The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a plan on Aug. 10 to prioritize Federal agency engagement in developing standards for artificial intelligence (AI), just before the deadline of an executive order issued in February that gave the agency 180 days to develop a plan. […]
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and a series of other senators wrote Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai on Aug. 9 to urge the commission to protect consumers from cellphone fraud. […]
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is seeking to both expand facial recognition capabilities in its vetting of international travelers and migrate its traveler-processing technology to the cloud, according to an Aug. 8 CBP solicitation. […]
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is not using its authority to exclude suppliers that pose a threat to its supply chain. While the agency is working on drafting recommendations to improve the usefulness of its authorities, it keeps pushing back when it will actually complete the recommendations, according to an August 8 report from GAO. […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking Federal employees to apply for a new program the department is launching to train new CIOs and CISOs. […]
A team of Stanford University scientists, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), are turning to birds to help them learn how to develop machines that can land like the feathered animals, according to an Aug. 8 NSF news release. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program will engage with small businesses in technological research and development Aug. 12-16 in the Southwest part of the National SBIR 2019 Road Tour. SBIR representatives will visit four cities – Tucson, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Boulder, Colo. – one per day in respective […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is putting together a single contract vehicle that will award multiple vendors to manage DHS’ 17 unclassified security operations centers (SOCs). […]
John Felker, who last month was named assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Integrated Operations Division (IOD), on Thursday discussed IOD’s plans to integrate operations of CISA’s three primary component organizations in order to produce better cyber threat data intelligence that will include inputs from Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) programs implemented by Federal agencies. […]
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its estimate for S. 406, the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act of 2019, and found that it would cost less than $500,000 annually to implement. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning on Aug. 6 urging the public to “watch out for possible malicious cyber activity seeking to capitalize on” the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. […]
Federal agency approaches to identity management don’t have a single approach across the government, but vary to significant degrees with agencies’ mission focus, said LaChelle LeVan, Acting Director for Federal Identity, Credential and Access Management (ICAM) Program Office at the General Services Administration (GSA). […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Aug. 6 that it has extradited Muhammad Fahd, who allegedly bribed AT&T workers to plant malware and illegally unlock cell phones. […]
Embassy Nassau, the American embassy to the Bahamas, has IT issues that are largely a result of embassy understaffing, according to an August 5 report from the State Department’s Inspector General. […]
Senior Security Architect for the General Services Administration’s (GSA’s) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) and Centers of Excellence (CoE) Dan Jacobs wants agencies and industry alike to heed the lessons GSA has learned from experience and the Black Hat conference over the past 16 years when it comes to securely implementing cloud. […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking assistance to identify vendors that can provide simulations with virtually implanted generic medical devices using a whole-heart computational model. […]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issues close to $360 million in potentially erroneous tax refunds on an annual basis due to the lack of e-filing for amended returns, a process that would cost approximately $4.1 million to implement, according to a July 31 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wrote to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on July 22 sharing details about its forthcoming guidance on how to securely share .zip files. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) released several notices of intent today to negotiate its existing Local Service Agreement (LSA) contracts to continue to 2023, as the agency continues to transition Federal telecommunications and networking contracts to the $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract. […]
Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., introduced the TOWER Infrastructure Deployment Act (TOWER Act) with the goal of increasing broadband deployment across the country and addressing the workforce shortage within telecommunications industry. […]
Preliminary findings on the Multiple Awards Schedule (MAS) Consolidated Solicitation Requests for Information (RFI) revealed that a strong majority of the industry community believes that the proposed solicitation format is clear and beneficial to the industry. […]
While the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has completed its migration of existing records into the data center of its electronic health record (EHR) vendor, the VA and Department of Defense (DoD) are jointly searching for a director and deputy to oversee $10 billion, 10-year modernization effort. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has completed the migration of its existing records in the VistA system into the data center of its electronic health record (EHR) vendor Cerner, notching a key milestone for the EHR modernization effort. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office Inspector General (OIG) discovered in a July 31 report that a VA healthcare facility in Long Beach, California, failed to adhere to VA and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) privacy and security policies in the midst of a patient electronic health record (EHR) complication. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on August 1 voted to approve reports, orders, and notices of propose rulemaking that taken together aim to improve mapping the availability of “fixed” broadband service – the type generally provided by cable and phone companies – in the U.S. […]
The FCC on August 1 voted to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking comment on a range of proposals that would establish a Rural Digital Opportunity Fund funded with up to $20.4 billion to subsidize the further buildout of broadband services to rural areas of the U.S. that don’t have widely available high-speed broadband service. […]
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on July 31, introduced a bill to combat illegal robocalls. […]
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft interagency report to establish a core baseline guide for cybersecurity that manufacturers may adopt for Internet of Things (IoT) devices they produce. […]
The Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken implementation of FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) to heart, making it part of performance plans, department policy, and gaining visibility across its IT environment, USDA officials explained July 31 at an ACT-IAC event. […]
Christopher Krebs, Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), today outlined a range of security concerns associated with deployment of 5G wireless networks in the U.S., and offered a list of top-level recommendations for government and industry to deal with them. […]