Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is pledging that Congress will continue to undertake vibrant oversight of Federal agency IT and cybersecurity-related progress through the FITARA Scorecard that has been published twice a year – usually by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee – since 2015. […]
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is preparing for a leadership transition as Dr. Craig Martell, the office’s current chief, plans to step down from his post early next month, the department announced today. […]
The United States needs to ramp up its investments in critical and emerging technologies – such as semiconductors and AI – in order to keep pace in the global race for technological leadership, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF). […]
The Biden-Harris administration on March 11 submitted to Congress its proposed fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget request of $849.8 billion for the Defense Department (DoD), with integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building upon the military’s enduring advantages as top-line items. […]
President Biden is proposing a 2 percent pay raise for Federal civilian employees in his proposed fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget released on Monday, marking a significant decrease from last year’s 5.2 percent pay raise. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) delivered its first investment strategy today highlighting the Pentagon’s initial technology priorities for public sector investment in fiscal year (FY) 2024. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is undergoing a large-scale modernization process with plans to migrate the majority of its legacy IT systems to a brand-new “greenfield solution” later this year, according to CISA Chief Information Officer (CIO) Robert (Bob) Costello. […]
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introduced legislation today which would focus government resources on increasing transparency, oversight, and responsible use of Federal AI systems. […]
As Americans headed to the polls this “Super Tuesday,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., expressed his concerns surrounding election security this year, especially as AI technology is making it easier for adversaries to deceive voters. […]
The House and Senate Appropriations Committees released their first package of fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations bills on Sunday including a bill that provides over $6 billion in IT funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with a cut in the White House’s request for money to fund VA’s electronic health records program. […]
President Biden signed another short-term spending measure into law on Friday, avoiding a partial government shutdown this weekend and keeping one set of Federal agencies operating through March 8 and another through March 22. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) is well on its way to implementing an enterprise-wide zero trust architecture following review of implementation plans from DoD organizations, the department’s zero trust lead said today, although the process has not been without its bumps in the road. […]
President Biden plans to sign an executive order (EO) today that aims to protect Americans’ sensitive data from “countries of concern,” the White House announced in a Feb. 28 fact sheet. […]
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said today he is “very optimistic” that Congress will come to an agreement this week that avoids a partial Federal government shutdown when funding for several government agencies runs out on March 1. […]
The White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) released a report today calling on the technical community to proactively reduce the attack surface in cyberspace by adopting memory safe programming languages and developing better cyber diagnostics. […]
The Treasury Department’s announcement today of a new round of economic sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals includes notable numbers of new sanctions falling on companies operating in the Russian tech sector. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) has delivered its long-sought initial iteration of the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) capability – the department’s AI-powered meta-network of connected sensors to coordinate all the armed forces – said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. […]
President Biden signed a new executive order (EO) today that looks to strengthen the cybersecurity of our nation’s ports, as well as bolster maritime cybersecurity and supply chains more generally. […]
The House of Representatives officially launched its bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) today to help move along legislative proposals to regulate the evolving technology. […]
MeriTalk’s gearing up for our Tech Tonic Paddy’s Day Parade at Mortons in DC on March 14th. We’ll lead off with Federal IT’s favorite leprechaun, Congressman Gerry Connolly, lilting on the new CIO FITARA report card. […]
The Cloud Safe Task Force – comprised of four nonprofits: MITRE, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC), and the IT Acquisition Advisory Council (IT-AAC) – published a paper on Feb. 14 offering recommendations for Congress, the White House, Federal agencies, and industry to improve government cloud security. […]
As technologies are continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, officials from the Department of the Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) said on Feb. 14 that the United States must be dominant in artificial intelligence (AI) in order to win the “information fight.” […]
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has introduced bipartisan legislation that aims to strengthen America’s workforce pipeline in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and other critical technologies. […]
As the U.S. Navy is integrating disruptive and emerging technologies, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti stressed today that “speed matters” in order to keep up with our nation’s global adversaries. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued 2024 Priorities today for its Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) – aligning its priorities for the first time under three focus areas to help establish resources required and strategic direction. […]
A Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) official said today that the agency’s ongoing pilot efforts to provide cloud services to military service branches outside the continental U.S. (OCONUS) are proceeding well thus far, but that the ultimate goal of the pilots – to make overseas cloud services easy to use for all warfighting use cases – still remains on the horizon. […]
Conrad Stosz, the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) director of artificial intelligence and a key player in helping OMB formulate final guidance to Federal agencies on implementing President Biden’s landmark AI executive order (EO), told MeriTalk in an exclusive interview that many public comments on the draft guidance have focused on issues of transparency, consistency, and risk management. […]
Federal agencies called on all organizations today to urgently implement a series of cybersecurity actions after discovering that a Chinese-based hacking group has compromised the IT environments of multiple U.S. critical infrastructure organizations – with the end goal of a future cyberattack. […]
MeriTalk’s mixologists are giving the artist formerly known as Cyber Smoke a new shake. As of 2024, the bi-monthly power networking event is called MeriTalk Tech Tonic. […]
Members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are requesting additional documents and information from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding Federal agencies’ telework and remote policies. […]