The Department of Commerce uses a system to encourage employees to report on the tools they’re using outside of the information security boundaries. […]

The e-learning market in the United States is forecast to grow by 15.64 percent by 2020. The “E-learning Markets in the US 2016-2020” report points to cloud-based solutions as a key trend over the next few years. […]

The Federal government and its agencies all agree on the need to modernize IT infrastructure, though they continue to struggle with just how to do it. […]

Facing criticism over the awkward nature of the FedRAMP process and the use of $150,000 to create a FedRAMP Dashboard that already exists in the private sector, the GSA was told on Tuesday that it needed to clean up the program or have Congress step in. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency receives notifications for about 800 million alarms a day while providing support for 146 mission partners, and Maj. Gen. Sarah Zabel, vice director, said the agency is trying to grant all 146 partners access to the commercial cloud. […]

Facing criticism that $150,000 was spent to create a FedRAMP dashboard virtually identical to the existing FedRAMP OnRamp dashboard, the General Services Administration said that the new dashboard performs unique functions and that it has processes in place to ensure that systems are not unnecessarily duplicated. […]

Texas on Sept. 1 launched an IT marketplace website for state agencies to get the best deals for cloud services, the Lone Star State’s CIO tells MeriTalk.com. “Texas is leading the country on cloud. We have more cloud contracts in place than any other state,” CIO Todd Kimbriel said in an interview. […]

It’s been over five years since then-Federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced the cloud-first policy – and while it’s a common exercise to take a look back and at what has transpired over those years, we think it’s time to shift the view and get a clear picture of exactly where we stand now and where we are going. […]

Dawn Leaf, who served in the Department of Labor since 2012, announced her retirement as chief information officer on Sept. 5. Her last day will be Sept. 30. […]

Federal spending on contractor-supplied IT products and services will decline slightly from $99.8 billion in fiscal year 2016 to $98.3 billion in FY 2021, according to a recent report from Deltek. […]

Democratic and Republican policy advisers in the House are meeting this week to craft a bipartisan compromise that would combine the key elements of two major IT modernization bills introduced earlier this year into a legislative package that sources say has the backing of Republican appropriators and stands a good chance of being signed into law before President Barack Obama leaves office. […]

Big data can be analyzed more efficiently when it’s structured properly, according to government experts. […]

In the five years since the government has encouraged agencies to transition to the cloud, spending on cloud-based technologies has increased to about 9 percent, which is a good pace, according to Tom Ruff, vice president of Public Sector America at Akamai. […]

Patricia Adams of LANDESK says the hard part of purchasing software occurs after the purchase, when you need to confirm you’re getting the expected value and return on investment from that software. […]

The medical device industry’s role in health care is changing, says a new report called “Beyond the device: From producer to problem solver,” produced by PwC. Seven in 10 of the largest medical device companies have reorganized to broaden the services they offer health care customers. […]

Unisys announced a $232 million award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for cloud and application modernization services. Unisys will support USDA’s Rural Development Comprehensive Loan Program. […]

In the Defense Department’s new strategy document outlining the department’s vision for its future IT environment, CIO Terry Halvorsen argues the complex enterprise network is too difficult to defend, too costly to operate and maintain, and hampers effective information sharing between the military services and the nation’s allies. The strategy outlines eight major goals. […]

Partnerships between private companies and government agencies sometimes require more patience than young startups have, according to Rocky DeStefano, cybersecurity subject matter expert for Cloudera. DeStefano will participate in a panel discussion at MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm on Sept. 13. […]

Unified Communications company collab9 is seeking to give Federal agencies both flexibility and security in communication systems through its recent FedRAMP authorization, the first of a Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) provider. […]

The Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority of Toledo announced that it is using the Citrix Cloud to secure its IT operations. […]

MeriTalk sat down with GSA CIO David Shive to ask some substantial questions about FedRAMP and TTS ahead of MeriTalk’s GSA Forum on FedRAMP and TTS/18F on Sept. 13 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. […]

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report that shows that public sector prize competitions for innovative technology in the 2015 fiscal year have increased in capability and impact. […]

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is taking steps to move all 4,000 of its employees to cloud-based email. To do so, they’ve selected Unisys through a contract worth up to $11.2 million over the course of five years. […]

Please join us for an interactive breakfast session, co-located with the Cyber Security Brainstorm, on September 13th at the Newseum in Washington D.C. where David and his GSA colleagues will talk about the future for FedRAMP and TTS. […]

University of Maryland University College has reduced its physical IT infrastructure by almost 97 percent in the past three years–fully embracing cloud in order to accomplish this goal. The university has decreased its hardware from 1,500 pieces to fewer than 100 currently. […]

The General Services Administration on Tuesday released the FedRAMP Readiness Assessment Report, a template that allows cloud service providers to quickly determine whether they are ready to pursue FedRAMP authorization. […]

Federal agencies can now move their Red Hat subscriptions between physical or on-premises systems to both Microsoft Azure and Azure Government cloud platforms. […]

Intel announced its 3D XPoint technology and 3D NAND technology, which will help increase memory and storage capabilities in the cloud. […]

The White House United States Digital Service team launched a website on the General Services Administration’s Acquisition Gateway called TechFAR Hub, which walks agencies through the process of digital service acquisition. […]

Hitachi announced the creation of a data management system and technology for parallel data processing that, when tested, increased the speed of data analytics by up to 100 times. […]