Several high-ranking Federal agency tech leaders are set to testify before the House Government Operations Subcommittee on July 17 when it holds a hearing to consider the effectiveness of the FedRAMP (Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program) program that standardizes security requirements of cloud services used by the government. […]

MeriTalk recently connected with George Young, Vice President of U.S. Public Sector at Elastic, for insight into how the Department of Homeland Security’s CDM (Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation) Program might soon evolve. […]

Most Federal agencies earned stable scores in the latest FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard issued by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, but two big shifts in the way the committee reached those grades could portend significant changes going forward. […]

Several Federal IT industry stalwarts offered praise today for the important role that FITARA (the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) has played in pushing Federal agencies toward greater IT modernization, and for the opportunities for further progress that the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s FITARA Scorecard helps to clarify for Federal CIOs. […]

The chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Reform delivered a clear to-do list on Thursday to Federal CIOs: pursue further data center consolidation, tighten the reporting lines between CIOs and agency heads, and craft better roadmaps for IT modernization. […]

Congressional concerns over the revision to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) policy were a main focal point during a hearing on the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) Scorecard 8.0 today. […]

The House voted today to approve $35 million of FY2020 funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), which provides money to Federal agencies to pursue promising IT modernization projects. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee’s latest report card on how the 24 largest Federal agencies are progressing on critical IT initiatives reveals a core of relatively stable agency scores, but with several big twists that significantly impact grades for most agencies. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) netted its highest grade on the FITARA (Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard yet, earning a C+ on the eighth version of the biannual scorecard released today by the House Oversight and Reform Committee. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is offering an amendment to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act (HR 3351) that would boost the FY2020 budget for the Technology Modernization Fund by $15 million, to a total of $50 million. […]

A bill being readied by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Josh Hawley R-Mo., would require large online service providers to give users regular assessments of the monetary value of the data that consumers provide to them. […]

Federal agencies are unprepared to confront and mitigate cyberthreats today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affair Committee Investigations Subcommittee determined in a report released today, recommending that agencies give CIOs more authority to make decisions on cybersecurity. […]

A new survey from MeriTalk finds that 70 percent of Federal IT leaders surveyed believe that FITARA (the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) has been effective in accelerating Federal IT modernization, with 68 percent agreeing that the law has improved Federal IT efficiency. […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent tops the witness list for the House Government Operations Subcommittee’s June 26 hearing to assess implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), and to release the eighth version of the full House Oversight and Reform Committee’s FITARA Scorecard that grades Federal agencies on their progress under the law, MeriTalk has learned. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program aimed at helping Federal agencies fundamentally improve network security is moving ahead in a number of significant, future-leaning areas at the program level to advance its broad cybersecurity mission. […]

The Federal government is making progress towards its goal of improving IT spending data accountability and transparency, according to a Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goal update released June 20. […]

With vendors in various stages of approval for companies in the Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program (FedRAMP) program, getting a cloud offering approved and at the right level can be confusing, but new guidance from the FedRAMP program management office (PMO) aims to fix that. […]

School may be out, but the next edition of the biannual report card for Federal IT is coming next week, as the House Oversight and Reform Committee has scheduled its hearing for the eighth version of the FITARA Scorecard on Wednesday, June 26. […]

Michael Chertoff, formerly secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now at the helm of risk-management and security consulting firm Chertoff Group, said today he believes that U.S. data regulation will end up taking a page from European data privacy laws by giving citizens greater ability to control what companies do with their data. […]

Agencies continue to move their data to the cloud, but increasing adoption of cloud applications outside of existing security programs like FedRAMP (the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) and the CIO’s office brings security concerns as well, a new report notes. […]

The FedRAMP program has provided more authorizations to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and reduced the time to authorization in the last three years of the program, according to an analysis of the program. […]

News emerged on May 9 that a Russian hacker collective known as Fxmsp claimed to have breached three major U.S.-based antivirus companies. The hackers said they “worked tirelessly” for the first quarter of 2019 to obtain access to the companies’ internal networks, where they extracted sensitive antivirus source code, artificial intelligence models, web security software, and security plug-ins. […]

The Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought wrote a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and eight other members of Congress asking for a two-year delay of a ban that prohibits U.S. government contractors from doing business with Chinese-telecommunications company Huawei, in an effort to give companies more time to comply with the legislation. […]

The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is currently piloting the CDM Aware algorithm at different agencies, but there’s uncertainty as to whether a full implementation will be ready by October, while a soft roll out may still be in play, said Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]

Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Grant Schneider said today that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is continually working towards developing standards and accountability for supply chain security and cybersecurity. […]

A draft Homeland Security budget released by the House Appropriations Committee today offers $2 billion in funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, $408 million more than the Trump administration’s budget request. […]

The draft Financial Service and General Government budget released by the House Appropriations Committee on Sunday, June 2, only includes $35 million for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), putting funding below the White House budget request of $150 million and more in line with the $25 million allocated in fiscal year 2019. […]

Concerns over the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) inappropriate electronics use and information security program shortfalls were two of several highlighted in NSF’s Office of Inspector General’s (OIG’s) semiannual report to Congress that was publicly released today. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) faces a number of challenges for FY2019, including improving procurement metrics reporting through the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), and in the area of agency cybersecurity, according to the GSA Office of Inspector General (OIG) semiannual report to Congress issued today. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has awarded a six-year, $276 million dollar contract to ECS Federal to develop the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Dashboard, which will enable better visibility into the data generated by sensors, according to a post on the Federal Procurement Data System. […]