Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
cyber workforce

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT) became the latest agency to partner with the General Services Administration (GSA) on a Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative on May 7 to boost the agency’s technology modernization efforts. […]

Pentagon, DoD

Defense Department officials on May 6 pleaded their case to the Senate Armed Services Committee for a reversal of the Federal Communications Commission’s recent decision to grant a spectrum license to Virginia-based Ligado to operate in a spectrum band that military officials claim will interfere with Global Positioning System (GPS) networks vital to DoD operations. […]

NASA

Following the retirement of former CIO Renee Wynn on April 30, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected former deputy CIO Jeff Seaton to fill the role as acting CIO. […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has continued to harness innovation for diagnostics, treatment, and prevention and have launched the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) last week, as a national initiative for COVID-19 diagnostics. […]

Ajit Pai, FCC Commisioner
DHS Homeland Security

As the meaning of the term “cyber” shifts and expands within the intelligence community to include influence operations, officials are turning to data analysis tools to address the changing threat landscape, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said at the May 5 FedInsider webinar. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) updated Special Publication (SP) 800-57 Part 1, Revision 5, for guidance and best practices managing cryptographic keying material. […]

contract acquisition CFO

CGI won a $267 million, six-year contract with the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program to provide cybersecurity services to more than 75 Federal agencies, according to an April 29 press release from CGI. […]

Innovation

The General Services Administration (GSA) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) – part of the National Institutes of Health – are teaming up to modernize IT operations at NICHD. […]

VA

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Board of Veterans’ Appeals is making access to virtual hearings available to all veterans, according to a May 1 press release. […]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) said on May 3 that the agency’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)  processed loan applications totaling more than a half a trillion dollars since the coronavirus pandemic was declared in March. […]

Labor

The Department of Labor (DOL) is planning to reauthorize data collection for the Unemployment Insurance (UI) IT Modernization Pre-Implementation Planning checklist, which states use before “going live” with a new UI Benefits and/or tax system. […]

Several members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs are criticizing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for its lack of Senate briefings on the Federal workforce during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]

Budget Federal spending

Federal agencies and departments have spent more than $8.7 billion on COVID-19 related contracts since February – spending more than a billion dollars in the past week. […]

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are partnering to host a virtual hackathon to develop COVID-19 solutions at the end of the month. […]

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing both Federal agencies and the private sector to make a rapid shift to telework, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched a dedicated telework product line. […]

The Office of Management and Budget’s recent memo encouraging Federal agencies to maximize telework across the nation, has proven to cause some challenges for government workers making the shift, according to Kathleen Glow-Morgan, national transformational coach captain at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). […]

An official from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explained in an April 30 public meeting on regulatory data hosted by the General Services Administration how analytics tools associated with rulemaking process are saving the agency both resources and time. […]

HUD Urban Development

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has yet to implement various Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations from April of 2019 and eight more recommendations have been identified for HUD including those in cybersecurity and IT management. […]

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is searching for enterprise cloud integration services (ECIS) to migrate its Office of Information and Technology (OIT) IT systems to a full-service, cloud-based system, according to an April 29 request for comments. […]

GSA General Services Administration

The General Services Administration (GSA) transitioned from 50 percent to 100 percent telework during the coronavirus pandemic without any noticeable service disruptions, Deputy CIO Beth Killoran announced at the April 30 ACT-IAC COVID-19 Town Hall. […]

The Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Homeland Security (DHS) announced that they are continuing to work very closely together on bringing medical supplies to veterans and their doctors amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]

Census 2020

The U.S. Census Bureau is seeking to purchase a subscription-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) survey programming platform to support its Rapid Response Survey Study on COVID-19 and its social and economic impacts. […]

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