The Endless Frontier bill championed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and set for Senate floor debate over the next several days has grown by leaps and bounds this week with the addition of semiconductor manufacturing and cybersecurity components and has even gotten a new name – the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021. […]

Condoleezza Rice, the 66th Secretary of State, and Anja Manuel, former diplomat and advisor on emerging markets, gathered My 19 at Nutanix’s Women in Tech: Economic Value of Diversity in Tech virtual event to offer advice to women in the tech field and encourage them to seize the opportunities available to them. […]

Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., ranking member of the House Government Operations Subcommittee, urged the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in a May 18 letter to bring Federal employees back to their pre-pandemic workplaces quickly, or explain how the Biden administration will deal going forward with the billions of dollars it spends on currently underutilized facilities if Federal employees continue large-scale work from other locations. […]

In a rapidly changing aerial-technology landscape in which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is increasingly overseeing flights of emerging technologies like drones, FAA needs to step up its processes to gather quantitative data on skills gaps in its current workforce, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released May 13. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted on May 13 to approve and send to the House floor for consideration the Chai Suthammanont Remembrance Act (H.R. 978), which was reintroduced by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in February and aims to give Federal workers more information about office-place safety plans. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is extending the implementation deadline on an executive order (EO) issued last year by President Trump that would modernize Federal hiring to place less emphasis on collegiate degrees, according to a May 7 memo. […]

Federal chief data officers (CDOs) agree that in order to move to a data-centric future, Federal agencies need to invest in a data-driven leadership and workforce as the “first step” in their digital modernization journeys. […]

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on April 30 released a draft of a proposed order for the $7.17 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund, which would reimburse schools and libraries for their purchases of devices and broadband connections during the COVID-19 pandemic. […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is kicking off a new initiative with Federal and private partnerships to accelerate research in areas that affect Next-Generation (NextG) networking and computing systems, NSF announced April 27. […]

A bipartisan group of senators has reintroduced the Rural STEM Education Act, which would provide Federal support for STEM training in rural schools and instruct the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide grants to support training for rural STEM teachers. […]

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation advanced a number of bipartisan bills out of committee in an executive session today including four with tech implications. Those bills are a telecommunications workforce bill, one on tech research, one that would map broadband connectivity and maternal health outcomes, and another to protect victims of domestic violence. […]

President Biden’s American Families Plan announced today proposes providing two years of subsidized tuition and expansion of programs in high-demand fields— such as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)— at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs). […]

UniversIT, MeriTalk’s online library of training courses offering 20-minute complimentary education opportunities to IT pros across the spectrum, opens the doors to its newest course, Dive into Data Lakes: Centralized Data Enables Mission Success. […]

President Biden is signing an executive order (EO) today that will establish a task force for worker organizing and facilitate organizing across the country through an all-of-government approach to mobilizing Federal policies, programs, and practices. […]

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) found that Federal employees overwhelmingly support continued telework after the pandemic, and believe that their productivity has increased while teleworking over the past 14 months.  […]

Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas., and Frank Lucas, R-Okla., introduced the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act, which would expand research efforts to better understand the causes and consequences of sexual harassment in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce. […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released COVID-19 testing guidance for Federal workplaces, including multiple testing strategies and information about different forms of testing, a CDC memo says. […]

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) has a created a working group to focus on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, CIGIE announced April 8. […]

With the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) now having gone over four years without a quorum, Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Jody Hice, R-Ga., are urging President Biden to appoint new members or risk the board having to cease operations. […]

Top Federal technology leaders discussed the pressing need to address tech-sector workforce shortages at General Dynamics Information Technology’s Emerge 2021 digital modernization conference on April 6. GDIT President Amy Gilliland and Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat both tackled the issue in keynote addresses and pointed to its importance in both the private and public sectors. […]

The Office and Management and Budget (OMB) wanted to improve how Federal agencies conducted their hiring practice by adding in skills-driven assessments. To convince agencies to make the shift, OMB partnered with the General Services Administration (GSA) to develop a new hiring data dashboard. […]

Focusing on diversity and inclusion in the cybersecurity space is “paramount” to protecting the United States against cyber risks, female cyber leaders said April 6 during the Women Leaders in Cybersecurity Webinar hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) said in a new report that the agency should work to update its emergency response plans to include assumptions regarding the use of telework for essential and non-essential personnel. […]

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on March 31 previewed six “sprints” planned by DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) component throughout 2021 to bolster Federal cybersecurity across a range of areas including ransomware, industrial control system (ICS) security, and workforce development. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has extended Schedule A hiring authority for Federal agencies to hire personnel temporarily to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a March 29 OPM memo. […]

President Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan released by the White House today takes aim at upgrading technology facilities at public K-12 schools and community colleges as part of a broad education investment plan worth more than $100 billion. […]

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) official said today that while the Federal government could require all Federal employees to have a COVID-19 vaccine before returning to offices, it might be counterproductive to do so in a very strict way given the expectation that some of the workforce won’t want to, or be able to, receive the vaccine. […]

The Service to the Citizens: Champions of Change Program is currently accepting nominations for public servants that are worthy of recognition in delivering services that impact the publics’ lives. Those nominated will be recognized during a virtual event help on Sept. 22, 2021. […]

While the structure and details of President Biden’s upcoming infrastructure proposal are still mostly unknown, the President and his team have dropped some possible hints in recent days on items that may touch the infrastructure plan, including a boost in spending on scientific research, and attention toward infrastructure cybersecurity. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report on strengthening the Federal science and technology (S&T) workforce to compete for talent with the private sector and address factors affecting the Federal work environment, and found that the government has been slow in some cases to implement GAO’s previous recommendations that would help boost the S&T workforce. […]