Audio: VanRoekel reviews 1 year under Digital Government Strategy
Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel hosted a press call May 23 to discuss 1 year of deliverables under the Office of Management and Budget's Digital Government Strategy.
Issa tries again with DATA Act
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) will try again this year to pass into law a bill that would require federal agencies and companies or organizations receiving federal dollars to report back each quarter financial data using standardized data elements.
DHS, DOJ grossly underestimate spectrum relocation costs
The Homeland Security and Justice departments were the worst at estimating the actual cost of relocating radio systems away from a band auctioned off to the private sector, shows data from a Government Accountability Office report.
White House unveils more deliverables on anniversary of the Digital Government Strategy
Six deliverables were unveiled across government May 23--20 percent of all the goals laid out in the plan. Five of the announcements were directly related to mobile adoption, use and services in the federal government, while one advances open data efforts around APIs and data.gov.
Exascale computing needs more funding, say federal computer scientists
Funding for Energy Department supercomputer efforts would need at least another $400 million annually to possible build a exascale computer by 2020, a computer scientist told a May 22 House hearing.
Kendall: DoD 'may end up with a VistA derivative'
"I think, in an ideal world, [VA] would have preferred that we simply, you know, go along with them, but we don't--we may end up there. When we do the source selection, we may end up with a VistA derivative and be more common in software," said DoD's Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall.
Global telecom supply chain cyber-attack risk considered low
The risk of a cyber attack executed via corrupt hardware inserted into a global supply chain is considered to be low in the private sector, reports the Government Accountability Office.
Potential visa overstays still difficult to track
In a preliminary assessment (.pdf) submitted as prepared testimony to a May 21 House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, the GAO says DHS has taken steps to improve data sharing among various systems. But because the changes are so recent, GAO says it can't yet assess their effectiveness, and auditors note that DHS has about 1 million arrival records in ADIS without a corresponding departure records.
Spotlight: VanRoekel leading OMB management team
Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel will serve as the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director for management.
DoD passes on VistA, resumes plans to procure commercial EHR
The Defense Department is moving forward with plans to acquire a commercial EHR solution. "There are good reasons for VA to have selected its legacy system," wrote Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in a May 21 memo. "However, many of these reasons do not apply to DoD."
Grant: NSTIC will succeed where other programs have failed
CAMBRIDGE, Md.--The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace will succeed where other federal attempts at offering the public a common online identity have not, said Jeremy Grant, senior executive advisor for identity management at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Grant spoke May 21 during a panel session during the annual ACT-IAC Management of Change conference.
CBP OIT adjusts to tough times with shared services
CAMBRIDGE, Md.--Radical budget cuts amounting to about a 50 percent reduction over 4 years forced Customs and Border Protection to use shared and cloud services to a degree previously unthinkable, said CBP Chief Technology Officer Wolfe Tombe while speaking during a panel session of the annual ACT-IAC Management of Change conference.
Digital Government Strategy: The final countdown
Thursday, May 23 marks the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration's unveiling of the Digital Government Strategy, and with that milestone comes an array of deliverables that are due under the strategy. FierceGovernmentIT has compiled an at-a-glance scorecard to assess what's complete, what's missing and to what degree things changed since the plan rolled out last May.
Commerce CISO: Cybersecurity is about more than technology
"Technology doesn't always carry the day when you need to present a program to a set of executives in a federated organization," said Commerce Department Chief Information Security Officer Rod Turk during a May 20 panel discussion at ACT-IAC's Management of Change Conference in Cambridge, Md. Department CISOs and the teams that support them have to coordinate with an array of stakeholders.
DoD business architecture lacks detail, says GAO
Despite at least $379 million spent over a decade by the Defense Department to establish a business enterprise architecture, the DoD has yet to show that it's using that architecture as intended, says the Government Accountability Office.
Warrant requirements for police drone use debated
A tenet of fair information practice principles is that organizations should only collect personally identifiable information for a specified purpose--whether that should translate into a warrant requirement for government use of unmanned aerial vehicles took up large parts of a May 17 House hearing.
DHS cyber has problems with hiring, not retention, says Stempfley
Departures at the executive level have garnered some attention in recent years starting with the departure in fall 2011 of Sean McGurk, then the head of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. "What does it say about the department's cyber organization when it cannot retain its senior cyber leadership as well?" said Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).
Federal judge rules in favor of FBI use of stingray
A federal judge in Arizona says the FBI can use evidence collected by a device that masquerades as a cellular base tower, triggering an automatic register response from nearby devices and routing communications from those devices through it.
Data security isn't just for the intel community, says Commerce CIO
Many people think data security is only an issue for the Defense Department, the intelligence community or the Homeland Security Department, said Commerce CIO Simon Szykman while speaking May 14 at the FOSE conference in Washington, D.C. "Even if the confidentiality of the data is not key, the long-term integrity of the data is," he said.
Public says critical infrastructure cybersecurity framework should be risk-based, says NIST
An analysis of comments received so far by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to the cybersecurity framework called for by President Obama's February cybersecurity executive order shows respondents so far show risk management approaches to be a matter of nearly universal concern.
