A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that the U.S. Department of State is not able to readily use International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) data to assess trends or risks related to the export of defense services.  […]

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) recently stood up a new data management division within the Office of the Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) that aims to offer “invaluable insights” going forward, CDAO Lindsey Saul said. […]

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) plans to release updated cybersecurity guidance for the healthcare industry along with an agency-wide data strategy in the upcoming weeks, according to Karl Mathias, chief information officer (CIO) at HHS. […]

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Department of Energy (DoE) launched a call to action asking utilities and outage data companies to voluntarily share their data with the Outage Data Initiative Nationwide (ODIN) for better real-time, standardized, and transparent power outage data. […]

The Data Foundation – a Washington-based think tank that advocate using data to inform public policymaking – has issued a new report calling on Congress to create a Federal Chief Data Officer (CDO) position. […]

The Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has released a new strategy to improve the state of the agency’s data integration and utilization, information technology, and network capabilities. […]

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) on August 8 released a new report for the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) on current and potential sources of state death data used by Federal agencies for program administration and payment integrity, and pointing to ways for better government cooperation in the sharing of that data. […]

The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) continues to be plagued with problems in data collection and assessment of sexual harassment incidents that occur within the agency, according to a recent follow-up report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).   […]

Federal agencies are increasingly sharing information with one another with both connected and disconnected applications, while trying to be more security conscious and reevaluating approaches to building software and other tech important for securing the homeland, officials said on July 20. […]

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued an alert memorandum detailing that the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) is planning to expand the Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) Rule to the entire Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) Program by November 2022. FAS’ plan to do so comes despite ongoing issues with data […]

Government and private sector organizations that are seeking to create successful artificial intelligence (AI) technology efforts need to prioritize investments in data maintenance and categorization, two AI experts said this week. […]

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate on June 23 aims to create new rules for bulk exports of U.S. citizens’ personal data that would help protect that data from use by hostile foreign governments. […]

The Federal government’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) is falling short on information sharing regarding each participating agency’s current or planned spending for the whole-of-government initiative, and could use a shared database to make spending information more readily accessible, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. […]

According to research from MeriTalk and AP-NORC, just 15 percent of American adults trust the Federal government to do what is right for them and their families all or most of the time. How can our governments at the Federal, state, and local levels regain the public’s confidence by delivering on the promises of major infrastructure programs? […]

The creation of a new police misconduct database, and a further evaluation of the use of facial recognition technologies in law enforcement, are among several foundational elements in President Biden’s executive order on policing issued today on the second anniversary of the killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers. […]

While concern in some quarters of the tech world continues to grow about how to keep pace with  growing data storage demand, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a new report that exotic alternatives – think options like synthetic DNA – to fill the gap are probably still years away. […]

Recently MeriTalk sat down with Monzy Merza, vice president of cybersecurity go-to-market at Databricks, a data and artificial intelligence (AI) company that offers the first and only lakehouse platform in the cloud. Merza chatted about the implications and opportunities with M-21-31 and offered insights for successfully meeting its mandates. […]

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency should look to improve how it has been categorizing drug seizure data and evaluating training, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote in a new report. […]

As the Federal government and Department of Defense look to find creative solutions to problems, creators will need to emphasize getting accurate nonbiased data and understanding the user experience (UX) of their product if they look to create something that is both useful and used, the Chief Data Officer for United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) said. […]

The United States military is developing a new Global Position System (GPS) signal resistant to interference, such as jamming. The Department of Defense (DoD) plans to install this technology on hundreds of weapons systems, but a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that incomplete data hinders deployment efforts. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it launched a new $90 million initiative to improve data collection for health centers to reduce health disparities. The initiative will utilize the remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. […]

The Department of State is looking to hire up to about 50 data scientists to work in different agency offices and portfolios, as well as support data-driven diplomacy. […]

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) organization has not collected or recorded complete data for its Missing Migrant Program, and lacks a plan to evaluate the program’s ongoing development, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). CBP is a component agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). […]

The ever-growing influx of data collected from thousands of sensors means that the U.S. Army needs more help than ever in sorting through that sea of information, and creating a robust data fabric to help with that task is essential, leaders from the service branch said this week. […]

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is seeking information and sources for a Virtual Data Enclave (VDE) for managing data in a protected environment with a tool to share restricted microdata with researchers authorized to access the data. […]

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has announced the appointment of Air Force Lt. Gen. Mary O’Brien to be the next Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the J-6 Joint Staff and director for the J-6 command, control, communications, and computers/cyber, according to an April 5 Department of Defense (DoD) release. […]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has named Geoffrey Nieboer as the agency’s Chief Data Officer (CDO), and moved Brian Whittaker to the role of Acting Chief Innovation Officer, according to the agency’s organization directory. […]

The organizers of World Backup Day – the annual March 31 call for all to back up their data in order to preserve those precious assets and create the ability to recover them in the event of theft or loss – claimed victory this week in its effort to spread the word about the importance of backups and implementing strategies for continuous backups going forward. […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is looking to improve its data management and sharing challenges with the new NIH Policy on Data Management and Sharing that will become effective on Jan. 25, 2023. […]

The U.S. Navy’s Chief Data Officer (CDO) said the service branch is embarking on a data infrastructure transformation to tackle a two-pronged challenge: first, how to deal with the sheer amount of data collected, and second, understanding if the Navy has the correct kinds of data to help leaders make decisions. […]