Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
FCC

Following its December meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it approved a proposal seeking comment on improving transparency and efficiency in the competitive bidding process for the E-Rate program. The FCC has now released the official Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, laying out the process and deadlines for submitting comment on the E-Rate bidding process. […]

5G
EHR

Legislation introduced this week by the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee aims to increase the transparency of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program through regular reporting requirements. […]

With legacy government IT systems increasingly threatened by cyberattacks and Federal agencies on the move to improve security, the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is proving instrumental in helping the Education Department accelerate its transition to zero trust security architectures. […]

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.
IT

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy CIO Beth Cappello, whose agency snagged a $50 million Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) award earlier this year, this week urged Federal agency IT and financial organizations to align their expectations and resources in order to achieve better IT modernization results. […]

With two separate Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) awards already under its belt, the Department of Labor (DoL) is seeing the benefits of agency leadership’s buy-in into the funding concept as a way to make quicker headway on pressing IT modernization projects, the agency’s chief technology officer said at MeriTalk’s TMF Forward virtual event on Dec. 16. […]

Cloud

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) confirmed today that it plans to sunset its milCloud 2.0 cloud services contract by May 2022, but offered little in the way of firm detail on how it plans to migrate to comparable services the existing customer roster of milCloud 2.0, which is managed for DISA by General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT). […]

Data-led migrations can help forward-thinking organizations take a major step toward treating their data as a strategic asset. But, according to an official from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for public sector entities, there are some key challenges they need to address to ensure they comply with Federal needs. […]

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., said at Meritalk’s TMF Forward virtual event on Dec. 16 that he remains committed to pursuing further Federal IT modernization to improve citizen service capabilities, including through TMF funding. […]

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is proving to be a vital source of immediate funding for pressing projects at the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM), with CIO Guy Cavallo saying the agency would have to wait years to complete vital upgrades if it relied solely on regular appropriations. […]

With the initial big round of Technology Modernization Fund awards announced in September skewing toward cybersecurity-related projects, Federal CIO Clare Martorana said today at MeriTalk’s TMF Forward virtual event that the next round of awards will be focused more on projects that will foster citizen service improvements. […]

TMF

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. – one of the prime movers behind congressional approval of $1 billion of new funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) earlier this year –
emphasized the crucial impact that money will have on modernizing Federal agency networks and improving government cybersecurity and citizen service in keynote remarks at MeriTalk’s TMF Forward virtual event on Dec. 16. […]

Senate hearing Congressional-min
Cybersecurity

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Dec. 14 that there has been no confirmed compromise of any Federal agencies as a result of the Log4j vulnerability. But CISA reiterated it has added the vulnerability to its catalog of known vulnerabilities over the weekend, giving agencies two weeks to remediate and mitigate any potential harm. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is sustaining a protest by Microsoft after the company complained that the National Security Agency (NSA) improperly evaluated proposals for cloud services in support of NSA’s classified and unclassified computing requirements when it awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services (AWS). […]

Army

The U.S. Army plans to advance its use of digital night vision technology (DNVT) to boost its members’ situational awareness and decision-making abilities, and the branch is looking towards industry to help make it happen. […]

FCC

The Senate passed the conferenced version of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today, sending the $768 billion defense spending bill to President Biden’s desk for his signature. The annual defense spending bill has now been passed 61 years in a row. […]

FedRAMP

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted today to advance the Federal Secure Cloud Improvement and Jobs Act of 2021, sending the bill to the full Senate for consideration. […]

Cloud

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) cloud strategy is ever-changing but with the termination of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract earlier this year, the DoD has developed a more “agile” failure mindset – recognizing that it’s okay to fail, but also important to do so quickly, a Pentagon official said. […]

Emerging tech

The Senate on Dec. 14 voted to invoke cloture on the conferenced version of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting up a final vote on Wednesday for the $768 billion defense spending bill. […]

cyber workforce
DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that it is launching a new edition of its Hack DHS program – a bug bounty program started in 2019 – to identify potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities within certain DHS systems. […]

The Biden administration’s Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Executive Order issued in May 2021 has put a greater emphasis on cybersecurity at the Federal level – which is especially important after numerous high-profile ransomware and software supply chain attacks came to light earlier in the year – but many Federal cyber leaders say the Cyber EO only addresses a fraction of today’s cybersecurity challenges. […]

OPM Office of Personnel Management

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has again extended the Schedule A hiring authority that allows Federal agencies to temporarily hire personnel to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Dec. 10 OPM memo. […]

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