legislative leaders from the House and Senate – along with Federal CIO Clare Martorana, officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other government agencies – are headlining MeriTalk’s TMF Forward morning virtual program on December 16 with the latest developments on the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) that Federal agencies use to re-tool their networks and boost cybersecurity. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced it will be pushing back the release of requests for proposals (RFP) for its Polaris Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) vehicle until January 2022, the agency announced on its interact GSA blog. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued updated guidance this week to agencies in order to ensure compliance with currently applicable court orders that bar the enforcement of the vaccine mandate for Federal contractors in any U.S. state or outlying area. […]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote an open letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opposing any efforts by the agency to expand its use of facial recognition technology. […]

Despite the Department of Defense’s (DoD) efforts to add its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certificate (CMMC) program to its acquisition process beginning in 2021 and up until full implementation in fiscal year (FY) 2026, a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that DoD has not met its implementation goals, nor properly communicated key decisions with industry. […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced the nomination of John Sherman to serve as the chief information officer (CIO) at the Department of Defense by voice vote on Dec. 8. […]

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) a potential 10-year, $4.5 billion contract for IT and data center services. […]

After a spate of cyberattacks and ransomware attacks on American companies and critical infrastructure providers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers and members of the cybersecurity industry expressed shock and disappointment that mandatory cyber incident reporting was dropped from the conferenced version of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). […]

The Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported the Open Courts Act of 2021 (S. 2614) to the full Senate floor with bipartisan support for the legislation. […]

Senators praised Kurt DelBene, the nominee for chief information officer (CIO) and assistant secretary for information and technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), during a quick Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on Dec. 8, and called for swift confirmation by the full Senate. […]

While healthcare disparities are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic did highlight the persistent and systemic inequities with healthcare in this country, especially for indigenous communities. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has announced establishment of a Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO), responsible for strengthening and integrating data, AI, and digital solutions across DoD. […]