Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
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The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved the nominations of former FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc and Aditya Bamzai, formerly of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and National Security Division, to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). […]

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GAO government accountability office

A report released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that passage of an internet privacy law plus expanded authorities could help the Federal government better protect consumer privacy, adding ammo to the recent push for a national data privacy law. […]

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Steve Harris runs Dell EMC Federal. His office in McLean, Virginia, a stone’s throw from the nation’s capital, is a long way from the tiny town where he grew up: Wellsville, New York – population 7,000. I sat down with the one-time aspiring professional golfer to discuss how he got into IT, and his vision for Dell Technologies’ position in the changing Federal market. A fellow USO-Metro board member, Harris is hitting a hole-in-one at Dell EMC Federal. […]

OPM Office of Personnel Management

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced today that Clare Martorana would replace a retiring David Garcia as CIO. […]

CDM RSA

Less than two weeks after the end of the partial Federal government shutdown and with the looming threat of another such disruption coming on Feb. 15, will Federal government IT officials in large numbers be making the trip out west to the U.S.’s preeminent cybersecurity conference next month? […]

While their committee assignment paths have diverged since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in January, Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Gerry Connolly, D-Va., pledged Wednesday night to continue their close working relationship on Federal IT issues both on the policy and funding sides of the equation. […]

FITARA Awards 2019 - Congressman Gerald Connolly

At MeriTalk’s FITARA Awards ceremony on Wednesday night, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Government Operations Subcommittee, offered his views on what Congress needs to tackle next in Federal IT, and previewed three likely pieces of legislation. […]

FITARA Awards
IoT City Cyber modernization chip internet of things

Participants described how their participation in Jack Voltaic 2.0, a joint exercise between the City of Houston and the Army Cyber Institute held in July 2018, opened their eyes to the threats of a combined cyber and physical attack on critical infrastructure. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the appointment of Christine Calvosa as the new CIO of the agency. […]

If you take a look at MeriTalk’s newly released FITARA Dashboard, be ready to find some clear success stories across the seven categories of the FITARA Scorecard – as well as areas where improvement still is needed. […]

Federal Cloud Flag

If recent events are any indication, we could be seeing big changes to agency cloud migration plans in 2019. The Federal government could be rethinking its role in owning and operating its own data centers, strongly questioning whether that is a job best left to government employees. […]

FTC Federal Trade Commission

MeriTalk today announced the launch of its FITARA Dashboard, a publicly-viewable resource that brings the latest congressional scoring of Federal agency information technology modernization progress into clearer focus, and provides analytical tools to perform detailed comparisons of how 24 major Federal agencies have achieved progress toward their goals over the past three years. […]

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Cyber Security Brainstorm

A former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Thursday she believes that while the agency’s core cybersecurity operations are holding up through the partial Federal government shutdown, other important IT security initiatives appear to be lying fallow until the agency receives funding to operate and pay its employees. […]

FTC Federal Trade Commission

Yesterday, 13 Democratic Senators signed and sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Joe Simons expressing their concerns over the FTC’s ability to monitor and respond to phone spam and robocalls during the partial government shutdown. […]

Dorris Consulting International is seeking nominations for its 2019 Service to the Citizens Awards, which aim to recognize “those public servants who demonstrate excellence in their delivery of services that impact the public’s lives” through the organization’s Champions of Change Program. […]

Federal IT oversight will be the domain of the Subcommittee on Government Operations in the House Committee Oversight and Reform, and there will be no IT Subcommittee this session of Congress, said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, during an interview on Tuesday’s episode of Government Matters TV. […]

The “End The Shutdown And Secure The Border Act,” touted by President Trump as a “commonsense compromise” funding bill to end the partial federal government shutdown and set to be introduced in the Senate, includes $25 million in FY 2019 funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) – mirroring the funding level set in H.R. 648, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, set to be considered in the House this week. […]

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A House-Senate conference committee has pegged FY 2019 funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) at just $25 million, according to text of legislation made public by the House Rules Committee and set to be considered by the committee, and possibly by the House, next week. […]

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Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Kennedy, R-La., reintroduced the Social Media Privacy and Consumer Rights Act on Thursday, which would strengthen privacy notices and breach disclosure requirements for online platforms. […]

Members of the House and Senate are giving the bipartisan Securing Energy Infrastructure Act another go in the current Congress, after passing the bill in the Senate in December 2018 but failing to get the bill through the House before the 115th Congress ended. […]

As Federal agency leaders look to modernize networks and provide better citizen services, they need to have a “Citizen First” mentality, rather than “Cloud First” or “Cloud Smart,” Claire Bailey, director of Federal, State and Local Mainframe Solutions at Compuware, told MeriTalk. […]

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