State audit agencies reported unparalleled challenges faced by their workforces in providing pandemic-related unemployment insurance benefits, according to a new report released Dec. 16 by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC). […]
Following its December meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it approved a proposal seeking comment on improving transparency and efficiency in the competitive bidding process for the E-Rate program. The FCC has now released the official Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, laying out the process and deadlines for submitting comment on the E-Rate bidding process. […]
Legislation introduced this week by the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee aims to increase the transparency of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program through regular reporting requirements. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) must address data reporting deficiencies to better prevent hazing and to improve response training. […]
With two separate Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) awards already under its belt, the Department of Labor (DoL) is seeing the benefits of agency leadership’s buy-in into the funding concept as a way to make quicker headway on pressing IT modernization projects, the agency’s chief technology officer said at MeriTalk’s TMF Forward virtual event on Dec. 16. […]
Data-led migrations can help forward-thinking organizations take a major step toward treating their data as a strategic asset. But, according to an official from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for public sector entities, there are some key challenges they need to address to ensure they comply with Federal needs. […]
The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is proving to be a vital source of immediate funding for pressing projects at the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM), with CIO Guy Cavallo saying the agency would have to wait years to complete vital upgrades if it relied solely on regular appropriations. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is sustaining a protest by Microsoft after the company complained that the National Security Agency (NSA) improperly evaluated proposals for cloud services in support of NSA’s classified and unclassified computing requirements when it awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services (AWS). […]
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Dec. 14 meeting yielded a host of rulemaking actions when it comes to hot button topics for the commission, including E-Rate broadband bidding, emergency alerts, and robocalls. […]
The Department of Justice said that Ron Bewtra, who has served as the agency’s chief technology officer since 2015, will be leaving the agency later this month. […]
Federal agencies in the Security, Suitability, and Credentialing Performance Accountability Council (PAC) Principals have made progress in implementing the Trusted Workforce 2.0 framework, however further work remains, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that it is launching a new edition of its Hack DHS program – a bug bounty program started in 2019 – to identify potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities within certain DHS systems. […]
The Biden administration’s Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Executive Order issued in May 2021 has put a greater emphasis on cybersecurity at the Federal level – which is especially important after numerous high-profile ransomware and software supply chain attacks came to light earlier in the year – but many Federal cyber leaders say the Cyber EO only addresses a fraction of today’s cybersecurity challenges. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has again extended the Schedule A hiring authority that allows Federal agencies to temporarily hire personnel to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Dec. 10 OPM memo. […]
The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and the General Services Administration’s (GSA) 18F program must coordinate more consistently on developing agency guidance to eliminate overlap or duplication of guidance or conflicting guidance, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. […]
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in the process of working through a long list of network security fixes recommended by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this year, but doesn’t expect to get done with addressing all of those until the end of 2022. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is concluding in a new report that the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has historically cost more to run than it collects in fees from agencies that it awards funding to, and that most of the savings estimates from older funded agency projects continue to be unreliable. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) announced it will be pushing back the release of requests for proposals (RFP) for its Polaris Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) vehicle until January 2022, the agency announced on its interact GSA blog. […]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote an open letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opposing any efforts by the agency to expand its use of facial recognition technology. […]
Senators praised Kurt DelBene, the nominee for chief information officer (CIO) and assistant secretary for information and technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), during a quick Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on Dec. 8, and called for swift confirmation by the full Senate. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is contracting JumpStart, an app developer, to build a platform using AI and a user’s own body to improve the physical therapy process – unless other off-the-shelf apps are identified with equal or greater capabilities. […]
Performance management for the government is at a crossroads between traditional and new emergent models. But the dawn of big data and technological advancements in analytics has brought forth new opportunities for an emergent performance management framework that deliberately seeks to leverage these data. […]
The General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Service (TTS) wants to build a federated authentication service and is looking for input on this effort, according to a request for information (RFI) posted on Sam.gov. […]
Today the Senate voted 68-31 to confirm Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Jessica Rosenworcel to another five-year term. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has issued a presolicitation on SAM.gov, detailing its plans to utilize emerging technologies to improve healthcare products and in turn, patient care. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is acknowledging strides that the Biden administration has taken this year to broadly improve cybersecurity, but is still encouraging the Federal government to take more steps to strengthen the cybersecurity of the nation’s critical infrastructure in light of several high-profile cyber incidents over the course of the past year. […]
The White House on Dec. 6 released the first-ever United States Strategy on Countering Corruption, which among other steps aims to utilize the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) newly established National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team to hold corrupt actors accountable. […]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for small businesses to work on a bid for a potential 10-year, $8 billion professional services contract to support satellite programs. […]
Legislation designed to strengthen the Office of Personnel Management Act has cleared the House Oversight and Reform Committee, despite multiple Republicans objecting to the bill. […]
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued an expanded plan for telework and remote work through a new FAQ page on its website, allowing eight days of telework per pay period. […]