At MeriTalk’s FITARA Awards ceremony on Wednesday night, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Government Operations Subcommittee, offered his views on what Congress needs to tackle next in Federal IT, and previewed three likely pieces of legislation. […]

MeriTalk has announced the winners of its FITARA Awards for the seventh iteration of the FITARA Scorecard released in December, recognizing seven agencies for their progress in IT modernization. […]

The House voted today to approve a 2.6 percent pay increase for civilian Federal employees. The legislation sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., cleared the House on a vote of 259-161, with all 230 House Democrats being joined by 29 Republicans voting for the measure. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee announced the leadership and membership of its subcommittees on Tuesday, with Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., as chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, which will handle Federal IT oversight duties. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., will service as the subcommittee’s ranking member. […]

MeriTalk today announced the launch of its FITARA Dashboard, a publicly-viewable resource that brings the latest congressional scoring of Federal agency information technology modernization progress into clearer focus, and provides analytical tools to perform detailed comparisons of how 24 major Federal agencies have achieved progress toward their goals over the past three years. […]

Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Steny Hoyer, D-Md., introduced the Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019. The legislation, introduced today, would bring this year’s pay increase for civilian Federal employees in line with the raise given to members of the military. Currently, under President Trump’s pay freeze, civilian employees will see no pay raise, while members of the military received a 2.6 pay increase for the 2018 calendar year. […]

Federal IT oversight will be the domain of the Subcommittee on Government Operations in the House Committee Oversight and Reform, and there will be no IT Subcommittee this session of Congress, said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, during an interview on Tuesday’s episode of Government Matters TV. […]

Democrats in both the House and the Senate have introduced a bill to prohibit landlords and creditors from taking action against employees at Federal agencies impacted by the partial government shutdown. […]

Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., announced today that she will serve on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. […]

As Congressional members celebrate and lament the results of yesterday’s midterm elections, Federal IT leaders face a changed landscape on Capitol Hill, with a new party in charge of the House and close elections for several members key to initiatives like FITARA, Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM), and IT modernization. Here are some of the key races and their results: […]

In recent comments regarding the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), Rep. Will Hurd, R-Tex., said that he is “pretty sure that we have resolved the issue with TMF,” and expects Congress to include the full $150 million in an upcoming minibus funding bill. […]

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. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said today that he introduced legislation – the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Reform Act – which would codify the FedRAMP program in Federal law and address what the congressman said are shortcomings of the program, including the slow pace of implementing standardized practices and realizing efficiencies in the certification process. […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s information technology and government operations subcommittees held a joint hearing Wednesday to key in on the most salient, persistent, and omnipresent issue in Federal agency IT: cybersecurity. On hand to testify were Federal CIO Suzette Kent, and Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, seeking to illuminate congressional inquirers on Federal agency progress to mitigate the wide range of cyber risks. […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) on Tuesday approved two bills that would put procedures in place to swiftly terminate underperforming Federal employees, adding legislative fuel to the fire burning over Federal workforce rights further stoked by President Trump’s recent executive orders. […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) on Tuesday approved by voice vote a bill which would allow Federal agency heads to limit access to certain websites or deploy cybersecurity measures if they feel that it is necessary to secure their IT systems, but not before strong vocal dissent about the scope of the legislation. […]

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. […]

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. […]

Once again, Washington is racing toward a shutdown. In what is becoming practically a monthly political exercise, Republicans and Democrats are unable to come to an agreement on how to fund the government. If a compromise isn’t reached, the shutdown will start Friday, Jan. 19 at 11:59 p.m. […]

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. […]

Since 2001, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has tried three different modernization programs for its healthcare system. So when the department announced another plan to modernize by adopting the same system as the Department of Defense (DoD), the Subcommittee on Information Technology was skeptical and interrogated them in a Dec.7 hearing. […]

Yesterday’s release of the FITARA Scorecard 5.0 did not look promising for Federal agencies. In today’s Oversight and Government Reform IT Subcommittee FITARA hearing, the committee shared their concerns and sought answers from agency officials testifying. […]

A bipartisan group of senators proposed legislation to extend certain provisions in the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. The extension would add two years to agencies’ data center consolidation efforts. The bill is the same as the FITARA Extension amendment that was adopted by the House of Representatives in July. […]

The Government Accountability Office found that of the 24 agencies required to participate in the Data Center Optimization Initiative, 22 said they were making limited progress toward the 2018 performance targets. […]

As Congress approaches its Oct. 1 deadline for funding the Federal government, employees and contractors can stay prepared by knowing what to expect in the event of a shutdown. […]

Congress will likely be putting bipartisan pressure on the White House to fill critical IT positions in Federal agencies and prioritize modernization efforts, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., predicted at the ServiceNow Town Hall. […]

If Federal agencies invest upfront in technologies to track fraud and improper payments, the government could end up saving enough money to pay back some of the national debt or stave off sequestration, according to Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. […]

The House of Representatives adopted Rep. Gerry Connolly’s, D-Va., amendment to extend certain provisions of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. The FITARA Extension amendment continues three provisions that were set to expire over the past couple of years: Federal data center consolidation, transparency and risk management of major IT systems, and IT portfolio, program, and resource reviews. […]

As the needs of Federal employees push agencies to move more and more services to the cloud, join MeriTalk and Government Acquisitions Inc. for the Federal Focus: The Cloud Generation event on July 12 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the best practices and results of Federal cloud migration. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., co-author of FITARA and IT reform advocate, will keynote the lunch session at the event. […]