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The Defense Information Systems Agency announced April 16 it has achieved initial operational capacity as the commercial cloud computing middleman for the Defense Department--despite its acknowledgment that it has yet to fully approve for DoD use any FedRAMP-authorized commercial cloud service providers.

The Federal CIO Council released April 16 a catalog of shared services in furtherance of the Office of Management and Budget policy of Shared First. The contents of the catalog, which are not classified, aren't public. The council also released an implementation guide (.pdf) that outlines steps agencies should undertake to implement shared services.

The Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2013 (H.R. 1163), secured a 416-0 vote with 16 representatives not present; it would amend the Federal Information Security Management Act in ways similar to legislation the House approved in 2012 but which the Senate did not take up.

The White House veto threat (.pdf), issued before the rules committee approved the final rule via voice vote, cites CISPA's (H.R. 624) broad authorization of information sharing between companies and the federal government, stating that the Homeland Security Department should be the point of entry for private sector threat information. CISPA would permit civilian, military or intelligence agencies to directly receive private sector threat information, a feature opponents say would undermine civilian control of national cybersecurity measures and amount to surveillance of Internet users.

The National Archives and Records Administration requests total appropriations of $385.84 million for the coming fiscal year in the budget proposal the Obama administration sent to Congress April 10.

Funding for the Defense Department office of the chief information officer would go down in the coming fiscal year, as would funding for the deputy chief management officer and many defensewide technology efforts, shows data from the fiscal 2014 budget request the Obama administration sent to Congress April 10.

The fiscal 2014 budget request the Obama administration sent to Congress April 10 includes a nearly 4 percent increase to funding for the Federal Aviation Administration air traffic modernization effort known as NextGen.

Privacy advocates continue to oppose the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (H.R. 624) after the House Intelligence Committee voted 18-2 for it April 10, saying that amendments added to the bill don't account for all their objections. The committee defeated four amendments that would gone further to address critics, including one (.pdf) proposed by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) that would have restricted the flow of cyber threat information sharing from companies to civilian agencies.

The fiscal 2014 budget proposal the Obama administration sent to Congress on April 10 carries mixed results for major Homeland Security Department information technology efforts. Total funding for the DHS office of the chief information officer would go down by 1.2 percent when taking into account Office of Management and Budget-projected inflation.

Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel spoke with reporters April 10 about information technology aspects of the Obama administration's fiscal 2014 budget proposal, which it transmitted to Congress that day.