FCW Insider: August 17, 2021

The latest news and analysis from FCW's reporters and editors.

DHS eyes CMMC model

DHS' Office of the Chief Procurement Officer issued a special notice Aug. 10, noting that it is looking for a way to check contractors' compliance with its cyber hygiene clauses released in 2015.

How an IRS hiring blitz can help pave the way for IT modernization

The tax agency's chief procurement officer says she's on a mission to find top talent to work with industry while modernizing the agency's acquisition processes amid a ballooning tax gap.

Microsoft touts top secret cloud ATO

Azure Government Top Secret is now "generally available" for national security workloads, Microsoft announced in a blog post.

Quick Hits

*** Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is taking its protest over the NASA lunar lander contract to the courtroom, where the company will continue arguing that the space agency made several mistakes in choosing Elon Musk's SpaceX for the program. Washington Technology has more on this story.

*** A simulation tool from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory allows researchers to model energy use for 129 million buildings in the United States. Researchers say the effort has created a "digital twin" of every U.S. building.