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). […]
It’s not exactly the heist of the century, but the FDIC has stirred up a bit of controversy. Departing FDIC employees downloaded their family photos, personal emails, and the sensitive data of over 100,000 bank customers–oops. Instead of reporting to Congress, the agency stayed mum for months. This earned the agency a strict chiding from their IG in the form of a special inquiry issued on April 16. Fa […]
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. […]
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has released new guidance to help cloud service providers (CSP) better delineate the authority and responsibility shared between providers and government agencies. […]
Out with the old, in with the new–that was the message from Windsor this weekend as the Meghan-Harry union shattered outdated norms. […]
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. […]
User-centered, citizen-based design must be at the heart of government technology initiatives in the next decade, and diversity at the decision-making table must inform the outcome of those efforts, said Federal CIO Suzette Kent. […]
In the first nine months of 2017, 79,637 Federal employees either quit or retired, Politico reported. Compare that number to 56,036 who left the government during the first nine months of the previous administration in 2009 and that’s almost a 50 percent spike. […]
A gathering of crows is called a murder. A bunch of kangaroos is called a mob. And a gathering of IGs is–no, not a nuisance–it’s called CIGIE–the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. And, CIGIE’s annual Top Management and Performance Challenges–TPMC report–boiled down IG reports from 61 different agencies–and leads with IT and security management issues across the government. […]
Eyes tend to glaze over at an Appropriations hearing. Seems Congress just pushed through the 2018 Omnibus spending bill, and the House is already back talking budgets for FY19. […]
Federal agencies deliver on a wide breadth of missions–from protecting the environment to promoting job creation and economic growth to keeping citizens safe. Regardless of their mission, agencies share similar “behind-the-scenes” needs. They all need to pay employees, acquire goods and services, and manage their budgets. […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s marathon Congressional sessions in front of both the House and Senate have produced countless talking points and incendiary sound bites. […]
The world over, folks ask the same two questions every day–what’s for dinner, and what’s the weather forecast? In the government IT space, every day we’re all asking about the cloud forecast. A recent report from P&S Market Research provides new insights on the global government’s cloud appetites. […]
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. […]
Google announced that Google Cloud Platform (GCP)–and Google’s underlying common infrastructure–have received the FedRAMP Rev. 4 Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO) at the Moderate Impact level from the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board (JAB). The certification covers data centers in numerous countries, so customers can take advantage of cloud services in multiple regions. […]
Opening day for the Nationals might be a week away, but four Beltway insiders have already knocked one out of the park. The latest omnibus spending bill, which passed through the Senate early Friday morning, includes $100 million for the MGT Act’s centralized revolving capital fund. President Trump signed the MGT Act into law late last year as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. […]
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. […]
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. […]
With compliance deadlines looming for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), FedRAMP is ramping up its requirements for the monitoring of cloud systems. […]
Reports like December’s White House IT Modernization Report sometimes seem like they impose requirements on agencies from above. Speaking at the ServiceNow Federal Forum in February, Danielle Metz, a policy advisor at DoD Office of Science and Tech Policy and contributor to the Modernization Report, gave us a look inside the kitchen to see how these reports come together. […]
TalaTek, a risk management company, announced on Feb. 26 that it received a FedRAMP ATO from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) for its Enterprise Compliance Management Solution (ECMS). This cloud-based SaaS allows PBGC to centralize security statistics in real time and see whether it complies with a variety of security frameworks, including NIST security frameworks. […]