Steve O'Keeffe

Since it became law in 2014, FITARA’s dished out tough love for Federal CIOs–and the 6.0 report card wasn’t one you’d want to take home to your CIO parents. So MeriTalk is working with the FITARA Awards chairman, Congressman Gerry Connolly, D-Va., the author of the FITARA legislation, to recognize the agencies that topped the class on FITARA and provide a venue for discussing the merits and challenges with the grading process. […]

DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) is pivotal to improving government cybersecurity. While it’s critical, it has a lot of moving parts–and that can make it difficult to follow. MeriTalk sat down with Kevin Cox to get a handle on the state of CDM, as well as an understanding of where the program goes from here. And, it’s quite a story–so I hope you’re sitting comfortably, feel free to grab a cup of coffee. […]

We sat down with Jeff Henry, president of ViON, in his office in Herndon, Va. The typical tech provider surroundings belied the epic changes at ViON, as it morphs from leading data center reseller to delivering government IT modernization as a service. […]

If somebody embodies a can-do, refreshing attitude in government IT, that person is Darryl Peek, the digital innovation evangelist at DHS. Sadly for Uncle Sam and luckily for Salesforce, Peek is leaving government and signing on with Casey Coleman’s all-star team at the cloud leader. […]

Following is a re-print of our Feb. 12 interview with Dave Powner, director of IT issues at the Government Accountability Office, and leader of the team that produces the FITARA scorecard–the subject of his testimony on the Hill today. […]

Out with the old, in with the new–that was the message from Windsor this weekend as the Meghan-Harry union shattered outdated norms. […]

It’s only traditional for heroes to ride off into the sunset–and, appropriate that the sun sets in the West. Dr. Barry West, senior advisor and senior accountable official for risk management at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced plans to hang up his government IT spurs the end of this month. […]

The timing for the White House to release its new IT EO is–timely. […]

How do you spell the future of government IT? AI. While that’s not going to get you too many points on the triple word score in Scrabble, the technology and applications will unscramble massive dividends in cost savings, service enhancements, and breakthroughs. […]

Maria Roat, smart business innovator CIO at SBA, knows her way around the jobs that define government IT–because she’s held most of them. She’s precisely the kind of professional we all want to see on the MGT Technology Modernization Fund board–a lean forward, pragmatist. Roat is a military veteran who has also walked a mile in the contractor’s shoes–she notes she’ll never drop an RFP before the Christmas holidays. Like Suzette Kent, she stresses the importance of the Federal workforce. […]