Officials from the Department of Defense (DoD) emphasized this week scaling cloud and data capabilities to empower warfighters operating at the network edge is crucial to meet the Pentagon’s mission needs. […]

With an international focus on climate change after the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, Department of Energy (DoE) CIO Ann Dunkin said today that data center consolidation is helping to reduce the agency’s carbon footprint, and pointed to the further use of scalable cloud-native apps as the next step in that campaign. […]

Cloud security provider Zscaler said that its Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) service has received a provisional authorization to operate at Impact Level 5 as published in the Defense Department’s Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide. […]

Following on the successes of the FedRAMP program that certifies cloud services as secure to use for Federal government agencies, the home-grown StateRAMP program is forging ahead with similarly vital services to state and local governments and institutions of higher learning, state, and industry leaders explained on October 5 during MeriTalk’s StateRAMP: Taking the On-Ramp to Secure SLED Cloud Solutions online event. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has completed the market research phase for its proposed multi-vendor Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) cloud contract, which the Pentagon announced in July following its decision to cancel the single-vendor $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract. […]

The fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the House of Representatives late Sept. 23 with a bipartisan 316-113 vote. Among the amendments are a number of tech provisions focusing heavily on cybersecurity, along with some focusing on the digital workforce, cloud, and AI. […]

There is no “one size fits all” for an agency’s cloud journey, but chief information officers (CIOs) from the General Services Administration (GSA) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) offered some top-level advice for agencies to help them along their journey. […]

Like all Federal agencies, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is working on complying with President Biden’s cyber executive order (EO). To help comply with the EO and aid OPM’s modernization mission, the agency has funding requests out to the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) Board to help OPM with the move to zero trust and cloud modernization, OPM CIO Guy Cavallo said August 31. […]

services for CFPB’s Technology & Innovation (T&I) employees and other CFPB personnel, according to a request for proposal (RFP) posted on SAM.gov. […]

The State Department is taking a mission-oriented mindset when deploying cloud services to operate effectively within a multi-cloud environment and to avoid unnecessary costs, an agency official said on August 26 during an FCW webinar.  […]

For many organizations, moving to the cloud can be such an intimidating effort that they don’t even know where to start. Federal, state, and local government cloud experts recommend that organizations stop worrying about where to start, and to “just do something” to move themselves along on their cloud journey. […]

While cloud adoption by government agencies accelerated greatly during the pandemic, Federal experts agree that agencies need to create “purpose-built clouds,” as opposed to undertaking “lift and shift” cloud migrations, in order to achieve the best operational outcomes. […]

Danielle Metz, deputy CIO for information enterprise in the Defense Department’s (DoD) CIO Office, said the Pentagon is nearing completion of a plan launched in 2018 to migrate nearly 1,000 systems to cloud-based services and shutter another 60 data centers.  […]

Federal agency demand for cloud service products in the General Services Administration’s (GSA) FedRAMP marketplace showed a 60 percent year-over-year jump in the first half of Fiscal Year 2021, as agencies continued their move to cloud services in order to deal with pandemic-driven tech needs and IT modernization priorities. […]

The Department of State’s Bureau of Information Resource Management Cloud Program Management Office is looking to determine what capabilities industry can provide for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) solutions as the agency looks to migrate some legacy applications to the cloud. […]

The U.S. Navy is building on its experience in adopting commercial cloud services and further developed strategic approaches to cloud-delivered services and application development, a senior Navy tech official said during an August 10 ATARC virtual event. […]

Cloud service behemoths Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft appear to be squaring off once again over a big Federal government cloud contract – this time a deal awarded by the National Security Agency (NSA) to AWS. […]

As the Department of Defense (DoD) looks to accelerate the move to an enterprise cloud environment, experts say to focus on speeding application modernization, rather than the specific cloud solution itself. […]

Join MeriTalk on July 29 from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET for The Time is Now: Accelerating DoD Enterprise Cloud, a complimentary webinar that will explore additional findings from the study, as well as what’s preventing DoD organizations from migrating to available DoD enterprise clouds and what’s needed to accelerate adoption. […]

The FedRAMP Authorization Act sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has been nearly four years in the making without crossing the goal line. But after the House approved the bill earlier this year, Rep. Connolly said today that the House is “working in lockstep” with Senate colleagues to hopefully pass the bill in 2021. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Office of Information and Technology is seeking a contractor to maintain an Authority to Operate (ATO) for the Social Security Numbers Reduction (SSNR) Tool in the VA Enterprise Cloud (VAEC) environment. […]

A Defense Department official charged with helping to figure out the Pentagon’s next set of moves on large-scale cloud contracts said today that the Pentagon hopes to award new cloud service contracts as early as the Spring of 2022. […]

As the migration to the cloud for Federal agencies has evolved and matured over the past decade, many agencies have learned valuable lessons that have allowed them to put their data to use efficiently. […]

Step one in launching a robust DevSecOps (Development, Security, and Operations) effort is moving to the cloud, a State Department expert recommended July 8. […]

Defense Department Acting CIO John Sherman emphasized the Pentagon’s firm intent to move further toward adopting cloud infrastructures and zero trust security concepts at a June 29 hearing held by the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems. […]

Department of Defense (DoD) and public sector experts agree that in order to better leverage cloud for the warfighter, it is vital for organizations to be smart about their cloud migrations and focus on specific service offerings, as opposed to racing to move everything to the cloud. […]

Cloud is evolving how the Department of Defense (DoD) defends assets, supports the warfighter, and gains tactical advantages. Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, the assistant to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) director, spoke about the benefits and challenges that arise from moving from legacy infrastructure to cloud infrastructure. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the rate at which the entire Department of Defense (DoD) had to learn how to collaborate and operate more effectively regardless of location. The solutions in place to respond to this crisis inadvertently set the bar for how the DoD wanted to operate on a day-to-day basis post-pandemic. […]

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said the Department of Defense (DoD) is looking to move forward on solutions for the agency’s enterprise cloud needs perhaps within the next month, as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract continues to be stalled in litigation. […]

While the Federal government certifies cloud vendors as secure through the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), an official at the Government Accountability Organization (GAO) shared striking statistics about agencies going outside of the program for cloud vendors, which can lead to vulnerabilities. […]