MeriTalk has announced the winners of its FITARA Awards for the seventh iteration of the FITARA Scorecard released in December, recognizing seven agencies for their progress in IT modernization. […]

The government funding bill is still being debated among members of Congress, and Democratic leaders have suggested Friday as a benchmark to get an agreement in place. […]

Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Dan Sullivan, R-Ark., reintroduced legislation on Tuesday that would “establish an international information sharing program on election administration and security at the State Department.” The Global Electoral Exchange Act, which had been introduced in the last Congress, would enable the United States to work with its international allies to strengthen election security by sharing best practices on audits, disinformation campaigns, and voter database protections–among other pertinent issues. […]

Participants described how their participation in Jack Voltaic 2.0, a joint exercise between the City of Houston and the Army Cyber Institute held in July 2018, opened their eyes to the threats of a combined cyber and physical attack on critical infrastructure. […]

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced that Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer were sworn in as commissioners on Wednesday, granting the commission a full quorum for the first time in over a decade. […]

While President Trump made only an indirect mention of the importance of emerging technologies in his State of the Union speech last night, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was busy tying the President’s call for government investment in “cutting edge industries” to emerging technology sectors including quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G wireless services. […]

Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, a House Energy and Commerce Committee member, said today that the House would work to bring about autonomous vehicle legislation for the new Congress to vote on, after legislation addressing self-driving vehicles stalled in the last Congress. […]

Top officials from communications industry trade groups told members of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today what few, if any, in the hearing room would disagree with:  the United States needs to win the global race to leadership in 5G communications services and technologies. […]

The call last week by the Pentagon’s top tester to temporarily halt deployment of the Department of Defense’s Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) wasn’t exactly out of the blue. The DoD’s independent Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) said the same thing in its annual report last year, while citing some of the same problems, such as staffing shortages, difficulty in integrating disparate commercial technologies, and the lack of mature standard operating processes. […]

The Department of Defense Cloud Strategy released this week emphasizes the importance of the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) cloud contract in the computing environment of the Pentagon. […]

On Tuesday, President Trump continued to push his desire for a border wall on the U.S.- Mexico border, even suggesting a “human wall” to prevent immigrants from illegally entering the U.S. President Trump will give his State of the Union address tonight where he could talk about border security at length. […]

In a report released yesterday by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), missions and systems remain at risk from adversarial cyber operations with operational testing discovering vulnerabilities that are considered mission critical. […]

The Defense Department’s newly published cloud strategy leans heavily on several core concepts including maximizing competition among cloud service providers, sticking to a single cloud strategy, leveraging commercial-sector best practices, creating a culture for better technology evolution, and above all else supporting warfighters and increasing their lethality. […]

Department of Defense (DoD) and private sector leaders gathered to discuss the state of cybersecurity in the U.S. military during a Tuesday Federal Executive Forum webinar. […]

Several senators took a skeptical view today over the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) Electronic Health Records Modernization effort (EHRM), raising questions on the need for better IT infrastructure, scheduling systems, and leadership structure. […]

The Department of Defense published an unclassified version of its long-awaited cloud strategy Monday afternoon, which features an enterprise cloud environment that includes “general-purpose” and “fit-for-purpose” cloud infrastructures achieved through multiple vendors, and identifies seven strategic objectives for the effort. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the appointment of Christine Calvosa as the new CIO of the agency. […]

The Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) announced Monday Amy-Gabrielle Bartolac as its new public affairs manager. […]

The Internet Security Alliance (ISA) announced Monday that it hired Dan Lips as its new assistant vice president. […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has tapped John Brown for a promotion, according to a report from The Hill. […]

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on Monday reintroduced a bill to prevent “abusive” robocall practices and to give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) increased authority to fight robocalls. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Monday to create a new division housed in its Enforcement Bureau that will target potential fraud in Universal Service Fund (USF) programs. […]

If you take a look at MeriTalk’s newly released FITARA Dashboard, be ready to find some clear success stories across the seven categories of the FITARA Scorecard – as well as areas where improvement still is needed. […]

Senate Democrats on Monday introduced a bill that would prevent President Trump from using money already appropriated for the U.S. military to help build a border wall in the event that the President declares a national emergency to accomplish that purpose. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) released a request for information on January 24 on a draft Discovery blanket purchase agreement (BPA) for its Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative, a new strategy for acquisition as GSA rolls the program out to more agencies. The RFI is open for comment until February 8. […]

The U.S. Government Publishing Office’s (GPO) Office of Inspector General (IG) has flagged three continuing IT control issues at GPO involving access controls, separation of duties, and drafting of contingency plans in the event of service network service interruptions. […]

In a letter on Friday, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., questioned Steven Dillingham, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, over how nearly $5 billion in IT costs are being managed by the Bureau. His concerns come as IT costs grew by $1.56 billion between October 2015 and December 2017. […]

The Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) released a request for information on January 30 looking for vendors to help it implement a “one-stop shop” portal for comparing and enrolling in Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plans. The RFI is open for questions until February 15, and open for responses until March 11. […]

The White House announced Saturday that it has hired Roger Stone (not the one you’re thinking of) to serve as the deputy assistant to the President and director of White House IT. […]

Ricky Le has joined VMWare’s global government relations and public policy team, with a focus on Federal policy. […]