Cybersecurity flag

Federal agency demand for CDM (Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation) security technologies has plenty of room for continued growth based on a GAO report released in late December, which showed mixed progress on agency deployment figures for the first half of 2018. The report underlined the importance of CDM progress and chided Federal agencies for being slow to implement the government’s approach to network security. […]

Sens. Mark Warner, D.-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced legislation on Friday to create an Office of Critical Technologies & Security at the White House to coordinate action across Federal agencies and develop a “whole of government” strategy to combat theft of U.S. technologies by state actors including China, and to reduce risks to “critical supply chains.” […]

Federal money spending government

Whether the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) will receive any funding for fiscal year 2019 remained an open question late Thursday as the House voted to approve a full-year FY 2019 appropriations bill that includes no funding for TMF. […]

Capitol Washington DC Federal

Reps. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., and Will Hurd, R-Texas reintroduced today their Federal CIO Authorization Act, which is intended to elevate and reauthorize the role of the Federal CIO. A previous version of the legislation passed unanimously out of the House on Nov. 30, 2018. […]

Phone mobile security protection

The explosive use of mobile technologies by citizens and an increasingly mobile Federal workforce is driving the need for greater visibility and security in mobile environments. As a result, the government is looking to continuous diagnostic and mitigation solutions working in conjunction with mobile device management (MDM) solutions to give agencies better awareness into mobile application and devices. […]

data sharing

An audit of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to ensure adequate compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) shows a need for improvement in IT security. […]

USDA Agriculture

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated their goals on modernizing its information technology through an action plan that is focusing on customer-focused, evidence-based, and tax-dollar efficient technology. […]

Since the President’s Management Agenda was issued in March, Federal agencies have been working governmentwide to “provide a modern, streamlined, and responsive customer experience [CX] across government, comparable to leading private sector organizations.” According to an update released Wednesday on Performance.gov, agencies have made strong progress on the cross-agency priority (CAP) of improving CX with Federal services; however, the path forward has not been without bumps in the road. […]

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The Senate on Dec. 18 approved by unanimous consent S. 3085, the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act.  This bill, according to its text, would “establish a Federal Acquisition Security Council and … provide executive agencies with authorities relating to mitigating supply chain risks in the procurement of information technology.” […]

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TMF technology modernization fund gears

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. […]

Federal spending budget

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. […]

Phone mobile security protection

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. […]

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FITARA

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. […]

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. […]

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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. […]

FITARA

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. […]

Internet of Things IoT sensors devices internet-connected smart city

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. […]

cloud computing concept -min

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. […]

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