People
East-West prisoner exchange brings home American journalist, returns convicted Russian hackers
The swap that brings home reporter Evan Gershkovich and others will in turn send back imprisoned Russian hackers convicted for pilfering millions of dollars in schemes against U.S. targets.
Modernization
Senate panel advances House-led TMF update
Congress is looking to enshrine repayment requirements in the legislation that supports the Technology Modernization Fund.
Artificial Intelligence
Party line differences emerge over AI oversight, international partnerships
At a Senate Commerce Committee markup hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, offered multiple amendments designed to reel in federal oversight in AI software development that he says could impair innovation.
Cybersecurity
Senate panel advances cyber regulatory harmonization bill
The bill aims to address overlapping cyber laws that CISOs say have caused compliance headaches.
Emerging Tech
New bill pushes VA to examine how blockchain can enhance its work
Legislation from Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., would require VA to explore the benefits and risks of using distributed ledger technology.
Cybersecurity
New NSA-powered AI tool would help industry optimize cyberdefense testing
Autonomous Penetration Testing would overhaul manual work needed to check the cyber armor of firms that service the DOD community, said Cyber Command and NSA head Gen. Timothy Haugh.
Digital Government
Education says a new system will help borrowers — lawmakers aren’t so sure
“This new system lacks transparency,” four senators told the Department of Education.
Digital Government
Acting Secret Service head suggests that better tech could have thwarted would-be Trump assassin
Ronald Rowe Jr. told a Senate panel that additional cellular bandwidth and the use of counter-drone technology could have averted the attempted assassination of former President Trump.
Cybersecurity
New tech, personnel will help CISA with coming rush of cyber incident reports
CISA said “an automated mechanism” could help it better process and review a coming deluge of new cyber incident reports but could not be accounted for in its current budget.
Artificial Intelligence
Human performance tech with AI assists athletes in the 2024 DOD warrior games
This was the first time that wearable technology and artificial intelligence also took the field to assist some of the competitors.
Modernization
Senators take another crack at solving over-classification
The bipartisan Classification Reform for Transparency Act would establish a new task force to narrow the criteria for classifying documents and make it harder for agencies to exempt records from automatic declassification.
Artificial Intelligence
NTIA advocates open AI model weights in report to White House
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a report to the White House recommending open-source AI foundation model weights with sufficient risk mitigation frameworks.
Digital Government
Senate Democrats push an accessibility refresh
A new bill would revamp the decades old law requiring the government be accessible online, where many agencies are still falling short
Acquisition
Treasury’s funding request for IRS cloud tech far outpaces other civilian agencies, report says
Treasury’s request is the largest out of a combined federal civilian total of almost $9 billion for cloud-related programs in their fiscal year 2025 IT budget requests.
Digital Government
Malicious foreign actors exploit US entities to push disinformation, IC warns
Communications and marketing firms can be pulled in as unwitting collaborators, the intelligence officials noted in a Monday call.
Ideas
Future-proofing government data
COMMENTARY: As AI becomes increasingly integrated into governmental operations, the cost of neglecting data readiness could be catastrophic.
Emerging Tech
White House roadmap looks to guide emerging tech standardization
The Biden administration unveiled a to-do list for federal agencies developing standards for cutting-edge technologies, focusing on external communications.
Modernization
OMB rewrites cloud buying rulebook
The FedRAMP program received its first major update in more than a decade
Ideas
Why unified observability is key to better UX
COMMENTARY: The technology also helps shed light on blind spots introduced by zero trust cybersecurity strategies.
People