A Federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Charles Edwards, former acting inspector general (IG) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), today on 16 charges, including theft of “sensitive government databases containing personal identifying information (PII)” of DHS and U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employees. […]

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on March 4 to the U.S. Navy’s award last month of the latest version of its Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) contract that is worth up to $7.7 billion. […]

The Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced in a March 4 memo that it will conduct an audit of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) security controls to protect 50 information systems where a breach would have a “catastrophically adverse effect.” […]

DHS
GAO government accountability office

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report issued today that most of the largest Federal agencies made good progress in meeting goals to close data centers in Fiscal Year 2019, but also recommended that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) take several steps to improve clarity of reporting on data center closures under OMB’s Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) issued in 2016 and modified last year. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) today announced that their Center of Excellence (CoE) effort has achieved new milestones in leveraging data as a strategic asset while advancing AI tech across DoD. […]

military healthcare, veterans healthcare

While a House Veterans Affairs’ panel investigated the cause of delayed rollout of electronic health records (EHR) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee investigated a similar question during a hearing on the Defense Health Program. […]

Shortcomings in crucial IT systems and staff training caused the launch delay of the electronic health records modernization (EHRm) effort at the Department of Veterans Affairs, David Case, deputy inspector general at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told a House panel today. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking comment on its Draft Special Publication 800-133 Revision 2 on Recommendations for Cryptographic Key Generation, which discusses generation of key to be managed and used by approve crypto algorithms. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent a memo to Federal agency heads on March 3 with “preliminary guidance” to prepare the Federal workforce for the “potential impacts” of the COVID-19 coronavirus, including an emphasis on telework and Federal mission resilience. […]

House Appropriations Committee members raised concerns at a March 4 hearing over the size of President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with one calling it “irresponsible” and asking Secretary Robert Wilkie to justify the request. […]

Innovation

There are many challenges facing defense agencies when it comes to modernizing technologies and establishing an environment for industry and government to effectively communicate is essential to this process. […]

Department of Education logo

Fresh off notching an A+ grade on the latest FITARA Scorecard, the Department of Education knows it has a handle on good IT, and agency CISO Steven Hernandez said today he credits a measure of that success to an important mindset change on data. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is seeking industry applications for its Biometric Technology Rally to bring together industry innovators that can help advance DHS’s enterprise operations. […]

Department of Commerce

Since its 2016 launch, the Opportunity Project, an open-data Federal program that partners public and private organizations to solve tech problems, has completed 100 products via nationwide virtual sprints, Director Drew Zachary announced at a March 3 FCW Citizen Engagement Summit. […]

VA

The General Services Administration (GSA) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced today that they’ve partnered on GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative and are “entering into a sprint-based discovery phase to address strategy, acquisition, and technology challenges and solutions, including cloud architecture and security configuration.” […]

The General Services Administration’s (GSA) release of Federal website standards in December 2019 was intended to aid agency compliance with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA), but Larry Gillick, chief of web and digital strategy at the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, raised concerns with unintended consequences of the standards. […]

DHS

Today’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on DHS’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request covered a wide array of topics. However, Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), spent much of his time defending a budget cut to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]

elections, election security, voting
NIH

 The Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which holds tens of thousands of sensitive patient records, needs to develop a secure data backup site, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). […]

NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) said today it hired the agency’s first research security chief, Rebecca Spyke Keiser, who will oversee NSF’s strategy and policy for securing Federally funded research while remaining open to international collaboration. […]

The Federal Trade Commission announced it will hold a public workshop on May 13 in Washington to hear testimony and review research on proposed changes to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s Safeguards Rule that requires financial institutions to implement information security programs. […]

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