Booz Allen Hamilton has won a task order worth up to $1.03 billion to provide services under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program to CDM’s Group D Federal agencies, according to contracting information on the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Procurement Data System. […]

President Trump on Friday nominated James Gfrerer to head IT for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Pending Senate confirmation, Gfrerer will be the VA’s CIO and assistant secretary for information and technology. […]

State-sponsored cyberattacks are the new normal in adversarial international activity, whether on large or small scales. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

While some aspects of the Trump administration’s government agency reorganization proposal released in June have flown into moderate headwinds in Congress over jurisdictional and workforce issues, the proposal found a friendlier–if still somewhat cautious–audience at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees’ subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management Thursday. […]

At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday, July 25, to examine findings of the Federal Cybersecurity Risk Determination Report and Action Plan released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in May, lawmakers and private sector witnesses hailed new legislation as a necessary – but on its own insufficient – step to bring down the security risks of three-quarters of Federal agencies deemed in cyber danger. […]

Disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) can help Federal agencies better utilize their data to improve processes, public and private sector technology officials said  during a FedInsider webinar on July 25. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said today that he introduced legislation – the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Reform Act – which would codify the FedRAMP program in Federal law and address what the congressman said are shortcomings of the program, including the slow pace of implementing standardized practices and realizing efficiencies in the certification process. […]

The House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday approved the Securing the Homeland Security Supply Chain Act (HR 6430), which would authorize the Homeland Security Secretary to take a variety of actions to curb supply chain risk including actions to exclude certain contractors in order to address “urgent national security interest.” […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent, testifying today at a joint subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that the Federal government intends to complete all of the tasks outlined in the Federal IT Modernization Report by the end of the year. She said that the majority of those tasks are already complete, and that many have beaten the timelines the government had set for itself. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an interim report today detailing four major challenges and 10 critical actions that it says must be taken in order to stem the growing tide of cybersecurity threats facing the nation and Federal agencies. […]

Today’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) covered the waterfront on election cybersecurity issues but came up with little that differed much from many of the other election cybersecurity hearings that have happened on the Hill over the last few months. The greatest hits were once again discussed–concerns over involvement in the 2016 election, threats facing the 2018 midterm elections, and how to respond to Russia cyber aggression towards U.S. election infrastructure and technology. […]

The House Homeland Security Committee today voted to recommend two bills, the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act and the Department of Homeland Security Chief Data Officer Authorization Act, aimed at strengthening and solidifying IT operations of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and to guard against evolving cybersecurity threats. […]

The Senate voted on Monday to confirm Robert Wilkie as Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary by a vote of 86-9, solidifying top leadership at VA in the midst of ongoing change and uncertainty at the second-largest Federal agency. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

The House today approved by voice vote the ACCESS BROADBAND Act (HR 3994), which would direct the Department of Commerce (DoC) to establish an Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today finding that three-quarters of major Federal agencies maintain incomplete, untimely, inaccurate, or poor-quality spending data, and that around half of them are not even implementing required data standards in the first place. […]

In 2016, criminals stole $1.6 billion from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by using false identities to claim fraudulent tax refunds, according to IRS estimates. In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) zeroes in on IRS’ authentication efforts as a way to reduce fraud and save tax payer dollars, and offers 11 recommendations for IRS consideration. […]

During a General Services Administration (GSA) webinar on July 18, officials explained why Federal agencies should use GSA tools to move to the cloud, how agencies can utilize IT Schedule 70 to move to the cloud, and how to meet FedRAMP requirements. […]

After 16 years at the Government Accountability Office, Dave Powner, the high priest of government IT accountability is stepping away from the alter.  […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) said Thursday it was putting in place a new policy governing disclosure by DoJ and other Federal agencies of “foreign influence operations” being conducted in the United States. The agency said the new policy “provides guideposts for Department action to expose and thereby counter foreign influence threats, consistent with the fundamental principle that the Department always must seek to act in ways that are politically neutral, compliant with the First Amendment and designed to maintain the public trust.” […]

A new Defense Department (DoD) Risk Management Framework (RMF) – due to be delivered to agency leaders in roughly seven weeks – will have strong implications for the way the department’s cybersecurity professionals perform their tasks, according to John Bergin, IT and Business System Reform Lead at DoD. […]

Unifying end-user operations and communications can help Federal agencies provide a consistently higher level of service to both employees and citizens, participants at a July 18 GovExec webinar said. […]

July 21 is a deadline that looms large for the Trump administration to provide more information to Senate appropriators about the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) and why legislators should change their recommendation made on June 21 to zero out funding for TMF for fiscal year 2019. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

Federal agency .gov domains have less than three months left to come into compliance with binding operational directive (BOD) 18-01, issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last October, which requires the use of Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC). A DHS representative on Wednesday said that progress in implementing DMARC has been strong, but that initial implementation is far from the finish line. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

Following a July 16 letter by former government officials requesting disclosure of 2020 Census cybersecurity policies, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a statement today affirming its “robust cybersecurity program” and ensuring interested parties that cybersecurity remains paramount at the bureau. However, it said it was declining to reveal all of its encryption policies “as a matter of data security.” […]

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the General Accountability Office (GAO) isn’t fully compliant with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA), according to a report released yesterday. […]