The House Armed Services Committee advanced their version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) out of committee shortly before midnight July 1, in a unanimous 56-0 vote. The bill heads to the House floor after the July recess. […]

California’s landmark data privacy law, which went into effect in January and gives consumers greater access and control over their personal information, will now be enforced, according to the state’s attorney general. […]

DHS is accepting quotations in response to the request through July 10. […]

At the Department of Defense (DoD), emphasizing a zero-trust security model is helping the agency overcome common security mishaps, Director of Defense Research and Engineering for Modernization Mark Lewis shared. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) debuted Chapter 2 of the CISA Cyber Essentials Toolkit which centers around how organization staff and the users can exercise good cyber posture. […]

A group of prominent U.S.-based universities announced their support for the bicameral, bipartisan National AI Research Resource Task Force Act. […]

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has had to move quickly to support American staff abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic. […]

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been far-reaching within the Federal government – not only requiring agencies to shift services online, but also to enable employees to work from home en masse. […]

As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues its “extensive, transparent, data-driven, measured and deliberate approach” to reopening its regional and National Capital Region offices, a spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk that political leadership has returned to on-site work. […]

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) launched a new initiative on June 23 to advise state, local, and Federal governments on protecting electoral integrity and enhancing voter participation. […]

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and many agencies maintain telework status, outgoing Federal CIO Suzette Kent called the current moment a “marker of a new era” in IT modernization and digital capabilities.  […]

Federal IT has taken the ultimate stress test during the COVID-19 pandemic – and has withstood the strain. Fortified by ongoing modernization efforts, agency CIOs and their teams have ensured the delivery of vital government services during unprecedented crisis. As the new normal paves the road to recovery, MeriTalk is chronicling those success stories. Today, we go into the eye of the storm with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the second-largest Federal agency and largest civil agency. […]

The House Armed Services Committee spent Wednesday compiling its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, a process that could continue into the late evening or tomorrow if necessary, said the committee’s chairman. […]

The nominee to be the next deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told a Senate panel this week that OMB can help speed IT modernization in the Federal government through a change in budget scoring rules, and through pulling together best practices developed by the CIO Council. […]

Charles Chen, director of the AI and Emerging Technology Office at the Department of State, said at the June 30 AI in Action webcast that data lakes are “certainly essential for the success of machine learning and AI.” […]

For the Department of the Interior’s (DoI) journey of moving to a completely cloud-centric organization, maintaining cyber posture and developing the workforce is key to the strategy. […]

Both Small Business Administration (SBA) CTO Sanjay Gupta and Eddie Tejeda, Director of Cloud.Gov at the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization,  agreed this week that a solid cloud foundation can enable future IT modernization or other technical transformation. […]

The ability to generate new value through collaborative sharing and analysis of ever-growing data streams represents one of the holy grails of IT modernization. Now that government and private organizations are investing in the requisite infrastructure to make the data-driven future possible, what are the remaining challenges? […]

Across the board, Federal agencies have made a massive shift to telework in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, agencies are beginning to look at how to safely bring employees back to worksites. While the Department of Defense (DoD) is taking a slow, phased approach, leadership is grappling with whether the culture of increased telework is here to stay. […]

A subcommittee of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended on June 30 that the Federal government dramatically increase funding for non-defense artificial intelligence technologies in order to ensure U.S. world leadership in development and deployment of the technology. […]

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said today that a bill to promote Open RAN technologies will be included in the Senate’s annual defense bill, but added that appropriators have not committed to fully funding the bill. […]

Sens. Rob Portman, D-Ohio, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said they are offering the Deepfake Report Act as an amendment to the Senate’s fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill. […]

Anil Cheriyan is stepping down as Deputy Commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) and Director of the agency’s Technology Transformation Services organization, effective July 17, the agency said today. […]

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at NASA blamed the lack of information security programs, missing contingency plans, and ineffective IT security handbooks for the agency’s Federal Information Security Modernization (FISMA) Act shortcomings in Fiscal Year 2019. […]

As Federal Deputy CIO Maria Roat steps down as president of the American Council for Technology (ACT), starting July 1 Internal Revenue Service Deputy Chief Procurement Officer Harrison Smith has been selected to fill the role, ACT-IAC announced June 30. […]

A collection of trade groups representing the nation’s biggest tech firms is urging Senate leadership to match or exceed the $1 billion in funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) approved by the House last month as part of the HEROES Act pandemic-relief legislation. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the National Information Assurance Partnership with the National Security Agency (NSA) said June 29 that their joint pilot program is showing that cybersecurity for mobile application software for Federal use can be an automated process. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks a “comprehensive strategic [plan] to guide spectrum policy for 5G deployment,” according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.  The government watchdog agency made recommendations to FCC to improve its strategic plan, but the FCC was luke warm on the reccomendations.  […]

The Open RAN Policy Coalition pushed hard in a recent filing to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that the group’s primary mission – promoting openness and interoperability in radio access networks for 5G wireless services – will boost U.S. national security as the U.S. and other nations increasingly roll out those networks. […]

The legislative effort to update the Federal government’s spectrum management processes got one step closer to becoming law when a bipartisan group of four House members introduced a bill identical to the version added to the Senate’s annual defense bill earlier this month. […]