With three agencies receiving “A” grades and more seeing improvements in their scores, what do the best  performers on the FITARA Scorecard get right to earn such high marks? A look at the latest edition of the scorecard shows several factors that top agencies have in common, and shared issues among the low performers as well. […]

For Federal agencies, fostering innovation involves understanding when to be bold and where to put forth resources by communicating with other agencies as to what their needs are, while allowing for open communication channels within one’s own agency, said agency leaders today. […]

An audit of the finances of the Small Business Administration highlighted the need for improved cybersecurity and internal controls over IT systems. […]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to sniff out bogus websites that are trying to interact with the agency and its networks, a senior IT leader at the agency said on Oct. 29. […]

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of the CIO (OCIO) has made improvements in its IT controls deployment, according to a recent Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report. […]

Using cloud-based tools has helped the Small Business Administration (SBA) meet the intent of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program as budget constraints have caused SBA to be more creative with its resources, the agency’s CIO said today. […]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is standing up a modernized system to help the agency manage its Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program, according to a notice posted on September 9 in the Federal Register. […]

Guy Cavallo, deputy CIO at the Small Business Administration (SBA), said today that his agency has made significant strides toward IT modernization by employing cloud services, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools provided by SBA’s cloud vendors to improve network security. […]

The House on July 15 approved two bills that aim to bolster Small Business Administration (SBA) cybersecurity, and help small businesses combat cyberattacks. […]

As one of the agencies that has strongly embraced cloud computing, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is using the agility and native capabilities of the cloud to improve data analytics and better share data, said Steve Perry, Enterprise Data Integration Manager at SBA. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) has developed dashboards for both agency acquisition spending management and small businesses to help track spending and help support small businesses in Federal acquisition, which have been key in working toward achieving the President Management Agenda goals, GSA IT Category Management Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laura Stanton said today. […]

The Small Business Administration Office of the Inspector General, or SBA OIG, raised concerns about oversight of the agency’s cloud migration, contracts with cloud providers, and ability to move data to other services in a report released April 9. […]

For agencies looking at a multi-cloud strategy, managing different vendors and gaining expertise in different clouds is key to take advantage of the nuanced differences and prevent cloud sprawl, said Sanjay Gupta, chief technology officer for the Small Business Administration (SBA). […]

The Senate Small Business Committee unanimously approved two bills that aim to bolster small business cybersecurity yesterday. […]

While opening a Senate Small Business Committee hearing on cybercrimes against small businesses today, committee Chairman Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced his rollout of two pieces of legislation which would aim to create greater accountability at the Small Business Administration (SBA) and to expand small business cybersecurity awareness and training resources. […]

The Consolidated Appropriations Act–the bill negotiated by Democrats and Republicans in Congress that could fully fund several Federal agencies and avert another partial government shutdown–features a variety of funding for IT modernization projects at multiple agencies, according to the joint explanatory statement released with the bill: […]

Maria Roat, chief information officer at the Small Business Administration, provided a run-down of her office’s extensive to-do list during a keynote address on Thursday at the Veritas Public Sector Vision Day event, and emphasized the importance of laying the proper data-management policy groundwork before embarking on cloud deployments and forays into artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. […]

Some of the largest federal agencies saw increases in scores for the 2018 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, released by the Partnership for Public Service, which measures employee engagement. […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent revealed today that the new draft Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) policy will be released next week, and that new policies on data and automation are coming in 2019. […]

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the agency needs to improve compliance three key pieces of Federal IT Legislation, according to OIG’s semiannual report, released May 25 and covering October 2017 through March 2018. […]

Maria Roat, smart business innovator CIO at SBA, knows her way around the jobs that define government IT–because she’s held most of them. She’s precisely the kind of professional we all want to see on the MGT Technology Modernization Fund board–a lean forward, pragmatist. Roat is a military veteran who has also walked a mile in the contractor’s shoes–she notes she’ll never drop an RFP before the Christmas holidays. Like Suzette Kent, she stresses the importance of the Federal workforce. […]

SBA has made it a priority to provide cybersecurity assistance for small businesses, reaching out to local chambers of commerce, technology vendors, and banks that serve small businesses to raise awareness of the benefits of cybersecurity threat prevention sharing through conferences.                                      […]

Yesterday’s release of the FITARA Scorecard 5.0 did not look promising for Federal agencies. In today’s Oversight and Government Reform IT Subcommittee FITARA hearing, the committee shared their concerns and sought answers from agency officials testifying. […]

More than one-third of the Small Business Administration’s 120 circuits are overloaded. To resolve this issue, chief information officer Maria Roat plans to modernize SBA’s infrastructure by moving to a “pure Ethernet backbone.” She said Ethernet will help employees with Skype and virtual counseling, and will extend to all of the agency’s field offices. […]

The secret to the Small Business Administration’s success in going from cloud launch to receiving an authority to operate (ATO) in less than three months was to burn the bridge back to the old way of doing things and commit completely to cloud migration, according to SBA Deputy CIO Guy Cavallo and CTO Sanjay Gupta. […]

Although the Small Business Administration’s modernization efforts are well underway, they may not be reflected on the upcoming Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard, according to Maria Roat, the agency’s chief information officer. […]

When the cloud houses many single applications that aren’t designed to work with other servers, it can indicate communication problems within government agencies. The Small Business Administration uses the same application on two different cloud networks. “Two offices that never talk to each other, they’re doing the same thing,” said Maria Roat, chief information officer at the SBA, who spoke at Cloud Connect on Nov. 2 in Washington, D.C. “The problem right now is the cloud is really siloed.” […]

Small businesses are prime targets for today’s hackers, according to witnesses testifying at the House Small Business Committee. “According to a recent report by Verizon Enterprise, over 70 percent of attacks occurred in businesses with fewer than 100 employees,” said Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio. […]

The U.S. Small Business Administration is teaming up with major technology companies to form the Small Business Technology Coalition, which is designed to connect small businesses with technology platforms and training. The coalition will include Amazon, Box, Facebook, LegalZoom, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Zenefits. […]

The U.S. Small Business Administration has appointed Tracy Terrill to serve as its Chief Data Officer, a new position. […]