Following President Trump’s proclamation of November as National Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen released a statement on Wednesday saying she and DHS are “committed to strengthening our efforts to protect and secure the infrastructure on which Americans rely, in close partnership with other Federal agencies, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, and the private sector.” […]
The White House is looking to finalize its new Cloud Smart policy following the release of a draft at the end of September. Agencies and other stakeholders have been given just over a month to express how to make improvements to the new policy. […]
The newest round of Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) awards came after the TMF board reviewed more than 40 proposals from agencies looking to win funds from the program, according to Federal Deputy CIO Margie Graves. […]
The Professional Services Council told Federal CIO Suzette Kent in an Oct. 24 letter in response to the Office of Management and Budget’s request for comments on the 2018 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy that it “supports efforts to build on the 2011 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, the ‘Cloud First’ policy, to help Federal agencies leverage commercial solutions to provide the best services at best value to the American people.” […]
The Trump administration is taking its turn at trying to solve the persistent and increasingly pressing problem of how to make sure there is enough wireless spectrum available to meet the burgeoning demands of the communications industry and the Federal government, in particular the U.S military. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today that the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies is of primary importance to the Federal government, as agencies begin to determine their AI priorities and a picture of government-wide investment begins to form. […]
President Trump said today that the administration would be asking cabinet-level secretaries to cut their budgets. […]
Federal Deputy CIO Margie Graves said today that the forthcoming update to the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Initiative is coming “extraordinarily soon.” With the update, there seems to be an acknowledgment that the former ways of TIC–now over a decade old–will be yielding, including the TIC architecture often seen as expensive and inflexible to cloud technologies. […]
Top Federal officials are pointing to new research from MeriTalk and the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) as evidence that the Trump administration’s Federal government IT modernization efforts are making solid progress. […]
The Federal government is seeing progress in seven out of 10 key cybersecurity metrics that are being tracked quarterly as part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today. […]
The Senate passed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act (CISA Act) on Wednesday by unanimous consent but included some amendments, setting up a few remaining steps before the bill reaches President Trump’s desk. […]
Matt Lira, special assistant to the president for innovation, policy, and initiatives at the White House Office of American Innovation, has a unique visualization exercise to help consider how we should address problems in the Federal IT space. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent called today’s first official test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System a “historic event,” highlighting the test as evidence of the expanding role of mobile technologies and their impact on a broader effort toward digital transformation in the Federal government. […]
President Trump today signed legislation that effectively funds Federal government operations through Dec. 7. […]
As the Federal government shifts its cloud strategy from “Cloud First” to “Cloud Smart,” IT leaders at the Infor Government Forum described how their previous cloud migration efforts have shifted their agencies’ mindsets and brought new successes to their department. […]
House IT Subcommittee Chair Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Ranking Member Robin Kelly, D-Ill., today introduced legislation to reauthorize, rename, codify, and elevate the role of the Federal CIO, a position initially created as part of the E-Government Act of 2002. The bill, called the Federal CIO Authorization Act of 2018, is designed to create a “clearer IT reporting structure within the Administration,” the lawmakers said in a release. […]
President Trump on Tuesday announced the appointment of Victoria Espinel to a four-year term on the White House’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. […]
The Office of Management and Budget today released a draft of its new Cloud Smart strategy, marking the first update to White House guidance on Federal agency cloud adoption since 2011. With the new draft strategy the administration has broadly highlighted three areas–security, procurement, and workforce–as the foundational areas of the strategy and where it feels that updated guidance is most necessary. […]
As the administration makes its push to implement reforms and reorganize government under an audacious plan released on June 21, it’s finding modest success in some areas, but has somewhat faltered on initiatives where it did not cultivate appropriate stakeholder engagement. […]
The National Cyber Strategy policy document released by the White House late Thursday tracks in tone and wording with the tough stance adopted in the Defense Department’s cyber strategy announced earlier this week–including its adoption of a more offensive-minded position than previous written policies–and appears to respond in tone to demands from across the political spectrum that the U.S. fashion policy that will do a better job in creating a deterrence effect against adversaries. […]
The Federal government is continuing its push to update the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative to provide “improved solutions for accessing cloud services while maintaining cybersecurity,” according to the latest progress updates to the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). […]
The Office of Management and Budget recently released its Q3 FY 2018 progress update to the President’s Management Agenda’s cross-agency priority (CAP) goals, and for CAP goal No. 1, IT Modernization, it appears that there has been a notable progression on cloud adoption in the Federal government. […]
The Office of Management and Budget received more than 40 responses to a request for information (RFI) for its planned Government Effectiveness Advanced Research (GEAR) Center, and today a representative from OMB provided more detail about the RFI’s results, the proposed structure of the new center, and where the currently-unspecified amount of “seed funding” for the center would go in order to support various disciplines including Federal IT modernization. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today at an event hosted by the Professional Services Council that the Federal government is currently seeing a “nexus of three critical elements” that provides an unprecedented opportunity for innovation in IT. […]
A significant trickle of Republican House members are joining ranks with Democrats to oppose President Trump’s August 30 declaration that he will freeze Federal civilian pay for calendar-year 2019. […]
A group of eight House Democrats representing districts in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia urged House and Senate leaders in a letter dated today to back an FY2019 pay increase of at least 1.9 percent for Federal workers–the amount included in legislation already approved by the Senate–following President Trump’s declaration last week that he would freeze Federal civilian pay for calendar-year 2019. […]
Today the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation approved, among other measures, a STEM-focused bill and two technology-related nominations. […]
President Trump today announced his intention to freeze Federal civilian pay increases for calendar-year 2019. That plan, contained in a letter to congressional leaders, reflects President Trump’s call for a civilian federal employee wage freeze in his FY19 budget proposal. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to update metrics for Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) reporting, and said that agencies are seeing progress in those metrics, which are being tracked in a newly added category in the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard. […]
Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, today issued new guidance to Federal agencies on shifting employees from low-value work to high-value work, including a focus on IT. […]