As part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the State Department has undertaken efforts to modernize the Department’s IT portfolio. In its July update, the State Department announced that it has met all PMA milestones for Q1 and Q2 of this year, and is on track to meet its Q3 milestones. […]
The Department of the Interior (DOI) is facing challenges in implementing the CARES Act, along with IT, financial and programmatic issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the agency’s inspector general. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking robotics process automation (RPA) to reduce its electronic health record (EHR) backlog, reduce manual tasks, and increase the traceability of VA’s program. […]
The House Appropriations Committee released its draft of the fiscal year 2021 Legislative Branch funding bill which appropriates $4.198 billion total to fund Legislative Branch departments such as the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional Budget Office, and Capitol Police. The appropriated funding will be $207 million more than the FY2020 enacted level and doesn’t include […]
The Department of Education wants to improve student privacy and cybersecurity at institutions of higher education, and listed engaging those institutions as a goal over the next year in its July 2020 President’s Management Agenda update. […]
The cyber agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking to fix 75 percent of Federal agencies critical network vulnerabilities within 30 days of their discovery, according to a goal in the July 2020 update to the President’s Management Agenda […]
At Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, it has been the job of two people to check visitors into the base, and manually enter their information into a system for a background check. Those days are numbered because of a robotics process automation program, according to the base’s director of communication and information. […]
Both the Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Commerce are progressing ahead on rural broadband agency priority goals (APG) as a part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) with some help from emergency funds in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. […]
The House Appropriations Committee voted to approve $196.5 billion in funding in a fiscal year 2021 appropriations bill covering the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS), which also includes the Social Security Administration. […]
Members of the House Committee on Financial Services and witnesses at a July 8 hearing weighed the public health benefits of digital contact tracing to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 against the data privacy concerns of access to personal information. […]
The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs funding bill for Fiscal Year 2021, which includes $65.87 billion in funding, maintains funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), and is substantially above the president’s budget request. […]
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS), and Related Agencies approved by voice vote a $71.4 billion funding bill for fiscal year 2021. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) identified cybersecurity as one of the high-risk mission critical occupations that the Federal government lacks, and is helping agencies create action plans to bolster cyber workforces, according to its July 2020 President’s Management Agenda (PMA) update. […]
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Related Agencies has approved a $158.3 billion appropriations bill for fiscal year 2021. […]
Since completing phase one of its multiple award schedules (MAS) consolidation initiative in October 2019, the General Services Administration (GSA) has progressed into phase two during the first two quarters of Fiscal Year 2020. […]
Time and again during the COVID-19 pandemic, Federal IT has proven its value as a vital service-delivery lifeline between government and citizens. MeriTalk is chronicling the untold stories and lessons of Federal IT success as the nation takes its first steps toward recovery. In this chapter of CIO Crossroads, we explore the State Department’s accelerated IT modernization journey in the midst of the storm. […]
The House Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) Subcommittee approved by voice vote today legislation that would provide $24.6 billion of funding for a variety of Federal agencies and programs for Fiscal Year 2021. […]
The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of the defense funding bill for Fiscal Year 2021, which includes $694.6 billion in new discretionary spending authority for the Department of Defense, and a slight decrease in funding for the research, development, test, and evaluation of new technologies. […]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its final Data Strategy – on the heels of its final Cloud Strategy – to most effectively accelerate data use across the agency. […]
Federal agencies have simultaneously adjusted core functions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic while making substantial progress on implementing cross-agency priority (CAP) goals, says the July 2020 update of President’s Management Agenda (PMA) progress. […]
The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is establishing a program to share “supply chain security risk” information with communications services providers with an aim to avoid future “rip and replace” programs that require removing potentially dangerous equipment from networks. […]
If the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is going to see a big boost in funding anytime soon, it may not arrive through the regular annual appropriations process. […]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its final cloud and data strategies and “establishes a new mindset or modernizing NOAA’s IT environment.” […]
Federal cybersecurity officials working on the policy and operations fronts agreed this week that better collection of data about vulnerabilities is key to fostering improved network defenses. […]
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Intel are partnering to fund research for machine learning (ML) in wireless networks in hopes of accelerating a new wireless architecture that can keep up with modern demands. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) attributes the FedRAMP program’s success to building a culture that prioritizes continuous improvement, and aims to continue program growth through its recently launched FedRAMP Agency Liaison Program. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a strategy today intended to “strengthen and unify industrial control systems (ICS) cybersecurity for a more aligned, proactive, and collaborative approach to protect the essential services Americans use every day.” […]
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) released a solicitation request for IT support for an existing data center and a new disaster recovery center. […]
The chief executive officers of four of America’s largest technology companies are scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee on July 27, according to a committee press release. […]
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said today he believes Congress should take action to make broadband service affordable for tens of millions of Americans with low incomes and those who have been left unemployed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. […]