Whether House and Senate budget negotiators will agree to fund the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) for FY 2019 remained an open question late Thursday following a public hearing by legislators working to reconcile differences in the House and Senate versions H.R. 6147, the “minibus” appropriations bill that includes FY 2019 budget measures for Interior, Environment, Financial Services, General Government, and a host of other areas. […]

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led his committee today through a hearing aimed at finding “practical solutions” to a host of homeland security threats, but didn’t appear to land many easy or novel solutions.   […]

Members of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) board and the fund’s executive director today provided a wide range of TMF updates regarding funding and coordination with lawmakers, on the same day that House and Senate conferees met to reconcile differences in appropriations bills that will ultimately decide the fund’s spending power for FY 2019. […]

A new bill in front of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Health Subcommittee would put pressure on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to make its websites and digital tools more accessible to the visually impaired. […]

Tim Ruland, the CISO at the Census Bureau, announced his retirement via LinkedIn, with his last day scheduled for September 27. […]

CyberWarCon is seeking speakers for its Nov. 28 conference in Arlington, Va., dealing with cyber attacks and information operations threats with cyber components. […]

The Army Research Laboratory (ARL), working with an international team of researchers, is looking to implement a new type of cyber defense that operates on the principle that you can’t hit what you can’t see. […]

A new report published today by the Government Accountability Office is calling attention to persistent agency difficulties in complying with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), as well as difficulties with finding skilled acquisition professionals across the Federal government. […]

President Trump today issued an Executive Order that creates a structure to evaluate whether any foreign actors are attempting to influence U.S. elections and authorizes the government to impose “appropriate and meaningful sanctions against foreign individuals and entities determined to have engaged in election interference.” […]

Elizabeth Cain, the executive director of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), estimated that there are “about a dozen” projects in the fund’s pipeline, and that new awards are around the corner. […]

A bipartisan group of senators wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday questioning the State Department on what they called its failure to meet Federal cybersecurity standards, including a “near total absence of multifactor authentication (MFA).” […]

The Internet Association (IA), a tech association whose members include Amazon, Google and Microsoft, today released its list of six principles–transparency, controls, access, correction, deletion and portability–that the group says should guide future Federal-level privacy legislation and regulation. […]

The future of work in the Federal government will require a focus on machine-human collaboration, new change management processes, and reskilling of over 300,000 Federal employees, said speakers during a Professional Services Council conference on Sept. 11. […]

Apple later this year will launch an online portal for law enforcement officials to submit “lawful request for data, track outstanding requests, and obtain responsive data” from the tech company. […]

In the quest to keep the upper hand in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI), the Pentagon’s top research arm just put $2 billion in chips on the table to spur development of the third wave of AI technologies. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recommended in a new report that the Food and Drug Administration pay even more attention to medical device cybersecurity during the process in which it evaluates products for approval to market in the U.S. […]

Tech giants including Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco, Dell, and VMware are calling on the United States and other governments to invest in defensive, rather than offensive, cyber technologies. […]

The Government Publishing Office has named Sam Musa GPO’s new CIO. Musa previously served as chief of IT services for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and information systems program manager at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. […]

The intelligence community has adjusted its strategy for the “second epoch” of the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise program (IC ITE) to adjust to agency needs, reduce duplication, and use artificial intelligence to free up resources for analysts, said La’Naia Jones, deputy CIO for the intelligence community at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). […]

Mike Madsen, partner at the Defense Innovation Unit, said today that DIU is preparing to wrap up its search for a new managing director who will help guide activities at DIU, the newly-elevated commercial sector outreach wing of the Department of Defense. […]

The Senate Judiciary Committee is ready to markup S. 2785, the DETER Act, on Thursday. […]

Former Federal Trade Commissioner Terrell McSweeny has joined Covington & Burling LLP as a partner in the firm’s Antitrust and Competition Law and Data Privacy and Cybersecurity practice groups. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced yesterday the 20 small businesses that will be part of the agency’s ENCORE III Small Business Set-Aside Suite. […]

As the list of primary threats to the United States continues to evolve, the Department of Homeland Security is evolving to meet them with new operations such as the National Risk Management Center (NRMC) the agency announced in July, said Matthew Travis, deputy under secretary for DHS’ National Protectorate and Programs Directorate (NPPD), today at an event organized by the Professional Services Council. […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today at an event hosted by the Professional Services Council that the Federal government is currently seeing a “nexus of three critical elements” that provides an unprecedented opportunity for innovation in IT. […]

A significant trickle of Republican House members are joining ranks with Democrats to oppose President Trump’s August 30 declaration that he will freeze Federal civilian pay for calendar-year 2019. […]

Andrei Tyurin, a Russian citizen, was extradited to the United States on Friday from the country of Georgia in connection with his alleged participation in a computer hacking campaign that targeted U.S. financial institutions, brokerage firms, financial news publishers, and other American companies, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. […]

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said today it awarded $225 million of contracts to three companies to help the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) improve its medical review tools. […]

The Department of Defense Inspector General announced the start of a joint investigation with the U.S. Army Audit Agency, Naval Audit Service and Air Force Audit Agency into the military’s use of cybersecurity reciprocity. […]

A bill introduced by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, on Sept. 7 aims to create a national standard for financial institutions to notify consumers of data security breaches. […]