The incoming Trump administration plans to get rid of 18F, the digital services team located within the General Services Administration that has been criticized recently for its spending practices, according to a senior administration official. Republican Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 8, raising questions about what lies ahead for Federal IT.
The General Services Administration will start a council of agency Web and digital directors by Dec. 8, according to a memorandum from Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott.
The day before the election, the White House and other Federal agencies are getting ready to mitigate and strike back if necessary, in the event of a state-sponsored cyberattack against the United States. Ann Barron-DiCamillo, former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s computer emergency readiness team, said the denial-of-service attack against Dyn in October “had all the signs of…a drill.”
All 50 states have reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for cybersecurity services, a DHS official said on the day before Election Day.
The Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy recently announced up to $32 million in funding for 10 innovative projects as part of its newest program: Next-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Autonomous On-Road Vehicles.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation announced the winners of the first Innovations in Food and Agricultural Science and Technology prize competition on Nov. 1.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology announced the release of CyberSeek, an interactive map that shows cybersecurity job availability by both state and locality.
With one inspector general report accusing it of gross mismanagement of taxpayer dollars and two more reports on the way, longtime Federal IT professionals warn that the General Services Administration’s 18F digital services startup may have set itself up for failure.
The Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt new online consumer privacy rules that would require Internet service providers to obtain opt-in consent for the collection of sensitive information and opt-out consent for any other information.
The National Technical Information Service named data.world, a social network for people interested in working with data, as one of 35 organizations announced as partners for its Joint Venture Partnership program.
Energy Savings Performance Contracts are a good way for Federal agencies to reduce their data centers’ energy footprint, according to Timothy Unruh, director of the Federal Energy Management Program for the Department of Energy.
The Department of State has moved from leased data center facilities to data centers on government property by using a modular approach.
Though many agencies want to, or are mandated to, move applications onto Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tools, Dustin Laun says that agencies should be more deliberate in determining what they need from a platform provider. “I feel the government buys off of paper and presentations, and they don’t really know how simple these things are,” said Laun, contracted senior adviser for innovation and technology at the FCC.
The General Services Administration, under fire for mismanaging its digital consulting division, announced today that longtime Pixar executive Rob Cook has been named commissioner of the Technology Transformation Service.
Tony Summerlin, who helped write FedRAMP, said he envisioned the program as a much quicker and sleeker version of what it is today. He says speed is one of the biggest challenges to Federal initiatives across the board, not just in the application of FedRAMP.
Cybersecurity professionals can respond and fix vulnerabilities more efficiently by acting like ants, according to Chris Oehmen, senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
One of the most common commercial drone waiver requests concerns permission to fly at night, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has rejected 71 waiver requests and 854 applications because of inaccurate or incomplete information.
The Department of Transportation issued guidance for motor vehicle cybersecurity to ensure that connected vehicles can make appropriate decisions when cyberattacks are successful.
The Department of Homeland Security identified Mirai as one type of malware used in a recent cyberattack that brought down major websites, according to a statement from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.
The Department of State Foreign Affairs Cybersecurity Center is working with the Bureau of Information Resource Management to create a joint office for cybersecurity.
The General Services Administration’s digital services organization, known as 18F, has consistently overestimated revenue projections by tens of millions of dollars, allowed IT staff to spend more than half of their time on non-billable projects, and continued to hire employees at the top of the Federal pay scale despite losses that now amount to more than $31 million, a new inspector general report found.
Federal agencies have increased the amount of money they spend on outdated IT systems, according to a study from the International Data Corporation.
Cyberattacks directed at the Internet domain name management company Dyn affected several major East Coast websites on Friday, causing slowdowns. “We still don’t know who is responsible,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “Figuring out the why is also of vital importance.”
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate is working to protect the Federal government’s fleet of connected vehicles from cyber threats.
The Interior Department’s Investigator General found about 90,000 critical and high-risk vulnerabilities on the 3,684 devices that were tested.
Tenable Network Security announced Oct. 13 it would support the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-171, a document enumerating guidelines to protect sensitive government information.
In order to educate law enforcement officials on how to deal with digital evidence and cyber-based crimes, the FBI has created the Cyber Investigator Certification Program, a project that, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, aims to address the concerns of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) over a lack of affordable cyber training options for officers.
Vault Risk Management Solutions, which creates software that firefighters can use to document their exposure to hazardous materials, was one of 10 startups selected for the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s EMERGE program.
ACT-IAC recently released a step-by-step report for agency IT modernization efforts.
The Department of Justice appealed the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in favor of Microsoft that said American service providers are not required to honor warrants seeking data outside the United States. In this case, which was decided in July, the data the DOJ was asking for belonged to a non-U.S. citizen and was stored in a data center in Ireland.