The Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University – which focuses on data and technology issues to drive more equitable practices in society – has named Cori Zarek executive director. […]
Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies said today they believe that “fewer than ten” Federal agencies have been targeted by “follow-on” activity after initial breaches in the Russia-directed hacking of government networks via SolarWinds Orion products. […]
The White House issued the National Maritime Cybersecurity Plan – a plan for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop and deploy a maritime cybersecurity workforce in order to monitor, protect and mitigate cyber threats to the maritime sector. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) has released a new draft of its Polaris Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) on Dec. 31, 2020 and is seeking feedback from the small business IT community by the end of the month, according to an RFP posted on beta.SAM.gov. […]
The newest version of the “United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions” document – known colloquially as the Plum Book – shows that at least six major Federal IT positions could see changes during the transition to the Biden Administration in the coming months. […]
After being excluded from the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the 117th Congress made the Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program (FedRAMP) Authorization Act one of the first bills passed in the House, passing by voice vote today. […]
The Biden-Harris transition team has chosen two Obama White House veterans – David Recordon and Austin Lin – to run technology operations in the White House’s Office of Management and Administration (OMA). […]
The State Department has kicked off the new year with a bang. The Department announced on Jan. 4 that it has appointed Dr. Matthew Graviss as its first-ever Chief Data Officer (CDO). Graviss will lead the Office of Management Strategy and Solution’s Center for Analytics (CfA), which is the State’s enterprise data capability. […]
The United States Postal Service (USPS) did not do enough to ensure that some of its main IT contracts were well-managed and remained competitive, bringing spending under the contract into question, according to a report from the USPS Office of Inspector General. […]
The U.S. Army Futures Command (AFC) is in the planning stages of creating a software development wing of the Army that would reduce its reliance on vendor software. AFC put out a call for white papers on Dec. 28 which they will use to invite vendors to submit prototypes and, later, award a contract by March of this year, according to the Federal government’s beta.SAM.gov website. […]
A Treasury Department official told House Ways and Means Committee members in a Dec. 23 letter that the agency has found no evidence that the suspected Russia-backed breach of Federal government systems via SolarWinds Orion products exposed U.S. taxpayer data. […]
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought pushed back strongly Dec. 31 on claims by President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team that OMB is dragging its feet on providing required assistance to the transition team. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a Dec. 23 update to its budget guidance to Federal agencies that removes a section that required agencies to evaluate the performance of their programs as part of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). […]
We’ve made it – together – to 2021. […]
After an unusually noisy holiday news week, here’s a quick catch-up. After threatening to derail a combined $2.3 trillion spending bill, President Trump on Dec. 27 signed combined FY 2021 government funding and COVID relief legislation. President Trump on Dec. 31 issued an executive order that will give all Federal government civilian employees a one percent pay raise in 2021. The House on Dec. 28 and the Senate on Jan. 1 voted to override President Trump’s Dec. 23 veto. […]
With one of the most abnormal years of our lifetimes coming to an end, we look back at the top Fed IT moments of 2020. In a year with both a pandemic and an election, the government had to change the way it worked, ensure trust in election outcomes, and modernize on the fly. […]
With 2020 nearly in the rearview mirror, we surveyed the office to find everyone’s silver linings of the pandemic. From ditching the morning commute to logging more quality time with loved ones, we’ve done our best to make lemonade out of lemons. […]
With the holiday season upon us, we at MeriTalk wanted to spread some holiday cheer. We’ve gathered up photos of our furry friends – and one with scales – dressed in festive attire, meeting Santa, or just enjoying some winter weather. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) Prototypes and Experiments office is looking for submissions ahead of a solutions meeting that the office expects to hold in late spring 2021, according to a Dec. 22 release. […]
A bill introduced on Dec. 11 by Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would require Federal agencies to report to Congress within seven days about any cyber attacks they have faced that would cause significant harm to national security or agency operations. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO)has reviewed several Department of Defense (DoD) information technology programs and found that the agency’s IT development approaches and cybersecurity practices may be impacting cost and scheduling. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has outlined technical and policy options for creating database resources that can be used to identify chemical “fingerprints” and help investigators track down the sources of chemical weapon agents used in attacks. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) this week issued its 2020 Presidential Transition Guide to Federal agencies, setting forth rules and policies for Federal agency and department heads to follow when dealing with the departure and appointment of political appointees and the treatment of career Federal employees during the transition to the incoming Biden administration. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft version of Special Publication (SP) 800-213 and several supporting documents aimed at manufacturers, with the goal of establishing a baseline for securely integrating Internet of Things (IoT) devices into Federal networks. […]
President Trump followed through today on threats to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Dec. 23. Both houses of Congress have already set up post-Christmas sessions to conduct votes aimed at overriding the presidential veto. […]
After congressional Democrats and Republicans broke a nine-month deadlock on Fiscal Year 2021 spending and further COVID-19 relief funding with their agreement on both fronts earlier this week, President Trump put the fate of the combined spending bill in doubt with suggestions to change the terms of payouts in the stimulus portion of the legislation. […]
The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and Project Management Institute (PMI) released a new report today on how to build a more agile Federal government, and provided five recommendations for how government can move in that direction. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a draft version of guidance that will further help agencies report cloud-security data to the National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS), giving CISA the needed visibility to track network traffic amid increasing cloud migrations. […]
MeriTalk spoke with six key Federal IT suppliers about the Federal government’s mostly successful nine-month scramble to remote work and service delivery, with executives forecasting 2021 as a crucial opportunity to rework architectural, security and workforce concepts to turn the government IT’s year of turmoil in 2020 into lasting performance gains. […]
Key Federal IT suppliers agree that 2020 has been the year of making remote work and service delivery happen by any means necessary, and say that 2021 represents the opportunity for government to build better security and modern architecture into Federal networks as the remote-access experiment becomes the standard way of doing business and delivering services. […]