Government agencies have made proposed amendments to the Federal Acquisition Regulation that would avoid use of generic contract identifiers in their records, according to a Federal Computer Week report. Contractors use Data Universal Numbering System numbers in their records, some of which lack in specificity. It has been the case that generic numbers have been [...]

Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee introduced new legislation Wednesday which would permit the sharing of information between the government and private sector. The basis for the bill drafted by Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) is that the sharing of classified cyber threat information between the government and private [...]

In mid-October, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the House Armed Services Committee he wanted the Pentagon to be ready for an audit by 2014, three years earlier than the deadline mandated by Congress. Later in a memo to Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale Panetta ordered the department’s statement of budgetary resources — part of the audit [...]

Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew has signed off on the federal government’s cloud security guidance known as FedRAMP according to a Federal News Radio report. FedRAMP has been in the works for nearly 18 months through collaboration between federal agencies, private industry and academia. The OMB will release the memo and guidance [...]

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recently spoke to Federal News Radio about the agency’s budget and its top priorities for the coming years. The agency recently received a clean financial audit from the Office of Management and Budget. “Anytime you can demonstrate that, at least, you seem to know what you’re doing in the fiscal arena, [...]

In examining eight federal agencies with the highest information technology budgets, the Government Accountability Office found that none of the agencies know the size of the cyber workforce they have since there is no clear definition of what a cybersecurity professional is doing, according to a recent FierceGovernmentIT report. In the GAO report, the group [...]

Amidst the Defense Department‘s budget reduction efforts, lawmakers are urging the Obama administration to mar cutting of a joint developed commercial satellite program worth $7 billion, according to a Bloomberg report. The program that may be cut was developed by GeoEye Inc. and DigitalGlobe Inc., as part of the EnhancedView program, which provides commercial satellite imagery to intelligence [...]

On Monday, Army Maj. Gen. William E. Ingram Jr. both assumed his role as director of the Army National Guard and received a promotion to lieutenant general, according to a DVIDS report. Ingram was made the Army Guard’s 20th director with the last official director serving in April 2009, according to reported comments by Air [...]

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had to pass another stopgap funding measure before Thanksgiving, but had one measure of budget success as they passed a “minibus” bill to fund several Cabinet departments and agencies. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will try a similar approach but on a bigger scale. Reid plans to bring forward [...]

A cell phone emergency service used to alert government and public safety calls failed during the east coast earthquake this past summer, a Homeland Security official said. Allen F. Woodhouse, acting director DHS National Communications System told NextGov it was text messaging traffic that overwhelmed the Wireless Priority Service. “All of the texting and short [...]