Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
Pentagon Military Defense DoD

Michael Horowitz, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) first-ever deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development and emerging capabilities, announced his resignation via a post on the platform X on Friday. […]

broadband

Funding for high-speed internet initiatives received by Federal agencies totaled $64.3 billion with an additional $11.4 billion in infrastructure contracts during fiscal year (FY) 2022, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) 2023 Federal Broadband Funding Report.  […]

The General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is looking for feedback on a proposed policy update to how it applies Federal cryptography standards to cloud providers. […]

telework
quantum computing

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., introduced legislation last week that aims to advance quantum research at the Department of Energy (DoE) by authorizing $2.5 billion in funding over the next five years. […]

Department of Veterans Affairs, VA Health Care Center

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in an Aug. 1 report that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans Health Administration (VHA) component needs to do more work to set performance goals and assess the effectiveness of a program that provides telehealth services to veterans who lack internet services.   […]

Cyber-Defenders

George Dilger II, who is the Federal regulatory compliance IPv6 SME at Dell Technologies and a new inductee into the Cyber Defenders class of 2024, gave us 20 minutes of his time to shine a powerful light on how high-profile government technology policies can sometimes end up reinforcing one another to improve security. […]

Sen. Mark Warner
White House

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded BAE systems a $48 million contract to further develop an analytics system used by military intelligence analysts.  The contract announced on Aug. 6 will “mature components” and add new features to Insight, an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system currently used by AFRL. Insight uses advanced data […]

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously at its Aug. 7 meeting to move forward with a proposed rulemaking that would protect consumers against receiving unwanted robocalls whose content is generated by artificial intelligence technologies. […]

healthcare cyber-min

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) – a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – is researching the use of artificial intelligence technologies in health care with the aim of improving screening and analytics capabilities.    […]

As the nation’s largest law firm, the Department of Justice (DoJ) is looking to make its services more accessible, effective, and efficient through its newly launched “Access DOJ” customer experience (CX) hub. […]

telework
website

The Pentagon announced Wednesday that it has executed on $969 million in task orders on its Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) cloud services contract vehicle and currently has 75 packages in the process for award. […]

One year after Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks first announced the Department of Defense’s Replicator initiative at the NDIA Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference, Hicks returned to the conference on Wednesday to say the initiative is “on track” to meet its initial goal. […]

VA, Veterans Affairs
Cyber-Defenders

Fresh off his induction into the 2024 class of Cyber Defenders, we were delighted to sit down for a half hour with Gary Barlet – who is public sector chief technology officer at Illumio – for a wide ranging talk about government cybersecurity needs, the criticality of the current zero trust security transition, and the multiple facets of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the hands of both adversaries and network defenders. […]

The General Services Administration’s (GSA) robotic process automation (RPA) program has helped the agency to reduce repetitive administrative tasks, but a new report from the GSA Office of Inspector General (OIG) finds that the security of the program needs significant improvement. […]

Defense Information Systems Agency, DISA

Jeff Marshall, who took over in May as acting director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) J9 Hosting and Compute Center (HaCC), explained this week how his organization is rethinking its approach to providing services through more of a hybrid cloud lens, and how it’s also gearing up for some retooling of its Stratus private cloud offering. […]

A recent report from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) finds that Federal agencies will need approximately $7.1 billion to transition their prioritized information systems to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) between 2025 and 2035. […]

air force
ODNI

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is welcoming Peiter “Mudge” Zatko back to the agency as its new chief information officer (CIO) as of June, a DARPA spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

Finance Forward: Accelerating Federal Finance Transformation

Early results from Federal agencies’ financial transformation initiatives have yielded benefits including improved citizen service and decision-making capabilities, but fewer than half of Federal IT and finance leaders believe their systems are very effective in critical areas such as financial planning, compliance, and data integrity, according to a recent MeriTalk survey conducted in partnership with KPMG. […]

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