Less than three months after a wave of negative feedback from industry forced the General Services Administration to revamp the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, a new MeriTalk survey shows for the first time that many government IT officials doubt the value of the program in its current form. […]
MeriTalk begins a series taken from a book-length work authored by a senior Federal IT official currently working in government. This is one part of an extensive, firsthand account of how IT decisions are made, the obstacles standing in the way of real change in government technology management, and what one career Federal IT employee really thinks about the way government does IT. […]
NASA’s progress meeting the requirements of FITARA has been anything but out of this world. Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voiced disappointment at the mediocre progress made by most agency chief information officers, but NASA, arguably the most high-tech of all Federal agencies, was the only one to receive an F. […]
Most Federal agencies received slightly better grades for their progress under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, according to the annual scorecard released ahead of a hearing on Capitol Hill. […]
Applicants for Federal security clearances may want to double check their Twitter feeds, as agencies could soon be moving forward with investigations into applicants’ social media accounts. The biggest obstacle to these investigations, however, is not privacy concerns, but rather data security. […]
Many Americans’ electronically stored medical data is likely unsecured and inaccurate, according to panelists at the Health Datapalooza. “There are real-world consequences to medical data sharing,” said privacy and medical attorney Neal Eggeson. […]
Content management company Box unveiled its Box for Government initiative, which brings together different product suites designed for government and enables agencies to work remotely, collaboratively, and with an assurance of security. Box for Government has already received a FedRAMP Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) from the Defense Information Systems Agency. […]
If cloud computing is the future of government information technology, then Cisco may be one of the most relevant companies in Washington, D.C. Cisco’s FedRAMP authorization—granted by the Department of Health and Human Services—represents a significant development for both the company and the government. […]
The General Services Administration has announced the establishment of a third service branch, known as the Technology Transformation Service, that will be centered around GSA’s 18F digital service organization and will actively provide technology services to other government agencies. […]
FedRAMP Director Matt Goodrich said some Federal agencies may have refused to share a FedRAMP ATO granted to a CSP, but that’s only a small part of the story behind one of the major shortcomings of the FedRAMP program. One theory: It’s not that agencies are refusing to share—it’s that cloud service providers are failing to capture new business. […]
Food and Drug Administration CIO Todd Simpson is working toward a new tech-savvy agency by creating programs specifically aimed at technological innovation. “I created a separate, stand-alone innovations office that speeds new technologies into the CTO shop once they’re approved,” he said. These technologies include various Apple and Android phones, applications, and tablets. […]
Third party cloud security auditing firms are worried that new documentation requirements put in place by FedRAMP could open them to significant liability risks. […]
Cloud computing offers the most security for government data, argued Homeland Security CIO of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Mark Schwartz, at the Akamai Government Forum. […]
The key to data center consolidation success is communicating and committing to an aggressive plan, according to Department of Justice CIO Joseph Klimavicz. […]
Consumers comprehensively think that more needs to be done to protect their data, according to a study published by Purple Insights on behalf of ACT the App Association. But do they trust government or tech companies more? […]
Dave Powner, director of IT issues at the Government Accountability Office, profiled the upcoming agency scorecard on FITARA and discussed the Federal government’s continuing difficulties with data center consolidation and legacy IT modernization. […]
The General Services Administration is pushing Congress to get behind a plan to establish a third service branch, known as the Technology Transformation Service, that would be centered around GSA’s 18F digital service organization and would actively help manage the $3.1 billion IT modernization fund proposed by the White House, MeriTalk has learned. […]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence plans to hire its first chief information officer to take charge of IT programs across the ODNI’s 20 component offices, particularly the effort to retire legacy IT systems and migrate users to the cloud. […]
If you are wondering what it’s going to take to get your agency in line with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, known as FITARA, look no further. Joyce Hunter, the deputy chief information officer for policy and planning at the Department of Agriculture, has been there and has done that. […]
The Agriculture Department’s Flip Anderson is the only known agency-level FITARA director–an indicator of both the level of importance USDA has assigned to the new law and the resources necessary to manage the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act compliance correctly. […]
For FITARA to reach its full potential, Federal agencies must dissect the real problems and attract stronger CIOs, Dave Powner, Director of IT Issues at the Government Accountability Office, told MeriTalk’s FITARA Forum in Washington, D.C. […]
Just 11 percent of Federal IT managers say their data centers are fully equipped to meet their agency’s current mission demands, according to a report by MeriTalk. The report, titled “Flash Forward–The Future of the Federal Data Center” and underwritten by Pure Storage, asked 150 Federal IT/data center professionals to predict and examine the future […]
Two months after a cloud industry advocacy group published a scathing assessment of the Federal government’s cloud computing security certification process and took their concerns to Capitol Hill, the General Services Administration’s FedRAMP announced significant structural changes to the way the government will assess cloud service providers. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs is on what appears to be an irreversible losing streak when it comes to its annual cybersecurity audit. Last week, VA’s Office of the Inspector General slapped the agency with a “material weakness” designation for its information security efforts—the 16th year in a row that VA has failed the annual […]
Federal agencies remain woefully behind on cybersecurity, according to the annual cybersecurity compliance report released Friday by the Office of Management and Budget. During the 2015 fiscal year, Federal agencies reported 77,183 cybersecurity incidents, a 10% increase over the incidents reported in 2014. Though the administration believes this increase may be attributed to improved detection […]
Microsoft Azure was selected for a FedRAMP pilot program that will establish a high-impact baseline for cloud-computing services. This essentially allows Federal agencies to move more sensitive data onto contracted cloud-computing services, enabling the sensitive data to operate on the more technically advanced level that is already possible for low-impact data. […]
The White House on Wednesday called on all Federal agencies to establish so-called acquisition innovation labs to improve how the government purchases information technology products and services. […]
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has released a proposal for regulations that would restrict the ways broadband service providers can use customer data. The goal is to give customers greater choice in how their data is used. […]
Both Apple and the FBI are taking extreme stances in the encryption debate, which makes picking a side complicated, according to a panel at the Cybersecurity for New America Conference. […]
Verizon Wireless and the FCC agreed on a settlement on the company’s use of “supercookies” in customers’ mobile Internet use. The supercookies, also known as Unique Identifier Headers, enable Verizon to identify customers and deliver targeted advertising programs to them. […]