The Trump administration disclosed yesterday that it updated its CAP Goal Action Plan to leverage Federal data as a strategic asset.  […]

An updated cross-agency priority (CAP) Goal Action plan was released yesterday, designed to modernize technology to increase productivity and security, reduce costs, and establish a modern IT workforce.

The Federal government is making some progress in supporting the cross-agency priority (CAP) goal of greater transparency among Federal IT spending, but is behind schedule on establishing government-wide standards for Technology Business Management (TBM)–a set of best practices for running IT businesses and communicating IT costs and benefits–according to an update released yesterday on Performance.gov.

In the afterglow of last week’s FITARA Scorecard 7.0 report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee–which catalogued both substantial improvements by some Federal agencies in numerous grading categories and efforts by others to shore up a sturdier floor under otherwise fairly poor grades–several Federal IT industry executives took a few minutes with MeriTalk to share their thoughts about how agencies might be able to boost their grades on the next scorecard, scheduled for May 2019.

Cloud security provider Zscaler announced today that it received FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) authority to operate (ATO) at the Moderate Impact Level for its Zscaler Internet Access-Government (ZIA-Government) solution–nearly coincident with the Office of Management and Budget’s release of a draft update of its Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) policy late Friday.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a draft of its Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) policy late Friday, with the goals of removing barriers to cloud and modern technology adoption, ensuring that the TIC initiative remains agile, and streamlining and automating verification processes.

2018 brought a lot of progress on IT modernization and Federal policies, providing a platform for future IT modernization efforts, said Federal CIO Suzette Kent on Thursday.

Even anonymity doesn’t guarantee privacy. Not even in a crowd of millions. That’s the finding of a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers who found that anonymized mobility data can still result in privacy risks when that data is combined with data from other sources. Data–lots of it–is widely seen as the key to better planning for cities, transportation lines, and any kind of mobility services. But collecting all that data has an unintended privacy risk, even when taking pains to protect people’s identities.

Federal CIO Suzette Kent revealed today that the new draft Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) policy will be released next week, and that new policies on data and automation are coming in 2019.

While yesterday’s hearing held by two House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittees was a mostly upbeat affair given the better grades earned by several Federal agencies on the committee’s latest FITARA scorecard, committee members also grilled witnesses about impediments that stand in the way of agencies implementing a key aspect of the MGT (Modernizing Government Technology) Act.

A presidential advisory council found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage.

Federal agencies can earn better grades on their next FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) scorecard by taking action on three items that underpin the scoring–software inventories, CIO reporting lines, and setting up working capital funds for IT improvements as authorized by the MGT (Modernizing Government Technology) Act–members of Congress and an official with the Government Accountability Office said today.

Witnesses from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will testify tomorrow at a hearing of two House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittees that will examine Federal agency efforts to implement the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), and the FITARA Scorecard 7.0 issued by the committee earlier today.

Alongside the release of the seventh edition of its FITARA scorecard, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee included an in-depth examination of the methodology behind the “B+” grade for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), showing exactly how the department was able to boost its score.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s version 7.0 of its FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard issued today revealed broad trends of improvement and stabilization for Federal agencies compared to the previous scorecard issued in May.

The House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee released the seventh version of its FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) scorecard, showing progress at many agencies over the six-month evaluation period, and no agencies that suffered grading drops from the prior period.

Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., will introduce new legislation this week to “address cyber vulnerabilities created by the adoption of Internet-connected devices,” and specifically cyber threats of internet of things (IoT) devices owned and used by the Federal government.

IT security provider Zscaler said this week it is one of four cloud service providers selected to pursue Joint Authorization Board (JAB) FedRAMP certification, at the High Impact level, through the FedRAMP Connect program.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, today urged the U.S. and other governments to take legislative action to shape legal frameworks for the use of facial recognition technologies.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has scheduled a Dec. 12 hearing for two of its subcommittees to examine version 7.0 of the FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard report.