The Federal government and other entities are adjusting to and planning for the impact of the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus. Here’s a quick look at some of the top developments of interest to the Federal IT community: […]
Federal agencies and private sector companies alike are doing their part to slow the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus by switching to telework. For many employees, however, this is an unprecedented change. […]
Lora Shiao, who has served as executive director of the National Counterterrorism Center for the past year, will become the center’s deputy director and serve as acting director, starting April 3 until the Senate confirms a permanent director. […]
A new website bot from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can help members of the public decide what type of medical care to seek if they are exhibiting symptoms of the COVID-19 coronavirus. […]
Stan Lowe, global CISO at Zscaler since 2018, is no stranger to danger when it comes to protecting large enterprise networks both within government and in the private sector. […]
An IT system, which provides critical information to the President, Secretary of Defense, and other military leaders, received only a little more than half of the required security controls at seven sites, a Department of Defense Inspector General report shows. […]
The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed enforcement action against operators of a fraudulent COVID-19 coronavirus website March 22 after Attorney General William Barr directed the agency to prioritize the “detection, investigation, and prosecution” of illegal pandemic-related conduct. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told Federal agencies in a March 20 memo to work with their Federal contractors, “if they haven’t already, to evaluate and maximize telework for contractor employees, wherever possible” during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]
The Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier continues to collaborate with World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan to address the global impact of COVID-19 and information sharing. […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) launched the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium – a partnership with Federal agencies, industry, and academia – to provide supercomputing resources to COVID-19 coronavirus researchers on March 22. […]
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a March 20 letter to issue more detailed guidance on paid leave and telework options for uniformed, civilian, and Defense Department personnel amid the COVID-19 pandemic. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a new guide, NISTIR 8170, to provide Federal agencies with different approaches to leveraging the Cybersecurity Framework to address common cyber problems. […]
As the country settles in for the long haul of teleworking and social isolation, the goal becomes maintaining your sanity and staving off cabin fever. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released separate draft requests for proposal (RFPs) – one for its legacy voice system and one for its data network – under the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract program, an industry source told MeriTalk. […]
The Federal government and other entities are adjusting to and planning for the impact of the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus. Here’s a quick look at some of the top developments of interest to the Federal IT community: […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 18 waived gift rules for its Rural Health Care (RHC) and E-Rate programs to allow broadband service providers to support telehealth and remote learning capabilities during the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. […]
A group of eight senators including all four from Virginia and Maryland asked the Trump administration in a March 19 letter to direct Federal departments and agencies to make publicly available their continuity of operations plans (COOP) in light of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]
Nathan McGuirt started working in the cloud about ten years ago. Now, a senior solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, McGuirt can testify that a lot in the space has changed. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is requesting $45.8 billion in Fiscal Year 2020 emergency funds to support the government-wide response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, including updates to agency IT to support telework and improve cybersecurity. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a bulletin note from the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) on cybersecurity risks increasing with remotely accessible telework networks. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on March 19 issued a list of 16 sectors – including information technology – that it considers essential during Federal, state, and local government responses to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]
The White House said on March 18 that President Trump intends to nominate Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). […]
The Professional Services Council (PSC), a trade group representing the Federal contractor community, today called on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue “clear and comprehensive government-wide guidance” to provide maximum telework flexibilities for contactors. […]
Thanks to COVID-19, most of us are now working from home – or otherwise isolating to take care of on-prem mission-critical functions. In this new world order, managing anxiety and stress has become just as important as taking care of the normal workloads. […]
As more Federal employees transition to telework to combat the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, agencies are facing massive network strains. At the Department of Energy (DOE), they are considering staggering work schedules to spread out network traffic. […]
More than 50 Congressional representatives agreed to a March 18 letter in support of remote voting addressed to House leadership, however, not all representatives physically signed the letter due to concerns about the coronavirus. […]
As Federal agencies increasingly move to telework due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Federal IT leaders across the government agreed that communication is a key building block for successful teleworking. The panelists specifically zeroed in on the importance of maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture even as employees begin to conduct work on their own network and potentially expose the agency to more cyberattacks. […]
In a letter to Federal CTO Michael Kratsios, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., questioned the Federal government’s plan to use American’s smartphone location data to fight COVID-19. […]
The U.S. Army is seeing success in implementing machine learning (ML)— evidenced by improved classification of previously unknown data by 20 percent— and is developing a workforce culture where artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is possible. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is building a 5G Spectrum Sharing Test Bed to measure how well 5G, Wi-Fi, GPS, and military radar can operate without interfering with each other, the agency announced in a March 18 press release. […]