House Appropriations Committee members raised concerns at a March 4 hearing over the size of President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with one calling it “irresponsible” and asking Secretary Robert Wilkie to justify the request. […]

Innovation

There are many challenges facing defense agencies when it comes to modernizing technologies and establishing an environment for industry and government to effectively communicate is essential to this process. […]

Department of Education logo

Fresh off notching an A+ grade on the latest FITARA Scorecard, the Department of Education knows it has a handle on good IT, and agency CISO Steven Hernandez said today he credits a measure of that success to an important mindset change on data. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is seeking industry applications for its Biometric Technology Rally to bring together industry innovators that can help advance DHS’s enterprise operations. […]

Department of Commerce

Since its 2016 launch, the Opportunity Project, an open-data Federal program that partners public and private organizations to solve tech problems, has completed 100 products via nationwide virtual sprints, Director Drew Zachary announced at a March 3 FCW Citizen Engagement Summit. […]

VA

The General Services Administration (GSA) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced today that they’ve partnered on GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative and are “entering into a sprint-based discovery phase to address strategy, acquisition, and technology challenges and solutions, including cloud architecture and security configuration.” […]

The General Services Administration’s (GSA) release of Federal website standards in December 2019 was intended to aid agency compliance with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA), but Larry Gillick, chief of web and digital strategy at the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, raised concerns with unintended consequences of the standards. […]

DHS

Today’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on DHS’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request covered a wide array of topics. However, Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), spent much of his time defending a budget cut to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]

elections, election security, voting
NIH

 The Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which holds tens of thousands of sensitive patient records, needs to develop a secure data backup site, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). […]

NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) said today it hired the agency’s first research security chief, Rebecca Spyke Keiser, who will oversee NSF’s strategy and policy for securing Federally funded research while remaining open to international collaboration. […]

The Federal Trade Commission announced it will hold a public workshop on May 13 in Washington to hear testimony and review research on proposed changes to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s Safeguards Rule that requires financial institutions to implement information security programs. […]

FCC

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on a final order Feb. 28 to auction mid-band spectrum for use by providers of 5G wireless services, but the vote spurred some criticism from members of both parties in Congress.  The auction is set for December 2020. […]

electric grid

MetTel, formerly known as the Manhattan Telecommunications Corporation, won a $253.5 million enterprise infrastructure solutions (EIS) task order with the Social Security Administration (SSA) Feb. 4 for telecommunications services. […]

FCC, Chinese suppliers
DHS

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (DHS) wants solicitations from start-ups that can develop technology to track objects underwater as a part of its Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP), according to a Feb. 27 announcement.  […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is seeking proposals from United States universities interested in establishing a Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in security technology. […]

Veterans Affairs VA Vets

After facing IT challenges with the implementation of the Forever GI Bill, Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Robert Wilkie said during a Budget Request hearing for Fiscal Year 2021 that the department needed to look at its entire IT infrastructure’s readiness. […]

The House Appropriations Committee questioned today why the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is requesting $2.6 billion in funds for Fiscal Year 2021 for the VA’s Office of Electronic Health Records (EHR)— $1 billion more than the FY2020 request— when the EHR Modernization go-live date was delayed and wants better communication on information from the agency to avoid delays and cost more money. […]

When it comes to adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, it’s important to look at its range of effects from many different viewpoints. […]

Congressional staffers on House and Senate committees with strong interest in cybersecurity issues said today they are watching for “low-hanging fruit” in the form of easy-to-enact legislative proposals expected to make up some of the recommendations in the Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) report set to be released on March 11. […]

electric grid

In a report released Feb. 25, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that “most” of nine agencies tasked with protecting the 16 critical infrastructure sectors “have not developed methods to determine the level and type of adoption of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.” […]

Health and Human Services HHS

Leaders from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shared how the agency’s acquisition process fueled successful IT transformation in projects like Accelerate at the Feb. 26 ServiceNow Federal Forum. […]

military healthcare, veterans healthcare

The Offices of Inspectors General (OIG) for the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) are planning to begin a joint audit to determine what actions taken by the DoD and VA in acquiring and implementing a common, commercial electronic health record system. […]

A senior official speaking Feb. 26 at the RSA Conference clarified recent steps by the State Department to publicly attribute and condemn acts of cyber aggression on the part of Russia, calling the actions of the Department part of a deliberate attempt to establish a framework for appropriate nation-state behavior in cyberspace. […]

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