Modernization

Agencies score record number of A's on latest FITARA scorecard

GAO Information Technology and Cybersecurity Director Carol Harris said the biannual review has saved the government a total of roughly $31.4 billion since it first began in 2005.

Why Iowa’s 2020 caucus flop still haunts the civic tech world

The caucus stands as a model for how not to integrate tech into elections.

Exclusive

NSA’s secret Amazon-developed cloud environment progressing ‘very well’

The agency's $10 billion cloud program dubbed “WildandStormy" is benefiting from the intelligence community's dozen years of experience in commercial cloud, an AWS official said.

Lawmakers mull a fraud-focused scorecard for oversight

Agency watchdogs warned lawmakers that their centralized fraud analytics capacity could end next year without congressional action.

Inside the IRS push for digital transformation

IRS employees at an Austin, Texas processing center must still sort through heaps of paper documents. But digitization tools are being powered on to help.

VA needs stricter oversight for EHR deployment, top Republican says

Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., who chairs the House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, said he appreciated VA’s engagement with Congress “about establishing some metrics that Oracle has to abide by in order to keep this moving forward.”

Exclusive

IRS will stick with legacy processing system for the upcoming tax season

The IRS is waiting to switch away from the old Individual Master File “out of an abundance of caution,” despite hopes to potentially convert to the new one this year, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told Nextgov/FCW.

Could an easy radio fix have prevented the Trump assassination attempt?

“Being able to talk to other agencies real-time certainly would assist in that response,” one official said.

Space missions rely on private sector engagement, NASA official says

The space agency needs to work more closely with its commercial providers to meet critical flight requirements.

What the next president should do to maintain global tech leadership

A report from MITRE recommends new oversight and continued external partnerships for the next presidential administration to strengthen U.S. science and technology leadership.

IRS is flying blind without plans to modernize legacy tech, watchdog says

This isn’t the first time the IRS has been called out by oversight officials for a lack of detailed technology planning.

Senate panel outpaces House in tech spending plans, including TMF

The Senate's General Government and Financial Services appropriation includes a $25 million plus-up for the nearly depleted Technology Modernization Fund.

VA launches revamped burn pit registry with automatic enrollment

The upgraded database of veterans exposed to toxic pollutants and trash burn pits came after “extensive feedback” showed the platform was difficult for many retired service members to navigate.

Senate panel advances House-led TMF update

Congress is looking to enshrine repayment requirements in the legislation that supports the Technology Modernization Fund.

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.

OMB rewrites cloud buying rulebook

The FedRAMP program received its first major update in more than a decade

Cost overruns, delays plague VA’s new integrated financial management system

The rollout of VA’s modernized financial management and acquisition system has been affected by delays in the department’s new electronic health record system, since “multiple deployments” depend on the EHR’s launch at medical facilities.