Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed today its selection as prime contractor under the Federal government-wide Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Dynamic and Evolving Federal Enterprise Network Defense (DEFEND) program for Group D Federal agencies. […]

Beth Killoran, CIO of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since November 2015, has left the position for a new role at the Office of the Surgeon General, and CTO Ed Simcox has been named acting CIO, an HHS official confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

Charles Phalen, director of the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB), said Sunday in an appearance on Government Matters that his organization has been working with the Defense Department since December 2017 to shift the entirety of its operations over to DoD, long ahead of a coming executive order from President Trump that will make the move official. […]

The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), a Federal government entity within the Department of Commerce that is working with AT&T to build out a nationwide broadband communications network for first responders, said today that Sue Swenson is stepping down as chair of the FirstNet board, and Jeffrey Johnson is resigning as vice chair. […]

Research firm Gartner has released its 2018 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report, which found technologies like artificial intelligence platform as a service, blockchain for data security, and quantum computing reaching the peak of inflated expectations, while technologies such as mixed reality, and blockchain were on the downswing of excitement. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) announced today that it awarded DataRobot $200,000 to begin testing a prototype of a machine learning platform for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Travel Assessment System. […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said today that an internal IT systems failure–that has shut down its major electronic database for patent-related activities since last Wednesday–has yet to be remedied, and that teams are working to restore service following an ongoing five-day outage. […]

Federal agencies are looking to gain actionable intelligence and information from disparate data sources in a secure, scalable, and efficient manner. An emerging technology known as a big data fabric could provide those agencies with a unified platform “that accelerates insights by automating ingestion, curation, discovery, preparation, and integration from data silos,” according to Forrester Research. […]

General Paul Nakasone, head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command (CyberCom), recommended keeping the agencies under the same leader for the next two years, according to a report by the Washington Post […]

We’re sitting at a critical inflection point in Federal IT.  Cloud wars are raging, AI’s bubbling, and IoT’s, well, almost literally, everywhere.  And, as in any conflict, the first casualty is all too often the truth.  […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is looking to significantly overhaul its online presence, and on Wednesday opened bidding on a contract to develop a content management system for VA.gov–the agency’s primary website. […]

A collection of tech-sector trade groups including the Internet Association and Digital Europe is urging leaders from the world’s top 20 economic powers to focus on policies that encourage broadband deployment and adoption, and job skills training for the digital workforce when the G20’s Digital Economy Task Force meets next week in Argentina. […]

The Department of Homeland Security today released a request for information (RFI) calling on the private sector to provide DHS with information on strategies and tools to augment its cyber supply chain risk management program. […]

The Defense Department is pushing full speed ahead on modernization efforts, with recent strides made on a $28 billion R&D project, a $10 billion cloud infrastructure proposed contract, efforts to move cyber defense infrastructure to the cloud, along with myriad advanced research and futuristic projects. They’re even working to overhaul their travel planning system. Call it AirDoD, perhaps? […]

The Secure Elections Act, S. 2593, which is expected to be marked up by the Senate Rules Committee later this month, has been freshly amended to require states to have a cyber response and communication plan in place as a precondition to receiving Federal grants to support election security and election technology modernization. […]

A new report from The Century Foundation, a progressive think-tank, urges state law enforcement officials to take action on data privacy regulations in the absence of any substantial movement in that direction by the Federal government. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has hired Michael Conlin as its first chief data officer (CDO). According to his LinkedIn profile, Conlin started in his new position in July. […]

Bill Zielinski has been tapped to replace Kay Ely and will serve as the acting assistant commissioner of the IT Category (ITC) for the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), a GSA official confirmed to MeriTalk today. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the selection of SAP Concur for a $9.3 million contract to develop a new system to replace the current Defense Travel System. […]

Pamela Wise-Martinez, chief cloud and enterprise data architect at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, discussed the opportunities for Federal agencies to shift from disparate multi-cloud environments to effective use of hybrid cloud – marrying together on-prem, private, and public cloud use. […]

The Government Accountability Office released a report Wednesday that says the Federal government needs to provide more reliable data on employee misconduct, and suggested that Federal managers need better training to ensure that inappropriate employee behavior is dealt with appropriately. […]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today defended his year-long public insistence that the FCC was the victim of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack which impacted its electronic comment filing system during the agency’s net neutrality rulemaking proceeding last year, but admitted to having his own doubts about the cause of the system problem. […]

While members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today appeared to be generally positive toward the nomination of Lane Genatowski to be the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the Department of Energy, they also had some sharp questions for the nominee over his stated support for President Trumps’ plan to get rid of the organization.   […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) organization announced it has rolled out facial recognition technology at Mineta San José International Airport (SJC). […]

The Reform Government Surveillance (RGS) coalition, whose members include tech-sector bellwethers such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, called on the Senate to take prompt action to confirm nominees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which has only one member currently. […]

Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., has requested that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division investigate “whether the uses of facial recognition technology – as currently utilized – by law enforcement agencies are in violation of civil rights protections.”  In a letter to assistant attorney general John Gore yesterday, Cleaver noted the potential benefits of facial […]

The Department of Homeland Security on Aug. 13-15 hosted “Tabletop the Vote 2018: DHS’ National Election Cyber Exercise,” which invited vendors and Federal, state and local election officials to participate in election security preparation. […]

The Defense Department announced Tuesday that it awarded 15 companies the right to compete for task orders in a potential nine-year, $28 billion technology research and development contract for its Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). […]

Cybersecurity solutions provider Cylance today announced that it is offering free artificial intelligence-based antivirus software “to support all 2018 U.S. political campaigns” in the wake of pervasive election security concerns across the Federal government. […]

The Army needs help from academia and the private sector to modernize its workflow, explained Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, acting deputy CIO for the U.S. Army, during an Avaya webinar today. Yee specifically stressed an interest in industry helping to make the Army’s workflows interoperable and said that “workflows at the installation level must be scalable” to achieve true modernization. […]