The House on July 11 approved an amendment to its version of the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 2500) that would block the Trump administration’s plan to merge the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration. […]

The inspector general for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, better known as Amtrak, found cyber vulnerabilities in an audit, as noted in a summarized public version of the report released July 9. […]

With aging infrastructure standing in the way of IT modernization efforts, the Centers of Excellence (CoE) effort at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is looking to stabilize the existing mainframes at OPM before replacing them. […]

Two Democratic senators told Margaret Weichert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), to put the brakes on proposed furloughs of OPM employees in connection with a plan by the Trump administration to merge OPM with the General Services Administration. […]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said in a blog post on July 10 that the agency will consider the $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund which Pai introduced back in April of this year. […]

A bipartisan proposed amendment to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2020 would prevent the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) from spending funds on any expansion of facial recognition technologies. […]

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) announced today that it endorsed S. 1846, the State and Local Government Cybersecurity Act of 2019. […]

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Office of Information and Technology (OIT) is requesting information on market research related to developing an acquisition strategy to acquire services from  commercial cloud service providers. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) is seeking an online assessment system to integrate with the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM’s) USA Hire to improve online Federal hiring services. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a memo on implementing the first phase of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, including deadlines for naming agency chief data officers (CDO), creating data governance bodies, and developing learning agendas. […]

Synthetic identity theft has become the fastest growing type of financial crime in America and is often unreported and difficult to detect, according to a new Federal Reserve white paper. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) on July 10 released its strategic plan that aims to sharpen the Defense Department’s (DoD’s) military readiness, drive acquisition reform, and push modernization efforts through FY 2022. […]

Despite a lot of press in recent months about threats that China-based communications equipment maker Huawei may pose to the developing global 5G communications ecosystem because of the company’s close ties to the Chinese government, the U.S. is continuing to lead the world in 5G technology innovation, panelists at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event said on July 10. […]

The U.S. Navy has kicked off its Artificial Intelligence Applications to Autonomous Cybersecurity Challenge (AI ATAC), sponsored by the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) and Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (PEO C4I). […]

The Energy Department (DoE) is making strides in its unclassified cybersecurity program, according to a DoE Inspector General (IG) semiannual report released today. […]

A new survey from Accenture found that while most users of government digital services across several countries are satisfied and want government to make them easier to access, most American respondents don’t use them at all. […]

The White House on July 9 released a lengthy list of concerns it has with the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 2500) set for debate in the House, and said the current bill would likely earn a veto recommendation from President Trump’s advisors. The list of issues that concern the White House runs to several dozen items, and in all likelihood does more to stake out negotiating positions rather than present a list of eventual deal killers. […]

IBM announced on July 9 that it completed its agreement to buy Red Hat, an open-source software provider, for $34 billion. […]

The U.S. Navy is deploying new, automated solutions to facilitate better customer experiences for their teams who use bandwidth-intensive applications on closed government networks. […]

A group of House Democrats urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a letter on July 9  to reject a proposal that would place a spending cap on the Universal Service Fund (USF). […]

Cyber tech provider Proofpoint said a recent security awareness audit of employees that undertake security training concludes that people are only hitting on the right answers 78 percent of the time. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced on July 8 an award that will add 23 small businesses to the agency’s $7.5 billion Science, Engineering, Technology, and Innovation (SETI) contract. […]

The U.S. Army is looking to pilot an Enterprise IT as a Service (EITaaS) approach as an alternative to the service’s current owned and operated IT network, according to a July 9 solicitation. Responses are due by August 9. […]

The National Security Agency (NSA) may have deep knowledge of signals intelligence and cyber, but the agency still faces challenges in implementing a strong cybersecurity posture under FISMA (the Federal Information Security Modernization Act), according to the agency’s inspector general. […]

The Defense Department’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) is seeking to procure innovative commercial software and services solutions to provide comprehensive data management, end-to-end platform integration, and model/capabilities development for technologies to assist in disaster relief through a new pilot program. […]

Small businesses are more likely to lack resources to build robust cybersecurity capabilities, but Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., are looking to address that challenge with their recently introduced Small Business Cybersecurity Assistance Act. […]

The Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA) released its Cyber Incident & Breach Trends Report for 2018 today, which found that cyber incidents cost $45 billion last year on a worldwide basis.  The report also emphasized that 95 percent of those incidents could have been avoided. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wants feedback on which Federal datasets would be most helpful to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which datasets are difficult to access, and areas with gaps in data and model availability. […]

Data privacy and online child protection experts at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today called for multi-layered approaches to online data monitoring, policies, and enforcement to safeguard children from sexual exploitation and exposure to inappropriate content online. […]

Fight for the Future, a digital rights group, today announced the launch of BanFacialRecognition.com, which calls for a complete Federal ban on government use of facial recognition surveillance. […]