Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
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The Senate voted last week to confirm Susan Grundmann to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) with a 50-49 vote, giving Democrats control of the agency in charge of administering the labor-management relations program for more than two million non-postal Federal employees. […]

Federal government cybersecurity leaders told House members today that the government has made very significant progress in executing the Biden administration’s cybersecurity executive order (EO) issued a year ago, but also reminded lawmakers that funding is key to continued success in implementing crucial tenets of the order. […]

electric grid

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) has named Kristin Seaver – who served as CIO at the United States Postal Service (USPS) from 2016 to 2020 – vice president of strategic client engagement. […]

infrastructure

The Department of Energy (DoE) has begun to gather feedback on a $2.5 billion investment to build out new power transmission infrastructure across the country using funds approved by Congress in bipartisan infrastructure legislation. […]

Federal money spending government

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a new report laying out how the Federal government could save billions in spending and improve the efficiency of its programs and activities – with up to $21 billion of projected benefits for 2022 and beyond. […]

Pentagon Military Defense DoD
MerITocracy 2021

In the lead-up to the in-person forum in Washington, D.C., we are table-setting a host of big issues that will get serious attention at MerITocracy 2022.  And lining up some big guns in Congress – Reps. Bill Foster, D-Ill, and Tom Emmer, R-Minn. – along with Chamber of Digital Commerce CEO Perianne Boring to point the way forward. […]

Emerging tech

A memorandum of understanding unveiled today between the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) will help speed the transition to GSA contract vehicles for Federal civilian agencies a range of technologies that have already been successfully prototyped by DIU. […]

contract acquisition CFO

The General Services Administration (GSA) has updated its request for proposals (RFPs) for its Polaris small business-focused governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) vehicle, and is looking for industry feedback on the changes before reopening the RFPs. […]

Pentagon DoD Defense Military

The Department of Defense (DoD) has restructured its Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD (R&E), DoD announced May 10. The DoD has redesignated the three current Directors of Defense for R&E as Deputy Chief Technology Officers (CTO). […]

FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has appointed Tonya Ugoretz as the new lead for the bureau’s Intelligence Directorate, moving from her role as deputy assistant director of the bureau’s cyber division. […]

Achieving effective cybersecurity relies on experts from all corners of an enterprise – network systems administrators, cloud experts, data stewards, cybersecurity officers, and more. Making all of those parts work right together makes cybersecurity the ultimate team sport, and it requires all levels of an organization to understand and avoid risks to a network, said Steven Hernandez the chief information security officer (CISO) for the Department of Education (DoE). […]

The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program – for several years a bedrock asset in the government’s bid to improve Federal agency cybersecurity – is having a decisive impact in furthering agency work on requirements of the Biden administration’s year-old Cybersecurity Executive Order (EO), new research findings from MeriTalk shows. Long before the 2021 Cyber […]

The 107 conferees assigned to hash out the differences between the House and Senate-passed semiconductor manufacturing, innovation, and competition bills met for the first time May 12 to officially kick off the conferencing process and begin to stake out their priorities for the final bill. […]

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has released a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for its $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program that will provide broadband access grants to underserved or unserved communities. […]

supply chain

The United States on May 12 signed onto an expanded version of the Budapest Convention that governs international cooperation against cyber crime, and that in its expanded form will allow for easier collection of cross-border electronic evidence. […]

AI

Federal authorities are cautioning employers about using tools like artificial intelligence (AI) in employment decisions because it could impede access to opportunities for people with disabilities in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). […]

Larry Grossman, Director of Information Security and Privacy Services at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), explained this week that his organization’s priorities for improving cybersecurity run the gamut from the latest in zero trust work, to the more traditional but necessary steps to improve cyber hygiene across the board. […]

FedRAMP

As the General Service Administration’s (GSA) Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) program looks to transition to Revision 5 (Rev. 5) baselines – in accordance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Rev. 5 security and privacy controls – Acting Director of FedRAMP Brian Conrad said the agency has been  able to decrease the number of controls for improved usability. […]

security

A significant share of Federal cybersecurity leaders are turning to dynamic application security testing (DAST) to speed the secure development of web applications, shown in new research from MeriTalk and Invicti, a developer of web application security technologies. […]

The House of Representatives approved a pair of bills May 10 to bolster Federal cybersecurity by creating a Federal cybersecurity rotational workforce program and developing a training program for Federal officials with supply chain risk management responsibilities. […]

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