Senate hearing Congressional-min

Members of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee at a September 29 hearing sketched out the latest chapter in a years-long debate about how to boost consumer data privacy protections – with the current options centering on a proposal from committee Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would set up a new privacy bureau for that purpose at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). […]

FCC

Dominic Sale, who for years helped lead Federal government IT modernization efforts at the General Services Administration (GSA), left government service earlier this month for a new position with Dynamic Integrated Services (DIS), a provider of IT, enterprise, and communications solutions to government and other customers. […]

AI

The September 29 kick-off meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) created earlier this year by the United States, European Commission, and European Council produced initial commitments by the three parties to coordinate on technology issues including the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, and semiconductor supply chains. […]

Labor

The Department of Labor (DoL) awarded Verizon Public Sector five Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions task orders worth $887 million to help substantially modernize its legacy communications and information technology capabilities. […]

Cybersecurity

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, the committee’s ranking member, have introduced legislation to require critical infrastructure entities to report cyberattacks to the Federal government, and to require most other entities to report to the government if they make a ransomware payment. […]

State Department
FCC
CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a new Insider Risk Mitigation Self-Assessment Tool which the agency says will help public and private sector organizations assess their vulnerability to insider threats.  […]

Emerging tech

The coronavirus pandemic – for all the tragedy and disruption it continues to cause – has advanced the cause of digital modernization by three to five years, leaving government and private sector organizations better prepared to provide improved digital services going forward. […]

TMF

The American Rescue Plan (ARP), passed in March, included an additional $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). Last week, Federal Chief Information Security Officer Chris DeRusha said the first round of awards was coming soon. Today, Federal CIO Clare Martorana said the TMF board sent the first seven project awards to Congress for final approval. […]

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) selected Lumen Technologies for a network modernization contract to strengthen and modernize its network services that support more than 32,000 post offices and mail processing sites around the country.  […]

AI

The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the world will extend far beyond narrow national security applications. Federal officials spoke about moving beyond those narrow AI applications to gain strategic advantage and the importance of justified trust when deploying AI systems on September 27, during a webinar hosted by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. […]

Pipeline

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is in the process of doing research and working on an update to its special publication (SP) 800-82, a guide to Industrial Control Systems (ICS), by early 2022, NIST officials said today. […]

CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is in the process of building out its Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) office, and CISA Director Jen Easterly today said that while the office is being established based on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission recommendation of creating a joint collaborative planning office, the JCDC will be about more than just planning. […]

IRS
AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are driving breakthroughs in innovation, but Federal agencies struggle to keep up with the growth of data that these technologies produce. According to a MeriTalk study, 88 percent of Federal IT leaders are frustrated with their agency’s data management strategies. […]

Budget Federal spending

Legislative crunch-time for the Biden administration’s two infrastructure funding bills began in earnest on Monday. Here are three tracks to watch that impact the legislation, which proposes billions of dollars of funding for Federal IT, cybersecurity, and broadband initiatives.  […]

FCC, Chinese suppliers
website

The office in charge of building a government-wide shared services ecosystem for grants management plans to launch a website for grants management shared services marketplace by the end of the year and have all Federal service providers onboarded by mid-year 2022. […]

Space NASA Satellites

The newly established U.S. Space Force is building its workforce and develop its people, while primarily looking for people that have science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) backgrounds, Chief of Space Operations for the Space Force Gen. John Raymond today. […]

federal workers workforce IT workers employees millennial -min

Federal government contractors and subcontractors are facing a deadline of Dec. 8 to get their employees fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus – subject to a list of exceptions that include medical conditions and religious beliefs – with an additional 60-day extension of the compliance window possible in the case of “urgent” contract needs. […]

The Department of Commerce is seeking comment on questions related to the development of regulations to govern process and procedures the Commerce Secretary will use to deter foreign malicious cyber actors’ use of U.S. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products and investigate foreign malicious cyber actors. […]

CISA

Federal agencies are on the clock to transition networks and systems to using Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) program office released draft guidance to help agencies transition securely. […]

The fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the House of Representatives late Sept. 23 with a bipartisan 316-113 vote. Among the amendments are a number of tech provisions focusing heavily on cybersecurity, along with some focusing on the digital workforce, cloud, and AI. […]

cybersecurity

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