The Senate voted late on June 8 to approve the much-amended U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, by a margin of 68-32. […]

FedRAMP and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the release of version 1.0.0 of the Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL) that aims to help cloud service providers (CSPs) speed the FedRAMP approval process. […]

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) wants to build on its current transformational period, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, to accelerate change and position the military to win, and the service branch’s CIO spoke on June 8 about tech strategies that the Air Force and the Defense Department are putting in place to get to that goal. […]

The Accreditation Board (CMMC-AB) for the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) has approved the first Certified Third-Party Assessment Organization (C3PAO) in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), the CMMC-AB announced today. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) awarded a $2.5 billion 5-year blanket purchasing agreement to Dell to provide the U.S. Navy with enterprise software licenses, DoD announced June 4. The contract details that the technology company will provide user-based subscription licenses for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure products. […]

The White House today released the first fruits of a February executive order that has Federal agencies looking at ways to improve supply chain security in several key critical infrastructure areas. […]

Colonial Pipeline Company’s president and CEO announced the company is in the midst of an ongoing review of last month’s ransomware attack and relayed the timeline of events that led to the company paying a ransom and its communication with law enforcement in a Congressional hearing today. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is looking to consolidate its digital human resources system into one single system and wants a contractor to help manage and support VA’s Enterprise Human Resources Information Services (EHRIS). […]

Last fall, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a binding operational directive (BOD) requiring the Federal government to develop and publish vulnerability disclosure policies (VDP). CISA announced today it has chosen vendors for its VDP platform. […]

Cross-agency collaboration – which has been important to the larger Federal IT mission for years, and became even more so during coronavirus pandemic – is due for further acceleration as the next mechanism in how government works together, Federal officials said on June 7. […]

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin signed and approved the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) strategy document last month, marking an official start to the marathon to implement the data-sharing strategy across the military, the Pentagon said at a June 4 press conference. […]

While legislation from 2018 sought to have the Social Security Administration (SSA) enter into agreements with states to share and match SSA and child welfare data, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) survey has found that some state child welfare agencies are identifing challenges to participating in these data exchanges. […]

To embrace the opportunities of AI, the Department of Defense (DoD) says it needs to “adopt responsible behavior, processes, and outcomes in a manner that reflects the department’s commitment to its ethical principles, including the protection of privacy and civil liberties.” […]

As part of its ongoing breast cancer research efforts, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) is partnering with Queen’s University Belfast to help manage NIH’s research data. […]

Digital vaccine credentials can be used to certify that a person has been vaccinated or tested for COVID-19, but those tools come with challenges that can limit the use of the credentials including security and health data privacy concerns, the Federal government’s chief watchdog agency said. […]

Despite legislative requirements, many Federal websites are not accessible for people with disabilities, a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) found. The findings present an obstacle for millions of Americans, especially as the pandemic has forced many government services online. […]

The vast majority of IT leaders at the Defense Department (DoD) see an urgent need for the adoption of enterprise cloud services, but an even larger share say their path to enterprise cloud is blocked by continuing migration delays. […]

Nothing looms larger in the policy gunsights of the Biden administration than cybersecurity – both in the Federal and private sectors – and how to improve it. […]

The Biden administration is pushing hard to help fight the rise of ransomware attacks on private industry, and the White House is taking steps on multiple fronts to work with the private sector to combat the issue. […]

Vice President Kamala Harris announced the availability of nearly $1 billion in U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) grants to expand broadband access and adoption on Tribal lands. […]

Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and James Lankford, R-Okla., introduced bipartisan legislation that aims to improve the customer experience of citizens when using government programs and strengthen trust in the government. […]

According to a U.S. Army spokesperson, the military branch has rescinded a policy that restricted Internet of Things (IoT) devices from telework environments to prevent data leaks and protect the privacy of critical unclassified information, personally identifiable information, and operational data. […]

Federal agencies looking to transition from artificial intelligence (AI) research and development (R&D) to operations must overcome challenges both unique to their agencies, as well as governmentwide obstacles. […]

Federal chief data officers (CDOs) agree that if agencies can move from a system-centric model to a data-centric model, they will be able to get a better understanding of the data they have and will be better positioned to meet mission needs. […]

A newly issued Office of Inspector General (OIG) report shows that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was making only limited progress in implementing the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program in several years leading up to an audit completed in 2020, but has since taken action on several recommendations from the OIG that puts the agency in better position to benefit from CDM. […]

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, sent letters to ransomware victims Colonial Pipeline Company and CNA Financial Corporation to get more information on their respective decisions to pay ransoms, the committee announced today. […]

The Department of Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a request for information (RFI) seeking software cybersecurity tools that can work with an older version of programming language the agency uses, known as common business-oriented language, or COBOL.  […]

The continued flurry of high-profile ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure targets in the United States is climbing the ladder of presidential priorities – with President Biden saying it’s on the agenda for his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month, and White House officials confirming that cryptocurrency will be part of a new examination of global corruption. […]

Over the years, many government agencies have undergone significant digital growth. But while they were “doing digital” and leveraging digital technologies to enhance their capabilities, they still primarily relied on traditional operating models. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded a five-year, $674 million contract to Booz Allen Hamilton to support the growth of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Advana data analytics platform to improve decision making across the organization. […]