Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
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Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, this week urged Congress to move toward final passage of legislation that would provide $52 billion of funding to reinvigorate the U.S. semiconductor industry and aid the domestic automotive industry. […]

funding

The Department of Defense (DoD) would refill its coffers for cyber investments with $11.2 billion in funding for cyberspace activities under the White House’s budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2023 – which proposes to hike DoD’s cybersecurity-related funding by nearly $1 billion from the prior-year request. […]

A pair of Senate votes late on March 28 has cleared the way for a House-Senate conference committee to work out remaining differences on semiconductor and innovation legislation that will combine the House-passed America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength (COMPETES) Act and Senate-approved United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA). […]

IRS

The IRS is planning to have employees return to their traditional offices in a phased telework approach, according to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), with the first phase of employee returns set for May. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is ready to authorize more than $313 million in funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund for new broadband deployments in 19 states. […]

FCC
CISA

On December 13, 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an emergency directive that called for agencies to disconnect or turn off any SolarWinds Orion products by noon the following day, due to an exploit of Orion network monitoring software that posed a “grave risk” to agencies, critical infrastructure providers, and other private-sector organizations. […]

The White House released President Biden’s fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget request today, with a top-line number of $5.8 trillion and featuring proposals to spend $10.9 billion for civilian cybersecurity measures – marking an 11 percent increase in civilian agency cyber spending from reported FY2022 levels. […]

TMF

The Biden administration is asking for $300 million of additional money for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) in Fiscal Year 2023 – an amount that would backfill most of the $320 million that the fund has awarded to Federal agencies since it received its $1 billion infusion in the American Rescue Plan Act last year. […]

General Services Administration GSA
Federal money spending government

The U.S. Army has appointed Michael Sulmeyer as the service branch’s new principal cyber adviser, taking the helm from Terry Mitchell who was appointed to the position in September 2020. […]

Air Force

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) is investing in its Cloud One platform to modernize and make applications more portable. However, according to an agency official, executing a migration program of this size is not without its challenges. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced $68 million in funding for its latest round of Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) awards on March 23, as well as its third application window for ECF funding, which it says will likely be the last round before the program’s funding is exhausted. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) recently called cATO the “gold standard” in cybersecurity. However, the current process for obtaining authorization to operate (ATO) is “point in time,” costly, and time consuming. Based on these issues, an alternative, continuous authority to operate (cATO), is gaining momentum. […]

Russia U.S. Hacking

Federal cybersecurity agencies along with the Department of Energy (DOE) have published a new cyber advisory that talks about several Russian hacks on the energy sector between 2011 and 2018 that are the subject of a Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment unsealed this week against Russian actors for those past attacks. […]

The complex legislative process needed to bring congressional leaders together to reconcile differences between Senate-passed and House-passed semiconductor and innovation legislation advanced in the Senate this week, and now stands just a few steps from completion, as lawmakers call for cybersecurity-related components of the bills to make the final cut. […]

White House flag at half mast

The U.S. Navy’s Chief Data Officer (CDO) said the service branch is embarking on a data infrastructure transformation to tackle a two-pronged challenge: first, how to deal with the sheer amount of data collected, and second, understanding if the Navy has the correct kinds of data to help leaders make decisions. […]

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., are working together on a bipartisan bill that would provide clarity on the United States’ regulation of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, the pair announced March 24 at an event organized by Politico. […]

GSA General Services Administration

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced today that it boosted its Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 goal for small disadvantaged business (SDB) contracting to 21 percent, more than a four-fold increase from the government-wide statutory goal of five percent in FY2021. […]

New legislation introduced by Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and John Cornyn, R-Texas would codify into Federal law the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program, and provide for a pilot program for state and local governments to deploy the cybersecurity technologies that the CDM program offers. […]

Blockchain link

Blockchain technologies face challenges, but a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) offers a range of policy recommendations that could help enhance the benefits and mitigate challenges posed by the use of those technologies.  […]

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