Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke frankly about the need IT modernization in the State Department last week, both referencing his personal experiences with the department’s servers and tying it into a larger need for reorganization in the department, but failing to lay out any concrete plan for the changes. […]
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A firm understanding of grading mechanisms and reporting practices is the way to success, according to an official from the United States Agency for International Development, the first agency to ever receive an A on the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard. […]
Bernard Barton, chief information officer of the Library of Congress, is challenging American coders to bring the centuries-old information stored by the library into the digital era. The challenge, which will launch later this year, asks coders to submit ideas for modernizing the public’s access to the Library of Congress’ data. […]
Johnson Joy was named chief information officer of the department of Housing and Urban Development on June 14. […]
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on June 30 will become the first component within the Department of Homeland Security to completely roll out Microsoft Office 365 within the agency’s systems. That move is one of several initiatives Adrian Gardner, the agency’s chief information officer, is working on. By late September, FEMA aims to deploy derived credentials, which would enable employees to access the agency system from their mobile devices. […]
President Donald Trump appointed Richard Staropoli, former chief information security officer at Fortress Investment Group, to serve as chief information officer for the Department of Homeland Security. […]
A truly stunning detail overlooked by most observers during the confirmation process of David Shulkin to become secretary of Veterans Affairs is that the VA is going to hire a chief health informatics officer to lead the agency’s electronic health record strategy. […]
Michael Johnson, chief information officer of the Department of Energy, has left the agency. […]
Luke McCormack, the chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, submitted his resignation today. […]
Twice a week, at precisely 11:30 a.m., dozens of IT employees at the FCC emerge from their offices and make their way to a central hallway cross section in the heart of FCC headquarters in Washington, D.C. A large white board hangs on a wall in the center of the main gathering place, detailing a dozen major IT projects in priority order. Beneath the white board, white tape outlines an ‘x’ on the floor. […]
A software upgrade gone wrong caused widespread system outages across the Veterans Affairs Department, officials confirmed Tuesday. The agency’s main website, VA.gov, as well as Vets.gov, associated websites, and apps were temporarily affected, a VA spokesperson told MeriTalk. […]
Hawaii last week announced its first annual “Code Challenge”–a monthlong competition that seeks to involve the local tech community in the state’s modernization efforts. […]
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A new report released by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers reveals states are unprepared for the IoT movement: Only one out of five state CIOs say their state has moved to the formal discussion phase–and zero states have adopted policies and developed an IoT road map. […]
MeriTalk’s feature, a Q&A with prominent IT leaders, focuses this time on Virginia Chief Information Officer Nelson P. Moe. […]
MeriTalk’s feature, a Q&A with prominent IT leaders, focuses this time on Flip Anderson, the Executive Director of FITARA Operations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. […]
MeriTalk spells out the pros and cons of the Office of Management and Budget’s Data Center Optimization Initiative. […]
MeriTalk recently broke the news that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is planning to hire its first chief information officer. Sounds pretty straightforward, but there is much more to the story and the timing of this new job search at ODNI. […]
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers issued a “planning guide” to help states deal with a cyber disruption. Cyber disruption response planning is essential, the report said: “Ignore at your own peril.” […]
It has become so tough for Federal agencies to find skilled technical talent that the National Security Agency is collecting resumes from “former civilian affiliates” who have the necessary skills, experience, and security clearance to help the agency “augment the existing work force on high priority projects or programs.” … A pilot program is underway to demonstrate the use of federated online identity technologies for use by hospitals and patients. … And DOD continues to make significant progress on its insider threat detection program and the intelligence community’s new continuous evaluation effort. […]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence plans to hire its first chief information officer to take charge of IT programs across the ODNI’s 20 component offices, particularly the effort to retire legacy IT systems and migrate users to the cloud. […]
For FITARA to reach its full potential, Federal agencies must dissect the real problems and attract stronger CIOs, Dave Powner, Director of IT Issues at the Government Accountability Office, told MeriTalk’s FITARA Forum in Washington, D.C. […]
Catch up on some reading this weekend. Here are a few interesting items from around the Web. […]
MeriTalk introduces a regular new feature, a Q&A with prominent IT leaders. The initial installment highlights David Bray, CIO of the Federal Communications Commission. […]
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has begun its search for a new Chief Information Officer, two months after HHS lost its previous CIO, Frank Baitman, who worked to establish HHS within the 2014 FITARA guidelines. […]
A group of senior IT executives and former CIOs are attempting to direct the presidential candidates’ attention to the urgent needs of IT policy in the Federal government. They released a report, titled “Tech Iconoclasts – Voting for America’s Success in a Network World,” an open letter to the candidates that outlines five key needs in Federal IT and recommends policy to address these needs. […]
It’s time for the Pentagon to clean up its act on cloud computing, the Department of Defense’s Inspector General said in a new report. […]
With new authority comes greater accountability. See how that applies to the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA). […]
On Nov. 4, I testified before the joint subcommittees on Information Technology and Government Operations of the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform. The hearing was titled “FITARA’s Role in Reducing IT Acquisition Risk, Part II–Measuring Agencies.” The other witnesses included Federal CIO Tony Scott, Treasury CIO Sonny Bhagowalia, General Services Administration CIO David […]
The new 21-page Cybersecurity Strategy and Implementation Plan (CSIP) has a long list of deadlines. […]
Richard Spires, the former chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, has been named CEO of Learning Tree International Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based IT and management training provider. Spires, who left DHS in 2013 to lead San Francisco-based security firm Resilient Network Systems, had been an independent member of the board of directors […]