Andrew Saul, the White House’s nominee for commissioner of Social Security, noted his commitment to continue the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) IT modernization efforts during a Senate Finance Committee hearing yesterday. […]
California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown on Sunday signed S.B. 822 , which restores in the state Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today approved by a 3-1, party-line vote a series of steps that its Republican-majority commissioners argue will speed the pace of infrastructure installations necessary for carriers to provide 5G wireless services, but which have drawn strong protest from states and localities in the run-up to today’s vote who object to restrictions on their ability to govern. […]
The Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU)–formerly known as DIUx–has selected Michael Brown as its new director. […]
Small drones have been a useful tool to the military for years, primarily as a way to provide on-the-spot surveillance. But as hardware and artificial intelligence guidance systems continue to improve, macro- and nano-drones are poised to begin playing a bigger role in contested areas as both friend and foe. […]
Federal, state, and local government IT leaders are preparing to share their own hard-won experiences about planning for and executing broad IT modernization and cloud adoption strategies at the Infor Government Forum in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25. […]
Retired Gen. William Bender, who was Air Force CIO from 2014 until 2017, said on Thursday that while the pace of IT modernization across the services may be somewhat uneven, the military is making progress toward its modernization goals. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today at an event hosted by the Professional Services Council that the Federal government is currently seeing a “nexus of three critical elements” that provides an unprecedented opportunity for innovation in IT. […]
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and FirstNet today announced new personnel changes. […]
California’s state Senate pushed the Golden State one step closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year. On Friday the state Senate passed the controversial bill, called SB 822, in a vote of 27-12 that was largely along party lines. […]
California’s state Assembly is attempting to turn back time on net neutrality by voting yesterday to approve a controversial bill that brings the state closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) awarded $3.5 million in research and development funding to improve detection capabilities of X-ray technology used for checked baggage systems at U.S. airports. […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today launched a new webpage highlighting the importance of rural e-connectivity, as well as ways USDA is helping to deploy high-speed broadband infrastructure in rural America. […]
The Army Futures Command (AFC) is ready to start working on modernizing the U.S. Army. As MeriTalk reported last month, the new AFC is headquartered in Austin. John Murray, who will lead the new command, was promoted to four-star general last Friday at a ceremony in Austin, following Senate confirmation of the promotion early last week. […]
The Secure Elections Act, S. 2593, which is expected to be marked up by the Senate Rules Committee later this month, has been freshly amended to require states to have a cyber response and communication plan in place as a precondition to receiving Federal grants to support election security and election technology modernization. […]
While members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today appeared to be generally positive toward the nomination of Lane Genatowski to be the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the Department of Energy, they also had some sharp questions for the nominee over his stated support for President Trumps’ plan to get rid of the organization. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) organization announced it has rolled out facial recognition technology at Mineta San José International Airport (SJC). […]
Following Monday’s CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference at the White House, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce committed “to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI.” […]
As Federal agencies adopt DevOps practices to shorten development cycles and increase deployment frequency, security must be interwoven into every aspect of the process from design, through coding, testing, release, and operation. […]
Vice President Pence said today that the Trump administration and the Defense Department are preparing to move forward with detailed plans to establish a new United States Space Command as a unified combatant command, and if Congress approves, as a separate branch of the military–dubbed the U.S. Space Force – equal to and separate from the existing five branches. […]
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. […]
Former U.S. Chief Information Security Officer Greg Touhill today called on Congress and the Trump administration to work together to take “bold action” to advance Federal government IT modernization, arguing that investments in modernization would pay off with a host of benefits including better IT security. […]
Obstacles to data sharing are holding back the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) in Federal agencies. However, the use cases and potential of AI makes it worth the struggle, according to experts. […]
Senate FY2019 funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) remains stuck on zero following the Senate’s approval earlier today on a 92-6 vote of a “minibus” appropriations bill that wraps together four separate spending bills including one to fund financial services and general government (FSGG) budgets. […]
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. […]
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. […]
Disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) can help Federal agencies better utilize their data to improve processes, public and private sector technology officials said during a FedInsider webinar on July 25. […]
The White House on Monday published a request for information (RFI) for the Government Effectiveness Advanced Research (GEAR) Center that it has proposed to create as part of its government agency reorganization plan released in June. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) on Tuesday released a justification and approval (J&A) document that says DoD is expanding the scope of the contract for its Electronic Health Record (EHR) system known as MHS Genesis. The document says that the contract must be expanded to achieve “a single standard baseline solution” with the new Department of Veterans Affairs EHR and also to incorporate the U.S. Coast Guard into the DoD EHR. […]
After the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2019 cleared a major hurdle late yesterday with the release of a conference report that reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of the bills, techies across the Federal government are finding that IT modernization and innovation amendments for the Pentagon fared well in the legislation. […]