Product managers at the U.S. Digital Service said that policy and operations teams should work together at Federal agencies to ensure that new technologies affect users in the way that policies intend. Natalie Kates, product manager at USDS, is working with Health and Human Service’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on building the Quality Payment Program website. […]
The White House Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum for agencies to submit their Federal Information Security Modernization Act reports to the Government Accountability Office by March 1, 2018. […]
President Donald Trump issued a memorandum on Oct. 5 that requires Federal agencies to set up an information sharing network to correspond about threats to national security. […]
Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, called for the administration to nominate more permanent agency chief information officers. “I’m worried that we don’t want to stall some of the progress that we’ve achieved over the last couple of years,” Hurd said. […]
President Donald Trump declared October 2017 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The announcement follows the Equifax breach in September, which affected about 143 million U.S. consumers. Trump signed a Cybersecurity Executive Order in May in an effort to strengthen Federal cybersecurity and hold agency heads accountable for security issues. […]
As Federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget work to develop reorganization plans as part of a March executive order, Congress needs to improve its oversight of those agencies, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp D-N.D., said at a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing. […]
Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said that he expects his Modernizing Government Technology Act to pass the Senate within the next week as an add-on to the Senate’s 2018 National Defense Authorization Act deliberations. “Buying IT goods and services in the Federal government is pretty silly,” said Hurd, criticizing the fact that agencies must use all of their IT funding for the year or risk losing it. “That is an insane way to purchase things to defend our digital infrastructure,” […]
The Federal government is working on improving its inter-agency information sharing process during cyber threats, but Greg Touhill, former Federal CISO, said that information sharing is useless if recipients of the information don’t act on it. “You can share all day long but if people aren’t listening and they aren’t acting on it, bad things are going to happen,” Touhill, president of Cyxtera Federal Group, said at the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference on Sept. 12. […]
Former Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Tony Scott has joined the law firm Squire Patton Boggs as a senior data privacy and cybersecurity adviser, the firm announced. […]
Though new initiatives like the Cybersecurity Executive Order cover many of the same issues tackled by past administrations, the focus on IT modernization will make a big difference in actually improving cybersecurity, according to Barry West, senior adviser and senior accountable official for risk management at the Department of Homeland Security. […]
As Congress approaches its Oct. 1 deadline for funding the Federal government, employees and contractors can stay prepared by knowing what to expect in the event of a shutdown. […]
The White House American Technology Council IT modernization report, released Aug. 30, emphasizes the need for updated IT infrastructure and shared services. The ATC said that the Federal government should invest in two to three cloud platforms to support all of the agencies. […]
The United States Digital Service turned 3 years old earlier this month and highlighted this year’s major projects, including modernizing the Veterans Affairs website, launching Code.mil, and starting the #Procuremenati. […]
A draft of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) Cyber Working Group report on securing the nation’s critical infrastructure has found that while the U.S. has the capabilities to defend against cyber attacks, it lacks the coordination to do so effectively. […]
President Donald Trump announced on Aug. 18 that he directed United States Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) to be elevated to full combatant command. […]
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to White House Counsel Don McGahn asking for the Trump administration’s rationale in publishing the emails sent by many citizens to critique the President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, many of which contained sensitive personal information. […]
Congress will likely be putting bipartisan pressure on the White House to fill critical IT positions in Federal agencies and prioritize modernization efforts, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., predicted at the ServiceNow Town Hall. […]
Federal agencies are working on ideas to reorganize and streamline, as requested by the Office of Management and Budget and President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on a Comprehensive Plan to Reorganize the Executive Branch.
“Many manual processes remain, especially when it comes to processes that cut across multiple departments. Initiating a cross-cutting, agencywide approach to service delivery is necessary but challenging, especially when we look at holistic service delivery that marshals the data stored in legacy systems,” said Bob Osborn, chief technology officer for ServiceNow Federal.
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The United States Digital Service released its July report to Congress, detailing projects including streamlining Veterans Affairs services, modernizing the immigration system, Hack the Pentagon, and IT acquisition training. […]
The government is counting on education, financial incentives, and minority outreach to help expand the cybersecurity workforce. The Office of Personnel Management created a Strategic Recruitment for Cybersecurity Model to complement the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Strategy, which was released last year, and plans to release the details of the model on July 25. […]
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released a report on ways to support innovation in the Federal government, including establishing a chief innovation officer (CINO), even though the White House still hasn’t nominated a chief information officer. […]
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) challenged the White House in Federal court on President Donald Trump’s voting commission’s request for voter data from 50 states and the District of Columbia. […]
The United States Digital Service is creating an application called Caseflow, which will create a more efficient process for managing veterans’ appeals. However, before the team was able to make daily updates, an elusive bug prevented them from performing rolling deployments into the Amazon Web Services AutoScaling group. […]
Some states refused to turn over voter data to the White House on June 30, saying that the data requested contains sensitive information and could be used for political purposes. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May that established the Commission on Election Integrity, which investigates instances of potential voter fraud. The commission asked the states to turn over all publicly available voter data. […]
The White House invited technology leaders to a summit last week to discuss eliminating policies that provide obstacles to modernizing the Federal government. On the table: tax reform, the implications of a new tax plan on the technology sector, and the H-1B visa program. […]
Government agencies shouldn’t give up on developing agile models of procurement despite setbacks, according to Eric Hysen, former United States Digital Service official. […]
The Federal government needs to set standards for cybersecurity and hold the proper people accountable, technology executives that gathered at the White House on June 19 told Rob Joyce, cyber coordinator for the White House. […]
Despite disagreements about climate policy and immigration, the White House still managed to scrape together 18 technology executives who want to have a voice in the administration. Jared Kushner, head of the White House Office of American Innovation, said, “Many warned me bureaucracy would resist any change we tried to implement. So far I’ve found exactly the opposite. The goal is simple here, to improve the day-to-day lives of average citizens. That’s a core promise and we are keeping it.” […]
Eighteen technology company CEOs are expected to attend the White House Tech Summit on June 19 to talk about modernizing the government’s tech infrastructure and keeping its computers safe from cyberattacks. The technology leaders could benefit if the government moves to modernize with the help of their hardware, software, and cloud-computing services. […]
Much of the government has a fear of taking technological risks, and it is the role of digital services teams to snap agency leadership out of that way of thinking, according to Digital Services panelists at the AWS Public Sector Summit on June 13. […]