Tag Archives: Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act

Grant Schneider, federal chief information security officer, spoke about federal agencies’ improvement in cybersecurity and information technology modernization at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency summit Thursday, Federal Times reported.

The Office of Management and Budget released an updated Data Center Optimization Initiative to better comply with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act’s data center consolidation requirements. The revised DCOI establishes metrics and goals for data center optimization and defines requirements for agencies’ progress reports ahead of FITARA’s Oct. 1, 2020 deadline for consolidation.

The eighth iteration of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard shows that five agencies saw improvement in their letter grades. The agencies showing progress in their letter grades are the departments of Defense, Agriculture, Justice and Treasury and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Eleven federal agencies maintained their scores, while five agencies showed a drop in their letter grades.

The Government Accountability Office discovered that nine agencies successfully implemented provisions of a 2014 law requiring changes to governmentwide information technology management. GAO released a report on Monday highlighting the 12 practices that helped agencies implement the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. 

Andrea Norris, chief information officer at the National Institutes of Health, said her office moves approximately 6 petabytes of data each day through a core computational network, Federal News Network reported Thursday. “Our backbone network is one core because the predominant data that we’re moving through there is scientific by far, but we do have set up in some cases, we architect virtual local networks for specialized scientific instrumentation,” Norris said on the network’s Federal Monthly Insights - Digital Transformation.

Congress provided the chief information officer at the Department of Defense with additional authorities and responsibilities through new provisions that took effect Tuesday, Jan. 1, as part of the fiscal 2018 defense authorization measure, Federal News Network reported Tuesday. The amendments would direct the DoD CIO to develop, publish and adopt standards for all cyber and information technology capabilities that operate on networks of service branches and defense agencies.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has issued the seventh iteration of its Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard, which shows that 11 agencies saw improvement in their letter grades. Thirteen federal agencies maintained their scores, according to the biannual scorecard released by the House panel.
 

The Office of Management and Budget has updated the Data Center Optimization Initiative after Congress passed a measure that extends agencies' compliance with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act’s data center consolidation requirements through Oct. 1, 2020. Suzette Kent, federal chief information officer, said in a draft memorandum published Monday OMB decided to revise DCOI in accordance with the FITARA Enhancement Act of 2017.

 

The Government Accountability Office has called on eight federal departments and their component agencies to organize their policies and review and approval processes for their information technology budgets. 

Dave Powner, a 16-year Government Accountability Office veteran, told FedTech in an interview published Tuesday that the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard has provided agency chief information officers authority to oversee IT modernization and security efforts. “We have plenty of acquisitions that have failed, we have plenty of operations that need to improve, and I think elevating that position and making it a real CIO position at more and more agencies is extremely important,” said Powner, former director of IT management issues at GAO.