The House on Sept. 30 approved the Modernization Centers of Excellence Program Act, a bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that would require the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services group to establish a Modernization Centers of Excellence (CoE) “to facilitate the adoption of modern technology by executive agencies.” […]
The bias and ethics of artificial intelligence application are still being worked out on a case-by-case basis, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) IT Lab Chief of Staff Elham Tabassi said yesterday that an assessment process to minimize harm is not necessarily in the near future. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week approved new rules and procedures to streamline and improve the timeliness and transparency of how FCC coordinates with other Federal agencies in assessing national security, law enforcement, foreign policy, or trade policy issues that may impact foreign ownership applications filed with the commission. […]
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the American Competitiveness on More Productive Emerging Tech Economy (COMPETE Act) and the Consumer Safety Technology Act (H.R. 8128), both now move to the Senate for consideration. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is partnering with the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a public-private partnership dedicated to the cause, to lead the 17th annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month starting today. […]
The Library of Congress, which includes millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts in its collections, is seeking a cloud-based approach for interacting with digital collections as data. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is aiming for big progress in Fiscal Year 2021 on upgrading agency and Federal-level dashboard infrastructure and improving the quality of data coming from agency network sensors, along with continuing to get a better handle on how agencies employ cloud infrastructure and cloud security. […]
Three tech-sector veterans, in conjunction with MeriTalk, will cut through the confusion about an important aspect of the new tech environment – the virtual desktop experience – during a virtual tech briefing set for Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern time. The complementary briefing will explain how to make the virtual desktop experience productive, efficient, and safe. […]
The House of Representative this week voted to approve a collection of bills that aim to improve cybersecurity in the energy sector, inform the use of emerging technologies, and establish R&D plans. […]
After multiple delays of the Department of Veterans Affairs Electronic Health Record Modernization program, a critical part of the project is set to “go live” later this month, VA officials told members of Congress on Sept. 30. […]
President Trump today signed a continuing budget resolution that will fund Federal government operations at Fiscal Year 2020 spending levels through Dec. 11. The President’s approval of funding legislation passed by the House Sept. 22 and the Senate Sept. 30 narrowly averted a government shutdown following the end of FY2020 yesterday. […]
Federal legislation to help strengthen the cybersecurity of state and local governments through a Department of Homeland Security grant program passed the House of Representatives on Sept. 30 – with impetus for the legislation coming from across the U.S. in the form of numerous ransomware and other attacks in recent years. […]
In a discussion about creating more diversity in the field of cybersecurity, Department of Agriculture CISO Venice Goodwine encouraged cyber professionals not to let anyone put them in a box, to invest in themselves, and to be deliberate in their career decisions. […]
A two-part ransomware guide released yesterday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) directs cyber professionals on how to protect against and respond to attack. […]
MeriTalk spoke with Felipe Fernandez, Director of Systems Engineering, Fortinet, to hear his thoughts on dynamic cloud security and the impact it’s having on our Federal government during telework. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today reported results of its review of Federal agency efforts to reduce IT contracts duplication, and found that four of the seven agencies reviewed had fully or partially taken recommended steps to regularly identify potential contract duplication. […]
A recurring theme in America’s response to the COVID pandemic is to work from home. While this is seen to help flatten the curve of COVID, it has created a new challenge to the cyber community. More now than ever, workers are relying on secure connections to continue working at full capacity. Both industry and Federal guidelines and tools have quickly adapted to help create safe cyber environments, but is it enough? […]
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), an industry-backed group dedicated to best practices to ensure secure cloud computing environments, released its list of the top 11 threats to cloud computing. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has awarded six agencies across the Federal government with Gears of Government President’s Awards today honoring their innovative contributions to service delivery. […]
The three biggest linchpins for the Department of State’s successful implementation of telework across the enterprise each involve longer-term IT investments that the agency was able to make prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and each of those investments has paid big dividends in agency performance since March. […]
The interim rule for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification was posted in the Federal Register on Sept. 29, opening a public comment period for the amended regulation, which is scheduled to become effective November 30. […]
U.S. Cyber Command has a new Senior Enlisted Leader, who is responsible for advising leadership on military workforce issues and advocating on behalf of military personnel. […]
In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) broke down policy context and considerations to implementing agile for Federal IT programs. […]
In a new move to secure the 2020 election, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is letting Federal government employees serve as poll workers on election day – an effort election security officials are praising as critical. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) wants small businesses to be aware of subcontracting opportunities that could lead to larger Federal contracts. […]
The eight members of Congress that comprised the Future of Defense Task Force signed off on the group’s bipartisan work, which was months in the making and recommended several items pertaining to artificial intelligence, cyber, and the technology workforce. […]
As a part of its record digitization efforts alongside the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) completed digitization of declassified deck logs from the Vietnam War. […]
House Democrats released an updated version of their $2.2 trillion HEROES Act COVID-19 relief legislation yesterday that retains over $1 billion in proposed new funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). […]
Congratulations are in order for seven Federal agency CIOs and their senior staffs who earned well-deserved praise for improving their agencies’ grades on the latest FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard issued by the House Oversight and Reform Committee. […]
NASA has released the final solicitation for its enterprise IT contract – Advanced Enterprise Global Information Technology IT Solutions (AEGIS) – and is encouraging organizations to make proposals to support tech operations at the agency. […]