Tag Archives: IT

The Department of Agriculture held a two-day hackathon event to address agricultural concerns through the development of new approaches. USDA tasked software developers, information technology professionals and technical experts to create IT systems that will work, grow and sustain agricultural efforts through the use of water resources, the agency said Monday.

The Defense Information Systems Agency’s contracting arm will reduce the fee it charges to clients for enterprise procurement services by start of fiscal year 2020. DISA said Monday that the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization will implement a 2.25 percent contracting fee for IT and telecommunication services starting Oct. 1, down from 2.5 percent.

The Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of the Inspector General released results of an audit on VA's information technology procurement vehicle. VA OIG said Thursday that it sought to verify the department's compliance with federal regulations in managing the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation or T4NG contract. In addition, the audit worked to determine whether VA's Technology Acquisition Center helped contractors meet requirements and awarded orders with respect to policy.

The Department of Energy intends to invest $32 million to help research projects through the rapid development of new materials for the next four years. DOE said Wednesday that it will use high-performance computing facilities to create open-source software applications to support the design of functional materials for electronics, data storage, renewable energy and quantum information science. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration unveiled an online tool to help users prepare and handle the effects of coastal flooding. The Coastal Inundation Dashboard is designed to deliver 48-hour water level forecasts, storm surge information and historic flooding data through the use of real-time information gathered from 200 coastal water level stations, NOAA said Friday.

Rick Driggers, deputy assistant director for cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity and infrastructure agency, said state and local governments should establish information sharing functions with federal cybersecurity agencies, FedScoop reported Thursday.

The Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center has deployed a metrics-based framework to distribute command information in the cloud. The Installation Health Assessment platform works to evaluate the condition of different installation and mission support areas from different commands, the U.S. Air Force said Thursday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) earlier this month released its 2020 to 2025 Strategy document which focuses on three main goals, the third of which outlines how the agency will invest in technology and partnerships to confront emerging threats. 

The Office of Inspector General provided 10 recommendations to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to help reinforce its network firewalls. OIG said in an audit that it discovered vulnerabilities at the FDIC network firewalls that may have mitigated their capacity to track and repel cyberattacks.

The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service recommends that the federal government optimize its hiring processes and modernize civil service preferences to sustain the information technology workforce, Fedscoop reported Tuesday. The commission advised that the government needs to develop technical skill standards, create a civilian group comprised of former government IT employees and grow the Federal Cyber Reskilling Academy.