Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
voting, election, election security

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) remains highly confident in the agency’s efforts to defend against nation-state cyber threats including those targeting U.S. elections and supply chains, a senior CISA official said today. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Sept. 30 officially transferred the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) to the Defense Department (DoD), a move that makes the Pentagon responsible for nearly all – about 95 percent – of government security clearance investigations. […]

Acquisition

Criteria for acquisitions to use the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) process will be released on the Federal Register Oct. 2 and have been finalized for Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, according to an upcoming Federal Register post and a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released September 26. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) successfully met its deadline to release its consolidated schedule solicitation on FedBizOpps today, marking progress in the agency’s mission to consolidate its current 24 Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) into a single schedule. […]

cybersecurity
Health Data

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) said it will implement new procedures by January 2020 to improve medical information-sharing for veterans accessing healthcare in their communities, in accordance with the VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act (MISSION Act). […]

DOJ Department of Justice

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Sept. 27 that a former Federal contractor was sentenced to two years in prison for “illegally accessing his former employer’s network systems, stealing critical servers and information, and causing a loss of over $1.1 million.” […]

Cybersecurity cyber

The House of Representatives has approved the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act (H.R. 3710), which would increase the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) responsibilities in addressing a variety of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. […]

The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) compliance with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) for the first quarter of FY2019 was timely and complete but still has room for improvement, according to a Sept. 27 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report. […]

Budget Federal spending
Department of Homeland Security DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) needs to improve its cyber workforce planning to meet Congressional mandates and improve the department’s capabilities, according to a report from DHS’ inspector general, released September 23. […]

health

The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization held a hearing today to discuss the future of scheduling at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and implementing a commercial off the shelf scheduling solution. […]

Cybersecurity flag

With the upcoming release of the Federal Data Strategy’s final action plan on the horizon, Federal chief data officers (CDOs) agreed on Sept. 25 that the strategy holds plenty of promising features to advance their work, including an official CDO council that will help them share ideas and experiences. […]

data sharing

Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of the Fiscal Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Treasury Amy B. Edwards highlighted today how her department went about simplifying the process for which customers can see how funds are spent. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) and the Defense Department’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) announced today they are teaming up for a “discovery sprint” as part of GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative. […]

Department of Homeland Security DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) improved its performance on the department’s FISMA (Federal Information Security Modernization Act) audit, going from Level 3 in Fiscal Year 2017 to Level 4 in FY2018, an agency inspector general’s report issued this month shows. […]

A new report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) finds that FHFA doesn’t have an agency-wide cybersecurity incident data analysis program based on a consistent data set, and that it lacks sufficient information to conduct trend or other time-series analyses for security purposes. […]

Customer experience CX-min

The first High Impact Service Provider (HISP) Action Plans on customer experience (CX) have been released by Performance.gov to highlight public-facing services in accordance with 2018 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-11 Section 280 guidance and the President’s Management Agenda. […]

NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has appointed Dr. Margaret Martonosi to lead the agency’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). […]

DOJ Department of Justice

In the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the Justice Department was tasked with combating cyber-enabled threats and attacks by “conducting 8,400 computer intrusion program deterrences, detections, disruptions, and dismantlements, while successfully resolving 90 percent of its cyber defendant cases.” According to a Q3 FY2019 update, the Justice Department has not only met its quarterly targets, but it has also exceeded them. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced in a press release today the appointment of Kshemendra Paul as the agency’s chief data officer (CDO). […]

Labor

The Department of Labor (DoL) is making progress on its goal to take an enterprise approach to department administration, especially when it comes to IT, according to a Q3 Fiscal Year 2019 update to the agency’s priority goal posted on September 19. […]

USDA Agriculture

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has continued its progress toward modernizing IT and data analytics capabilities across the agency in accordance with the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) with a set date of Sept. 30, 2019, to “provide USDA leadership with instant access to key data on program activities and trends.” […]

Securities and Exchange Commission SEC

While the Department of Education is somewhat on track to meet its goal of improving student privacy and data security at institutions of higher education, it still has room to improve, according to an update to the Department of Education’s agency priority goals – part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) – released September 19. […]

supply chain risk management process automation

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Supply Chain Risk Management Task Force’s first interim report, which details the groups’ progress since its formation. […]

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