A steering committee tasked with overseeing the administration’s e-commerce identity-management plan — known as the identity ecosystem — could be up and running by the end of the year, FierceGovernmentIT reports. Jeremy Grant, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is charged with implementing the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, signaled [...]

The director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency has announced the Defense Department is revamping the way it deals with foreign military sales, including a streamlined approach for high-demand technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. Foreign military sales have averaged $30 billion in the last three years, said Navy Vice Adm. William E. Landay III, [...]

The federal government is drowning from information overload, especially when it comes to decisions about which kinds of information to classify and how, Federal Times reports. A recent report by the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office found intelligence agencies’ generation of classified information has increased seven times over, driven by an increasing number of [...]

Just as families across the country are cutting back, the U.S. government must do so as well — and increasingly, administration cost cutters are looking to the low-hanging fruit. The White House announced today the launch of the Campaign to Cut Waste, which aims to cut back on “misspent tax dollars” in all federal agencies [...]

The General Services Administration is relaunching an online platform that aims to improve collaboration and communication between government and industry during the acquisition process. A posting on CIO.gov announces a draft statement-of-work order on a governmentwide, interactive online wiki platform that will solicit and store comments during the pre-RFP stage of the IT acquisition process. [...]

Some of the administration’s biggest energy and technology players are set to announce the launch of a number of new initiatives aimed at modernizing the power grid at a White House event this morning. “Building the 21st Century Electric Grid” details the administration’s progress on so-called “smart” grid efforts — aimed at deploying IT solutions [...]

Count Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead among the social media enthusiasts in the government and military. The Navy is “irreversibly” committed to engaging in social media, he said, according to a FierceGovernmentIT report on remarks he made this week at an Institute for Public Relations’ Strategic Communications Summit in Arlington, Va. But far [...]

Defense Department officials have put out the word. They want input from civilian employers about the impact of reservists and National Guardsmen on the civilian workforce. DoD’s National Survey of Employers — a first-of- its-kind initiative — was launched in March and aims to pinpoint how the increasing use of reserve forces over the past [...]

CIA Director Leon Panetta sat before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week for what The Washington Post characterized as a “gentle grilling.” While his confirmation seems all but assured, Panetta was clear on one point: The department’s effort to cut $400 billion in spending as part of overall deficit reduction measures would not endanger [...]

As part of the ongoing shakeup of President Barack Obama’s national security team, the Defense Department announced the president this week formally nominated Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John R. Allen to serve as the next commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan. As part of Allen’s promotion, the president also nominated [...]