Sens. Mark Warner, D.-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced legislation on Friday to create an Office of Critical Technologies & Security at the White House to coordinate action across Federal agencies and develop a “whole of government” strategy to combat theft of U.S. technologies by state actors including China, and to reduce risks to “critical supply chains.” […]
H.R. 1, the For The People Act introduced in the House yesterday, includes new restrictions for Federal employees on participating in work related to their former private sector employers, and stronger restrictions on government personnel leaving for private sector employment. […]
On Thursday, President Trump signed the Forever GI Bill Housing Payment Fulfillment Act into law, speeding up IT modernization efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). […]
Whether the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) will receive any funding for fiscal year 2019 remained an open question late Thursday as the House voted to approve a full-year FY 2019 appropriations bill that includes no funding for TMF. […]
On their second day in charge of the House, Democrats debuted H.R. 1, the For The People Act, which features a wide range of election security and modernization measures, including cybersecurity standards for voting machines, an election security bug bounty program, and a requirement for online voter registration. […]
The House Rural Broadband Caucus announced Thursday that Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., will serve as co-chair of the Caucus. […]
Reps. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., and Will Hurd, R-Texas reintroduced today their Federal CIO Authorization Act, which is intended to elevate and reauthorize the role of the Federal CIO. A previous version of the legislation passed unanimously out of the House on Nov. 30, 2018. […]
Asad Ramzanali is now a senior technology policy adviser to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. Previously, Ramzanali served as a legislative fellow specializing in banking and technology policy for Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. […]
The U.S. Army, continuing a Pentagon trend of scouring the front lines of technological innovation for tools that can help warfighters, has launched a second competition among small businesses that don’t usually fall into the world of defense acquisition. […]
Through a $40 million task order, General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) will be supporting the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division’s (NAWCWD) Joint Electronic Warfare Laboratory (JEWEL) by providing engineering services related to electronic, cyber and information warfare, and information operations and foreign military sales requirements, the company announced. […]
Cybersecurity experts are growing concerned that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hasn’t indicated which critical cybersecurity capabilities the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ceased during the on-going partial government shutdown. […]
The 116th Congress was sworn into office today, and with it, the House of Representatives was on track late today to vote on a package of bills aimed at ending the partial Federal government shutdown and reopening the government, according to House scheduling information provided by C-SPAN. […]
The House Rules Committee, newly controlled by Democrats, today announced a rules package that changes the name of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. […]
Four months after taking the helm as acting director of GSA TTS–the agency’s innovation hub–Kelly Olson today announced plans to leave the agency. […]
The Senate failed to vote yesterday on President Trump’s nomination of William Evanina to be director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), which is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. […]
The Senate voted to confirm Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer as commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), allowing the commission to hold a quorum for the first time since March. […]
The House of Representatives’ rules package, which will be introduced later today, includes a new “Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.” The package, which is backed by newly minted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., includes three titles and is expected to pass. The title that includes the new Select Committee will be up for a vote on Friday. […]
The Senate confirmed James Gfrerer as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Information and Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs Wednesday evening on a voice vote, filling the permanent CIO role that had been vacant since the start of the Trump administration. […]
Patrick Halley has joined USTelecom as its new senior vice president of Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs. […]
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced Friday that FCC will investigate last week’s nationwide CenturyLink outage, which impacted 911 service across the country. The outage, which primarily impacted Western states, began shortly after 8 a.m. ET on Dec. 27 and was resolved by 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 28. […]
The State Department is looking to secure its mobile devices and protect against malicious apps–with an app. The department released a request for information on Dec. 20, asking vendors for information about an endpoint protection platform for mobile devices. Responses are due by Jan. 18. […]
The Senate voted on Wednesday to confirm Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier as the new director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). […]
A day after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filled its board of commissioners for the first time since April 2018 by confirming Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks to full five-year terms, the FCC shuttered most of their operations on Thursday amid the partial government shutdown. […]
The Pentagon’s plan to use machine intelligence to better manage the finite and increasingly crowded electromagnetic spectrum took a small leap forward last month, as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hosted Phase 2 of its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2). […]
he partial Federal government shutdown is expected to last at least until Friday, as congressional leaders left a meeting with President Donald Trump today apparently with no deal in place. […]
The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Dec. 21 that it filed suit in Federal district court for the Western District of New York seeking disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) into how seven Federal agencies conduct what ACLU characterized as “hacking” operations into phones, computers, and other devices. […]
President Trump on Dec. 31 signed into law H.R. 5509, the “Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act,” that would direct the National Science Foundation to provide grants for research about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education approaches and STEM-related workforce issues. […]
The Department of Labor on Dec. 27 released a request for information on a proposal for a new financial management system, with an eye towards a potential move to the cloud and data analytics capabilities. Responses are due by 11 AM on January 16. […]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said last month it established a new program called Pilot IRS that will look to investigate and acquire emerging technologies that will help the agency better serve taxpayers. […]
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) found that NSF could improve its mobile device security after finding devices that were not enrolled in the agency’s management program, and finding inappropriate apps on work devices. The agency agreed with those recommendations. […]