The House Government Operations Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for April 16 at 9:30 a.m. to examine compliance with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA). […]
The Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2022 discretionary funding request submitted to Congress on April 9 features $1.25 billion of new requests that would be aimed at undertaking further Federal IT modernization efforts. […]
Amid the widespread misery and dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the few bright spots has been on the Federal technology front, where the imperative to adopt a range of remote processes including widespread telework has helped push Federal agency operations farther into the future. […]
Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat said today that the Federal government is making progress on a number of fronts in its digital-first strategy to improve the delivery of citizen services, but needs to pursue “sustained modernization” of IT services to continue driving change for the better. […]
Back in December 2019, months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a draft document of its Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 guidance. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is partnering with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense and other entities to recognize National Supply Chain Integrity Month and promote a call to action for strengthening global supply chains. […]
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on March 31 previewed six “sprints” planned by DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) component throughout 2021 to bolster Federal cybersecurity across a range of areas including ransomware, industrial control system (ICS) security, and workforce development. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released supplemental directions to help agencies root out and mitigate vulnerabilities in their Microsoft Exchange on-premises products. […]
Cybersecurity experts stressed this week that Federal agencies must keep stay focused on future threats and on moving toward adoption of zero trust security concepts, although they acknowledged that the latter tasks is “easier said than done.” […]
Acting Defense Department (DoD) CIO John Sherman said he has set his sights on generating faster progress on implementation of zero trust security concepts throughout DoD as a key follow-up to the agency’s success in facilitating rapid and widespread telework during the coronavirus pandemic. […]
The year-plus of societal misery and dislocation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has helped to deliver two mega-trends to the Federal government IT landscape that will far outlast the public health crisis. The first is the permanence of remote work, and second is the urgent need to evolve IT security to defend expanded attack surfaces against increasingly sophisticated adversaries. […]
The White House named Nabeela Barbari, a national security veteran, to President Biden’s National Security Council (NSC). Barbari will serve on the NSC as the nation’s director of resilience and response. […]
The COVID-19 pandemic forced Federal agencies to shift to majority telework in a matter of days. Over the last 12 months, agencies have had to rapidly learn how to keep their networks secure in a new work environment. […]
The Biden administration is proposing that the Federal government take a giant leap into the national broadband service market – traditionally the province of the private sector – in order to close persistent service availability and affordability gaps across the United States. […]
The Biden Administration today proposed in its $2 trillion American Jobs Plan to invest upwards of $90 billion in Federal government-directed research and development (R&D) spending in a host of technology areas including AI. […]
When it comes to modernization and innovation for Federal agencies, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) is emphasizing that software and cybersecurity are foundational to its digital modernization strategy. […]
The ongoing “Sunburst” cyber-espionage campaign that resulted in the SolarWinds Orion and Microsoft Exchange breaches represents a strategic failure by the U.S., rather than simple IT inadequacy, according to a report by the Atlantic Council. […]
Will Federal agencies’ use of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) become a feature of the FITARA Scorecard that the House Oversight and Reform Committee issues twice a year to grade agency progress on IT modernization and efficiency? […]
A group of ten tech-sector trade groups led by the Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI) is asking the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make some big changes to Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) rules and policies, including those covering repayment obligations. […]
The Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) said it is rolling out three new research programs aimed at energy supply chain security, protecting infrastructure from electromagnetic (EMP) interference, and cybersecurity education. […]
It’s hard enough sometimes just keeping up with the challenges of cybersecurity in the big headline-news cases – think SolarWinds in recent months or the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intrusion several years back. But the more you talk with experts in cybersecurity, the more it becomes clear that exploitable gaps in the network armor are nearly limitless, and that plugging those gaps requires innovative security in the spaces that remain off the radar for many. […]
Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat explained today that Federal IT policymakers are devoting considerable effort toward how to share and otherwise re-use across government the applications of automation technologies that Federal agencies have been developing on their own. […]
Sonny Bhagowalia recently became the new permanent CIO at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP), but the title change was more of a formality. Bhagowalia became acting CIO last June, and with three years in top tech leadership at the agency, he already comes equipped with a clear strategic vision for the agency’s IT and cybersecurity. […]
The Board of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) awarded $9.6 million in funding to the Department of Labor (DOL) for the agency to modernize its enterprise data infrastructure. […]
In a press release, IBM announced that it would be working with companies from the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), Electronic Design Automation (EDA) suppliers, Non-Traditional Defense Contractors (NTDC), and academic partners to develop state-of-the-art (SOTA) microelectronics for Defense Department (DoD) use. […]
As COVID-19 created unprecedented demand for remote work, one Federal agency was especially well equipped to transition to full telework in March 2020. The civilian agency had invested in robust collaboration tools and IT infrastructure, including network bandwidth upgrades in January 2020, which eased the transition and kept workers productive. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) indicated in a statement late Thursday that additional funding for Federal government technology included in the American Rescue Plan Act will help improve IT security, infrastructure, and digital experience. […]
President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act today, a day ahead of schedule due to a speedy transmission of the legislation by the House. The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill forms the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s initial legislative agenda. […]
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., long a prime mover in the House for Federal IT modernization, today hailed the inclusion of $1 billion of new funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act approved by the House. […]
In the wake of the recent SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange hacks, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is emphasizing the need to shore up supply chain integrity, adopt a zero trust security concepts mindset, and direct more resources to best address vulnerabilities. […]