cybersecurity
cloud

The Department of Defense (DoD) unveiled its outside the continental United States (OCONUS) cloud strategy last month, which strives to enable an all-domain advantage for international operations through cloud innovation. Officials from DoD and Rackspace Government Solutions stopped by MeriTalk’s Cloud Café July 15 to talk about OCONUS and the benefits and challenges to cloud modernization. […]

Pentagon Military Defense DoD

The Senate Armed Services Committee said on June 22 it completed its markup of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes a $1 billion increase in funds for programs developing AI, microelectronics, advanced materials, 5G, and biotechnology. […]

Veterans Affairs

Dan McCune, the acting associate deputy assistant secretary of the Enterprise Program Management Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), talked about major themes in the agency’s IT modernization approach during a virtual webinar hosted by Federal News Network on July 21.  […]

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While the announced framework for the bipartisan infrastructure plan agreed to last month includes $65 billion for broadband infrastructure deployment, Republican senators on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee are urging House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other negotiators to pull the broadband portion of legislation from the compromise agreement, and instead try to get it approved as a separate piece of legislation under normal rules. […]

FITARA

The House Government Operations Subcommittee has scheduled a public hearing for July 28 at 2:00 p.m. EST for the release of the 12th edition of its FITARA Scorecard which rates major Federal agencies across a range of IT-related topics. […]

Guy Cavallo has been named permanent CIO at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – removing the “Acting” portion of the title that he assumed at the agency in March, according to an internal OPM communication today. […]

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate July 21 would require Federal agencies, government contractors, and critical infrastructure owners and operators to report cyber intrusions within 24 hours of discovery. […]

The House of Representatives on July 20 voted to approve the State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act July as part of a slate of cyber bills that passed under suspension of normal rules. The bill would create a $500 million-per-year grant program run by the Department of Homeland Security to help state and local governments improve their cybersecurity. […]

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved six cybersecurity and supply chain-related bills during a markup session on July 21. The committee’s vote sends these bills to the House floor for further consideration. […]

When U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began moving to the cloud in 2014, much of the agency’s cloud movement was “lift and shift” – simply moving workloads as-is to the cloud. Over time, IT staff trained themselves on cloud operations and began to take greater advantage of the flexibility and scalability that cloud computing offers. […]

Join MeriTalk on July 29 from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET for The Time is Now: Accelerating DoD Enterprise Cloud, a complimentary webinar that will explore additional findings from the study, as well as what’s preventing DoD organizations from migrating to available DoD enterprise clouds and what’s needed to accelerate adoption. […]

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.
Cybersecurity

Federal Chief Information Security Officer  (CISO) Chris DeRusha today offered an expansive set of ideas for how Congress may undertake reform of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) of 2014 to bring the existing law up to speed with the fast-moving security improvement work underway throughout the Federal government following the release of President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order in May. […]

Recent hacks on localities’ water supply have shown the importance of cybersecurity in the water infrastructure. Witnesses sounded the alarm about water infrastructure cybersecurity and called for training and funding investments at a July 21 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 20 approved and sent to the full House for consideration several bills with Federal tech implications, including measures dealing with artificial intelligence oversight, and Federal hiring for several classes of technology positions. […]

New bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate this week would staff the newly-created Office of National Cyber Director (NCD) and authorize non-reimbursable detailees for NCD to support coordinating national cybersecurity policy and strategy. […]

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The House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved H.R. 550, the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021 during a markup session on July 21. The committee’s vote sends the bill to the House floor for further consideration. […]

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the FCC is entering into partnerships with 11 Federal, state, and local agencies to assess the delivery of Wireless Emergency Alerts in areas across the country during a planned nationwide test on August 11. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has given its first priority recommendation letter to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), calling for the office to strengthen interagency collaboration around science and technology issues. […]

Federal money spending government

Federal CISO Chris DeRusha said today that the ongoing solicitation of Federal agency bids for money from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is drawing a lot of interest in security-related projects – one of the four primary areas that the TMF Board identified earlier this year as ones it would prioritize as it works to deploy up to $1 billion of new funding capacity from the American Rescue Plan Act. […]

OPM Office of Personnel Management

The previously proposed merger by the Trump Administration of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA) will soon dissolve. The administrative resources and functions that support the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council will return to OPM after more than a year under GSA responsibilities. […]

White House flag at half mast

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is requesting information from the private sector on how it might improve the way social media data is collected and archived from previous presidential administrations, according to a request for information (RFI) posted on the SAM.gov website. […]

Connolly

The FedRAMP Authorization Act sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has been nearly four years in the making without crossing the goal line. But after the House approved the bill earlier this year, Rep. Connolly said today that the House is “working in lockstep” with Senate colleagues to hopefully pass the bill in 2021. […]

The House of Representatives approved a bill July 19 that aims to improve electric power grid infrastructure cybersecurity by using public-private partnerships. The bill was passed by voice vote under suspension of the rules. […]

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