The focus on Federal agency cybersecurity scores in the 14th edition of the FITARA Scorecard released last week – and the lack of enough data from the government to allow the House Oversight and Reform Committee to get a good fix on how agencies performed on cybersecurity during the first half of 2022 – caught the eyes of private sector technology executives who said the government needs to do more to help agencies boost security. […]
Jay Ribeiro, the chief information security officer (CISO) at the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, plans to step down on August 26 after serving in the post since September 2018. […]
Federal agencies are hard at work developing strategies to overcome data challenges and ensure they’re meeting critical mission needs, Federal data experts from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said during the Databricks Data and AI Summit 2022 in late June. […]
In a recent MeriTV “IT In Depth” episode, Robert Costello, Chief Information Officer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Bill Wright, Splunk’s Director of Public Sector Affairs, said new event logging requirements pose a series of complicated tests for Federal IT managers. The mandates stem from the August 2021 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo M-21-31, which outlines a four-tier system for logging events and describes logs on Federal information systems as “invaluable” in fighting cyber threats. […]
New legislation filed in the Senate today would prevent any future attempts to undertake wholesale reclassifications of Federal civil servants and replace them with political appointees without the consent of Congress. […]
David Shive, the chief information officer (CIO) at the General Services Administration (GSA), apologized to the vendor community today for the agency’s challenges in transitioning to a new online identification system for the Federal government’s awards process. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) on July 29 put out a request for information seeking market research that will help the agency move forward with its Ascend Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) to simplify and standardize the way that Federal government agencies buy cloud products and services. […]
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have introduced new legislation that would reauthorize the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI), which provides cybercrime training to state and local law enforcement agencies. […]
The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) continues to be plagued with problems in data collection and assessment of sexual harassment incidents that occur within the agency, according to a recent follow-up report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) needs to do a better job at strengthening collaboration between Federal agencies on science and technology issues. […]
John Roese describes himself as a “technology optimist.” The Dell Technologies Global Chief Technology Officer illustrated that spirit at the MerITocracy American Innovation Forum on July 21, displaying enthusiasm about a U.S. wireless industry that he acknowledged has fallen far behind foreign rivals. […]
General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) has appointed former Army Major Gen. Garrett Yee vice president and general manager of the company’s Army sector. […]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on July 28 that she plans to introduce new legislation aimed at combating what she called cryptocurrency and digital asset “scams” aimed at novice investors. […]
Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced bipartisan legislation on July 28 to strengthen Federal data center security to protect against cyberattacks, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks. […]
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has announced that Abraham Denmark will serve as his senior advisor on the tech-heavy Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security partnership. […]
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he plans to introduce a bill that will develop a pilot program across agencies to enhance the government’s use of metadata. […]
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report details how the Department of Defense (DoD) still has only been able to meet 11 out of the 14 key requirements for its Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (FCCS). […]
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee voted narrowly on July 28 to approve the nomination of Arati Prabhakar to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). […]
Proposed legislation released on July 28 by the Senate Appropriations Committee augurs well for the eventual approval of a 4.6 percent pay raise for Federal civilian government employees for 2023. […]
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts relies on IT systems to manage information to support its lines of business, including court administration, probation, and pretrial services. However, insufficient oversight and incomplete IT management guidance have hampered the agency’s overall operational success, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced an extension of its Thunderdome Prototype zero trust security project, increasing the total length of the pilot program to 12 months with a new expected completion date in January 2023. […]
The Environmental Protection Agency will be issuing a rule to extend its sanitary reviews of critical water systems to include cybersecurity, according to Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security advisor for cybersecurity and emerging technology. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) has announced two new appointments – Jetta Wong as Senior Advisor to the Administrator on Climate, and Channing Grate as Associate Administrator in the Office of Strategic Communications. […]
Two Federal experts explained a range of cybersecurity risks faced by commercial satellite systems – and customers who rely on them – at a July 28 hearing of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on July 27 committed an additional $77 million in two new funding rounds through the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECF) that aims to help close the “homework gap” for students across the United States. […]
The Government Accountability Office said in a new report that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) component needs to do a better job at informing the public when it uses facial recognition technology (FRT). […]
The top Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee called the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program a “bad investment” during a July 27 hearing, and said Congress may have to “seriously consider pulling the plug” on the project. […]
A lack of required cybersecurity performance data for the largest 24 Federal agencies over the first half of 2022 left the House Oversight and Reform Committee partly in the dark as it formulated cybersecurity-related grades for the 14th version of its FITARA Scorecard issued by the committee today. […]
During a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing today to discuss the newly-released 14th installment of the committee’s FITARA Scorecard, several Federal chief information officers (CIOs) agreed the scorecard serves as a useful tool for their agencies to track IT-related performance, but also offered recommendations on how the scorecard could improve. […]
A former Justice Department official implored members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging at a hearing today to make Federal technology more accessible for people with disabilities, and called for “serious enforcement” of regulations under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). […]