Just days after its reintroduction in the House, Rep. Will Hurd’s, R-Texas, Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act has received an outpouring of industry support, praising the congressman’s leadership in Federal IT and the bill’s potential.

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Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, reintroduced his Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act in the House on Friday as Congress dodged an eleventh hour budget fight that would have shut down the government. Hurd told MeriTalk that the timing is designed to get the bill through markup and onto the floor for votes as soon as possible.

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Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., introduced the NIST Small Business Cybersecurity Act, which directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology director to disseminate guidelines, tools, best practices, standards, and methodologies for small businesses to improve their cybersecurity.

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Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., introduced a bill on Thursday that would authorize the Department of Defense scholarship fund to receive $10 million for fiscal year 2018 and would enable them to expand scholarships for associate degrees in cybersecurity.

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Email Privacy Act, a bill that would amend Title 18 of the United States Code to include privacy protections for electronic communications stored on third-party servers.

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The House of Representatives today passed the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, which endeavors to provide agency CIOs with the funding and framework to modernize aging IT systems.

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Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology disagreed on Wednesday on whether the Cybersecurity Responsibility and Accountability Act of 2016 acted as a partisan dig against former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server.

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The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will mobilize 911 emergency services at the insistence of the Federal Communications Commission.

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Members of Congress are working to pass the Kelsey Smith Act, which would give law enforcement access to phone location data in some emergency situations, despite claims from privacy groups that the law could be abused.

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As the Internet of Things becomes increasingly prevalent, the government will play an important role in enabling and regulating how the industry will develop, according to panelists at a National Telecommunications and Information Administration workshop. They listed a number of areas in which that advice can take shape. […]

Democratic and Republican policy advisers in the House are meeting this week to craft a bipartisan compromise that would combine the key elements of two major IT modernization bills introduced earlier this year into a legislative package that sources say has the backing of Republican appropriators and stands a good chance of being signed into law before President Barack Obama leaves office.

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Many members of Congress can agree that IT modernization is an important problem in need of a solution, but there is less agreement on how exactly to go about it. In the past four months, two separate bills have been introduced in the House, which aim to improve and fund future IT modernization efforts: the IT Modernization Act and the MOVE IT Act.

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While most college students are off enjoying their summer break, the House of Representatives is focusing on helping them out. Last week the House passed five bills, and while they aren’t law yet, each bill could have a serious impact on universities.

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The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) has far-reaching government benefits as well as hurdles that must be addressed to ensure its success, according to authors of the research paper “The Data Act: Vision and Value.”

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An update to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, specifically Rule 41, which could automatically take effect in December, is once again bringing up concerns of privacy and security in the digital world. “The changes in Rule 41 leave Americans […] more exposed to threats, and, of course, put at risk their liberty,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “Our lives are lived online; most of our most private information is stored on the cloud.”

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Proponents of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) worry that a change in presidential administration could derail the progress made to release Federal financial data to the public.

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Consumers comprehensively think that more needs to be done to protect their data, according to a study published by Purple Insights on behalf of ACT the App Association. But do they trust government or tech companies more? […]

Internal Revenue Service cybersecurity is woefully inadequate, and Congress is to blame, according to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “Congress has sat back and watched while criminals have come in and preyed on taxpayers,” Wyden said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

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The Agriculture Department’s Flip Anderson is the only known agency-level FITARA director–an indicator of both the level of importance USDA has assigned to the new law and the resources necessary to manage the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act compliance correctly.

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President Obama unveiled plans for addressing Federal cybersecurity issues, including a 35% increase in the cybersecurity budget. But Tom Kellermann, Chief Cybersecurity Officer for Trend Micro, worries that the plan is “completely insufficient” to address the cybersecurity needs of the nation.

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