Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
FDIC
FITARA

Department of Agriculture (USDA) CIO Gary Washington said today that his agency is focusing on boosting its FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) grades by the time the House Oversight and Reform Committee issues its next set of scores – expected in December – and is confident that the agency can accomplish that goal. […]

Gary Washington USDA CIO agriculture

Gary Washington, CIO at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), spoke enthusiastically today about the agency’s ongoing approach to emerging technologies – including robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain – and said the technologies have the potential to become “a very large part of our future.” […]

VA, Veterans Affairs
Health and Human Services HHS

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a July 15 letter to keep telework policies in place, and argued that reducing allowed telework could be a factor in many employees deciding to leave the department. […]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) did not fully assess and authorize all of its cloud systems and did not effectively communicate with the FedRAMP program management office, leaving its cloud security at risk, according to an inspector general report published July 17. […]

New job hired workforce employee-min

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced today that it has hired Jamie Susskind as its new vice president of policy and regulatory affairs. […]

senate floor congress capitol-min

The House of Representatives has scheduled a vote this week on a bill that would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to craft rules regarding unwanted robocall and robotext messages that make sure those communications comply with the consumer protection and privacy purposes of Section 227 of the Communications Act. […]

cybersecurity
Electronic Records

The General Services Administration (GSA) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have teamed up to establish an Electronic Records Management (ERM) market research tool that will allow agencies to more easily identify vendor services to meet their needs. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a request for information (RFI) on July 16 for Information Assurance Compliance System (IACS) tools that can support FISMA (Federal Information Security Modernization Act) compliance checks and reporting. […]

A majority of surveyed agencies who used shared services to comply with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) experienced challenges, which affected the timeliness and accuracy of their submissions, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released July 18. […]

IRS
jeanette manfra dhs nppd oc&c assistant secretary

Balancing cybersecurity with modernization – as well as strategies that organically create that balance – are critical as Federal agencies work toward modernizing their IT infrastructures, said Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), today. […]

supply chain risk management process automation

In paving the way for artificial intelligence (AI) deployment, agencies are still attempting to catch up to modern technology, and National Science Foundation CIO Dorothy Aronson said that skipping generations of technology to catch up may be the best path. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Gerry Connolly, D-Va., strongly voiced doubts that the Trump Administration’s plan to merge the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA) would help solve OPM’s existing IT troubles in a July 15 letter to OPM Acting Director Margaret Weichert. […]

A General Services Administration (GSA) blog post highlights how a recent amendment to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) has made it easier for Federal agencies to acquire IT through GSA. […]

Matt Goodrich, a senior advisor at the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation organization and former director of the FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) program, announced in a tweet today that he will depart Federal service on July 26. […]

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General has flagged cybersecurity and data management issues as top management challenges for the agency in FY2019 that need to be tackled. […]

Several high-ranking Federal agency tech leaders are set to testify before the House Government Operations Subcommittee on July 17 when it holds a hearing to consider the effectiveness of the FedRAMP (Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program) program that standardizes security requirements of cloud services used by the government. […]

White House flag at half mast
DCOI data center server room infrastructure hyperconverged cloud storage architecture

With aging infrastructure standing in the way of IT modernization efforts, the Centers of Excellence (CoE) effort at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is looking to stabilize the existing mainframes at OPM before replacing them. […]

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