In accordance with recent White House initiatives, the Department of Defense (DoD) is developing plans for Washington, D.C.-area employees to return to the Pentagon and begin a “new normal,” Secretary Mark Esper said at a May 4 Brookings Institution webinar. […]

I’m a veteran of the conference-going circuit, and my professional world has been turned on its head in the current climate. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Board of Veterans’ Appeals is making access to virtual hearings available to all veterans, according to a May 1 press release. […]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) said on May 3 that the agency’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)  processed loan applications totaling more than a half a trillion dollars since the coronavirus pandemic was declared in March. […]

As Congress considers remote voting and other measures to make the body work during the COVID-19 pandemic, a California-based non-profit has started the Congressional Digital Service Fellowship in order to bring additional digital expertise to the legislative branch. […]

The Department of Labor (DOL) is planning to reauthorize data collection for the Unemployment Insurance (UI) IT Modernization Pre-Implementation Planning checklist, which states use before “going live” with a new UI Benefits and/or tax system. […]

The geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) industry and workforce is undergoing a seismic shift driven by artificial intelligence (AI), with 91 percent of stakeholders believing AI has the potential to greatly improve GEOINT productivity, capacity, and capability. That potential impact, however, appears to be racing ahead of on-the-ground planning as just 33 percent of GEOINT stakeholders report having a clear AI workforce strategy. […]

U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Michael Kratsios announced on April 29 that Intel, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Idaho National Lab, and Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing (HPC) Center are joining the White House’s recently launched COVID-19 HPC Consortium. […]

Several members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs are criticizing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for its lack of Senate briefings on the Federal workforce during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]

Federal agencies and departments have spent more than $8.7 billion on COVID-19 related contracts since February – spending more than a billion dollars in the past week. […]

In an update on the defense industrial base (DIB), Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord detailed the decrease in DIB company closures that are tracked by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA). […]

Eight representatives founded the Congressional Task Force on Digital Citizenship on Thursday in order to create policies to promote technology’s responsible use. […]

Remote work isn’t a new thing for many organizations, but with pandemic-driven shelter-in-place orders and travel restrictions, it’s the new normal. For most, this experience is a mixed blessing.  Work-life and home-life are melding together, more time is being spent with family and furry-friends, and commutes are non-existent ­­– unless you count walking from bed to the home office.  But during work hours, instead of chatting around the water cooler at our leisure, we’re now being inundated with virtual meeting requests. […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are partnering to host a virtual hackathon to develop COVID-19 solutions at the end of the month. […]

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing both Federal agencies and the private sector to make a rapid shift to telework, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched a dedicated telework product line. […]

The Office of Management and Budget’s recent memo encouraging Federal agencies to maximize telework across the nation, has proven to cause some challenges for government workers making the shift, according to Kathleen Glow-Morgan, national transformational coach captain at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). […]

After a long day of driving, Iowa’s plow drivers used to have to drive back to a garage to enter their time on a timesheet. The drive could be a considerable number of miles, said the state’s chief data officer (CDO). But not anymore after a move to a cloud-based system. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) put out a request for information (RFI) on April 30 for blanket purchase agreements (BPAs) to support cloud technology within its Innovation Lab. […]

An official from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explained in an April 30 public meeting on regulatory data hosted by the General Services Administration how analytics tools associated with rulemaking process are saving the agency both resources and time. […]

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has yet to implement various Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations from April of 2019 and eight more recommendations have been identified for HUD including those in cybersecurity and IT management. […]

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is searching for enterprise cloud integration services (ECIS) to migrate its Office of Information and Technology (OIT) IT systems to a full-service, cloud-based system, according to an April 29 request for comments. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) transitioned from 50 percent to 100 percent telework during the coronavirus pandemic without any noticeable service disruptions, Deputy CIO Beth Killoran announced at the April 30 ACT-IAC COVID-19 Town Hall. […]

Four Congressional leaders sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense contesting the potential elimination of the cyber college at the National Defense University (NDU). […]

The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is looking to spend up to $41.5 million on new cloud-based software. In a task order posted April 29, USSOCOM said it was searching for a vendor to provide a subscription service of a Library Management system (LMS) cloud-based software program to support the Theatre Special Operations Command (TSOC) and Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) patrons. […]

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has released its 2020 technology needs and is preparing to release its first-ever agency-wide technology strategy in the coming weeks. […]

The Office of Justice Programs at the Department of Justice (DoJ) is fast tracking its new grants database due to the coronavirus pandemic. […]

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to reverberate through all aspects of daily life, many are asking the same question: How can I help?   […]

ECS last week delivered the first version of the new Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) dashboard for Federal agencies to the CDM program’s systems integrators, said Joanna Dempsey, Director of Cyber Solutions at ECS. Dempsey spoke on an April 28 MeriTalk webinar, “The Next-Gen CDM Dashboard: Real-Time Cybersecurity Insights.” […]

There is still a need “to bring technical expertise into the legislative branch,”said a Cyberspace Solarium Commission staffer. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) is a recommendation the commission made in order to accomplish that. […]

Katie Arrington, Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) lead and CISO for acquisition at the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Undersecretary of Defense, confirmed that the CMMC and FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) offices are working on a way to grant reciprocity between the two certifications. […]