FCW Insider: Jan. 27

Mary Davie, a 32-year veteran of the General Services Administration, is looking to NASA for her next adventure. She spoke with FCW's Mark Rockwell about the lessons learned over a long career in government acquisition.

The FBI recently announced it would notify states when their local election systems are hacked. Derek B. Johnson learned in his reporting that some state officials and lawmakers want the feds to form a broader range of stakeholders in the election ecosystem.

Central control over the spectrum holdings of federal agencies has broken down, according to the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They want the Government Accountability Office to look at what's going on at the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Mark has more.

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics underscores how public sector employees are driving union membership. Lia Russell explains.

The Department of Veterans Affairs needs to enhance how it authenticates and tracks veterans seeking services, according to Suzanne Charleston, senior director for federal healthcare and beneficiary markets at Neustar. In an FCW commentary, she noted that with agencies now offering such a complex array of services, it's more vital than ever that government catch up with their private sector counterparts and link the connection points.

Quick Hits

***The Defense Department saved $5 billion following its Fourth Estate review last year, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said during remarks at a Jan. 24 CSIS event. That saved money, he said, will be reinvested in tech efforts including artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, and space initiatives starting with the 2021 budget, which is expected in February.

*** The National Security Agency issued guidance Jan. 22 on mitigating cloud vulnerabilities. The document is designed to focus security managers and systems administrators to configuration risks, risks that can result from poor access control, vulnerabilities arising from sharing cloud space with other organizations as well as vulnerabilities in the supply chain.

*** Last week saw movement in two lawsuits that are looking to force the Defense Department to rethink its $10 billion cloud computing contract, awarded to Microsoft in October. In a filing opposing the original design of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure procurement, Oracle argues that the award to Microsoft doesn't moot its case, now on appeal, even though Oracle argued that the request for information was conceived with Amazon Web Services in mind as the eventual winner.

Meanwhile AWS pressed forward with an expected request for the judge in their protest lawsuit to halt work on the JEDI contract while the court considers their claim that they lost the contract to Microsoft due to political interference. That request comes as DOD has already issued a $1 million JEDI task order. Ross Wilkers rounds it all up for Washington Technology.