Aaron Boyd

Universal Service Administrative Corporation -- the not-for-profit, quasi-governmental corporation charged with funding internet access in needy and underserved communities -- is looking for some robotic process automation tools to ease the job of its verification team and reduce errors from rote, manual data entry. The RPA tools sought in a solicitation posted to beta.SAM.gov will be used in support of the High Cost program, which, “provides support for connectivi

The Office of Management and Budget announced Grant Schneider will be the second federal chief information security officer. As such, Schneider will lead cybersecurity strategy across the executive branch and chair the CISO Council. Schneider has been filling the CISO role in an acting capacity and is the National Security Council’s senior director for cybersecurity.

Under a new reorganization plan from the Trump administration, federal agencies would have less than four years to digitize all their paper processes. The White House released its overarching plan to reorganize the federal government, and, as with most of the administration’s management plans, it emphasizes technology’s role in the future of government. The plan calls for digitizing all of the federal government’s recordkeeping by Dec. 31, 2022, at which time the National Archives and Records Administration would stop accepting paper records from agencies.

A push by a cohort of Democratic Reps to reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment failed on the House floor June 8. The office was created in 1972 to offer bipartisan advice and assistance to lawmakers on difficult technical issues. It was later defunded in 1995 by a Republican Congress that considered its work redundant. 7 Democratic Reps introduced an amendment to reinstate the defunct office. The amendment was added to an appropriations bill to fund energy and water programs, military construction, the Veterans Affairs Department and legislative branch for fiscal 2019.

In December 2014, Congress gave government chief information officers (CIOs) new powers and authority to manage the IT enterprise at their departments and component agencies under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA). Three and a half years later, CIOs don’t have the authority they need, administration officials said. President Trump signed an executive order giving presidential weight to mandates of FITARA, specifically the parts that give department CIOs authority over hiring, budgets and setting the IT agenda for the entire department enterprise.

President Donald Trump has yet to name a director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy but that doesn’t mean the office hasn’t been working on the administration’s tech priorities. The office released a rundown of the Administration’s tech achievements to date in which OSTP staff had a hand, touching on: artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, education, government technology, health tech, and space exploration.

After sitting vacant for a year, the Trump administration has nominated a new permanent federal Chief Information Officer (CIO): Suzette Kent, currently a principal with law firm Ernst & Young’s financial services practice. The White House announced Jan. 26 the president’s intention to nominate Kent as the next administrator of the Office of Electronic Government within the Office of Management and Budget, a role most have come to know as the federal CIO.