Ideas

FITARA Must Become the Catalyst for Change in Federal IT

Many still consider FITARA a compliance drill rather than a way to transform IT.

Cybersecurity

The Encryption Wars Will Return One Way or Another

House Homeland aide predicts another encryption standoff, urges tackling the issue before there’s a crisis.

Digital Government

DHS IG Says Immigration System Could Grant Citizenship to National Security Threats

The inspector general made the urgent recommendation to stop the department from reactivating the system.

Artificial Intelligence

The Demon Voice That Can Control Your Smartphone

Researchers have created creepy sounds unintelligible to humans but still capable of talking to phones’ digital assistants.

Cybersecurity

Cyber Breach at Hospital; McDonald's User Info Exposed; and a Gmail Scam

Just another week in ThreatWatch, our regularly updated index of noteworthy data breaches.

Modernization

Klopp stays on board as SSA CIO for now

The Trump administration has asked SSA CIO Rob Klopp to remain in his role to provide continuity as his agency continues modernization projects and agile adoption.

Digital Government

NOAA's First Images from Next-Gen Geostationary Satellite

GOES-16 enters the testing phase, beaming back images with four times higher resolution than other NOAA satellites.

Cybersecurity

Legacy systems, hygiene top Air Force 2017 cyber list

The Air Force will prioritize making legacy and mission systems cyber secure and instilling a culture of cyber security in the workforce in 2017, says CISO Pete Kim.

Modernization

Samsung Finally Explained What Caused Galaxy Note 7 Explosions

The company claims engineering—not mismanagement—was to blame.

Modernization

State of federal IT report charts needs in cyber, workforce

A weighty report from the CIO Council takes a sweeping view of the challenges facing the federal IT community.

Digital Government

DHS watchdog warns agency on ELIS system

DHS Inspector General urged the Citizenship and Immigration Services to keep the struggling Electronic Immigration System unplugged.

People

Trump signs federal hiring freeze

As promised during the campaign, President Trump has signed an executive order implementing a hiring freeze across most of the civilian federal workforce.

Digital Government

Hi-Tech Pods That Allow Human Beings to Hibernate for Long-Distance Space Travel Are About to Become a Reality

“Our goal is to get from days and weeks to months,” says Bradford, who says the medical equipment used for therapeutic hypothermia can easily be automated and made space-ready.

Ideas

Delivering Efficient Citizen-Centered Government

Consider the following five strategies to create a citizen-centric government and to drive governmentwide efficiencies.

Emerging Tech

President of Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator Is Funding Trump Promise-Tracker

“One of the lesson from startups is more measurement almost always leads to better decision making,” Altman says.

Cybersecurity

Hackers Downloaded US Government Climate Data and Stored it on European Servers as Trump Was Being Inaugurated

Many of the programmers who showed up at UCLA for the event had day jobs as IT consultants or data managers at startups.

Digital Government

Video: Analyzing GAO's Decision To Deny Protests of Alliant 2

The contract will be in use for the next 10 years and $65 billion are at stake.