A Federal appeals court gave the Trump administration the green light today to fire thousands of Federal probationary workers by overturning a lower court’s order that had required them to be reinstated.  […]

Lt. Gen. William Hartman has been named acting director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and acting commander of U.S. Cyber Command following the Trump administration’s removal of Gen. Timothy Haugh from leadership of both organizations. […]

President Donald Trump on March 24 announced nominees to lead the Department of Defense’s (DoD) cyber and technology efforts, according to nomination notices posted on Congress.gov. […]

House Oversight and Reform Committee Democrats are looking to find out more about top White House advisor Elon Musk and his potential conflicts of interest while guiding the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) actions to root out what the Trump administration has called widespread government waste and corruption.  […]

Witnesses at a House Science, Space, and Technology subcommittee hearing today urged the next NASA administrator to prioritize restructuring the Artemis program to ensure its success and long-term sustainability. […]

A Federal judge on Friday heard arguments about whether to further block the Trump administration from freezing trillions of dollars in Federal grant and loan programs.  […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) is set to cut about 5,400 probationary civilian workers starting this week and impose a hiring freeze as the Trump administration continues to carry out massive headcount cuts across the Federal government. […]

Although the exact number of Federal employees who have been – or will be – affected by widespread layoffs instituted the Trump administration is not immediately clear, recent reports suggest the current number of cuts tops 12,000. […]

The Trump administration is continuing to battle in court to preserve its Federal grant and loan funding freeze, requesting that a U.S. appeals court stay pending appeal a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by a Federal district court that halted the freeze effort last week.   […]

The Trump administration is instructing Federal government agencies to remove the designation of “career reserved” roles for agency chief information officers (CIOs) – a move that the administration says recognizes that agency tech chiefs have “policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics.”  […]

The National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), which advises the president and the White House on the National AI Initiative, approved a draft report this week with 10 focus areas for President Trump to pursue during his second term. […]

Major Federal agencies appear to be taking a go-slow approach to making decisions both major and minor while the new Trump administration and its leadership ranks for agencies take time to settle in. […]

President Trump kicked of his second term with an executive order issued late Monday that makes his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – at least temporarily – an agency of the executive branch and rebrands the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) as the U.S. DOGE Service on order to help DOGE focus on modernizing Federal technology to improve efficiency and productivity. […]

The Trump-Vance transition team signed a key memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Biden-Harris White House on Tuesday to ease the transition between the two administrations.   […]

A top Biden administration cybersecurity official laid out her wish list today for how the incoming Trump-Vance administration should prioritize cybersecurity challenges and regulations. […]

The Federal government is curtailing its “surge” response to the SolarWinds Orion and Microsoft Exchange hacks after seeing improvements in patching that have helped to remediate the impacts of the cyber attacks, the Biden administration said today. […]

The Biden administration has suspended for 90 days a May 2020 Trump administration executive order that placed restrictions on the use of equipment made by “foreign adversaries” in the United States bulk-power system. […]

General Services Administration (GSA) chief Emily Murphy has asked for the resignations of all agency political appointees in order to demonstrate GSA’s “commitment to a peaceful transition of power” to the incoming Biden administration following the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol complex by a mob supportive of President Trump. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a Dec. 23 update to its budget guidance to Federal agencies that removes a section that required agencies to evaluate the performance of their programs as part of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). […]

New legislation being prepared by House leaders will aim to track the promulgation of any “midnight” regulations by the outgoing Trump administration with an eye to amending or eliminating any eleventh-hour rules that are not based on “evidence and research.” […]

The White House launched a new online portal–AI.gov–today to outline the Trump administration’s national artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives in a consolidated website. […]

In response to the Trump administration’s American AI Initiative, Intel released its recommendations for a national strategy for artificial intelligence that hashes out the goals and actions needed to advance the AI industry. […]

A bipartisan group of senators urged Trump administration officials in a letter dated today to ban the use of inverter equipment made by China-based Huawei from the U.S. electric grid, citing the same cybersecurity concerns that led Congress to block Huawei network equipment from the U.S. market because of firm’s alleged links to Chinese intelligence services. […]

On Thursday, the U.S. government released its Fourth U.S. Action Plan for Open Government that will work to making Federal government data more accessible, ensuring the grant-making process is more accountable, and Federally funded scientific research is more accessible. […]

Yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released the Trump Administrations 2018 S&T Highlights report. […]

Underneath its more headline-grabbing aspects such as the proposed merger of the Departments of Labor and Education, the Trump administration’s Federal agency reorganization proposal issued on June 21 marks another step in the wider push toward greater Federal government IT modernization, a former Department of Commerce (DoC) official told MeriTalk. […]

While the White House’s proposal to reorganize the functions of many Federal agencies made the biggest headlines today with major steps like the proposed merger of the Departments of Education and Labor, the lengthy proposal document released today also touches on a host of other significant issues including the Federal cybersecurity workforce, delivery of government services to citizens, and handling of background checks for Federal Employees. […]

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. […]

The White House said on Thursday that it will create a new artificial intelligence (AI) advisory committee–dubbed the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence–that will advise the White House on AI research and development efforts in government and industry. […]

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross emphasized on Tuesday that the Trump administration is prioritizing deployment of 5G wireless technology even as major service providers are restructuring their operations in pursuit of similar goals. […]