Public-private partnerships are at the core of President Obama’s new Commission for Enhancing National Cybersecurity, according to representatives from the Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. […]
The White House launched its “Opportunity Project,” an open-data program that partners with public and private organizations and provides information about access to opportunity in cities across America. The aim: to provide all Americans with access to as many opportunities as possible, regardless of social or financial status. […]
To drive down Federal spending and waste, the Office of Management and Budget has released its official Data Center Policy, designed to streamline the process of reducing the number of Federal data centers. By 2018, 52 percent of Federal data centers will close. […]
The Defense Department launched its Hack the Pentagon pilot program that will leverage commercial crowdsourcing to find trusted cybersecurity professionals to help uncover vulnerabilities in the Pentagon’s public Web pages. […]
President Obama appointed two industry leaders to head his Cybersecurity National Action Plan. Tom Donilon, former National Security Adviser, will serve as the chairman of the committee and Sam Palmisano, former CEO of IBM, will serve as the vice chairman. […]
Alongside the release of the proposed 2017 budget, the White House released its annual Analytical Perspectives of that proposal. MeriTalk spotted five important trends in the IT world and describes how the Federal government plans to address them. […]
The White House is looking to fill the Federal CISO position in the very near future. The posting for the job, which is designed to establish the direction of Federal cybersecurity policy and strategy in accordance with the Federal CIO, closes on Feb. 26. […]
President Obama unveiled plans for addressing Federal cybersecurity issues, including a 35% increase in the cybersecurity budget. But Tom Kellermann, Chief Cybersecurity Officer for Trend Micro, worries that the plan is “completely insufficient” to address the cybersecurity needs of the nation. […]
The White House is threatening to veto HR 1675 if it passes the Senate, after the House of Representatives passed the Small Company Disclosure Simplification Act that would not require most U.S. companies to file machine-readable financial statements. […]
Ashkan Soltani, the former CTO at the Federal Trade Commission who joined the White House in December to advise U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, is stepping down after being denied a security clearance. Soltani played an active role in the Washington Post’s reporting on the National Security Agency surveillance programs leaked to the media by Edward Snowden. […]
In a new report, the Government Accountability Office said some of the definitions provided to Federal agencies for reporting spending data under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 are inadequate, and “could lead to inconsistent reporting.” […]
Shawn Kingsberry, who led the first Federal technology system, Recovery.gov, to the cloud, will head Unisys Corporation’s global government practice division. Kingsberry will provide guidance to Federal clients as they transition from manual and analog processes to digital government techniques. […]
Will the Federal government’s embrace of Silicon Valley actually achieve anything of importance? In a column published in Federal Computer Week, Cisco Systems executives Alan Balutis and Stuart Robbins raise concerns about a government partnership with Silicon Valley that is in danger of producing little more than a few new shiny apps and websites. […]
A MeriTalk survey finds that Federal agencies are in need of an efficiency jump-start, and 78 percent of Feds believe DevOps will help agencies innovate faster responses and services. Legacy systems are slowing agencies down, and new apps just add to the inertia. […]
The Government Accountability Office, in a new report, said the Small Business Administration needs to do more to upgrade IT security. The SBA, which hands out billions in loan guarantees to small businesses, said it has fixed more than 30 recommendations. […]
President Barack Obama is directing the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to deliver a strategy within 90 days that will expedite the deployment of modern technologies that could help keep children, criminals, and the mentally ill away from guns. […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Veteran Affairs are hosting a suicide prevention hackathon and data jam on Dec. 12. Technology nonprofits and other local agencies will collaborate in hosting the free day-long events, which will take place in Boston, Chicago, New York, […]
Just a handful of agencies have accounted for the nearly $2 billion saved by closing Federal data centers through the first five years of the program, according to scorecards distributed by Congress, and that trend is likely to continue. The Treasury Department, Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Commerce Department saved a combined $1.652 […]
The Office of Management and Budget announced a new policy last Friday that effectively bars Federal agencies and departments from buying the laptops or desktops of their choice. In an Oct. 16 memo to all federal agency and department heads, U.S. Chief IInformation Officer Tony Scott and Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Anne Rung […]
The Office of Personnel Management got a wakeup call earlier this year when it discovered millions of files had been hacked, but its nightmare isn’t over yet. The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the theft of 21.5 million security clearance files. OPM is still plugging the holes and millions of Federal workers, their […]
Greg Godbout, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the EPA since April, is bringing a new way of thinking to the Federal IT community. His goal is to create a more agile system and improve everyday processes, serving the customers, not the stakeholders. Formerly the Executive Director and Co-Founder of 18F at the General Services […]
The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) aimed to empower agency CIOs and improve federal IT management. Now comes the hard part: putting those ideas into practice. […]
President Obama last week signed an Executive Order allowing the U.S. to impose sanctions on people and organizations that threaten the U.S. in cyber space, ratcheting up pressure on allies and adversaries alike to police their cyber citizens. […]
DJ Patil is not a turntable icon, spinning electronic dance music. He is the master of another medium – data. And last week he was named the nation’s first Chief Data Scientist. […]
The White House is establishing a new office to fight cyberattacks with the mission to “connect the dots” by infusing intelligence from government agencies and the private sector. […]
Average IT spending growth has been down 1.5 percent since 2010, and Obama’s request is coming in high in hopes of ensuring he gets at least as much in 2016. Look for Congress to appropriate less than the president’s request, but more than the ceiling allowed by the four-year-old budget law. […]
The White House opened its wallet, according to the president’s 2016 federal budget proposal, and IT is the beneficiary. […]
When the New England Patriots face the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX this weekend, the technology packed into the University of Phoenix Stadium will be almost as cool as the game itself. […]
Shortly after the White House set up the new U.S. Digital Service last summer, bringing in Google’s Mikey Dickerson to lead the effort to “build the federal government’s capacity to deliver world-class services to the American people,” the group posted its first product, the Digital Services Playbook. […]