Public comments on the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) draft Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) policy show a desire for OMB to continue the push for modernization amid new metrics and a shift towards optimization over data center closures. […]

During remarks to reporters on Sunday, President Trump explained his comfort with having a number of acting agency secretaries in his cabinet, saying he is in “no hurry” to name new nominees to head agencies on a permanent and confirmable basis. […]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has nominated Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., an election security advocate, to head the House Administration Committee, setting the stage for Lofgren to oversee legislative branch agencies and their activities. […]

Trump President

The partial Federal government shutdown is expected to continue into the weekend and likely beyond as both Democrats and Republicans remained far apart in negotiations on a new spending bill after meeting today but achieving no discernible progress. […]

Sens. Mark Warner, D.-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced legislation on Friday to create an Office of Critical Technologies & Security at the White House to coordinate action across Federal agencies and develop a “whole of government” strategy to combat theft of U.S. technologies by state actors including China, and to reduce risks to “critical supply chains.” […]

H.R. 1, the For The People Act introduced in the House yesterday, includes new restrictions for Federal employees on participating in work related to their former private sector employers, and stronger restrictions on government personnel leaving for private sector employment. […]

Veterans Affairs VA Vets

On Thursday, President Trump signed the Forever GI Bill Housing Payment Fulfillment Act into law, speeding up IT modernization efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). […]

Federal money spending government

Whether the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) will receive any funding for fiscal year 2019 remained an open question late Thursday as the House voted to approve a full-year FY 2019 appropriations bill that includes no funding for TMF. […]

Washington DC capitol federal government-min

On their second day in charge of the House, Democrats debuted H.R. 1, the For The People Act, which features a wide range of election security and modernization measures, including cybersecurity standards for voting machines, an election security bug bounty program, and a requirement for online voter registration. […]

rural broadband 5g fcc -min
Capitol Washington DC Federal

Reps. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., and Will Hurd, R-Texas reintroduced today their Federal CIO Authorization Act, which is intended to elevate and reauthorize the role of the Federal CIO. A previous version of the legislation passed unanimously out of the House on Nov. 30, 2018. […]

Washington DC capitol federal government-min
The Pentagon is a very large building that houses a lot of the authorities for the U.S. Military. It's big. This photo doesn't do it justice, but they're kinda rightly concerned about people flying drones around there.

The U.S. Army, continuing a Pentagon trend of scouring the front lines of technological innovation for tools that can help warfighters, has launched a second competition among small businesses that don’t usually fall into the world of defense acquisition. […]

Navy seal

Through a $40 million task order, General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) will be supporting the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division’s (NAWCWD) Joint Electronic Warfare Laboratory (JEWEL) by providing engineering services related to electronic, cyber and information warfare, and information operations and foreign military sales requirements, the company announced. […]

.gov website cybersecurity government

Cybersecurity experts are growing concerned that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hasn’t indicated which critical cybersecurity capabilities the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ceased during the on-going partial government shutdown. […]

Capital, House of Representatives, Congress, Senate

The 116th Congress was sworn into office today, and with it, the House of Representatives was on track late today to vote on a package of bills aimed at ending the partial Federal government shutdown and reopening the government, according to House scheduling information provided by C-SPAN. […]

Washington DC capitol federal government-min
Kelly Olson, GSA

Four months after taking the helm as acting director of GSA TTS–the agency’s innovation hub–Kelly Olson today announced plans to leave the agency. […]

The Senate failed to vote yesterday on President Trump’s nomination of William Evanina to be director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), which is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. […]

elections, election security, voting

The Senate voted to confirm Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer as commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), allowing the commission to hold a quorum for the first time since March. […]

Congress Capitol Senate House

The House of Representatives’ rules package, which will be introduced later today, includes a new “Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.” The package, which is backed by newly minted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., includes three titles and is expected to pass. The title that includes the new Select Committee will be up for a vote on Friday. […]

VA

The Senate confirmed James Gfrerer as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Information and Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs Wednesday evening on a voice vote, filling the permanent CIO role that had been vacant since the start of the Trump administration. […]

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Ajit Pai, FCC Commisioner

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced Friday that FCC will investigate last week’s nationwide CenturyLink outage, which impacted 911 service across the country. The outage, which primarily impacted Western states, began shortly after 8 a.m. ET on Dec. 27 and was resolved by 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 28. […]

State Department

The State Department is looking to secure its mobile devices and protect against malicious apps–with an app. The department released a request for information on Dec. 20, asking vendors for information about an endpoint protection platform for mobile devices. Responses are due by Jan. 18. […]

Washington DC capitol federal government-min
FCC

A day after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filled its board of commissioners for the first time since April 2018 by confirming Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks to full five-year terms, the FCC shuttered most of their operations on Thursday amid the partial government shutdown. […]

Military AI

The Pentagon’s plan to use machine intelligence to better manage the finite and increasingly crowded electromagnetic spectrum took a small leap forward last month, as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hosted Phase 2 of its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2). […]

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