A Government Accountability Office (GAO) official said on Sept. 16 that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is taking action on several major IT modernization and cybersecurity issues that GAO has flagged in recent years, but that the agency still has a lot of work to do to address many of them. […]
Josh Corman, the former chief security officer at PTC who joined the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in July as a Visiting Researcher to support the agency’s COVID-19 response effort, warned on Sept. 16 that any significant delay in distributing coronavirus vaccines – by malicious hackers or otherwise – could endanger the lives of millions of people. […]
The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced members of the steering committee for the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, a group designed to collaborate on research, standards, and workforce initiatives in quantum information science. […]
The Federal government has been designating more Quality Service Management Offices (QSMOs) across agencies to streamline its approach to shared services, and General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy and Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat are saying that both current and future QSMOs are taking a customer-centric approach to their duties. […]
In the wake of a data breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that exposed the personal information of 46,000 veterans, Deputy CIO and Principal Assistant Secretary Dominic Cussatt highlighted data security and privacy to serve the veteran community as a key tenet of the agency’s transformation efforts. […]
Data offers extraordinary power – and no two organizations harness this power better than the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). These two groups rallied around a shared goal – to leverage technology to improve the lives of veterans and citizens alike. […]
Reps. Bill Foster, D-Ill., John Katko, R-N.Y., Jim Langevin, D-R.I. and Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga. on Sept. 11 introduced legislation to improve the nation’s digital identity infrastructure. […]
MeriTalk, ACT-IAC, and the Partnership for Public Service are issuing a call to the Federal IT community for participants in several virtual roundtable groups that will formulate operating and policy recommendations to promote stronger and more resilient government operations to advance the nation’s post-pandemic recovery. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced today that an unauthorized actor entered its Financial Services Center database and accessed the personal information of 46,000 veterans. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed today that malicious actors affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) are using open-source information plans and readily available exploits to attack networks. […]
In a proposed rule change, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is seeking to allow agencies to create term appointments in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations to allow for greater flexibility to staff long-term, non-permanent STEM projects. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is launching the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) on September 14 – after months of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. […]
The IRS is looking for private sector help in launching a Cryptocurrency Tracing pilot program for tracing and attribution of privacy coins and Layer 2 off-chain transactions, with the aim of assisting the agency’s cyber-crime mission relating to cryptocurrency privacy technologies. […]
The General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) is in the early stages of efforts to set up an authoritative source for identification verification of U.S. citizens, but is approaching the process in careful and deliberate steps to encourage and maintain the public’s trust in the process, a GSA official said on Sept. 10. […]
With the White House and Department of Defense recently announcing that additional mid-band spectrum will be made available to be shared with industry, the Federal government’s spectrum manager called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do its part to ensure the partnership occurs smoothly. […]
Nearly two years into an ambitious overhaul of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cyber Security Center (NCSC), brighter horizons are in sight for the agency in the form of improved cyber analytics capabilities. From the start, NOAA took a holistic approach to the NCSC transformation that encompasses people, process, and technology – in equal parts. […]
The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has automated some processes to streamline administering assistance to veterans, but according to Under Secretary for Benefits Paul Lawrence, the agency’s customer-centric approach to AI and robotic process automation (RPA) is what makes it so successful. […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reimburses states for most Medicaid costs and is supposed to oversee how states use funds, but its IT systems have had problems with ensuring proper oversight, and CMS no longer supports efforts to reduce duplication by state systems, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. […]
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced multiple staffing changes to the FCC’s data team. […]
Ron Ross has seen a lot during his 30-year career in cybersecurity, so asking him to pinpoint new cyber threats is a little like asking Tom Brady to talk about a blitz he has not faced during his NFL tenure. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reviewed 16 major Federal IT acquisitions that are critical to government missions – including national security, public health, and the economy – and found that 11 of those acquisitions were re-baselined during development to reflect changes in project costs, schedules and performance goals. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) effort to consolidate its network and security operations centers into a Network Operations Security Center (NOSC) model will improve the agency’s continuity of operations efforts, CIO Karen Evans said today. […]
A proposed rule from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) component agency coming out in the Federal Register this Friday would expand the collection of biometrics data by about 2.17 million submissions annually. […]
Federal agency and private-sector healthcare officials agreed this week that the sharp increase in delivery of telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic has advanced state of the art in service delivery, along with the need to ramp up cybersecurity protections. […]
Investments in “basic” IT modernization initiatives, such as improving bandwidth and updating laptops, were the backbone behind telework success at the Department of Energy (DOE) as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, CIO Rocky Campione said at the September 3 Lessons from DOE: Foresight and Focus Keep the Grid Humming webinar. […]
The overwhelming majority – 81 percent – of Federal agencies are increasing their adoption of multi-cloud to support telework and mission needs related to COVID-19, according to a recent GDIT and MeriTalk report. However, nearly half – 42 percent – of Federal cybersecurity managers surveyed said their cyber strategies can’t keep pace with evolving multi-cloud environments. […]
Assessing the current threat landscape six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Christopher Krebs listed nation-state spies, cybercriminals committing fraud, and the spread of disinformation as top cyberattack vectors. […]
While the COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on the Federal workforce, one positive impact has been to boost the efficiency of Federal agency employees in how they approach their day-to-day duties, said Bryan Ware, Assistant Director for Cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]
The Federal Communications Commission said on Sept. 4 that the total cost of removing and replacing telecommunications equipment made by China-based Huawei and ZTE from the networks of smaller U.S. carriers could be more than $1.6 billion. […]
With no U.S.-based companies dominating the worldwide market for network equipment that underlies 5G wireless services, and with the U.S. in the midst of a years-long campaign to ban Chinese network equipment makers from U.S. and allies’ markets, perhaps the most important battle for the longer-term future of 5G network infrastructure is gearing up now in and near the halls of power in Washington, D.C. […]