Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

Members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee clashed on Tuesday over the impacts of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), mounting Federal worker firings, and defense spending levels, with one Republican member predicting that the current turmoil at Federal agencies may be the “tip of the iceberg.” […]

Senate hearing Congressional-min

While the Trump administration plans to reshuffle funding priorities at the Defense Department (DoD) and eliminate “unnecessary” programs, President Trump’s nominee for the Pentagon’s second-highest civilian position, Steve Feinberg, assured lawmakers today that advancing autonomous capabilities would remain a top priority if he is confirmed – suggesting that the agency’s Replicator initiative may be continuing on a safer funding track. […]

House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., demanded today in a letter to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that OPM rescind its memo issued earlier this month that redesignated Federal agency chief information officer (CIO) positions. […]

Former Federal agency inspectors general (IGs) who were fired by President Donald Trump have filed a lawsuit to get their jobs back, claiming that the Trump administration violated Federal law in getting rid of them. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee quickly found a flashpoint – Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk – during its inaugural hearing today, with subcommittee Republicans hailing DOGE aims and Democratic members calling for the removal of “Musk and his hackers.”  […]

Witnesses at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Thursday called for putting in place improved identity authentication measures for unemployment insurance (UI) programs as a way to cut down on UI program fraud.    […]

Democratic and Republican members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee clashed on Wednesday on a range of tech and science topics including Federal grant funding and the Trump administration’s recent push to gut government diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. […]

Democratic members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee conducted an ultimately unsuccessful exercise today to round up enough votes to authorize a subpoena for Elon Musk to appear before the committee to explain recent actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) organization that he runs at the direction of President Donald Trump. […]

Prominent House and Senate Democrats over the weekend tore into the Trump administration’s surprise dismissal of at least 16 inspectors general (IGs) at major Federal agencies late on Friday and said those moves run contrary to the law – at least in the short term. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, today slammed Republicans’ plan to create a subcommittee that would work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory group. […]

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has tallied up a total of $191 billion of fraudulent claims paid out through state unemployment insurance (UI) agencies to hackers and fraudsters – up from previous estimates that put the fraud figure closer to $100 billion. […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort – which has a mission to find ways to reduce government spending and potentially do away with any number of government operations – went from a mostly aspirational advisory exercise to a potentially powerful political force on Thursday. […]

The Peace Corps – an independent Federal agency that dispatches volunteers around the world – has made “significant progress” in enhancing its information security posture over the past year, but it is “falling short” of meeting what the White House defines as an “effective level of security.” […]

DoD

The Department of Defense (DoD) is making progress in reducing costs related to improper payments through its Advana centralized data and analytics platform, but the agency continues to struggle with some of its financial IT systems, a Government Accountability Office official said in testimony to House lawmakers this week. […]

While a senior CrowdStrike official issued blanket apologies to House lawmakers at a Sept. 24 subcommittee hearing for the widespread Windows outages sparked on July 19 by a faulty software update from the company, leaders of the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee positioned the CrowdStrike outage – and process improvements the company is undertaking to avoid any repeat performance – also as a teachable moment for all concerned. […]

The increasing prevalence of data localization laws around the world drew several angles of criticism at a Sept. 20 House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, and a call from some witnesses for the U.S. to press harder for international leadership in technology laws and policy.   […]

Artificial intelligence and other automation technologies are essential for the Department of Defense (DoD) to maintain its technological edge over adversaries like China – but increasing the use of both of those will require more funding and leveraging of industry capabilities, witnesses said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Monday.   […]

DoD Pentagon Military

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) is calling on Congress to make permanent the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee’s (PRAC) Pandemic Analytics Center of Excellence (PACE) to conduct more effective oversight of all Federal spending. […]

DoD

Lawmakers at a House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hearing on July 23 issued a bold call for CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping to dismantle the country’s “Great Firewall,” but witnesses at the hearing had other suggestions. […]

Witnesses at a Senate hearing today strongly urged lawmakers to enact comprehensive privacy legislation, calling for robust protections for individuals and clear regulatory guidelines for businesses as they develop and deploy artificial intelligence systems. […]

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee this week pushed for increased funding to use emerging technology-driven solutions to combat illicit activity at the U.S.-Mexico border, while witnesses at a subcommittee hearing argued for more highly trained U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) personnel to leverage the advantages that newer technologies can create for law enforcement. […]

The Pandemic Responsibility and Accountability Committee (PRAC) has released a new report for Federal and state program administrators that outlines recommendations on how to better protect government programs from fraud and abuse – including by upgrading out-of-date IT systems. […]

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