The U.S. Air Force issued a request for information (RFI) to gain feedback from entities that could provide capabilities for creating a wrist-worn physiological tactical wearable device. […]

The Senate confirmed Russell Vought as the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) yesterday in a 51-45 vote. […]

ACT-IAC released a best practices guide July 10 for industry and government on how to approach other transaction authorities (OTAs), a novel approach to Federal contracting governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation. […]

The House voted late on July 20 to include in the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) legislation that would codify into law the FedRAMP program – giving the program a statutory foundation and formal standing for congressional review. […]

President Donald Trump has nominated John Gibbs, who currently serves at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as the next director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for a term of four years. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., chairman of the House Government Operations Subcommittee and a leading voice in Congress for IT modernization, emphasized today that the effectiveness of Federal and state IT systems carries tremendous weight in government’s ability to help the nation through the coronavirus pandemic. […]

The House Government Operations Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing July 30 to discuss the upcoming tenth version of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard that is issued every six months by the House Oversight and Reform Committee. […]

In a letter to House leadership, a group of House Democrats urged leadership to block Federal spending on facial recognition technologies for law enforcement. […]

IT leaders across the Federal government are reviewing lessons learned from the past few months. Most acknowledge that agencies have significantly accelerated modernization efforts as part of their work to effectively support (and secure) mass telework environments. […]

Three congressmen in positions of leadership sent a letter to the president today requesting a classified briefing on China’s cyber activity directed towards the United States and recommending sanctions against hackers. […]

U.S. Navy NAVAIR Cyber Warfare Detachment (CWD) is pursuing research and development (R&D) to fill gaps in the cyber resiliency strategy for protecting its weapons systems. […]

The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) released a white paper titled “5G Capabilities: Enabling Services and Innovation in the U.S. Federal Government” to build an understanding of 5G and use cases in the Federal government. […]

Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is calling for any changes made to accommodate telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic to be made permanent following new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) demonstrating the expanding use of telehealth services to avoid the virus. […]

Sen. Angus King, Jr., I-Maine, said July 17 that a recent hack of Twitter accounts and warnings of Russian-government attempts to steal coronavirus research show the need for the U.S. to adopt a stronger cyber deterrence doctrine of the type called for by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission that he co-chairs.  […]

Witnesses at the House Government Operations Subcommittee’s July 20 hearing on Federal IT modernization will call for swift action by Congress and agencies to modernize IT infrastructure and services. The witnesses will offer a host of recommendations to clarify and simplify funding and policy inputs that can spur faster modernization. The hearing – entitled “Federal […]

Federal IT’s ability to sustain delivery of vital services to citizens stands out as one of the brightest aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. MeriTalk is chronicling the untold stories of that heavy lift, and the lessons it holds for the future as the nation embarks on the journey toward a more certain future. In the latest chapter of CIO Crossroads, we look at the U.S. Army’s IT evolution four months into the fight. […]

Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Christopher Krebs is saying that the 2020 election “will be the most secure election in modern history,” but continued to advocate for backup paper ballots to ensure an accurate count. […]

The House Appropriations Committee this week approved its defense funding bill for fiscal year 2021 on a vote of 30 to 22. The bill includes $694.6 billion in new discretionary spending authority for the Department of Defense, and a slight decrease in funding for research, development, test, and evaluation of new technologies. […]

The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t slowed the government’s progress on managing the Federal background check inventory, which has returned to a stable state of roughly 200,000 cases, according to a quarterly report on the Security Clearance, Suitability/Fitness, and Credentialing Reform Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goal action plan from the President’s Management Agenda. […]

Per a July 16 inspector general (IG) report, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) saw use of VA Video Connect increase from 79 calls per week to over 1,100 per week at just one of its facilities during the coronavirus pandemic, despite some bandwidth and scheduling issues reported by facility leaders. […]

The first group of “Responsible AI Champions” in the Department of Defense has completed a nine-week program led by Alka Patel, head of AI ethics policy at the department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. […]

Jim Russo, technical director of the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program at the General Services Administration (GSA), and Sean Connelly, program manager of Trusted Internet Connections at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), reflected this week on the continuous benefits of the EIS vehicle, and explained what each agency brought to the proposal. […]

Efforts to improve the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement (MISLE) data system have fallen short, and the Coast Guard plan to replace the system, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]

Attorney General William Barr said today that China had plans to “dominate the world’s digital infrastructure,” calling artificial intelligence a main part of China’s “drive for technological supremacy.” […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an emergency alert late today urging Federal agencies to take fast action on a patch to fix a Microsoft Windows DNS vulnerability. […]

CMMC Academy, an initiative of the cybersecurity firm Celerium, has set a July 22 event to walk companies through the certification process for the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). […]

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., has joined a growing list of legislators expressing concerns regarding Federal agencies reopening their offices amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. […]

The House Government Operations Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for July 20 at 1:30 p.m. to examine the pressing need for further Federal IT modernization in light of the coronavirus pandemic. […]

Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program Manager Kevin Cox said this week that the program is placing particular focus on helping agencies better understand and architect security structures for cloud and mobility-based data. […]

The U.S. Navy’s COVID Rapid Response Team is seeking information on a potential proximity tracking program to record individuals who may have been too close for too long to a person who tested positive for COVID-19, and whether social distancing policies put in place by Federal employers are effective. […]