The General Services Administration (GSA) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced today that they’ve partnered on GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative and are “entering into a sprint-based discovery phase to address strategy, acquisition, and technology challenges and solutions, including cloud architecture and security configuration.” […]
The General Services Administration’s (GSA) release of Federal website standards in December 2019 was intended to aid agency compliance with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA), but Larry Gillick, chief of web and digital strategy at the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, raised concerns with unintended consequences of the standards. […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) said today it led a call on Monday with science ministers and chief advisors from several allied nations “to share information on integrating science” into national responses to the COVID-19 virus. […]
Today’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on DHS’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request covered a wide array of topics. However, Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), spent much of his time defending a budget cut to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking comment on a proposal that would order Federal agencies to develop additional IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) implementation plans by the end of Fiscal Year 2021, and sharply boost requirements for agencies to increase the amount of IPv6-only assets on their networks through FY2025. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is updating its Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) that will impact its Enterprise Geospatial Information Services (eGIS) mapping system. […]
The Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which holds tens of thousands of sensitive patient records, needs to develop a secure data backup site, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). […]
As the U.S. prepares for the 2020 presidential primary’s “Super Tuesday,” officials from the nation’s defense agencies are trying to quell election security concerns. […]
The New Democrat Coalition (NDC) released its 2020 policy priorities on Feb. 28. The priorities cover a wide breadth of issues, but there were a handful focused on the technology sector. […]
The National Association of Counties (NACo) released a report on its TestIT app, which found that over half of U.S.’ counties are experiencing the Federal minimum of broadband standards. […]
On Feb. 27, the Senate passed the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 sending the bill to President Trump’s desk. […]
Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly shared “one of [his] greatest’s lessons in business” in a recent message to the department. He wrote that the quality of a company’s employee bathroom was a “nearly foolproof indicator” of a good organization. […]
General Motors CEO Mary Barra emphasized at the RSA security conference this week that development of robust cybersecurity technologies for the automotive sector is a crucial factor in the industry-wide push toward autonomous driving technologies and eventually fully self-driving vehicles. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center (JAIC) selected Alka Patel, a pull from the private sector with “diverse skills and experience” to help lead its ethical AI adoption, per JAIC spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson on Feb. 28. […]
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a report Feb. 26 discussing the disjointed nature of international cybersecurity norms. […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a year one report on the American Artificial Intelligence (AI) Initiative, announcing that the administration has met critical milestones. […]
At a Feb. 27 House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearing, representatives largely criticized the President’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal for cuts to investments in research and development (R&D), but praised funding increases to “industries of the future” like artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS). […]
The House Appropriations Committee questioned today why the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is requesting $2.6 billion in funds for Fiscal Year 2021 for the VA’s Office of Electronic Health Records (EHR)— $1 billion more than the FY2020 request— when the EHR Modernization go-live date was delayed and wants better communication on information from the agency to avoid delays and cost more money. […]
In a Feb. 26 letter to Dana Deasy, CIO of the Department of Defense (DoD), Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., stressed the importance of vulnerability disclosure programs. […]
When it comes to adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, it’s important to look at its range of effects from many different viewpoints. […]
The Cybersecurity Tech Accord (CTA), an international, industry-led effort by technology and security companies to combat cyberattacks, said this week it signed up 14 new member companies, bringing its total number of accord signatories to 144 companies. […]
Jim Sullivan, defense intelligence officer (DIO) for cyber at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), emphasized the value of offensive operations in cyberspace to deter nation-state attackers during a panel discussion this week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. […]
Katie Arrington, the Defense Department’s (DoD) Chief Information Security Officer for Acquisition and a driving force behind the Pentagon’s recently released Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, voiced a vigorous defense on Feb. 26 of U.S. law and policy that bans the Federal government and its contractors from doing business with China-based network equipment maker Huawei. […]
Both the growing ability to project offensive cyber power, and a long list of old friends around the world, are helping the Federal government to develop a greater ability to create more effective deterrence against cyber adversaries, a senior Defense Department (DoD) official said on Feb. 26. […]
The desire to make the employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) more efficient in their work led to the creation of a Robotics Process Automation Center of Excellence, explained Pam Dempsey, the center’s lead. […]
In a report released Feb. 25, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that “most” of nine agencies tasked with protecting the 16 critical infrastructure sectors “have not developed methods to determine the level and type of adoption of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.” […]
Leaders from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shared how the agency’s acquisition process fueled successful IT transformation in projects like Accelerate at the Feb. 26 ServiceNow Federal Forum. […]
A group of graduate researchers from the University of California-Berkeley trained a machine learning model to predict voter preferences using only readily available personal information, suggesting further-reaching implications on the use of AI to infer voter behavior and potentially influence elections. […]
The Offices of Inspectors General (OIG) for the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) are planning to begin a joint audit to determine what actions taken by the DoD and VA in acquiring and implementing a common, commercial electronic health record system. […]
A senior official speaking Feb. 26 at the RSA Conference clarified recent steps by the State Department to publicly attribute and condemn acts of cyber aggression on the part of Russia, calling the actions of the Department part of a deliberate attempt to establish a framework for appropriate nation-state behavior in cyberspace. […]