A new report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee calls for a whole-of-government plan to support state and local election officials amid an increase in election misinformation and disinformation. […]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for information on commercial space-based data relay (SBDR) capabilities to improve satellite data availability and resilience. […]

The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is doubling the size of its Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, to $1.98 billion, NTIA said on August 9. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), has awarded almost $90 million to nearly 1,400 community health centers across the county to improve their data collection and reporting efforts. […]

The ability of Federal agencies to improve their cybersecurity – if at all – took center stage in the 14th edition of the FITARA Scorecard issued by the House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 28. The House Government Operations Subcommittee, on the same day, explored reasons behind the apparent void of agency performance data in a sometimes-contentious hearing. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has spent ten years working on a new acquisition framework but still has yet to tackle central facets of how to implement the new framework – including identifying major programs that the framework will cover, integrating the new framework with the agency’s IT program, and addressing related acquisition workforce needs. […]

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that the National Science Foundation (NSF) could use better reporting to provide more visibility into whether goals are being achieved for a program designed to help ensure Federal funding for basic research is spread across U.S. states and territories. […]

Federal technology veteran Jason Gray is starting his new job as chief information officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) next week, according to sources. His start date on the new job is August 13. […]

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is looking to spend close to $100 million for new machine learning and high-performance computing capabilities to help improve the military’s awareness of potential threats in the space domain, according to a broad agency announcement (BAA) updated on Aug. 11. […]

Managing the ever-increasing growth of personal identifiable information (PII) at large organizations and government agencies continues to post difficult challenges, private sector and government officials said this week. […]

Leading technology and security companies are banding together to share tools and products to better guard against cyberattacks, saying their security teams are spending more time correlating a blitz of unintegrated data than detecting and responding to threats. […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has named David Updike deputy chief information officer (CIO) and director of the agency’s Office of Information Technology Operations (OITO), according to his LinkedIn. […]

Legislation recently introduced in the Senate aims to create a Federal grant system to help fund the construction of new broadband networks in parts of the country that either don’t have much broadband service currently available or that have service speeds of less than 100 megabits per second (Mbps) upload and 20 Mbps download. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made further funding moves to help close the “homework gap” by committing nearly $68 million in two new funding rounds through the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECP). […]

A senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) official provided an update this week on agency-level activity in their migration toward zero trust security architectures mandated by President Biden’s 2021 cybersecurity executive order and subsequent guidance documents issued by CISA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a solicitation for Hack DHS – a multi-year bug bounty program – to procure services in support of the program going into the future and carrying a contract value of up to $43 million. […]

The United States Army said in a recent solicitation that it’s interested in engineering services for a project to provide soldiers with integrated, latest-generation technologies for training and combat purposes. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Aug. 10 released a new cyber toolkit to help state and local election officials improve the cybersecurity and resilience of their infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections in November. […]

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and subcommittee leaders sent letters on August 10 to five agencies inquiring about their progress in addressing the Apache Log4j vulnerability. […]

A new report from BlackBerry and Corvus Insurance finds that many businesses will struggle to bear the financial costs of ransomware attacks that are not already covered by their insurance companies, and that most of the businesses surveyed believe government should help victims recover from attacks that are linked to nation-states. […]

The cultural and mindset shifts required to advance the migration by Federal agencies to zero trust security architectures are proving to be among the more stubborn areas of change in that sweeping effort, according to Angel Phaneuf, Chief Information Security Officer, at the U.S. Army Software Factory. […]

Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) from 2018 to 2020, said today that his vision for the Federal government’s next leap forward on the technology front involves creating a new “U.S. Digital Agency” that would combine elements of CISA and several other existing agencies to create an organization “focused on empowering better digital risk management services.” […]

Cori Zarek will join the United States Digital Service (USDS) as deputy administrator later this month, she announced in a blog post today. […]

The rise in the number of students who opt for online higher education programs has led colleges contracting with third-party companies – called online program managers (OPM) – to help develop and deliver their online programs. However, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a new report that the Department of Education (DoE) needs to strengthen how it monitors the arrangements between OPMs and higher education institutions. […]

A new report from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the agency is not effectively managing or coordinating its identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) program, and because of that is leaving information vulnerable to cyber intrusions. […]

The Federal government’s march toward zero trust security architectures is well underway with guidance documents from several agencies. And while that guidance is crucial, Federal agencies cannot confine themselves only to the practices described in them, Federal experts said during an ATARC event on August 9. […]

Several Federal agencies that have banded together to study ways to improve financial management policies and practices have released a new simulation tool that aims to illustrate concepts for improving identity verification and potentially reduce improper payments. […]

MeriTalk spoke with Frank Dimina, senior vice president of Americas and public sector at Splunk, about the value of log data and how agencies can facilitate collection and analysis. […]

The Inflation Reduction Act winding its way through Congress contains a massive infusion of funds for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including $4.8 billion that the bill’s authors hope will help to rebuild the agency’s antiquated technology systems. […]

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued an alert on August 1 warning of vulnerabilities in encoder/decoder devices for the agency’s U.S. Emergency Alert System (EAS) that could allow hackers to send fake alerts over TV, radio, and cable networks. […]