Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
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VA

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Paul Cunningham has announced his intent to retire, a VA spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

IT

While one primary focus of the Biden administration’s President’s Management Agenda is continuing to improve Federal IT to enable better delivery of citizen services, tech leaders from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) explained on Feb. 1 that they face emerging challenges in pursuing those goals. […]

The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) finalized zero trust directive issued last week sets the stage for the first steps in implementing zero trust security architectures at Federal agencies, but a lot more work remains in the pursuit of that goal, a panel of Federal security experts agreed during an ATARC virtual event on Feb. 1. […]

cyber workforce
SBA

Luis Campudoni has been named Acting CIO at the Small Business Administration (SBA) following news that CIO Keith Bluestein will be absent from his position for an indefinite period. […]

Department of Commerce
capitol washington dc senate house congress-min

Reps. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif., and William Timmons, R-S.C., have reintroduced bipartisan and bicameral legislation that aims to help improve the cybersecurity of local governments and small organizations. […]

FITARA
wireless networks

In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) lacks a formal process to plan for the transfer of some Federally-used spectrum to the private sector to help build mobile networks, including 5G. […]

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DISA

Growing technology advancements have created new opportunities for military officials to improve training, war fighting, and even efficiency in the court of law, officials from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force explained at a GovExec virtual event on Jan. 28. […]

Telehealth

NASA has updated a draft solicitation for a $720 million contract that will help the agency develop new technologies, and has invited request for proposals (RFP) to review and comment on the solicitation. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today the agency is ready to authorize more than $1.2 billion through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to finance new broadband deployments in 32 states. The commission also announced creation of the Rural Broadband Accountability Plan, which is a new effort from to monitor and ensure compliance for universal service high-cost programs including the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. […]

FCC
White House

On average, it takes 287 days to identify and contain a data breach, according to IBM Security’s 2021 Cost of a Data Breach report. The longer the delay in identifying a breach, the costlier it is. When a breach takes more than 200 days to identify and contain, it cost organizations an average of $4.87 million in 2021, while breaches that took less than 200 days cost an average of $3.61 million, IBM found. […]

Budget Federal spending

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kiran Ahuja stressed the need for agency budgets to include funding for efforts to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) for the Federal workforce during a Jan. 27 roundtable discussion hosted by OPM and the Commerce Department. […]

PMA

The Biden-Harris administration released a vision statement for the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) in November, and has since released a draft learning agenda that will inform further development of the PMA. But what’s next for the PMA and when can agencies expect implementation efforts to begin? […]

The Department of the Interior is working to hire a new chief information officer (CIO) to lead the agency’s IT strategy and budget, according to a job posting on USAjobs.com. The new hire would serve in the Senior Executive Service and have a place on the Federal CIO Council. […]

AI

The final version of the Office of Management and Budget’s zero trust security directive issued this week drew strong praise from private-sector providers of security technologies to Federal agencies for its hard deadlines and firm direction to agencies on how to begin digging into the task of migrating toward zero trust architectures. […]

Recent waves of cybercrime underscore the importance of increased government visibility before, during, and after a cybersecurity incident. As adversaries continue to target government networks and other infrastructure, efficient event logging is crucial in identifying, investigating, and preventing attacks. President Biden’s May 2021 executive order on cybersecurity set new requirements for event logging, and Office of Management and Budget memorandum M-21-31 in August 2021 provided guidance for agencies on how to meet those requirements. […]

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