MeriTalk compiles a weekly roundup of contracts and other industry activity. Here’s what happened this week in the Federal Information Technology community. […]
No Category Set!
The National Assessment of Educational Progress released The Nation’s Report Card: 2015 Science, with results showing fourth and eighth graders increasing their science scores from 2009. […]
Energy Savings Performance Contracts are a good way for Federal agencies to reduce their data centers’ energy footprint, according to Timothy Unruh, director of the Federal Energy Management Program for the Department of Energy. […]
The Department of State has moved from leased data center facilities to data centers on government property by using a modular approach. […]
The Department of Justice plans to have three physical data centers by 2019, according to Mark Busby, program manager of data center transformation. […]
Though many agencies want to, or are mandated to, move applications onto Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tools, Dustin Laun says that agencies should be more deliberate in determining what they need from a platform provider. “I feel the government buys off of paper and presentations, and they don’t really know how simple these things are,” said Laun, contracted senior adviser for innovation and technology at the FCC. […]
Governments across the globe focus on different factors when building and maintaining their data centers, including latency, network capability, and reduced complexity. “The key here is horses for courses,” Stephen Worn, chief technology officer at Data Center Dynamics, told MeriTalk’s Accelerating Data Center Transformation event Thursday in Washington, D.C. […]
Sheila Yahyazadeh, senior consultant of KPMG’s Federal sector, said that Federal agencies’ disappointing scores on the FITARA report card could be an opportunity for learning and growth. […]
The General Services Administration, under fire for mismanaging its digital consulting division, announced today that longtime Pixar executive Rob Cook has been named commissioner of the Technology Transformation Service. […]
Tony Summerlin, who helped write FedRAMP, said he envisioned the program as a much quicker and sleeker version of what it is today. He says speed is one of the biggest challenges to Federal initiatives across the board, not just in the application of FedRAMP. […]
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., called on the Department of Defense to stop being a “rogue elephant” when it comes to cloud authorization and the FedRAMP process. […]
Cybersecurity professionals can respond and fix vulnerabilities more efficiently by acting like ants, according to Chris Oehmen, senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. […]
One of the most common commercial drone waiver requests concerns permission to fly at night, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has rejected 71 waiver requests and 854 applications because of inaccurate or incomplete information. […]
Over the past few years, many government agencies have turned from doubting and distrusting the cloud to fully embracing its potential, according to Microsoft executives. […]
Red Hat announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 received the Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+. […]
The White House celebrated Active Learning Day by announcing projects that increase access to high-quality STEM education. […]
No Category Set!
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Collective Intelligence’s Climate CoLab seeks to find a climate change solution for the United States and an effective way to evaluate it. The Climate CoLab uses collective intelligence to leverage the experience of an online community of 75,000 people and 200 experts to develop project proposals, select finalists, provide feedback, and determine the best climate-related projects. […]
Recent cloud adoptions have enabled government agencies, both on the Federal and state and local levels, to process data much faster than before, and those cloud services are becoming easier to get, according to panelists at the Microsoft Government Cloud Forum. […]
No Category Set!
The American Academy of Pediatrics is doing away with its previous recommendation of no more than two hours of screen time a day. The new policy statement specifically focuses on children ages 5-18 and highlights benefits and concerns regarding exposure to media. With the rise in ed tech, it’s no surprise that the AAP is warming up to the idea of screen time. […]
The Department of Transportation issued guidance for motor vehicle cybersecurity to ensure that connected vehicles can make appropriate decisions when cyberattacks are successful. […]
The Department of Homeland Security identified Mirai as one type of malware used in a recent cyberattack that brought down major websites, according to a statement from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. […]
The Department of State Foreign Affairs Cybersecurity Center is working with the Bureau of Information Resource Management to create a joint office for cybersecurity. […]
No Category Set!
Students in completely virtual schools score lower on math exams than students in traditional schools, according to Mickey Revenaugh, director of New School Models and co-founder of Connections Education at Pearson. […]
Quick transitions of teams make for a relatively seamless administrative shift, according to Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service, which offers recommendations for capitalizing on the potential of open data, no matter who takes the Oval Office in January. […]
The General Services Administration’s digital services organization, known as 18F, has consistently overestimated revenue projections by tens of millions of dollars, allowed IT staff to spend more than half of their time on non-billable projects, and continued to hire employees at the top of the Federal pay scale despite losses that now amount to more than $31 million, a new inspector general report found. […]
Federal agencies have increased the amount of money they spend on outdated IT systems, according to a study from the International Data Corporation. […]
The White House asked for student input and received more than 2,500 ideas about STEM education from students across the United States. Eleven students were invited to the White House to share their ideas. […]
Alongside hampering service to sites like Amazon, Twitter, and PayPal, the massive Distributed Denial of Service attack against the Internet domain name management company Dyn has also drastically affected cancer fundraising efforts by impeding transfers of funds. […]
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith championed the use of data as a means of bridging the gender divide. […]
No Category Set!
As the classroom shifts from a teacher-centered model to a student-centered model, it’s important to understand what technology is in the classroom, how it’s being used, and what key stakeholders think of the technological advances. For its 2016 Digital Education Survey, Deloitte analyzed more than 2,800 responses from demographically diverse teachers, parents, and students. […]