New guidance for the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) will likely include revised performance goals for agencies, revised metrics for energy metering and virtualization, and new metrics for under-utilized servers, availability, and old hardware, said Jake Wooley, IT sustainability program manager at the Department of Energy (DoE), during MeriTalk’s 2018 Data Center Brainstorm. […]

The Department of Energy Office of Inspector General released a report on Oct. 19 that found several weaknesses in the cybersecurity program at DoE in fiscal year 2018, including recurring issues in vulnerability management, patching, and formal cybersecurity training policies.

Department of Energy (DoE) CIO Max Everett said the agency’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) project is helping to align the activities of DoE’s wide range of labs and offices, and that the TMF process has helped DoE learn to prioritize all of its future IT projects around cost efficiency and business case.

The Department of Energy’s new office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) has already begun work to provide support to the nation’s energy grid and critical infrastructure cybersecurity, and the head of the new office appeared in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday to discuss the role of CESER within DoE.

Funding needed for further U.S. research and development of quantum information sciences (QIS) and the computing and other advances that QIS is expected to yield, along with the pressing need to develop a highly skilled workforce to leverage those expected advances, dominated discussion today at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee examining the Department of Energy’s (DoE) efforts in the QIS field.

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., is pressing major electric utility companies for details about whether and when their systems have been penetrated by Russian-affiliated hackers, and at the same time is querying several Federal agencies about what they are doing to help utilities recognize and prevent attempts to break into their networks and control systems.

Various arms of the Federal government are grappling with how to best curb critical infrastructure risk despite uncertainty regarding the best path forward and knowledge barriers surrounding the underlying technology.

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk.

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk.

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk.

Lawmakers hailed a new partnership that will leverage the Department of Energy’s high-performance computing and machine learning capabilities to help analyze the health records of more than 20 million veterans maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Federal agencies are accepting some harsh criticism being doled out in a new report that says many are failing to fully comply with guidelines designed to protect against wasted IT spending.

When Joby Emmons arrived for his first day as general counsel at IdeaScale, he was told: “Your first job at IdeaScale is to get us FedRAMP authorized.”

Despite an air of uncertainty coming from the Trump administration, the Department of Energy’s research arm is forging ahead with what it calls “transformational research,” putting up $100 million to try to ensure that it doesn’t miss a trick when it comes to potentially disruptive energy research.

MeriTalk compiles a weekly roundup of contracts and other industry activity. Here’s what happened this week in the Federal Information Technology community.

The Government Accountability Office found that 62 percent of major information technology software development investments were certified by the agency chief information officer for using adequate incremental development in fiscal year 2017. However, a number of responses for the remaining investments were incorrectly reported due to agency error.

The Department of Energy plans to roll out an enterprise risk management framework that would provide cybersecurity data about the agency in one place and enable better information sharing between departments.
“The enemy isn’t a hacker in the basement,” said Micah Czigan, director of the Integrated Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center for DOE. “The enemy is a world power nation-state.”

Agencies are looking at ways to secure the edge of their systems in order to support a more mobile workforce. “The edge is where the mission happens,” said Max Everett, CIO of the Department of Energy. “We’re in the midst of a transformation. It’s modernization with a plan.”

Incorporating automation into the U.S. electric grid can both improve recovery capabilities in the event of an outage and present new cybersecurity dangers, according to a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report.

The Department of Energy will grant $258 million to six technology companies that are working to create the nation’s first exascale supercomputer.