In a letter on Friday, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., questioned Steven Dillingham, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, over how nearly $5 billion in IT costs are being managed by the Bureau. His concerns come as IT costs grew by $1.56 billion between October 2015 and December 2017. […]
The Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) released a request for information on January 30 looking for vendors to help it implement a “one-stop shop” portal for comparing and enrolling in Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plans. The RFI is open for questions until February 15, and open for responses until March 11. […]
Maria Roat, chief information officer at the Small Business Administration, provided a run-down of her office’s extensive to-do list during a keynote address on Thursday at the Veritas Public Sector Vision Day event, and emphasized the importance of laying the proper data-management policy groundwork before embarking on cloud deployments and forays into artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. […]
Representative Susie Lee, D-Nev., will be taking over the congressional oversight of Veterans Affairs (VA) Department’s electronic health record modernizing by leading the Technology Modernization subcommittee of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. […]
Max Everett, CIO at the Department of Energy (DoE), said Thursday he was “optimistic” about the agency’s progress on a host of IT issues, including network architecture, cloud adoption, data governance standards, and cybersecurity. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) has put a lot of emphasis on speeding up the acquisition and development of new technologies out of a need to keep pace with new advances and potential adversaries. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO)–evaluating the Army Futures Command modernization effort–throws in a word of caution, saying there is such a thing as going too fast. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs failed to share Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) guidance across the department, leading to an estimated 860 unreported data centers and inadequate DCOI goals, according to a report released Wednesday by the agency’s inspector general. […]
The 17 members of Congress whose job it is to try to avert another partial Federal government shutdown held their first official meeting today, and two of the Democratic House members that are part of the House-Senate conference committee created to resolve differences on border security issues described the initial negotiating session as both cordial and constructive. […]
The Federal Communications Commission announced that Geoffrey Starks was sworn in as a commissioner today. […]
The House on Tuesday passed H.R. 769, the Counterterrorism Advisory Board Act of 2019, which would establish a board at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to coordinate and integrate departmental intelligence, activities, and policy related to counterterrorism. […]
During the State of the Net 2019 Conference, cybersecurity experts zeroed in on how the shutdown impacted not only the United States’ cybersecurity posture but also the Federal government’s cybersecurity workforce. […]
A group of Democratic senators went public with a letter to Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, and Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), asking them to answer questions about the partial Federal government shutdown’s effect on cybersecurity. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) launched its new Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics (STAA) team on Tuesday, with a focus on enhancing GAO’s ability to audit technology. […]
Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Communications and Technology, delivered a wide-ranging survey of tech issues in the panel’s gunsights for this year and beyond during a keynote speech at the State of the Net 2019 conference today, and generally came down on the lighter side of the regulatory spectrum. […]
The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing put out a request for information yesterday seeking information on technology or materials with hidden machine-readable counterfeit deterrent capabilities for future currency. […]
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reported today that customer satisfaction across Federal agencies was down in 2018 to a score of 68.9, following two years of improved satisfaction, as part of the ACSI Federal Government Report for 2018. […]
In anticipation of winter weather affecting the evening commute, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has announced a two-hour early departure for Federal personnel in the Washington D.C. area today, with an option to take unscheduled leave to stagger departure times. […]
The Department of Justice unsealed charges against Chinese communications equipment maker Huawei on Monday, accusing the company of wire fraud, stealing trade secrets, and undermining sanctions against Iran. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Sunday posted back-to-work guidance for Federal agencies and employees that were furloughed and/or required to work without pay during the partial government shutdown that began Dec. 22 and ended late Friday with congressional and White House approval of a continuing resolution to restart shuttered operations through Feb. 15. […]
The chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs have introduced H.R. 739, the Cyber Diplomacy Act of 2019, which would establish an Ambassador for Cyberspace in the State Department. […]
A former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Thursday she believes that while the agency’s core cybersecurity operations are holding up through the partial Federal government shutdown, other important IT security initiatives appear to be lying fallow until the agency receives funding to operate and pay its employees. […]
On the heels of the Senate voting down both competing Republican and Democrat funding bills to reopen the partially-closed Federal government, President Trump today suggested that he might be willing to accept a smaller “down payment” on funding the southern border wall. […]
Several former senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials today issued dire warnings that the ongoing partial Federal government shutdown–which has hit DHS particularly hard–is creating both immediate and lasting security problems for the U.S. […]
By a vote of 377-3, the House passed the Hack Your State Department Act late Tuesday evening. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an emergency order on Tuesday afternoon in an effort to mitigate Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure tampering. DHS and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been tracking incidents of tampering where multiple executive branch agency domains were impacted. […]
The Department of Homeland Security will extend deadlines for requests for proposals (RFPs), requests for quotations (RFQs) and requests for information (RFIs) to account for reduced staffing during the department’s lapse in appropriations, according to a FedBizOpps notice posted on January 17. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is requesting information for market research as it relates to testing software; infrastructure, environments, and operations of the Enterprise Testing Service (ETS) and ETS cloud; and continuous quality process management support. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a $9.9 million contract to establish and manage a new cloud platform for the agency’s mobile applications to Booz Allen Hamilton. […]
On Friday, the Senate blocked a bill that would open the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through Feb. 8. […]
In a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) blog post, released Thursday, the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) announced that they have completed a 14-week pilot program that sought to “improve clinical trials, experimental therapies, and data-driven solutions” for challenges stemming from cancer, Lyme disease, and other tick-borne diseases using Federal data and artificial intelligence (AI). […]