In a recent MeriTV “IT In Depth” episode, Robert Costello, Chief Information Officer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Bill Wright, Splunk’s Director of Public Sector Affairs, said new event logging requirements pose a series of complicated tests for Federal IT managers. The mandates stem from the August 2021 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo M-21-31, which outlines a four-tier system for logging events and describes logs on Federal information systems as “invaluable” in fighting cyber threats. […]

John Roese describes himself as a “technology optimist.” The Dell Technologies Global Chief Technology Officer illustrated that spirit at the MerITocracy American Innovation Forum on July 21, displaying enthusiasm about a U.S. wireless industry that he acknowledged has fallen far behind foreign rivals. […]

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) has appointed former Army Major Gen. Garrett Yee vice president and general manager of the company’s Army sector. […]

As brutal heat waves wash over both the United States and Europe, the Biden administration has launched the Heat.gov website to help Americans and government officials understand the impact and health risks of extreme heat. […]

Barton Phillips, vice president for Public Sector at DocuSign, detailed the Federal government’s relatively slow progress to date in digitizing citizen services – and what agencies need to do to operate seamlessly in the digital landscape – during an address at the MerITocracy American Innovation Forum on July 21. […]

Implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices has been an important task for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and using technology to create a lasting outcome has been key to its Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) that is in charge of implementing DEIA policy that sit at the very top of the Biden administration’s priorities. […]

Federal agencies and their Federal Systems Integrator (FSI) partners are considering how to tap into artificial intelligence (AI) to advance their missions. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence is calling on Federal leaders to double research and development spending on AI, to $32 billion by Fiscal Year 2026. As with any new technology, there is uncertainty on the best way to move from pilot projects in the lab to fully implemented production solutions. […]

The Federal government – galvanized by the Biden Administration’s Cybersecurity Executive Order – has spent a lot of time and money on cybersecurity solutions, but as the digital landscape continues to evolve so does the risk. […]

What are the essential elements of innovation partnerships between government and the private sector to harness the technology that can tackle the toughest problems facing America?  On July 21 – we’re going to find out. The countdown to MerITocracy 2022: American Innovation Forum is on. […]

Today, the government and private sector face similar problems with the daunting amount of cyber data, according to materials presented at GTC Spring 2022. “The volume and velocity of cyber data is extreme,” Rachel Allen, an NVIDIA senior data scientist, said at a GTC session, Transform Cybersecurity with Accelerated Data Science. “It’s estimated that over 90 percent of cyber data today is left on the floor, so to speak, and is never collected or analyzed at all.” […]

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) will provide IT and network support to the U.S. Air Forces (USAF) stationed in Europe under a new $908 million contract, the Defense Department (DoD) announced. […]

Bipartisan members of the House Judiciary Committee and hearing witnesses today agreed that Congress must take action to prevent law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing Americans’ personal data. […]

In today’s edition of Countdown to MerITocracy, Amazon Web Services (AWS) explains the driving forces behind the company’s innovative programs to bring more U.S. military veterans into cybersecurity and IT careers – and swell the ranks of the tech-ready as the Federal government competes for their talents. […]

Eleven of the leading voices in Congress on technology issues have won the inaugural MerITocracy Awards that recognize their meaningful contributions to the cause of innovation in technology and policy. […]

Advances in security technology have forced cyber attackers to turn to the weakest link in the security chain – the human element. With 88 percent of security breaches caused by human error, technology teams across the Federal government are searching for ways to address the human side of cybersecurity to keep networks and systems safe […]

From the earliest days of the internet, bad actors have found ways to breach security protocols to disrupt operations, steal sensitive information, and even extort money through ransomware attacks. Cyber attackers have always looked for the path of least resistance when launching an attack. Before there were strong network protocols, they would attack the network […]

At GTC Spring 2022, Bartley Richardson, an NVIDIA senior artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure manager, said that data is coming in so fast that most cybersecurity applications are unable to capture it all, much less analyze it to identify breaches. As a result, he said, contextualizing the streams of information “is often done by a human.” […]

Neeraj Saraf has been tapped as the new director of information technology operations at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) according to his LinkedIn profile. […]

The City of New Orleans has a long-standing history with natural disasters as a coastal city, and recovering data and protecting critical IT infrastructure has become an easier task with ActiveDR from Pure Storage, a city official said. […]

As Federal agencies work to mature zero trust environments and stay ahead of the next big threat, fusing AI with more traditional cybersecurity strategies may be key for progress. During a May webinar, two NVIDIA computing experts explained how the company has transformed itself in recent years into a full-stack firm, with a range of high-performance software applications. […]

Federal government agencies’ customer experience scores hung fairly steady in Forrester Research’s US Customer Experience Index Rankings 2022 report issued last month, even as rankings for some business sectors declined. […]

A cyberattack on IT services provider Geographic Solutions, Inc. (GSI) has disrupted the provision of unemployment and workforce benefits for thousands of people in several states and Washington, D.C. […]

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has awarded QuSecure a Phase III contract, making the company the sole-source provider of post-quantum cryptography for Federal agencies. […]

Can technology innovation – coupled with the boldest kind of leadership – work together to start fixing the most intractable problems facing America? On July 21 – we’re going to find out. The countdown to MerITocracy 2022: American Innovation Forum is on. […]

Google Cloud said today it is creating a new division – Google Public Sector – that will focus on U.S. public sector institutions. […]

In the lead-up to the July 21 forum, we are table-setting a host of big issues that will get serious attention at MerITocracy 2022. The overarching question we are asking is this: can technology innovation – coupled with the boldest kind of leadership – work together to start fixing the most intractable problems facing America? […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded BWX Technologies a $300 million contract to build the prototype for the first mobile nuclear microreactor built in the United States, titled Project Pele, the company announced June 9. […]

At the onset of the pandemic, Federal, state, and local government agencies across the country needed to rapidly reach disparate populations with information about COVID-19, testing, and vaccines – and swiftly gather and assess pandemic data across multiple agencies and populations. To help address these new and unique challenges, the Federal government turned to Maximus, which has designed, developed, and delivered impactful health and human service programs for more than 40 years. MeriTalk sat down with Lisa Slaughter, senior vice president at Maximus Federal Services, to take stock of how agencies utilized data and technology throughout the pandemic response and how lessons learned are informing new efforts to share and leverage data to improve public health. […]

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on science and tech policy, has opened a new policy center focused on industrial strategy policy, the Hamilton Center on Industrial Strategy. […]

Teresa Carlson, who left Microsoft in 2010 to found Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector operation and later serve as president and chief growth officer at Splunk, confirmed today that she rejoined Microsoft late last month as corporate vice president and Executive-in-Residence. […]