The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) secretary outlined how it will use its proposed budget to improve veteran healthcare and modernize its largely outdated information technology (IT) systems at a hearing today before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies. […]

Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T) has pioneered a graduate school program that emphasizes data science, cyber-physical, and cybersecurity research – particularly on the front of cloud computing – to a degree that has earned it Federal recognition. […]

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) believes that the agency violated the Federal Records Act when it destroyed an employee’s notes that document a security report of EPA’s cloud service provider. […]

A new analysis from Apptio, a maker of technology business management (TBM) software as a service applications, finds that Federal agencies were on average spending less than two percent of their IT budgets on cloud services in fiscal year 2018, lagging far behind a reported spend rate for the private sector. […]

The question of the best way for transitioning to cloud infrastructures is a big one for Federal agencies. One approach to solve this issue is a slow, measured migration. Another approach is a more dramatic transformation in a shorter period that might be painful, but allows agencies to reap the benefits of cloud migration much sooner. The best approach for agencies to successfully transition depends on the agency itself, its mission, and what officials are looking to achieve. […]

Controlling cloud costs in today’s hybrid and multi-cloud environments can be a challenge for many Federal technology managers after a migration or cloud-native application deployment. There are so many variables to consider, from operational to contracts and licensing issues, that if the process is not well managed costs can spiral out of control. […]

The General Services Administration announced Thursday that they are adding a category for cloud-oriented IT professional services to IT Schedule 70 under the Cloud Special Item Number (SIN), as well as draft updates for existing software SINs. […]

The U.S. cloud computing economy tripled in size from 2002 to 2017, and added $214 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2017, according to an Internet Association (IA) report released Tuesday. […]

The move by government organizations to public cloud infrastructure is often motivated by a desire to provide better services to citizens, but an academic piece warns about the need to maintain public access to open data in the cloud. […]

As Federal technology managers increasingly operate in a hybrid, multi-cloud world, having a holistic view of their agency’s application landscape and architecture will help in mapping the right workload to the right type of cloud deployment. […]

Defense Department (DoD) officials voiced sometimes conflicting ideas today about how the agency should migrate legacy systems to the cloud. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a request for information (RFI) on Tuesday asking for support in moving systems to the cloud, optimizing its remaining enterprise data center, and gathering comment on the department’s plan. The deadline to respond is March 20. […]

The Department of Defense’s recently released Cloud Strategy covers a lot of territory, from an emphasis on the multibillion dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative as a foundation of its plans, to its description of seven strategic objectives it wants to achieve in the cloud. One of those objectives is to extend tactical support to warfighters at the network edge to give units in the field the technology and tactical information they need to operate in a battlefield where seamless communications are essential and where cyber operations and electronic warfare are an increasingly important factor. […]

Discussions this morning with a Federal agency IT professional and an IT acquisition professional revealed very different views of the Federal government’s security posture.

Shared on the condition of no attribution during an AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association) Bethesda event Tuesday morning, the speakers’ varying opinions showed how the balance between security and effectiveness is an issue still up for debate. […]

The Defense Department’s newly published cloud strategy leans heavily on several core concepts including maximizing competition among cloud service providers, sticking to a single cloud strategy, leveraging commercial-sector best practices, creating a culture for better technology evolution, and above all else supporting warfighters and increasing their lethality. […]

Data can travel around the world in a blink of an eye and show up on practically any device, be it a networked PC, a phone, or some other mobile component. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is requesting information for market research as it relates to testing software; infrastructure, environments, and operations of the Enterprise Testing Service (ETS) and ETS cloud; and continuous quality process management support. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a $9.9 million contract to establish and manage a new cloud platform for the agency’s mobile applications to Booz Allen Hamilton. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to issue a draft request by the end of January to solicit information on a purchase agreement to develop a cloud computing service called Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) to update the Department of Defense’s (DoD) legacy information technology applications. […]

MeriTalk recently connected with Ted Girard, Vice President Public Sector, Okta, on how agencies can get the most out of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program to navigate on-premise, cloud, and mobile security. MeriTalk:  How does CDM align with the transition from legacy systems to the cloud? Ted Girard:  While the initial CDM phases […]

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that the mobile version of its Microsoft Outlook platform would be available to all Federal customers after updates to its platform met high-level compliance standards with the Department of Defense (DoD). […]

The Marine Corps Systems Command sent out a request for information on January 7, looking for help in migrating applications from on-prem to commercial cloud environments. Responses are due by January 23. […]

The United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) released a request for information yesterday for IT support services for the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC), with a focus on shifting to cloud. Responses are due by January 24. […]

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point will upgrade its email services to a cloud-based model, which the academy said will help facilitate projects and information sharing anywhere, rather than restricting email service to network-capable devices. […]

According to a new study conducted by cloud data-analytics platform Sumo Logic, multi-cloud adoption and deployments have doubled, while DevSecOps continue to grow. […]

Pentagon officials are certain that two of the biggest keys to the future of national security are two technologies that, for different reasons, are shrouded in a bit of uncertainty: artificial intelligence and cloud computing. […]

An updated cross-agency priority (CAP) Goal Action plan was released yesterday, designed to modernize technology to increase productivity and security, reduce costs, and establish a modern IT workforce. […]

A new study by Accenture finds that most Federal IT executives see themselves as supporting players, rather than prime movers, in technology modernization. […]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud modernization were the main topics of discussion at the Get Cloud Smart: The Art of the Possible event hosted by MeriTalk on December 13. […]