The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) successfully adapted to a flexible telework schedule for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic and plans to retain hybrid training and development opportunities for employees beyond the public health crisis, according to a DHS official. […]

Recent cyberattacks on critical infrastructure have elevated cybersecurity in the national discourse. For everyday citizens all the way to Congress and the White House, cybersecurity is top of mind. […]

According to a notice of intent posted on the SAM website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to make sole-source contract awards to seven vendors to modernize its immunization information system (IIS). […]

The United States Military Academy at West Point (West Point) is searching for a cloud-based common application platform to collect application data and provide the information to open files on candidates applying to the school. […]

Federal IT leaders want to see their agencies achieve enterprise-wide artificial intelligence (AI) proficiency in the next three to four years, according to a recent survey from MeriTalk underwritten by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA, “From Pilots to Proficiency: Operationalizing Federal AI.” […]

The Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service released a playbook that’s helping government agencies to automate their business through technology solutions. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has begun soliciting bids for a potential 10-year, $980 million satellite broadband contract to provide satellite communications services under the Commercial Broadband Satellite Program (CBSP), according to a request for proposals (RFP) notice posted on the SAM website. […]

Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president focused on digital issues, said today she’s “really encouraged” by recent tech-sector actions taken by President Biden to create greater competition, and is hopeful emerging technologies such as AI will create a bigger public sector market. […]

In a move to help increase law enforcement accountability, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is releasing $7.65 million in a competitive microgrant grant solicitation that will fund body-worn cameras (BWCs) to any law enforcement department with 50 or fewer full-time sworn personnel, rural agencies, and Federally-recognized Tribal agencies. […]

While the State Department Office of Technology Services’ (OTS) information system processes were compliant with many Department of State and Federal standards, there were some significant areas that require management attention, according to a new report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG). […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) investigation of the VA’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) modernization program has found an additional $2.5 billion in unreported IT infrastructure upgrade costs, which could put the program cost up to $5.1 billion more than estimated. […]

The Department of Labor’s (DoL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) does not require the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) to report data on suspected unemployment insurance (UI) fraud to either the ETO or the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), according to a July 1 OIG memo. […]

Step one in launching a robust DevSecOps (Development, Security, and Operations) effort is moving to the cloud, a State Department expert recommended July 8. […]

The Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences is dedicating $10 million in Federal funding for the creation of a research center that aims to address inequities in higher education online learning. […]

The U.S. Air Force released a solicitation for proposals for its $4.79 billion NOVASTAR contract vehicle for services in research, development, and sustainment of hardware and software capabilities to support intelligence production requirements of the service branch, Department of Defense (DoD), and the intelligence community. […]

Congresswomen Ayana Pressley, D-Mass., Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., on July 7 reintroduced legislation in the House to ban facial recognition use in most Federally funded public housing. […]

With President Biden’s cyber executive order (EO) guiding Federal agencies towards implementing zero trust architectures, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has already created a Zero Trust Playbook to help outline the change and create guidelines, the Corps’ CIO said today. […]

The Department of Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans on using its Pilot IRS program to release a multiple solution challenge to help digitize paper files. The agency will award multiple $7.5 million contracts based on which contractors offer the best solutions, according to a draft request for information (RFI) posted to SAM.gov. […]

According to a joint advisory from the National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), hackers from the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS) military unit – widely known as Fancy Bear or APT28 – utilized Kubernetes clusters to infiltrate targets in their global brute force campaign from mid-2019 through early 2021. […]

The SolarWinds software supply chain hack represented a seismic shift in cybersecurity awareness for public and private sector organizations. The attack, which compromised thousands of organizations, including at least nine Federal agencies – laid bare the reality that organizations may be compromised even if they don’t know it yet, and even if they are diligent about cybersecurity. […]

The recent Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity directs agencies to move to zero trust security architectures, in which no person or device is automatically trusted. However, many agencies were already well on their way to zero trust, said Drew Epperson, senior director of Federal engineering and chief architect for Palo Alto Networks Federal. In a new MeriTV interview, Epperson addresses the current state of zero trust in the Federal government and offers practical steps agencies can take to accelerate zero trust adoption. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a request for information (RFI) to identify potential vendors to support the secure and reliable operation of the dot-gov top-level domain (TLD). […]

As more Federal employees are going back to the office, there are efforts to understand the impact telework had. According to a recent survey, one effect was a substantial boost in productivity, as 79 percent of Federal employees found their productivity increased while teleworking during the pandemic, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) found. […]

NASA awarded a $2.5 billion IT and telecommunications services contract for Advanced Enterprise Global Information Technology Solutions (AEGIS) to Leidos, according to an agency announcement. […]

A new report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) puts veterans’ sensitive information and facility security at risk by not following requirements about documenting personal identity verification (PIV) cards returned by contract personnel. […]

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., have introduced a bill that would direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to study the risks and benefits of allowing private organizations to respond in kind to cyberattacks. […]

Defense Department Acting CIO John Sherman emphasized the Pentagon’s firm intent to move further toward adopting cloud infrastructures and zero trust security concepts at a June 29 hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems. […]

For once, the biggest problem with engineering effective IT modernization may not boil down to a lack of money to tackle the job. That conclusion was a top-line takeaway from Republicans, Democrats, and private sector experts at a hearing of the House Government Operations Subcommittee hearing today on how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed state and local governments’ antiquated IT systems, and what governments should do about it now that pandemic conditions are easing in many areas. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is developing a catalog of bad practices in cybersecurity to help critical infrastructure providers prioritize their cybersecurity responsibilities. The agency plans to keep updating the narrow list based on feedback from cybersecurity professionals. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is looking to develop practices that will ease the migration from public-key cryptographic algorithms to replacement algorithms that are resistant to quantum computer-based attacks. […]