The House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) IT subcommittee followed up last week’s release of the sixth FITARA Scorecard (Scorecard 6.0) by releasing a second, more detailed scorecard. It provides insight into each of the categories of FITARA scoring, with methodology, metrics, calculations, and detailed data points on just how well each of the 24 agencies fared.  […]

IT modernization in the Federal government will require collaboration, effective policies, and a focus on the true end-goal: improving the government experience for citizens, said agency CIOs and industry leaders at a May 23 FedInsider webinar on IT modernization. […]

Recent government alignment between Congress and President Trump to promote the authorities of agency chief information officers is necessary to respond to increasingly heavy demands on the CIO position, said Matt Lira, special assistant to the President for innovation, policy, and initiatives at the White House Office of American Innovation (OAI). […]

At Wednesday’s hearing on the FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) 6.0 Scorecard, both the agency designated as a guiding light in government-wide IT innovation and the agency singled out for its obfuscation and claimed exemptions on many of the reform act’s initiatives were met with stern questioning from a joint subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. […]

Two lawmakers and a government leader central to Federal agency IT modernization efforts said Wednesday that the means to improve substandard FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) scorecard grades are readily available and simple to achieve for many government agencies. […]

Following is a re-print of our Feb. 12 interview with Dave Powner, director of IT issues at the Government Accountability Office, and leader of the team that produces the FITARA scorecard–the subject of his testimony on the Hill today. […]

Several industry experts told MeriTalk in the run-up to the release of the latest FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Federal agency scorecards that expected funding flows from the Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGT Act) may go a long way toward helping agencies boost their scores. […]

The first FITARA scorecard (Scorecard 6.0) of 2018 is out, adding a new category to track Federal agency progress on the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act. […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee’s new FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) scorecard that rates Federal agency performance under the law gave 11 agencies lower grades since they were last measured in November 2017. […]

Out with the old, in with the new–that was the message from Windsor this weekend as the Meghan-Harry union shattered outdated norms. […]

It’s only traditional for heroes to ride off into the sunset–and, appropriate that the sun sets in the West. Dr. Barry West, senior advisor and senior accountable official for risk management at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced plans to hang up his government IT spurs the end of this month. […]

The Federal government has a massive data center footprint: 6.76 million square feet, to be precise. Of its total portfolio, an astonishing 62 percent of all floor center space goes unused. To add insult to injury, it’s extremely expensive to maintain all that unused space. […]

Improving user experience on Federal websites so that they rival leading private sector sites requires a better allocation of government resources rather than significant new cash outlays, said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., during a press gathering at Adobe’s Digital Government Symposium in Washington on Tuesday. […]

The timing for the White House to release its new IT EO is–timely. […]

Federal government officials and a member of Congress influential in government IT spending debates said late last month that billions of additional savings look to be ripe for the picking through elimination of duplicative services, and that Congress is working on ways to beef up the pursuit of those savings. […]

A Federal CISO handbook is due out soon from the CISO Council, said Jeff Wagner, Acting Chief Information Security Officer at the Office of Personnel Management. The new guidance aims to cut down on technical language barriers and standardize compliance formatting across the Federal enterprise. […]

The Navy’s IT operations have a new sheriff, in the form of a chief management officer whose arrival makes the high-profile Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer a thing of the past. […]

Jay Huie, Cloud Portfolio Director for GSA’s Technology Transformation Service (TTS)–which includes FedRAMP–sat down with MeriTalk last week. He offered insights on his role at GSA, FedRAMP, and the perspective on the road ahead for cloud adoption, FITARA, and MGT. […]

It’s an old axiom: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” And nowhere is that axiom truer these days than with Federal IT investments. Federal executives need to better understand, manage, and show value from money spent on IT resources. […]

When the first Federal IT Acquisitions Reform Act (FITARA) scorecards were dished out in November 2015, agencies and industry alike praised government’s glowing commitment to overhauling a moribund Federal IT landscape. Looking back over the scorecards, FITARA has clearly added new transparency and accountability–and the scorecard has evolved over time. But, the FITARA 5.0 reports in late 2017 showed agencies are regressing. With the passage of the MGT Act, now seems like a good time to further evolve the FITARA scorecard. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been working in unison with the Office of Management and Budget to assess the risk management posture of the Federal government. They’ve been using a combination of agency self-reporting and independent verification to evaluate each agency’s mitigation techniques as well as the nation’s overall security standing. DHS’ latest […]

The House subcommittees on Information Technology and Government Operations held a “State of Play” Federal IT Hearing Wednesday for the latest updates on ongoing modernization efforts, and the tone was resolute and unflinching. […]

Even with the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) deadlines pushed out to 2020, Federal agencies face significant pressure to expedite cloud migrations and consolidate their compute environments in a secure and cost-effective manner. Now, with the passage of the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, agencies may need to demonstrate significant progress in this area to justify their MGT Act budget requests. […]

Acronyms abound with a seemingly endless stream of Federal IT regulations and guidelines related to cloud and cyber security. Trying to make sense of the madness? On March 8, at “Cyber Convergence: Security, the Cloud and Your Data,” Federal visionaries will crack the code on some of the most critical developments in government’s IT agenda – from cloud-based application security to MGT, FITARA, and more. […]

Federal CIOs and industry execs gathered on the Hill Thursday evening to celebrate the passage of the Modernizing Government Technology–MGT–Act and map the path ahead. Judging by the standing-room-only crowd, seems government, industry, and the Hill are betting big on the legacy IT euthanasia program to break Federal IT’s failing status quo. […]

In an interview with MeriTalk’s Steve O’Keeffe, Powner shares more on his role at the GAO and the direction he thinks Federal IT needs to take in the New Year.  […]

Agencies undergoing digital transformation are combining on-premise, hybrid, and multiple cloud solutions into their environments. To that end, agencies need to weave cloud security and protection of on-premise systems into their broader security strategy for a true, defense-in-depth approach. […]

As you open your fortune cookie–you might ask, will 2018 be the year of widespread deployment of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools across Federal data centers? […]

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. […]

The MGT Act became the law of the land on Dec. 21, when President Trump signed it into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This is the much-vaunted revolving capital fund–cut out of the original FITARA bill in committee–that establishes a central bucket of money at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), for Feds to modernize legacy IT systems. […]