Witnesses at a Senate Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet subcommittee hearing about mobile apps on Tuesday pressed senators for action on making more spectrum available for 5G and other services. […]
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen emphasized at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing this week the importance of shoring up United States cyber defenses, and said that effort would be helped by adequate funding and reorganization of a key DHS department. […]
Government and industry experts told members of the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology yesterday that blockchain technology pilots and trials are yielding promising results for supply chain and government operations applications. […]
Language in the House FY 2019 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill calls for the Congressional Research Service to study what scientific and technology policy resources are available to members of Congress. The bill, which sailed through the House Appropriations Committee on May 8, marks another step in reviving the long-shuttered Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). […]
A bill introduced in the House on Thursday would create a series of minimum functionality and security requirements for all Federal government agency public-facing websites and digital services. […]
While members of Congress discussed the nationwide technical skills gap at a hearing on Wednesday, tech-industry advocates on Capitol Hill looked for ways to reduce the cybersecurity sector’s gender gap. […]
For the first time in more than eight years, the House Appropriations committee shuttered its doors when it discussed budget issues with top Pentagon brass late last month. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was in the hot seat during last week’s Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs hearing. […]
A gathering of crows is called a murder. A bunch of kangaroos is called a mob. And a gathering of IGs is–no, not a nuisance–it’s called CIGIE–the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. And, CIGIE’s annual Top Management and Performance Challenges–TPMC report–boiled down IG reports from 61 different agencies–and leads with IT and security management issues across the government. […]
Reps. Bill Foster, D-Ill., and Mark Takano, D-Calif., deserve a big thumbs up for introducing legislation on Thursday to reopen the Office of Technology Assessment–OTA. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will lead the charge in the Senate. […]
On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) online filing and payment portals went down for several hours. Tax Day, the biggest day of the year for IRS, and systems gave only cryptic messages with erroneous dates for “planned maintenance.” No doubt this wasn’t in the plan. […]
Eyes tend to glaze over at an Appropriations hearing. Seems Congress just pushed through the 2018 Omnibus spending bill, and the House is already back talking budgets for FY19. […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s marathon Congressional sessions in front of both the House and Senate have produced countless talking points and incendiary sound bites. […]
The $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill signed by President Trump on Friday gives a sizable boost to the Department of Defense, including a respectable 2.4 percent pay raise for DoD personnel, and for now at least gets Pentagon leaders off the frustrating, and at times wasteful, treadmill of continuing resolutions. And, while the bill doesn’t get into specifics about critical efforts such as cyber operations and artificial intelligence, it does continue programs DoD has underway. […]
Opening day for the Nationals might be a week away, but four Beltway insiders have already knocked one out of the park. The latest omnibus spending bill, which passed through the Senate early Friday morning, includes $100 million for the MGT Act’s centralized revolving capital fund. President Trump signed the MGT Act into law late last year as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. […]
The House subcommittees on Information Technology and Government Operations held a “State of Play” Federal IT Hearing Wednesday for the latest updates on ongoing modernization efforts, and the tone was resolute and unflinching. […]
In times of emergency, state governors have regularly called in the National Guard, for reasons such as assisting the recovery after natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or to suppress protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. If voting systems are under siege, should they do the same? […]
Federal CIOs and industry execs gathered on the Hill Thursday evening to celebrate the passage of the Modernizing Government Technology–MGT–Act and map the path ahead. Judging by the standing-room-only crowd, seems government, industry, and the Hill are betting big on the legacy IT euthanasia program to break Federal IT’s failing status quo. […]
What’s interesting and fun? Not enough. Join MeriTalk, Congressman Connolly, Maria Roat, CIO at the Small Business Administration, and a host of Federal CIOs, to raise a glass to celebrate the passage of MGT and talk about implementation plans. MeriTalk is hosting a reception on March 1, 5:30-8pm, in the Rayburn Building. […]
Artificial intelligence is sexy–no doubt about it. From self-driving cars to personal assistant technology that can anticipate your every need, the future of AI looks promising. However, the actual technology can be confusing. And rarely does the reality of AI match up to expectations created by Hollywood portrayals. […]
In an interview with MeriTalk’s Steve O’Keeffe, Powner shares more on his role at the GAO and the direction he thinks Federal IT needs to take in the New Year. […]
House Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee chairman Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, put the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program under the microscope in a hearing with industry experts last week. […]
Who says things in Washington don’t move quickly? A decade after Congress initially authorized the position; the Pentagon will get its first Chief Managing Officer (CMO). John Gibson, the current Deputy Chief Managing Officer (DCMO), will step in as the first DoD CMO in February. A major target for new efficiencies, DoD has more than $2 trillion in assets and liabilities. […]
Federal agencies are accepting some harsh criticism being doled out in a new report that says many are failing to fully comply with guidelines designed to protect against wasted IT spending. […]
We see lots of moves to IT modernization in motion–but how does it all come together? The White House wants to tie those into a broader program, creating a new ecosystem to fuel government-wide modernization efforts. […]
The Report to the President on Federal IT Modernization recommends modernizing the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) program, which is critical to the Federal government’s broader digital transformation strategy. By the end of this month, the report calls for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to conduct data calls to agencies to discuss their cloud migration projects, and identify any delays caused by current TIC policy. And, by March 2, OMB will share a “preliminary update to the TIC policy,” and launch select pilot projects to test the new TIC requirements. […]
Once again, Washington is racing toward a shutdown. In what is becoming practically a monthly political exercise, Republicans and Democrats are unable to come to an agreement on how to fund the government. If a compromise isn’t reached, the shutdown will start Friday, Jan. 19 at 11:59 p.m. […]
A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate just before the Christmas break aimed at protecting American elections from foreign cyberattacks has been getting generally positive reviews from security professionals. […]
The MGT Act became the law of the land on Dec. 21, when President Trump signed it into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This is the much-vaunted revolving capital fund–cut out of the original FITARA bill in committee–that establishes a central bucket of money at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), for Feds to modernize legacy IT systems. […]
It was no surprise to industry experts that agency performance on the initial scorecard for MEGABYTE Act compliance was poor. Twenty-one of 24 agencies graded received Fs. Managing software licenses can be complex and agencies had little time to begin the task before they were evaluated, they said. […]