The General Services Administration (GSA) has released a supplemental special notice to go along with its request for information (RFI) on GSA’s intent to establish a multiple-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) known as the Ascend BPA for commercial cloud services. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced the official launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (or ARPA-H), which will sit within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an independent entity. […]

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 25 voted to approve and send to the full Senate legislation that would tighten up oversight of Federal agency performance goals and publish more public data on the performance.gov website to help track how agencies are performing against those goals. […]

While the use of AI technologies is proving effective as a tool to help stop cyber criminals, the Federal government continues to faces an uphill road in deploying the technology, a U.S. Secret Service official said this week. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report this week that the United States Coast Guard needs to get a better handle on risk evaluations for some of its smaller IT acquisition projects. […]

Sens. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced legislation this week that would improve the collection and publication of data standards of eight Federal financial regulatory agencies. […]

Government grant funding technology writ large has made strides in modernizing to improve how funding is acquired, but there are still some state and local agencies that need to catch up, officials said this week. […]

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has published a final rule in the Federal Register that restricts cybersecurity export controls in an effort to prevent foreign adversaries from accessing hacking tools. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has awarded $203.6 million in an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity Application Development Support Services Contract (ADSS) as part of the agency’s IT modernization effort, according to a notice on SAM.gov. […]

Since late 2021 rumors about the impending demise of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) longtime standard identification card have spiraled. Several DoD officials earlier this week explained that the Common Access Card (CAC) will not be replaced overnight, but that the department is currently researching modern identity management solutions beyond the CAC. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the Biden Administration’s nomination of Maj. Gen. Kevin B. Kennedy to lead the 16th Air Force, which is based in Texas and is responsible for information warfare operations including cyber operations. […]

The United States Postal Service (USPS) recently opened up a third round of free COVID-19 rapid tests to send to households across the nation. But before the program was announced, the Office of the CIO had just three weeks to stand up a site that had to handle up to 20 million orders a day. […]

As Federal agencies are looking to modernize and undergo enterprise-wide digital transformations, leaders at the Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Office and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are pointing to changing organizational culture and “having the right conversation” first. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it received a whopping $2.8 billion of requests for the remaining $1.5 billion of funding under the agency’s Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) program, which aims to close the “homework gap” for students that don’t have access to reliable broadband service and devices. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) plans to issue $40 million in funding for research and training in science, technology, education, and math (STEM) areas for historically underrepresented groups, the agency announced on May 25. […]

The sweeping cyber EO that followed included 11 sections of guidance and mandates designed to push Federal agencies to improve their cybersecurity posture and modernize their infrastructure. Many of the mandates involve building a zero trust architecture, which requires users and devices to be authenticated and authorized before accessing the agency network, applications, and data. […]

New TMF awards and requests for more funds, public-private collaboration on cyber defense, OPM’s skills-based hiring guidelines, and more. For more news and insights on today’s mission-critical IT challenges, check us out on MeriTV. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report that its Fiscal Year 2021 audit found information system control problems at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that increase the risk of unauthorized access to financial and sensitive taxpayer data and disruption of critical operations. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – along with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and the Department of Defense’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering – has released a proposed five-step 5G Security Evaluation Process today for Federal agencies to receive authorization to operate (ATO). […]

The National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force – a Federal advisory group authorized by Congress in 2020 to explore creating a national resource for AI research and development – issued a new report this week that lays out the beginnings of vision for how a national infrastructure could be established to meet the needs of the U.S. AI research community. […]

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced a bill May 25 that aims to address potential conflicts of interest within the Federal contracting community. An amended version of the bill was reported favorably out of committee and heads to the full Senate for possible consideration. […]

MeriTalk recently sat down with Fortinet’s Jim Richberg, public sector CISO, Peter Newton, senior director, product marketing, and Fortinet Federal’s Felipe Fernandez, senior director, system engineering, to gain their insights into how Federal technology teams can integrate all of the components of a zero trust architecture to achieve holistic cybersecurity in a cloud, hybrid, or closed environment. […]

The Defense Department (DoD) has named Diane Staheli chief of Responsible AI within the Pentagon’s recently created Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO). […]

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on May 25 approved a bill that would direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to develop a national strategy for the research and development (R&D) of distributed ledger technologies. […]

While many cybersecurity officials strive to achieve “no risk” when it comes to cyber risk management, officials from NASA this week explained that’s just not possible and suggested that agencies instead focus on managing risks that are important to the mission. […]

The creation of a new police misconduct database, and a further evaluation of the use of facial recognition technologies in law enforcement, are among several foundational elements in President Biden’s executive order on policing issued today on the second anniversary of the killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers. […]

Democrats on the House Government Operations Subcommittee, along with hearing witnesses, today called for more money for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) as the fund’s remaining balance of about $750 million will likely be depleted by the end of this year. […]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has appointed long-term IT expert Stacie Alboum as deputy director of enterprise strategy in FDIC’s Chief Information Officer Organization (CIOO). […]

Priority number one in the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) is to strengthen and empower the Federal workforce, said one of the prime movers of that effort today. […]

State government IT officials said this week they are working to deploy their share of $1 billion of Federal cybersecurity grant funding approved last November by Congress as part of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. […]