The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) said today that it will conduct a series of systematic reviews this fall, in coordination with the Campbell Collaboration and in partnership with Australia, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, aimed at preventing acts of targeted violence and terrorism. […]

Department of Homeland Security DHS

Matthew Travis, deputy undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Programs and Protection Directorate (NPPD), said today that DHS’s recently-established National Risk Management Center (NRMC) represents the agency’s plan to play “the long game” in defending U.S. critical infrastructure sectors from attacks. […]

Walter McDonald Ann Kim FITARA Awards Department of Education

The General Services Administration has tapped the Department of Education to share with other Federal agencies Education’s successes in adopting the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework to arrive at a holistic understanding of IT processes, according to representatives of Education’s Office of the CIO. […]

AI Quantum Computing
US Federal CIO Suzette Kent OMB MeriTalk CCXB

Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to update metrics for Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) reporting, and said that agencies are seeing progress in those metrics, which are being tracked in a newly added category in the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The Army Futures Command (AFC) is ready to start working on modernizing the U.S. Army. As MeriTalk reported last month, the new AFC is headquartered in Austin. John Murray, who will lead the new command, was promoted to four-star general last Friday at a ceremony in Austin, following Senate confirmation of the promotion early last week. […]

Kirstjen Nielsen DHS

Members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct biennial reviews and provide dedicated funding to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program after finding erratic contracts and little planning documentation. The request was made via a letter to DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday. […]

White House

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, today issued new guidance to Federal agencies on shifting employees from low-value work to high-value work, including a focus on IT. […]

Congress Capitol Senate House

Multiple IT projects gained funding as the Senate passed H.R. 6157, the FY 2019 minibus appropriations bill for the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education on Aug. 23. The bill passed the Senate on an 85-7 vote.  The House approved its version of the legislation on June 28, setting up a House-Senate conference committee to reconcile differences in the two bills.   […]

James Mattis Defense Secretary DoD

Defense Secretary James Mattis in May urged President Trump to create a “whole of country” national strategy to advance U.S. development of artificial intelligence technologies, shortly after the White House’s announcement on May 10 of a new AI advisory committee–the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence–to advise the White House on research and development efforts across government and industry. […]

Cybersecurity flag

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Facebook, and Microsoft hosted a joint briefing on Friday, Aug. 24, for the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) regarding “actions being taken to combat malicious interference operations.” […]

Ron Wyden Oregon

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an Aug. 21 letter to update the Justice Department’s (DoJ) guidance on use of cell-site simulator technologies–sometimes referred to as Stingray devices–to take into account information from a manufacturer that use of the devices may completely disrupt communications of targeted phones including emergency 911 calls and other features.   […]

doj justice cyber court gavel ruling

U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the Federal district court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling Saturday that struck down key provisions of President Trump’s three executive orders related to the Federal workforce, which were issued in May and which agencies largely began implementing early last month. […]

Military AI DoD Defense

As the Pentagon rushes headlong into putting artificial intelligence into more of its operations, analyses, and weapons, it has said it doesn’t want to ignore caution flags about putting too much faith in the power of machines. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants to help with that, posting an array of those flags in a white paper that offers guidance to military use of AI and includes of list of its shortcomings and where it can go wrong. […]

Federal government, cloud computing
Cybersecurity cyber

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) previewed the results of its biannual state CISO survey during a webinar on Tuesday, revealing the continued growth of cybersecurity staff among the states, and continuing resource challenges. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is seeking comments on a draft practice guide that explores how multifactor authentication can help reduce fraudulent online purchases. […]

General Services Administration GSA

The General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract aims to aid modernization, support secure connections through various methods, and allow agencies to focus better on their mission, according to participants on a webinar titled “Building and Securing Government’s Connected Future with EIS,” hosted by FedInsider and sponsored by CenturyLink. […]

Senator Marco Rubio
Navy seal

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has named David Chow CIO, beginning earlier this week, a HUD official confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

military dod army AI innovation cyber command

The military services are mirroring the approach of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which seeks to accelerate the development of new technologies. This would be accomplished through collaboration with companies large and small, old and new. It has been so successful that earlier this month it got to remove the “x” from its name, as it’s no longer a temporary experiment. […]

Jay Huie

On the heels of Kelly Olson’s promotion to head the General Services Administration’s Technology and Transformation Services (TTS) organization (LINK to yesterday’s story), the agency is setting into motion a series of leadership changes impacting its FedRAMP operation, among others. […]

The former chief security officer at Facebook urged in a column published today on the “Lawfare” blog that the U.S. consider creating an independent, “defense-only” cybersecurity agency to deal with defense of election systems and processes that may come under attack by adversaries. […]

military healthcare, veterans healthcare
AI Quantum Computing

Jonathan Dowling, co-director of the Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics at Louisiana State University, said today at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Army Science and Technology Symposium that conservative estimates put the world’s first universal quantum computer at about a decade away from becoming a reality. […]

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) move to the cloud is fueled by the agency’s desire to improve interoperability and adopt emerging technologies, according to officials speaking during yesterday’s MeriTalk webinar. On the webinar, which was underwritten by AWS and Red Hat, Stephen Moon, senior solutions architect, DoD at Amazon Web Services, and Ted Brunell, chief architect, DoD at Red Hat discussed why cloud is mission-critical and how DoD sees it shaping the future. […]

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a warning about a new scam that targets men by claiming to know a personal secret about them and demanding a ransom in bitcoin. […]

Army DoD military Defense AI

Brian Sadler, senior scientist for intelligent systems at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, today discussed how the expanse of artificial intelligence (AI) research activities across the Army is bringing to light even greater challenges. […]

Federal government, cloud computing

The Federal government’s “Cloud First” strategy didn’t get quite the results the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was looking for the first time, so now OMB is about to unveil “Cloud Smart,” which updates the seven-year-old strategy with an eye toward energizing agencies that have lagged in making the transition. […]

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