Survey results discussed during a June 14 Digital Government Institute webinar seem to bode well for end-user reception of deployment of Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Phase 3 technology by the Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with improving the security of Federal civilian networks. […]

The General Services Administration on June 18 issued a request for information (RFI) seeking comment from industry on how GSA can adopt Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy across the Federal government, in order to provide “a standardized view of IT spend and provide greater transparency into how the Federal government invests in IT products and services.” […]

Proposals with great citizen impact, quick routes to success and repayment, and concise explanations of how to achieve their goals are likely to win the remaining dollars in the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), according to representatives from the General Services Administration (GSA) speaking at a workshop held June 8. […]

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) of the General Services Administration (GSA) on Wednesday announced the winners of the inaugural FedRAMP Five Awards at ATARC’s Cloud & Data Center Summit. […]

DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) is pivotal to improving government cybersecurity. While it’s critical, it has a lot of moving parts–and that can make it difficult to follow. MeriTalk sat down with Kevin Cox to get a handle on the state of CDM, as well as an understanding of where the program goes from here. And, it’s quite a story–so I hope you’re sitting comfortably, feel free to grab a cup of coffee. […]

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. […]

A shift to the cloud offers government agencies an opportunity to embrace digital transformation, add automation, and rethink processes, said Federal IT panelists on Wednesday at MeriTalk’s 2018 Cloud Computing Brainstorm. […]

We sat down with Jeff Henry, president of ViON, in his office in Herndon, Va. The typical tech provider surroundings belied the epic changes at ViON, as it morphs from leading data center reseller to delivering government IT modernization as a service. […]

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), passed by Congress in December 2014, represented the first major legislative overhaul of Federal IT in nearly 20 years. Beginning in November 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released two scorecards a year grading agencies’ performance under the law. Suffice to say, agencies haven’t always been making the GAO’s Honor Roll, with plenty of Cs and Ds to go around. However, many agencies have made significant improvements over the last 3 years. […]

A new government-wide strategic plan on Category Management covering FY18-FY20 and released in late April aligns with the President’s Management Agenda and declares the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contracting vehicle one of its key IT components. […]

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. […]

A new award program, that recognizes Federal agencies that turn citizens’ frowns upside down, debuts in May. The Service to the Citizens awards, founded by Martha Dorris, everybody’s favorite former govie and a lady that always makes me smile, honors Feds for service to citizens and citizen experience breakthroughs. […]

Action plans to accelerate Federal agency migrations to cloud platforms and services as outlined in the White House IT Modernization Report have been in effect for nearly three months now. For instance, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was directed to conduct a data call within 30 days of the report’s release, requesting agencies to identify systems that might be ready for cloud migration, but have not because of some perceived or encountered difficulties. […]

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. […]

Do agencies have enough time to make a smooth transition to the new Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract by spring of 2020 when the older telecom contract vehicles expire? […]

Another important piece of the emerging Federal IT modernization ecosystem is in place now that the General Services Administration (GSA) has given four companies the greenlight to start work on the first of five IT Modernization Centers of Excellence (CoEs). […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) deployments in the Federal government are already making government smarter, based on examples shared during the second of a three-part series on AI launched last month by the House Subcommittee on Information Technology. Federal agency leaders from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the General Services Administration (GSA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) discussed how AI is being implemented to improve the mission of their agencies and what is required to ensure the technology continues to be viewed as a problem solver. […]

Last month the Congressional Subcommittee on Information Technology began a three-part series of hearings to break through the myths and the hype to gain a real understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the role it can play in the Federal government. […]

GSA wants Federal procurement officers to be able to shop for and purchase commercial products the same way consumers and businesses do: through an e-commerce site like Amazon.com. […]

Thousands of Federal contractors could find themselves scrambling to comply with stringent cybersecurity requirements after the General Services Administration (GSA) announced it is tightening the rules for protecting sensitive, non-classified data. […]

Federal agencies are accepting some harsh criticism being doled out in a new report that says many are failing to fully comply with guidelines designed to protect against wasted IT spending. […]

The Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGT) and other related initiatives are pushing agencies to move away from aging, legacy applications as well as costly, complex software projects. The goal is to have more secure, agile, and cost-effective IT infrastructures replace them. […]

Dominic Sale, the fella that heads up GSA’s IT policy-to-implementation portfolio as Deputy Associate Administrator, Information Integrity and Access (I2A), is moving on up.  […]

Last July, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) revamped the provisional authorization process to make life easier for cloud service providers (CSPs). The change let CSPs use a simple web form to delineate their business cases to FedRAMP’s Joint Authorization Board (JAB). […]

The White House wants to clear the way for Federal agencies to adopt commercial cloud computing, even if that means tweaking acquisition rules to help them get there. […]

For enterprise IT teams seeking ways to deliver on-premises IT services with the speed and operational efficiency of public cloud services, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced the availability of the Nutanix’s Hyperconverged Cloud Infrastructure (HCI) platform to agencies. […]

The recently launched General Services Administration (GSA) SmartPay Travel Card app is designed to take some of the worry out of official government travel, GSA officials said. […]

The Federal CIO Council recently released a case study focusing on Technology Business Management (TBM) adoption rates at a single bureau within the Department of Justice (DOJ). The study will be used as part of the council’s commitment to guide agency-wide adoption of TBM. […]

As Federal agencies struggle to meet Office of Management and Budget’s data center optimization targets, the General Services Administration has stepped up its efforts to support agencies as they work to consolidate, migrate and close data centers. […]