In a letter to the Department of Transportation (DoT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., called for the expansion of drone use to facilitate contact-free delivery of medical supplies and other needed equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. […]
Apple and Google are launching the Exposure Notification application programming interface (API) that will enable apps created by public health agencies to work more effectively in contact tracing of COVID-19. […]
A Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) national recruiter exposed sensitive information including locations, phone numbers, and emails of more than 1,300 American University students following a virtual job fair on May 15. […]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Federal IT operations are providing a resilient fabric that enables accelerated delivery of vital services to citizens during an unprecedented public health crisis. As government IT operations reach their new steady-state and map the path to further modernization, MeriTalk is surfacing the untold stories – and lessons – of those efforts. In the latest installment of CIO Crossroads, we examine the Labor Department’s performance eight weeks into the fray. […]
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, agencies like the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have made the telework transition much easier for their personnel because of cloud-based systems. […]
Ransomware accounted for 61 percent of malware-based data breach incidents over most of 2019, according to the Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, reflecting that financial gains are the top motivator for three-quarters of threat actors. […]
The Senate Commerce Committee advanced key pieces of IT legislation out of markup during today’s business meeting. […]
The National Institutes of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is asking industry to demonstrate products and technical expertise to support its project entitled, 5G Cybersecurity: Preparing a Secure Evolution. […]
2020 marks the start of a new era in government IT. Federal, state, and local government IT leaders are quickly scaling work from home support levels, despite many organizations lacking needed infrastructure and security controls for a perimeterless work environment. […]
Consolidating Federal data centers through adoption of cloud and shared services has the “greatest potential” for streamlining the use of Federal resources, according to Thomas Santucci, director of the Data Center and Cloud Optimization Infrastructure Program Management Office at the General Services Administration (GSA). […]
A Defense Department (DoD) research official said this week that his office’s “number one priority” is making sure the military has access to advanced microelectronics, while calling quantum technologies a much longer-term play. […]
The CIOs of the Agriculture (USDA) and Transportation (DoT) Departments said today that workforce productivity trends have been stable or improved since both agencies turned to large-scale telework in March to combat spread of COVID-19. […]
In a project between ACT-IAC’s Emerging Technology Group and the Acquisition Community of Interest (COI) important takeaways were found for improving training, implementing modern techniques, and integrating appropriate tools for improving the Federal acquisition process. […]
The final version of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-207 on zero trust could be released as soon as this month, with an opportunity for industry collaboration coming this fall, a NIST official confirmed today. […]
Recounting how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a quick jump to 96 percent telework during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, agency CIO Vaughn Noga explained today how partnerships with other offices and a new approach to emerging tech helped fuel the fast transition. And he urged tech practitioners not to forget lessons learned over the past three months as they transition to the next phase of new normal. […]
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was joined by a bipartisan group of senators to introduce legislation that would expedite staffing for the special pandemic recovery watchdog that oversees trillions in taxpayer funded pandemic relief. […]
For the estimated four billion people across the globe without Internet access – about half of Earth’s population – the race to 5G wireless services has barely begun. But the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is putting people on the ground to prepare the way. […]
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and the General Services Administration (GSA) awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a five-year, $800 million task order today to support warfighting operations with AI-based solutions. […]
According to a request for information (RFI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is seeking to modernize its grants management system with an end-to-end automated solution. […]
The Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service released a May 2020 issue brief examining artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) from a cybersecurity perspective with a list of questions for policymakers to consider. […]
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is seeking machine learning (ML) solutions to help boost its existing robotic process automation (RPA) tools. […]
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. […]
During the COVID-19 crisis, Federal agencies are vulnerable to more cyberattacks and data breaches than ever before, but agencies like the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) are working hard to address the cybersecurity challenges. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced May 14 that 774 broadband and telephone providers have agreed to extend the Keep Americans Connected Pledge through June 30 as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. […]
The government’s Federal Data Strategy team extended some of the target dates for its 2020 action plan, and is making sure that COVID-19 response data is of the highest priority in the Federal Data Strategy’s call for agencies to prioritize data assets and projects. […]
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, just 40 percent of Federal and only 4 percent of State and Local government employees were authorized to telework. But since then, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is mandating that Federal agencies maximize telework across the nation, and many SLGs are doing the same. Embracing telework – and doing it right – is a government-wide priority. […]
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) released its Insider Threat Roadmap on May 14, with details on how the agency plans to use emerging tech and advanced analytics to mitigate risks. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent this week applauded the capacity of commercial, cloud-based solutions in helping the government focus on mission continuity and response during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has been taking the current remote-standard in stride as it has enough capacity in its cloud-based systems for personnel teleworking. […]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are warning research organizations studying COVID-19 that they may be susceptible to targeting and network compromise by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). […]