Effective 5 a.m. EST on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022, the Pentagon Reservation will be moving to Health Protection Condition (HPCON) Charlie, with workspace capacity required to be at less than 25 percent and supervisors continuing to provide maximum telework opportunities. […]
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kiran Ahuja emphasized in a recent report summing up the Federal government’s experience with telework during Fiscal Year 2020 that the practice will remain important to the government going forward particularly in creating further resiliency of agency operations and in helping workforce recruiting efforts. […]
Former Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd – who was a leading voice on technology issues during his three terms in Congress and now advises on similar issues as a managing director at Allen & Co. – said this week that a national data privacy standard is needed to put ground rules in place for wider use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today that it is continuing to help Federal agencies remediate the Log4j vulnerability that CISA first warned about in December. […]
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., is renewing calls for mandatory incident reporting legislation, after meeting virtually with Biden administration cybersecurity leaders on Jan. 5 for a briefing about the Log4j critical vulnerability. […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help make small improvements to discrete agency operations, or it can be a game changer that helps agencies meet their missions in ways we can’t imagine today. MeriTalk sat down with David Kushner, executive vice president of sales at enterprise IT solutions provider ViON to discuss how agencies can move beyond narrow use cases to achieve long-lasting, impactful change with AI. […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a request for information (RFI) in the Federal Register today seeking examples of digital health technologies that could be used to strengthen “community health, individual wellness, and health equity.” […]
The Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) has appointed Nick Leiserson – who spent the previous decade working his way up to be Rep. Jim Langevin’s, D-R.I., Chief of Staff – deputy chief of staff for National Cyber Director Chris Inglis’ office. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in its annual report on governmentwide improper payments – defined as payments that shouldn’t have been made or were made for incorrect amounts – jumped to 7.2 percent in Fiscal Year 2021 with the increase driven in part by soaring rates of unemployment insurance fraud during the coronavirus pandemic. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today that all large Federal agencies have successfully mitigated the Log4j critical vulnerability that the agency discovered in early December 2021. […]
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the launch of its Guaranteeing AI Robustness Against Detection (GARD) program, which is designed to develop new defenses against adversarial attacks on machine learning (ML) models. […]
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded a seven-year, $87 million contract to Accenture Federal Services (AFS) to help streamline the trademark lifecycle through supporting and enhancing its Trademark Product Line (TMPL). […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has established new criteria for Federal agencies hiring data scientists by releasing its new occupational series for data scientists in government – a project that has been more than two years in development. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has hired Daniel Bardenstein as its new tech and cyber strategy lead. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has launched the Affordable Connectivity Program, which is the successor to the agency’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program. […]
The Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which has served as an influential incubation chamber for a big chunk of cybersecurity policies that have become Federal law and policy over the past two years, underwent a status change over the holidays. The commission, which was born as a Federally commissioned group, transitioned to a 501(c)3 non-profit over the new year. […]
A new report from the Data Foundation is evaluating Federal agencies’ abilities to implement the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (Evidence Act), and makes eight recommendations to better implement the law’s evaluation provisions. Top among those asks are requests for more agency funding and personnel resources to properly implement the law. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) National Risk Management Center (NRMC) is cataloguing significant progress it has made in developing its “National Critical Functions” (NCF) framework, and pointing to next steps in the effort. […]
As a very busy 2021 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the past year and look forward with optimism to the possibilities of the new one that’s about to begin. Rounding the corner to 2022, MeriTalk asked several experts on the industry side of Federal IT for their predictions of what the next year will bring. […]
Cybersecurity took a front seat for the Federal government in 2021, with numerous cyberattacks on government and industry helping to spark a sweeping cybersecurity executive order and a host of new efforts to improve the nation’s security posture. As the year comes to an end, MeriTalk is rounding up our top cyber moments of 2021: […]
According to a research survey from the Pew Research Center, nearly half of parents surveyed said their child faced technology-related obstacles causing them to fall behind their peers with proper broadband connectivity and technology access. Students who lacked these necessities for remote learning experienced what is often called the “homework gap,” which impact may continue to be felt in the future. […]
With the Dec. 24 deadline approaching for Federal agencies to remediate the Log4j vulnerability, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed to MeriTalk that there have still been no compromises of Federal agencies via the Apache Log4J vulnerability. […]
Federal IT teams are scrambling to patch the Log4j and Log4Shell vulnerabilities before they cause major damage – and meet newly updated CISA guidance for Federal civilian agencies requiring immediate mitigation. […]
The White House AI Initiative Office announced on Dec. 17 the creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) public research portal to connect AI researchers with Federal resources and relevant grant-funding programs. […]
The year 2021 has played out as a non-stop whirlwind of activity for the Federal IT community – one unprecedented in recent memory for new policy direction, funding pushes, and urgency to improve network security. […]
The National 911 Program has selected consulting firm Mission Critical Partners to pilot and evaluate the first subset of the 911 DataPath data exchange model. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it is ready to authorize $1,041,074,000 over 10 years in its fifth round of funding for new broadband deployments through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. This marks the largest funding wave to date. […]
With 2022 just around the corner, MeriTalk is taking a month-by-month look at the most popular stories in Federal IT from 2021. […]
The Biden administration is looking for the public’s help to shape policy through its release of a draft learning agenda that will inform development of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). […]
The Department of Navy has appointed retired Lt. Cmdr. Josh Reiter as the service branch’s Deputy Principal Cyber Advisor. Reiter, a veteran of both the Navy and Naval Cyber communities, has served in the post since September, according to his LinkedIn. […]