President-elect Joe Biden’s nominees to head the departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security (DHS) are lined up for Senate committee-level confirmation hearings on Jan. 19 – one day before Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. […]
Faced with evolving technologies, increased use of hybrid cloud infrastructures, and the continuing need to provide widescale telework capabilities, all Federal agencies should be looking at migrating to zero trust security concepts, experts from two agencies said this week. […]
While the Department of Defense (DoD) has begun the process of compiling a list of acquisition programs, technologies manufacturing capabilities, and research areas critical for preserving U.S. military advantages, it still hasn’t determined how to communicate that list internally and to other agencies, according to the Government Accountability Office. […]
High-performance computing (HPC) is fueling innovation across Federal agencies. While there is a long journey ahead, one agency is leading the way and embracing this technology – the Department of Defense (DoD). HPC is critical to the mission of the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane – and of the DoD as whole. […]
Ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s Inauguration on Jan. 20, the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and the U.S. Capitol Police began to install a fenced security perimeter Jan. 12 that will lead to road closures around the district well before next week. […]
President-elect Joe Biden has officially nominated Anne Neuberger as Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology on the President’s National Security Council (NSC). […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is poised to issue an agency data strategy that will help advance the mission of caring for veterans while still protecting personally identifiable information (PII) and other health data, said Kshemendra Paul, VA’s CDO, at a FedInsider event Jan. 12. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is directing Federal agencies to steer away from cost-reimbursement contracts in most situations and look first at firm fixed-price contracts, as outlined in a recent OMB memo. […]
Kevin Cox, Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program manager, said today that he could not directly address the Russian government hack of thousands of government and private sector networks that came to light in December, but emphasized the importance of network resilience to quickly recover from intrusions and breaches. […]
Reps. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, have released a new bill that aims to improve science, technology, engineering, math, and computer science (STEM) education in rural communities. […]
The White House announced the creation of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy today, taking further steps to advance the research, development, and adoption of AI across the United States. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officially designated the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a Quality Service Management Office (QSMO) to lead grant management process improvement efforts on a government-wide basis. […]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) named Oki Mek, a career public servant, its first Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) in Dec. 2020, according to his LinkedIn. This is a new CXO-level position that puts Mek at the head of AI strategy for the agency. […]
The Smithsonian Institute is looking for a new Head of Digital Transformation to develop and execute a digital transformation strategy for the institution. […]
While most Federal agencies hung steady with their FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard grades for the final half of 2020, the inclusion of one new grading category helped to shake up overall grades – and will continue to do so for the next couple of years. […]
The National Security Agency (NSA) issued its first Cybersecurity Year In Review report, highlighting key achievements from 2020 – including encryption work for the Pentagon – and looking ahead to threats for 2021. […]
Federal government financial regulators are seeking comment on a proposed rule looking to increase accountability for banks that experience cybersecurity incidents by implementing requirements that they report incidents to their primary regulators within 36 hours of discovery. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has hired Kenneth Bible as its new CISO, a DHS management spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), along with the Department of Defense (DoD) 5G Initiative is looking to accelerate the development of an open 5G stack ecosystem to support DoD missions through a 5G Challenge. […]
The United States Air Force (USAF) Foreign Military Sales is searching for the “most effective way to modernize [its] current foreign military sales (FMS) legacy systems.” […]
During the nine months of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve asked a hundred variations of that question to people whose professional lives near the tip of the technology spear put them in good positions to predict the future and get as many good answers back. At the dawn of a more hopeful 2021, here’s a look at how the Federal work-scape may play out in the longer term, courtesy of three veteran technologists. […]
The pace of government adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies remains too slow in the face of amplified technology reliance due to the coronavirus pandemic. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) late Friday issued a new alert – stemming from the Russian hack of SolarWinds Orion products – in which CISA warns it has uncovered evidence of post-hack advanced persistent threat (APT) activity in the cloud environment. […]
The Biden-Harris transition team announced 21 more appointees to the incoming administration’s National Security Council (NSC) Jan. 8, including two that are sure to play significant roles in cybersecurity policy. The transition team has tapped Tarun Chhabra as Senior Director for Technology and National Security, and Caitlin Durkovich as Senior Director of Resilience and Response. […]
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Gina Raimondo as his Secretary of Commerce and Don Graves as Raimondo’s Deputy Secretary at the Department of Commerce (Commerce). […]
The Federal Communications Commission on Jan. 6 called for comment on how the agency should proceed with deploying $249.9 million of new funding to support its existing COVID-19 Telehealth Program. […]
In the midst of dealing with the fallout from the Russian cyberattack that used SolarWinds software to breach the networks of thousands of the firm’s customers, SolarWinds has hired former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs and his new cybersecurity consulting firm as an independent consultant. […]
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo approved the establishment of the Bureau of Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) within the Department of State on Thursday to lead diplomatic efforts to deflect cyberattacks from foreign countries. […]
The Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced last month that it will be conducting a review of the department’s cyber threat data sharing capabilities, pursuant to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 which set up structures for sharing threat data with government and private sector entities. […]
General Services Administration (GSA) chief Emily Murphy has asked for the resignations of all agency political appointees in order to demonstrate GSA’s “commitment to a peaceful transition of power” to the incoming Biden administration following the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol complex by a mob supportive of President Trump. […]