Members of Congress and officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) discussed the value of data-driven suicide prevention strategies at a Jan. 29 House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing led by committee Chairman Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif. […]
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, introduced a bill Jan. 28 to give Federal employees a 3.5 percent pay raise in 2021. […]
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Jan. 22 that the Federal government’s backlog of security clearance has fallen to near 200,000, from its peak of 725,000 backlog applications in 2018. […]
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Acting Administrator Uttam Dhillon in a Jan. 17 letter to release a “long-delayed rule” that will “ensure providers can successfully use telehealth to treat individuals with substance use disorders.” […]
Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced legislation on Jan. 16 that directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a Cybersecurity State Coordinator program. […]
A bipartisan group of House members introduced legislation on Jan. 16 that would use broadband service data mapping to identify areas of the country where high rates of poor maternal health overlap with a lack of broadband service access. […]
A bill introduced in the Senate this week aims to steer tens of billions of new funding toward civilian Federal government research and development efforts involving “industries of the future” including artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS). […]
The House Committee on Financial Services passed H.R. 4458, The Cybersecurity and Financial System Resilience Act of 2019, via voice vote on Jan. 13. […]
Reps. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., and Bobby Rush, D-Ill., introduced the Preventing Real Online Threats Endangering Children Today (PROTECT) Kids Act on Jan. 9. […]
House lawmakers on Jan. 8 passed two telecommunication bills promoting United States leadership in 5G infrastructure and systems. […]
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced a bill on Jan. 9 that would ban the United States from sharing intelligence with countries that use Huawei equipment and services for 5G network capabilities. […]
The House late on Jan. 8 approved H.R. 2881, a bill requiring President Trump to develop a mobile telecommunications systems and infrastructure strategy, by a 413-3 vote. […]
President Trump signed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act into law on Dec. 31, 2019. […]
The Department of Energy has taken the steps necessary to implement the 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the department’s inspector general (IG) said. […]
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that took effect earlier this week will not only erect a higher data privacy bar for citizens of the state, but also may put an important policy stake in the ground for Federal lawmakers who are weighing nationwide data privacy legislation. […]
Throughout 2019, members of Congress introduced numerous IT-related bills to their chamber, but they are scattered across various levels of the legislation process. With the 116th Congress approximately halfway through its two-year session, here’s a status update on where some of the top IT legislation stands: […]
Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., have introduced a bill in the Senate that would establish a K-12 cybersecurity education initiative. […]
The recent approval by the House of Representatives of two bills to improve the Federal government’s efforts to assemble and maintain accurate nationwide broadband service maps is adding weight to an ongoing push by the Federal Communications Commission to do the same in order to direct funding and other regulatory help to bringing more broadband options to underserved areas. […]
The House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Energy on Dec. 19 passed the Grid Modernization Research and Development Act of 2019. […]
The House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C) released an initial draft of a bipartisan Federal privacy bill on Dec. 18. […]
A bill backed by members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee would give the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) the power to issue administrative subpoenas to internet service providers (ISPs) in order to identify vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. […]
Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., have introduced new legislation to aid workers who lose their jobs to automation. […]
Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., introduced legislation on Dec. 10 that would provide $40 million in grants for state and local governments to purchase gunfire detection technologies. […]
On Dec. 6, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., introduced H.R. 5353, which will establish a policy that promotes and maintains “digital and software development expertise” in the Defense Department’s (DoD) workforce. […]
At a Brookings Institution event on Dec. 5, Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Mike Lee, R-Utah., made the case for their Facial Recognition Technology Warrant Act. […]
Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and five major healthcare companies to “provide more information on how they are addressing bias in algorithms used in many healthcare systems.” […]
A bill introduced last week by Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., would direct that the Federal government spend $100 million per year for five years on a program to provide mobile broadband “hotspot” devices to schools and libraries. […]
Democratic members of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee led by Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., unveiled Federal data privacy legislation that aims to establish data privacy rights, outlaw harmful and deceptive practices by information service providers, and improve data security safeguards for online consumers. […]
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in a Nov. 21 report that the DOTGOV Online Trust in Government Act would cost very little to implement. […]
According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released Nov. 21, the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act, H.R. 4237, would cost less than $500,000 to implement over the next five years if the legislation becomes law. […]