The Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act was approved this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee on a 25-to-2 vote, including provisions for the development of 5G, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. […]
Reps. Xochitl Torres Small, D-N.M., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Sens. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., Doug Jones, D-Ala., introduced legislation in both chambers of Congress June 11 to invest $50 million in rural telehealth initiatives amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]
A group of House Energy and Commerce Committee members urged House appropriators In a June 10 letter to fund the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability Act (Broadband DATA Act). […]
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted today to confirm the nominations of Russell Vought and Craig Leen as permanent director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), respectively, at a business meeting today. […]
“Team Telecom” – a group of Federal government officials tasked with making recommendations on the national security implications of Federal Communication Commission (FCC) telecommunications applications – has failed to properly monitor Chinese government-owned telecommunication carriers, according to a June 9 report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). […]
The House Armed Services Committee on June 5 released its markup schedule for the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act – a must-pass piece of legislation that normally features plenty of technology-related provisions. […]
Federal privacy legislation that has stalled in Congress for months has a new impetus, as questions about the use of location and health data during the pandemic are bringing privacy considerations to the fore. […]
Two bicameral, bipartisan bills intended to strengthen U.S.-based AI research initiatives were introduced this week. Both bills are focused on maintaining the United States’ global leadership and promote public and private sector collaboration. […]
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., wrote letters to ten Federal agencies in an effort to seek answers as to what those agencies are doing to modernize IT systems before the next crisis, like COVID-19, occurs. […]
The Cyberspace Solarium Commission has added two new recommendations to its wide-ranging cybersecurity policy report to address the challenge of disinformation on social media. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is working on a program inventory to catalog its project spending, starting with documentation of CARES Act funding, Acting Director Russell Vought confirmed at a June 3 Senate Budget Committee hearing on his nomination to become permanent director of OMB. […]
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that H.R. 5428, the Grid Modernization Research and Development Act of 2019, would cost the United States $1.2 billion over the next five years if enacted. […]
With several primary elections taking place today and the general election less than six months away, the group tasked by Congress to make recommendations to improve the nation’s cyber defenses made several additional recommendations to secure the 2020 elections. […]
The Department of Defense is planning on moving its network addresses into a bigger house, so to speak, but the Government Accountability Office says that the department needs to take more preparatory steps to plan before the move. […]
As states shift their voting processes and procedures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, another element of the process for states has been subject to change—Federal funding, an inconsistency that has caused local election officials to adapt on the fly. […]
To secure the United States’ place as a global tech leader, a bicameral, bipartisan group of legislators have introduced the Endless Frontier Act. […]
The United Kingdom’s cybersecurity agency said this week it will review the role of China-based network equipment maker Huawei in UK-based 5G networks – a move that comes days after the United States announced it will further restrict Huawei’s access to the U.S. technology supply chain. […]
The Senate Armed Services Committee announced the markup schedule for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2021 today. […]
As Congress begins work on future COVID-19 relief bills, a group of bipartisan legislators wrote to House and Senate leadership urging them to include funding for state and local government (SLG) IT infrastructure in future relief bills. […]
A new bill introduced by Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., would task the Department of Commerce with conducting a quantum computing study to outline economic benefits of the technology, and identify and mitigate supply chain risks. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified in a new report 168 new actions that Congress and Federal agencies could to take to improve efficiency and effectiveness across the Federal government, including two new recommendations involving information technology. […]
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, believes that the Federal government needs to help state and local governments figure out how to bridge the digital divide as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates a need to expand broadband to areas that don’t have it and to provide better services. […]
The Senate today confirmed Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, to become the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by a vote of 49 to 44. […]
In a move to ward off foreign adversaries, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., led the charge to encrypt phone calls between the chambers to protect communications against foreign surveillance. […]
The Spectrum IT Modernization Act, which advanced on a voice vote out of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on May 20, takes aim at revamping the way the Federal government manages the airwaves. […]
The Senate Commerce Committee advanced key pieces of IT legislation out of markup during today’s business meeting. […]
Four House Republicans have come out in favor of the Federal Communications Commission’s recent unanimous decision to allocate wireless spectrum to Ligado over the strenuous objections of the Defense Department (DoD) and other parties. […]
The House late Friday passed the HEROES Act, the Democrat-led $3 trillion COVID-19 coronavirus relief legislation that includes billions of Federal technology-related spending. […]
On the same day that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint warning to COVID-19 research organizations about China’s cyber threat, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission got its hearing in the Senate. […]
In a move to strengthen the United States’ cybersecurity posture, Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., introduced the Cybersecurity Competitions to Yield Better Efforts to Research the Latest Exceptionally Advanced Problems (CYBER LEAP) Act of 2020. […]