Capitol Washington DC Federal

Reps. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., and Will Hurd, R-Texas reintroduced today their Federal CIO Authorization Act, which is intended to elevate and reauthorize the role of the Federal CIO. A previous version of the legislation passed unanimously out of the House on Nov. 30, 2018. […]

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Capital, House of Representatives, Congress, Senate

The House has voted to approve bills that would two bills–one that would elevate and reauthorize the role of the Federal CIO, and another that would establish minimum standards for Federal agency website functionality and performance. […]

The race between Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s IT subcommittee, and challenger Gina Ortiz Jones, is too close to call, according to media outlets. […]

Election security, voting, midterms 2018

As Congressional members celebrate and lament the results of yesterday’s midterm elections, Federal IT leaders face a changed landscape on Capitol Hill, with a new party in charge of the House and close elections for several members key to initiatives like FITARA, Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM), and IT modernization. Here are some of the key races and their results: […]

Suzette Kent

Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today that the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies is of primary importance to the Federal government, as agencies begin to determine their AI priorities and a picture of government-wide investment begins to form. […]

quantum computing AI min

Congress is getting behind the push to develop artificial intelligence technologies and policies with recent calls for research and development that may overlap efforts already underway. It also reflects the kind of “whole of country” approach that some leaders have said is necessary to keep up with the Chinese. […]

Rep Will Hurd, R-Texas, chairman of the House IT subcommittee, questioned today whether Google’s decision in June to not renew a contract with the Defense Department for development of artificial intelligence technologies was influenced by what the congressman characterized as possible “influence operations” by the Chinese government. […]

Capital, House of Representatives, Congress, Senate

With artificial intelligence (AI) the topic du jour on Capitol Hill, Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Cory Gardner, R-Colo.; Rob Portman, R-Ohio; and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., on Wednesday introduced the Artificial Intelligence in Government Act that would establish a Federal AI advisory board that aims to chart paths forward in the technology’s development. […]

AI Quantum Computing

Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., today released a new white paper on artificial intelligence (AI) that urges the Federal government to increase its engagement with the technology. The paper focuses its attention on four key issue areas–workforce, privacy, biases, and malicious use of AI–and provides concrete recommendations for each area.   […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s information technology and government operations subcommittees held a joint hearing Wednesday to key in on the most salient, persistent, and omnipresent issue in Federal agency IT: cybersecurity. On hand to testify were Federal CIO Suzette Kent, and Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, seeking to illuminate congressional inquirers on Federal agency progress to mitigate the wide range of cyber risks. […]

Two lawmakers and a government leader central to Federal agency IT modernization efforts said Wednesday that the means to improve substandard FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) scorecard grades are readily available and simple to achieve for many government agencies. […]

Since 2001, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has tried three different modernization programs for its healthcare system. So when the department announced another plan to modernize by adopting the same system as the Department of Defense (DoD), the Subcommittee on Information Technology was skeptical and interrogated them in a Dec.7 hearing. […]

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said that he almost turned down then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz when he asked him to head up the IT Subcommittee in his freshman year in Congress. But “my mama said don’t be a part of the problem, be part of the solution,” Hurd said at Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Roadmap: Tomorrow’s Data Center in a Cloud-Driven Digital World event, produced by MeriTalk, on Oct. 24. […]

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, is working on the text of his bill to create the Cyber National Guard, a scholarship program that will help train students for cybersecurity jobs in the Federal government. Students who apply for the Cyber National Guard would receive scholarship money for cybersecurity training programs. Once the students graduate, they would spend the same number of years working for a Federal agency as they did receiving scholarship money to attend school. […]

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, called for the administration to nominate more permanent agency chief information officers. “I’m worried that we don’t want to stall some of the progress that we’ve achieved over the last couple of years,” Hurd said. […]

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said that he plans to track the IT modernization working capital fund, which will come from his Modernization Government Technology Act, on the FITARA scorecard. […]

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke released a binding operational directive on Sept. 13 requiring agencies to identify and plan to remove all Kaspersky Lab products within the next 90 days. “The Department is concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks,” DHS noted. […]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is evaluating the various technologies it can use to secure the southern border and vet incoming travelers. “As you may have heard, CBP is involved in building a wall on the southwest border,” said U.S. Border Control Chief Ronald Vitiello. […]

Through its series of summer camps and competitions, the Air Force Association’s CyberPatriot program is aiming to expand the cybersecurity workforce for both the public and private sector. “What they have learned is if they wait until someone is a college graduate, it’s too late, if they wait until they’re in college, it’s too late,” said CyberPatriot National Commissioner Bernie Skoch. […]

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, plans to introduce a bill Thursday morning that offers a plan to build a “smart” wall along the southern border of the United States. […]

Congress should focus on providing Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) with technology to patrol the border and detect illegal smuggling, rather than building a physical barrier across the whole southern U.S. border, according to Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas. […]

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard should be embellished with yet another column indicating whether agencies have set up the rotating capital fund outlined in the Modernizing Government Technology Act, according to Karen Evans, national director for U.S. Cyber Challenge’s Center for Internet Security. […]

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