The Department of Defense’s (DoD) plan to accelerate adoption of commercial cloud computing saw an early result this month with the maximum $950 million contract worked out with REAN Cloud that lets DoD agencies buy cloud solutions and services directly from the company. The accelerated part of the equation resulted from the work of the Defense Unit Experimental (DIUx), which worked with REAN to enable prototyping and procurement of the full range of cloud requirements, contributing to the Other Transaction Authority (OTA) award. […]
Rather than focusing on technology, Compuware’s CEO Chris O’Malley believes Federal CIOs need to focus on people. A little strange coming from a tech CEO, but Chris seems to be on to something. Compuware is a reinvigorated 40-something mainframe software company based in Detroit in a tech space populated with young Californian cloud/agile upstarts–but O’Malley […]
Until now, most Federal agencies built their computing architectures like the aging buildings that house most of their headquarters, as huge monolithic structures that are inefficient, require frequent maintenance, and are wholly inflexible. Now, companies like Red Hat are offering a new path using microservices technology, which takes huge application stacks and breaks them down into tiny, modular components that can expand or contract based on needs, eliminating waste while ensuring critical services are always available regardless of future usage spikes. […]
What’s interesting and fun? Not enough. Join MeriTalk, Congressman Connolly, Maria Roat, CIO at the Small Business Administration, and a host of Federal CIOs, to raise a glass to celebrate the passage of MGT and talk about implementation plans. MeriTalk is hosting a reception on March 1, 5:30-8pm, in the Rayburn Building. […]
Artificial intelligence is sexy–no doubt about it. From self-driving cars to personal assistant technology that can anticipate your every need, the future of AI looks promising. However, the actual technology can be confusing. And rarely does the reality of AI match up to expectations created by Hollywood portrayals. […]
This week, two members of the White House technology policy team, Grace Koh and Reed Cordish, announced that they are leaving their positions. The White House already selected replacements for both positions. […]
Pentagon leaders say they’re serious about getting ahead in the artificial intelligence (AI) game, which increasingly could include the “games” involved in the modeling and simulation programs used for training. […]
When Mike Hermus leaves his position as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) CTO on March 2, Kevin Wince, the DHS executive director for Enterprise Architecture (EA), will step up as acting CTO. […]
The Trump administration has a fever for curing Fraud, Waste, and Abuse (FWA)–in fact, this is perhaps the most important Three Letter Acronym in Federal IT today. So, GAO’s January report on the shortcomings of CMS Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) and the fact that Medicaid improper payments hit an estimated $36.7 billion in 2017 raised temperatures across government. […]
The Air Force wants to take the idea of a virtual assistant to the next level, with a system that not only draws from existing information to answer questions, but puts some additional thought into helping airmen make better decisions. This is accomplished by quizzing them about what, precisely, they plan to do. […]
Complete Discovery Source (CDS), an eDiscovery company that finds electronic documents for litigation, announced it received a FedRAMP JAB ATO for its cloud platform on Feb. 12. […]
Creating some kind of an Internet of Things (IoT) beneath the ocean would be a daunting task, because the ocean tends to not cooperate. It’s vast, constantly in motion, and filled with water that’s not exactly friendly to communication as we know it. It can be tough to put hardware in place that’s up to the task of tracking activity in the waters around them. As a result, an adversary can often operate “under the radar,” so to speak, moving about underwater without detection. […]
The Trump Administration’s proposed $4.4 trillion budget for FY2019 would add some money to the cybersecurity pot, supporting ongoing programs and manpower levels, while cutting back on cybersecurity research and redistributing where the research money goes. Administration budget requests are largely political documents whose numbers won’t hold up once Congress gets done with making the sausage, but they do reflect White House priorities. […]
David Egts, chief technologist for Red Hat public sector has some words of wisdom for Federal managers seeking ways to move from legacy applications to more agile environments: modernization is not just about adopting new technologies and practices, it is about what happens to the old ones. […]
Sometime in May, the Army will take two armed, autonomous Humvees out onto a gunnery range to test and certify them as combat vehicles, which will make them the first robotic ground vehicles to be OK’d for combat. […]
The Trump Administration proposes spending nearly $45.8 billion on IT investments at major civilian agencies next year, a slight rise from the $45.6 billion in fiscal 2018, according to the 2019 budget proposal released Monday. […]
It is not uncommon today for agencies to use multiple cloud services such as Amazon Web Services for putting up computing resources on demand, Salesforce for customer relationship management applications, and either Google or Microsoft for email and collaboration tools. […]
In an interview with MeriTalk’s Steve O’Keeffe, Powner shares more on his role at the GAO and the direction he thinks Federal IT needs to take in the New Year. […]
It’s tough patrolling on the US-Mexico border–extreme weather conditions, rugged terrain, and thousands of miles of it. That’s why DHS Customs and Border Protection needs mobile, next-generation reconnaissance and surveillance solutions like Relocatable-Remote Video Surveillance System (R-RVSS). And, GDIT just completed a successful R-RVSS pilot program with CBP in Laredo and McAllen, Texas. […]
On the heels of naming Suzette Kent as the new Federal CIO, Agriculture announced that acting CIO, Gary Washington will become the permanent CIO. Washington has served in acting capacity since September of 2017. […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) want to modernize, but are being held back by a vestige of the 20th century–clunky, outdated technology platforms. […]
GSA wants Federal procurement officers to be able to shop for and purchase commercial products the same way consumers and businesses do: through an e-commerce site like Amazon.com. […]
Agencies undergoing digital transformation are combining on-premise, hybrid, and multiple cloud solutions into their environments. To that end, agencies need to weave cloud security and protection of on-premise systems into their broader security strategy for a true, defense-in-depth approach. […]
The cloud is not a one-size fits all solution, and, as such, the government is looking to invest in two or three cloud models to support the differing security and risk-tolerance postures of agencies and to leverage various shared services, according to the President’s IT Modernization Report. […]
The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) awarded the $207 million Next Generation Information Technology Services (NGITS) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA). Featuring six prime contract holders, this agreement will support a wide range of IT services, including end-of-life support for outdated technology, implementation of new technologies, and customer support initiatives. […]
The Pentagon and White House are chewing over what to do about fitness tracking apps, in wake of the news last week that a global heat map posted online by Strava could be used to identify the whereabouts and activities of military personnel, including those in conflict zones and other sensitive areas such as the halls of the National Security Agency. A heat map transforms data into a map in which values are represented by colors, which in this case includes the location of fitness trackers carried by government employees. […]
As you open your fortune cookie–you might ask, will 2018 be the year of widespread deployment of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools across Federal data centers? […]
As we barrel into Valentine’s Day, seems industry is falling in love again with NIST’s cyber framework makeover. Business groups and the tech sector reacted favorably to the latest update to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure, but noted more work needs to be done in several key areas. […]
Secrets have always been the lifeblood of the spy game. However, sometimes it pays to know what everyone else does. To that end, agencies are learning that crowdsourced information can prove to be a good predictor of upcoming events. […]
Everybody’s heard of the Federal IT skills shortage–but it isn’t just IT departments that are struggling. A recent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) report on cyber security and IT modernization finds agencies’ Offices of the Inspector General (OIG) are struggling with an IT skills gap of their own. CIGIE brings OIGs together to talk about common challenges and areas for improvement. […]