A bipartisan group of House Oversight and Reform Committee leadership is urging the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to seek money from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) to help deal with a backlog of about 500,000 records requests from veterans who need the information from NARA’s National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) to receive benefits. […]

Alma Cole stepped down last week as Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) component after more than four years on the job. […]

Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., has filed companion legislation in the House to a Senate bill introduced in June that would invest $30 billion in deferred maintenance projects and infrastructure improvements at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) network of National Labs. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) has released an updated version of its Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (C2M2) with updates to address the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, DoE’s Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) unit announced July 21. […]

A State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report found that the agency lacks integrated financial management and procurement IT systems to support efficient contracting operations and a knowledge management strategy to efficiently store and retrieve essential information. […]

The Senate has confirmed Heidi Shyu, a former assistant secretary of the Army, to serve as the under secretary for research and engineering at the Department of Defense (DoD). […]

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Reform and Operations announced the witness list for the FITARA 12.0 hearing on July 28. Federal CIO Clare Martorana headlines the list of four witnesses, according to a release today by the committee. […]

New bicameral legislation was introduced July 22 by various members of the House and Senate that would provide $40 billion over five years to extend the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Emergency Connectivity Fund that was created under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. […]

The House of Representatives passed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Capabilities Enhancement Act on July 20, and the bill now has bipartisan companion legislation in the Senate. […]

A group of House lawmakers that has been studying Defense Department (DoD) supply chain concerns has given the Pentagon a list of high-level recommendations to address supply chain risks going forward. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) unveiled its outside the continental United States (OCONUS) cloud strategy last month, which strives to enable an all-domain advantage for international operations through cloud innovation. Officials from DoD and Rackspace Government Solutions stopped by MeriTalk’s Cloud Café July 15 to talk about OCONUS and the benefits and challenges to cloud modernization. […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee said on June 22 it completed its markup of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes a $1 billion increase in funds for programs developing AI, microelectronics, advanced materials, 5G, and biotechnology. […]

Dan McCune, the acting associate deputy assistant secretary of the Enterprise Program Management Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), talked about major themes in the agency’s IT modernization approach during a virtual webinar hosted by Federal News Network on July 21.  […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has named 18 firms it will work with on NCCoE’s Implementing a Zero Trust Architecture Project. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is considering an open-source registrar platform for the .gov domain, according to a new request for information (RFI) on SAM.gov. […]

While the announced framework for the bipartisan infrastructure plan agreed to last month includes $65 billion for broadband infrastructure deployment, Republican senators on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee are urging House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other negotiators to pull the broadband portion of legislation from the compromise agreement, and instead try to get it approved as a separate piece of legislation under normal rules. […]

The House Government Operations Subcommittee has scheduled a public hearing for July 28 at 2:00 p.m. EST for the release of the 12th edition of its FITARA Scorecard which rates major Federal agencies across a range of IT-related topics. […]

Guy Cavallo has been named permanent CIO at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – removing the “Acting” portion of the title that he assumed at the agency in March, according to an internal OPM communication today. […]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has not always protected Mobile Passport Control (MPC) applications from cybersecurity threats, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). […]

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate July 21 would require Federal agencies, government contractors, and critical infrastructure owners and operators to report cyber intrusions within 24 hours of discovery. […]

The House of Representatives on July 20 voted to approve the State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act July as part of a slate of cyber bills that passed under suspension of normal rules. The bill would create a $500 million-per-year grant program run by the Department of Homeland Security to help state and local governments improve their cybersecurity. […]

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved six cybersecurity and supply chain-related bills during a markup session on July 21. The committee’s vote sends these bills to the House floor for further consideration. […]

When U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began moving to the cloud in 2014, much of the agency’s cloud movement was “lift and shift” – simply moving workloads as-is to the cloud. Over time, IT staff trained themselves on cloud operations and began to take greater advantage of the flexibility and scalability that cloud computing offers. […]

Join MeriTalk on July 29 from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET for The Time is Now: Accelerating DoD Enterprise Cloud, a complimentary webinar that will explore additional findings from the study, as well as what’s preventing DoD organizations from migrating to available DoD enterprise clouds and what’s needed to accelerate adoption. […]

Department of Defense (DoD) Deputy CIO Cynthia Medoza shared her most important guiding principles to advancing the DoD enterprise, which she dubbed as getting back to the basics. […]

Federal Chief Information Security Officer  (CISO) Chris DeRusha today offered an expansive set of ideas for how Congress may undertake reform of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) of 2014 to bring the existing law up to speed with the fast-moving security improvement work underway throughout the Federal government following the release of President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order in May. […]

Recent hacks on localities’ water supply have shown the importance of cybersecurity in the water infrastructure. Witnesses sounded the alarm about water infrastructure cybersecurity and called for training and funding investments at a July 21 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 20 approved and sent to the full House for consideration several bills with Federal tech implications, including measures dealing with artificial intelligence oversight, and Federal hiring for several classes of technology positions. […]

New bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate this week would staff the newly-created Office of National Cyber Director (NCD) and authorize non-reimbursable detailees for NCD to support coordinating national cybersecurity policy and strategy. […]

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved H.R. 550, the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021 during a markup session on July 21. The committee’s vote sends the bill to the House floor for further consideration. […]