Kiran Ahuja, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), committed at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing today to work with legislators on proposals to improve cybersecurity. […]
Kevin Cox, who has led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program for the past five-plus years, will be leaving the agency later this year to take on deputy CIO duties at the Department of Justice (DoJ). […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released COVID-19 testing guidance for Federal workplaces, including multiple testing strategies and information about different forms of testing, a CDC memo says. […]
The White House and a bipartisan group of senators are finding common ground in the Endless Frontier Act legislation introduced in the Senate today. […]
The Application Rationalization Playbook has been around since June 2019, yet not all IT portfolio managers have taken advantage of it. A Federal IT expert encouraged agencies to utilize this playbook, not only to help with cloud migration but also said it can help save costs and get chief information officers (CIOs) on “the same page.” […]
The Biden Administration announced that Matthew Wiegmann will serve as senior advisor for technology and delivery at the Treasury Department. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued Emergency Directive (ED) 21-03 that requires Federal civilian departments and agencies running Pulse Connect Secure products “to assess and mitigate any anomalous activity or active exploitation detected on their networks.” […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is replacing its aging financial and acquisition systems with an integrated system after two prior attempts to replace the systems cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of several years to develop. In a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, GAO made recommendations to minimize risk of cost overruns and delays. […]
Federal Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) saved the government an estimated $53 billion through investigations in fiscal year 2020, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) reported in its annual report to Congress and the President. […]
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is seeking input on evidence-building activities to inform SSA priorities – including priorities of the Biden administration – as well as input on future projects to advance SSA’s mission. […]
While House Government Operations Subcommittee members offered no firm direction on how they may try to further evolve the FITARA Scorecard, their discussions with witnesses at the April 16 hearing on version 11.0 of the scorecard issued last December brought to light a variety of Federal agency IT concerns that might come into play. […]
President Biden intends to nominate Pamela Melroy, a former astronaut and former deputy director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to be the next deputy administrator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the White House announced April 16. […]
A handful of Democratic legislators have sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DoJ) seeking answers to what steps the agency takes to ensure predictive policing technology is effective, and whether it tests for bias and requires transparency in algorithms used in the technology. […]
The Federal government is curtailing its “surge” response to the SolarWinds Orion and Microsoft Exchange hacks after seeing improvements in patching that have helped to remediate the impacts of the cyber attacks, the Biden administration said today. […]
The FITARA 11.0 scorecard released in December 2020 turned out to be a pretty good report card for Federal agency IT operations. The latest set of grades marked just the second time since the House Oversight and Reform Committee started measuring agency progress against Federal Information Technology Reform Act (FITARA) and other key metrics that every agency received a passing score. […]
Amid a strategic review of the deployment of its new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) officials told Congress on April 14 that the agency will not begin EHR system deployment at a second VA site until the current strategic review is completed. […]
Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee leaders staked out key policy positions today on proposed legislation that would greatly expand the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) technology research funding portfolio. […]
National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Sethuraman Panchanathan told House appropriators today that the $10.2 billion proposed budget for the agency for fiscal year 2022 is necessary for the United States to remain a global tech leader, and to “outcompete” China in its efforts to take the top spot. […]
Federal Inspectors General have the crucial task of agency oversight, often handling that job for large agencies while operating on relatively small budgets. To keep up with their responsibilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic, IG offices have had to leverage new technologies – and old technologies in new ways – over the past year-plus, IG officials explained today. […]
Ann Dunkin, who served as CIO at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the second Obama administration, is in line to become CIO at the Department of Energy (DoE), knowledgeable sources tell MeriTalk. […]
President Biden intends to nominate Robert Santos as the next director of the U.S. Census Bureau, the White House announced Tuesday. […]
Five members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee are pressing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration (GSA) to develop a plan for prioritizing tech projects that are ripe for tackling with the $1 billion provided to the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) under the American Rescue Plan Act. […]
A group of communications technology trade groups urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in an April 12 letter to stick by what they called the Federal government’s “longstanding commitment” to use industry-led standards and best practices to deal with cybersecurity and supply chain security issues facing the information communications technology (ICT) sector. […]
The Department of Energy (DoE) announced today that Puesh Kumar will be serving as acting principal deputy assistant secretary for DoE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER). […]
Have you ever wondered just how fast your broadband service really is? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a press release today reiterating that it wants the public to find out the answer to that question by downloading its “FCC Speed App.” The app allows consumers to measure the speed of their mobile and in-home broadband networks, while also contributing data to the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America program. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is launching the Federal Workforce Competency Initiative (FWCI) to identify key skills needed to successfully perform in a variety of Federal jobs and develop a competency database. […]
President Biden’s fiscal year 2022 request for discretionary funding sent to Congress on April 9 would line up the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for substantial budget increases that include significant amounts for tech-related spending. […]
The Biden administration’s Fiscal Year 2022 discretionary funding request submitted to Congress on April 9 features $1.25 billion of new requests that would be aimed at undertaking further Federal IT modernization efforts. […]
The General Services Administration’s (GSA) Alliant 2 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) has had a lot of success in providing IT solutions to both Federal agencies and industry, and GSA experts said today they expect to see increased AI and automation tech going forward. […]
Krista Kinnard, chief of emerging technologies at the Department of Labor (DoL), said this week that her agency recently received its second round of Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) funding, and described how DoL is using that money to build out its data management and data analytics capabilities. […]