A group of 19 House Democrats–many from districts close to Washington–asked leaders of the House Appropriations Committee in a letter dated today to put the brakes on a Trump administration plan to shift government functions currently performed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to the General Services Administration (GSA). […]
While the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) signed into law by President Obama in 2016 has as its main mission “to help accelerate medical product development and bring new innovations and advances to patients who need them faster and more efficiently,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to emphasize accelerating the flow of information between the healthcare provider and the patient. […]
The House Energy and Commerce Committee late Wednesday voted 30-22 to approve H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, which would roll back network neutrality rules to their 2015 level. […]
In the wake of a critical report on the implementation of the MISSION Act by the U.S. Digital Service, officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offered assurances to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs that the program is on track and veterans will see no disruption in care. […]
Chip Fulghum, deputy under secretary for management at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will depart the agency this summer, according to statements from leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee issued today in connection with a subcommittee hearing to review the Trump administration’s FY2020 budget proposal for DHS’ Management Directorate. […]
The House Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee adjourned its scheduled hearing today without reviewing the Trump administration’s FY2020 Department of Commerce budget request after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross declined to testify before the subcommittee. […]
On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DoE) announced that it would be providing $40 million in funding for research into developing algorithms and software for quantum computers. […]
Making artificial intelligence (AI) explainable to the general public has come with its challenges in recent years and knowing where to start includes identifying high-consequence sectors that need future research and policymaker consideration. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will increase the authority CIOs have over direct hiring decisions, according to a post on Federal Register. […]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Cyber Guardian program, which provides cyber-attack victim notification services, is operating with “incomplete and unreliable” data, and as a result the FBI is unable to determine whether all such victims are being notified, according to a report released April 1 by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General. […]
The House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization held its first hearing of the year today with hopes of getting a baseline reading from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Information and Technology (VA OIT) – but with no OIT representation, the committee went ahead and discussed the department’s challenges with panelists from VA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) announced today that it has modernized the Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services (HACS) Special Item Number (SIN) to include additional cybersecurity services. […]
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced winners for Part 1 of its Career Compass Challenge, with five white papers selected to win a $5,000 award each. […]
With the U.S. decennial census set to begin gathering data in one year, the focus on new technology involved in the effort is increasing, along with security questions. The coming census has a reference date of April 1, 2020. […]
The Department of Energy (DoE) could do more to improve its identification of legacy information technology (IT) infrastructure and develop and implement plans to modernize IT systems and components, according to a March 27 DoE Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit. […]
Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Representative Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., sent a letter to Acting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Peter Gaynor last week to address the sensitive personal data of hurricane and wildfire survivors that was mistakenly shared with contractors. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is looking to small business for help in its $16 billion move to a new electronic health record (EHR) system, as the department announced its intention to host business engagements on the topic last week. […]
South Korean authorities extradited to the United States on Thursday a Ukrainian man who allegedly engaged in a fraud campaign and laundered at least $2.8 million with the help of overseas cybercriminals. […]
The Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that allegations of an Office of Information Security Office of Information and Technology (OIT) employee steering two contract awards to a company were unsubstantiated in a report Friday. […]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is switching up its strategy for acquiring IT services, extending its current blanket purchase agreement for another year and reworking its strategy for a new $5 billion IT services contract. […]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Wednesday that Office Depot agreed to pay $25 million to settle allegations that the company “tricked customers into buying millions of dollars’ worth of computer repair and technical services by deceptively claiming their software had found malware symptoms on the customers’ computers.” Support.com, Office Depots’ software supplier, agreed to pay $10 million to settle the same allegations. […]
Reps. John Katko, R-N.Y., Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., introduced a bill yesterday to create a 35-person advisory committee within the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency so that cyber professionals across different industries can help make suggestions on cybersecurity policies and programs. The National Technology Security Coalition, […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that information on the efficacy of identity theft insurance coverage is limited in a report yesterday, adding that it is unnecessary to mandate Federal entities to offer certain levels of identity theft services. […]
The Senate Small Business Committee unanimously approved two bills that aim to bolster small business cybersecurity yesterday. […]
Auburn University has been awarded $564,988 total for two research and development projects to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of (very good) dogs who are trained to detect explosives. […]
In the race to exascale computing, it looks like the Department of Energy (DoE) will be the first to reach the pole. In a couple of years, the department plans on opening a supercomputer, known as Aurora, capable of performing a quintillion calculations per second, five times faster than the current champ. But in addition to beating the Chinese and everyone else to the exascale summit, Aurora will be significant for incorporating artificial intelligence into its repertoire, while pursuing a range of scientific and real-world problems. […]
Due to a successful challenge in court, the General Services Administration (GSA) has rescinded all awards on the $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC), the agency announced yesterday. […]
The State Department now has its first permanent CIO in more than a year. Stuart McGuigan was announced on Tuesday as the new CIO and head of the agency’s Bureau of Information Resource Management. […]
With numerous past Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) IT modernization efforts falling short and attracting scrutiny, the head of the department told lawmakers that VA is fully embracing the cloud during a Senate Veterans Affairs hearing today. […]
Without a clear governance structure, the implementation of the DATA Act (the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014) has suffered and new guidance might not be reaching agencies, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week. […]