Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
health

A recent report from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) revealed limitations with the VA’s patient scheduling system, a component of the agency’s new electronic health record (EHR) system. […]

GSA General Services Administration

In the wake of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report encouraging the Departments of Education and Homeland Security (DHS) to update K-12 cybersecurity guidance, several Democrat senators have written to both agencies urging them to heed GAO’s recommendations, and establish critical infrastructure council structures to advance the issue. […]

Telehealth
broadband
Cybersecurity

President Biden on Nov. 11 signed the Secure Equipment Act, which will prevent equipment manufactured by Chinese state-backed firms such as Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua from being further utilized and marketed in the United States. […]

telework
Cybersecurity

Sponsors of two major pieces of legislation that would make formative changes to the way that private sector companies report cyberattacks to the government – and how Federal government agencies conduct their own cyber defenses – are hitching their hopes for passage to annual defense spending legislation that traditionally gets strong bipartisan support from lawmakers. […]

COVID-19 vaccine

While the COVID-19 pandemic pushed forward massive advancements in telehealth, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has taken it one step – or more – further and is using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in nearly 50 sites for clinical care, an official said Nov. 8. […]

With K-12 educational institutions increasingly targeted by ransomware and other cyber attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is pushing the Department of Education to update its plans – which currently date from 2010 – for addressing cyber risks faced by schools. […]

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.

With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated at disguising themselves as legitimate network users, a top Defense Department (DoD) IT official said this week that the Pentagon’s move to zero trust security architectures gives the agency a “fighting chance” to detect and eject hackers before they can do much damage. […]

 Following a November 10 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the U.S. will sign onto a three-year old framework offered by the French government as an international framework for cooperation on cyber and supply chain security. […]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has embarked on a new initiative to assess the status of geographic information systems (GIS) within the 911 community, with a goal of defining what is required to achieve interoperable GIS data sharing nationwide. […]

After its passage by the House of Representatives Nov. 5, President Biden plans to sign the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Monday, Nov. 15, authorizing billions of new funding for broadband and cybersecurity, in addition to traditional infrastructure, the administration announced Nov. 10. […]

Pentagon Military Defense DoD
Army

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has awarded CACI International a five-year single-award task order worth up to $785 million for information warfare and electronic warfare solutions and services. […]

National Guard
workforce federal workers industry-min
CISA

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly said November 10 that the agency’s Binding Operational Directive (BOD) issued earlier this month to Federal agencies to remediate against a list of 300 known exploited cyber vulnerabilities appears to be getting a good reception from government and industry as an effective roadmap on how to prioritize action against prevalent cyber threats. […]

While Congress has made some headway in recent years to modernize the way the national legislature takes advantage of technology, maintaining a bipartisan focus on modernization goals is the necessary ingredient to making further progress, current and former Capitol Hill officials said during a November 9 Partnership for Public Service online event. […]

vaccine

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) – the largest union for Federal employees – is pushing for Federal workers to have the same extended deadline as Federal government contractors to receive their COVID-19 vaccine. […]

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Resilience and Food Security is looking for feedback for a planned climate adaption support activity that will provide a suite of services and products to USAID Missions, Washington, D.C. Operating Units, and partners to support adaption mainstreaming, programming, and scaling to effect change. […]

supply chain

The Department of Transportation has been tasked with seeking private sector input to create standardized data exchange requirements for goods movement in the transportation supply chain, according to a White House announcement of administration plans to fund ports and waterways improvements aimed at improving supply chain resiliency. […]

TMF

Federal agency CIOs agreed during a November 9 panel discussion at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation conference that the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is a vital source of funding for IT modernization and cybersecurity projects, and said they want more of it from Congress. […]

Cloud

With an international focus on climate change after the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, Department of Energy (DoE) CIO Ann Dunkin said today that data center consolidation is helping to reduce the agency’s carbon footprint, and pointed to the further use of scalable cloud-native apps as the next step in that campaign. […]

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