Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said today that his agency has not identified any threat that could change vote tallies in next month’s elections, but did say citizens should expect that the final results of all elections may not be clear by the conclusion of election night, November 3. […]

The White House issued an executive order on October 5 directing several Federal agencies to create a Coronavirus Mental Health Working Group. The group is charged with mounting an “all of government” response to “mental-health conditions induced or exacerbated” the coronavirus pandemic, including issues related to suicide prevention. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) is looking for information and cost estimates on a technical solution that can help manage, route, and resolve inquiries from Federal agencies and the public. […]

Tasked with distributing stimulus checks during the pandemic, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been hobbled by decades of insufficient funding and legacy IT causing agencywide inefficiencies at a time when Americans rely heavily on the agency’s services. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., an official from the Government Accountability Office, and the IRS commissioner all agreed today that sustained modernization funding is necessary to bring the agency up to date and meet mission critical objectives. […]

Officials from the Department of Labor and the Army Corps of Engineers reported this week that their organizations are continuing to make progress on IT modernization despite hurdles created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and are approaching modernization with data as the centerpiece. […]

A new report from the Partnership for Public Service and Accenture finds that while the Federal government has made progress over the past year in improving customer experience and addressing customer feedback, the Feds still have a ways to go in meeting customer needs. […]

The most consequential presidential election in a generation is just four weeks away, and it’s time for the government technology community to stand up and be counted. […]

As more Federal agencies prioritize migration to the cloud, especially during this era of telework, it is essential to maintain consistency between data centers and provide the workforce with proper cybersecurity tools and strategies. […]

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning on Oct. 2 to help the public recognize and avoid spoofed election-related internet domains and email accounts during the 2020 election year. […]

The FBI’s Boston Division has issued guidance to help the general public guard against foreign influence and disinformation campaigns in advance of the 2020 election. […]

Department of Agriculture (USDA) CIO Gary Washington is crediting the agency’s modernization efforts for smooth service delivery and mass telework during the COVID-19 pandemic, but he’s also saying that the agency isn’t slowing down its transformation efforts as it looks toward a post-pandemic future. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said today that the $1 billion funding increase for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) included in the slimmed down HEROES Act pandemic relief legislation is probably not big enough to spur Federal agencies to undertake widespread IT modernization, but agreed that winning approval for the huge funding increase would be a good first step. […]

To harness the power of data science across the Federal government, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat said that agencies are launching a new subject matter expert hiring initiative alongside the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) data science reskilling program. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a new rule that will expand its insider threat program to cover “the categories of individuals to all individuals who have or had access to the Department’s facilities, information, equipment, networks, or systems.” […]

Lt. Gen. Michael Groen officially took the reins of the Defense Department’s  Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) on October 1.  He succeeds JAIC’s first director, Lt. Gen Jack Shanahan, who retired earlier this year after serving as director since the agency began operations in December 2018. […]

For more than two years, Department of Defense (DoD) fourth estate agencies have undertaken the challenging task of migrating more than 100 data centers to milCloud 2.0. With the Fiscal Year 2020 deadline for that migration having passed on September 30, DoD agencies are focused on making sure their migration to milCloud 2.0 is driving toward outcomes that matter. […]

At the start of COVID-19, Federal IT leaders not only had to enable Federal telework overnight, but also accelerate their modernization efforts to minimize disruptions, deliver access to needed applications and data, and at the same time increase network and data security. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is suggesting that the U.S. Army improve its use of alternative agreements and approaches for contracts – such as technology competitions and granting access to Army labs – by analyzing how those approaches are working and sharing lessons learned enterprise-wide. […]

The Treasury Department is asking organizations not to pay off malicious actors to terminate ransomware attacks without carefully considering possible national security threats – and said it may implement penalties for organizations that choose to pay ransom to their attackers. […]

New bipartisan legislation is aimed at addressing transparency issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers (VAMC). […]

The increased shift to telework seems like it is here to stay as employers work to slow the spread of COVID-19 several months into the pandemic, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released new telework tips for leaders, IT professionals, and teleworkers to keep the remote environment secure. […]

It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and a good time to talk about how Federal agencies need to make network security a top priority. MeriTalk recently sat down with Jim Carnes of Ciena, and Zain Ahmed of Lumen Technologies, to discuss the importance of Federal government cybersecurity efforts – and take a deeper dive into the importance of a connected network, how partnerships garner the best results, and what to keep in mind while improving security efforts. […]

On Sept. 30, the House of Representatives approved by voice vote, the Chai Suthammanont Remembrance Act, which is legislation that aims to protect Federal employees from COVID-19. […]

Weeks after the Department of Defense (DoD) asked industry for information regarding how the department could “own and operate 5G networks for domestic operations,” several top Republican senators sent a letter to the White House this week urging the President to “remain on the free-market path” in the 5G wireless race. […]

The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is crowdsourcing for answers on how to apply differential privacy solutions to complex data sets regarding public safety, and is dangling $276,000 in cash prizes to jumpstart the effort. […]

Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier became the 22nd director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) this week after the retirement of Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr., and a change of command and retirement ceremony on Oct. 1 with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley presiding. […]

The Federal CIO Council’s Federal Investment Management Community of Practice and ACT-IAC’s IT Management and Modernization Community of Interest have released an IT spending transparency maturity model in line with the Federal Data Strategy action plan and Technology Business Management (TBM) implementation. […]

The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today issued a new draft paper to help organizations address ransomware and other data integrity events. […]

The House on Sept. 30 approved the Modernization Centers of Excellence Program Act, a bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that would require the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services group to establish a Modernization Centers of Excellence (CoE) “to facilitate the adoption of modern technology by executive agencies.” […]

The bias and ethics of artificial intelligence application are still being worked out on a case-by-case basis, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) IT Lab Chief of Staff Elham Tabassi said yesterday that an assessment process to minimize harm is not necessarily in the near future. […]