The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) are moving beyond the earth-bound mission edge and into the stars as they look to launch artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into space, top agency officials said on Nov. 19 at the Red Hat Government Symposium in Washington.  […]

Feds are “growing good in government” this new fiscal year by partnering with industry and academia to build the feedback loops of the future. […]

A top official from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said today that the Federal government is currently on track in the second phase of the Federal Data Strategy OMB released in 2020. […]

Data is growing exponentially. Data is also everywhere – edge, core, and cloud. Most importantly, effective data capture, security, management, and analysis are critical to agency missions. Federal agencies must be able to keep pace with growing data volumes and leverage emerging technologies to create data-driven insights that support mission objectives. […]

Federal agency officials talked about the art and science of data management and related workforce recruiting at FCW’s IT Modernization Summit on October 5. […]

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter on Sept. 21 to the inspector generals of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense (DoD), and Department of Justice (DOJ), requesting that they investigate the alleged warrantless data gathering of American citizens’ online search histories. […]

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) on August 8 released a new report for the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) on current and potential sources of state death data used by Federal agencies for program administration and payment integrity, and pointing to ways for better government cooperation in the sharing of that data. […]

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has proposed establishing a new health data agency to improve access to impartial and objective public health data, with the payoff of bolstering infectious disease intelligence and preparedness. […]

Federal agencies are hard at work developing strategies to overcome data challenges and ensure they’re meeting critical mission needs, Federal data experts from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said during the Databricks Data and AI Summit 2022 in late June. […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) needs to re-design its data management system to ensure that it collects and delivers timely, accurate, and complete air passenger information to support contact tracing by local public health authorities, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]

Among the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) new list of priority open recommendations to the Department of Education (DOE) one common thread continues to jump out – improving data quality to ensure the well-being and education of school-age children. […]

The Biden-Harris Administration is seeking feedback on a pending national strategy for privacy-preserving data sharing and analytics, according to a request for information (RFI) released today in the Federal Register. […]

A new legislative “discussion draft” that aims to create a stronger data privacy and security landscape for U.S. consumers would put the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in charge of the proposed new rules and would preempt most existing state laws on data privacy and security. […]

New legislation filed by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., on April 20 would create additional legal protections for metadata generated by customers of online service providers and stored in cloud-based systems, in addition to the content of the electronic communications that they generate. […]

House Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said today he is preparing legislation that aims to reduce the Federal government’s ballooning improper payments rate – which amounted to at least $281 billion in fiscal year 2021 and was greatly exacerbated by fraud in connection with COVID-19 relief programs including unemployment insurance (UI) administered by states whose IT systems were overwhelmed by demand. […]

The Space Development Agency (SDA) has awarded a trio of contractors a total of $1.8 billion of contracts to build a mesh network of interconnected space satellites that will form the basis of a high-volume data communications system expected to make up the “backbone” of its Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network, SDA said in a release. […]

The internet enables the collection and responsible sharing of data to address challenges in the United States. To address the challenges of today, the nation needs data to be timely, relevant, and detailed according to White House Chief Scientist, Denice Ross. […]

Pointing to harms that can result from the use of online data from children and teens, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. – an architect of early internet privacy laws – is continuing his years-long push for an update to data privacy laws to more comprehensively protect children in today’s digital landscape, and expand provisions of the law to protect all adults if possible. […]

David Markowitz, the U.S. Army’s chief data officer and analytics officer, said today that the service branch is closing in on publicly releasing further details about its data plan including governance issues and major objectives. […]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is utilizing AI and big data to predict weather disasters and alert the public in real-time, according to NOAA’s Chief Information Officer Zachary Goldstein. […]

The Department of Education (DoE) has released new updates to its College Scorecard that are intended to make the tool more useful for students and families weighing college options. DoE said that updates may also be beneficial to school counselors, college access providers, researchers, and other critical stakeholders. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a new initiative – dubbed “Justice Counts” – to help states make smarter policy and budget decisions using up-to-date, actionable criminal justice data. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in its annual report on governmentwide improper payments – defined as payments that shouldn’t have been made or were made for  incorrect amounts – jumped to 7.2 percent in Fiscal Year 2021 with the increase driven in part by soaring rates of unemployment insurance fraud during the coronavirus pandemic. […]

A new report from the Data Foundation is evaluating Federal agencies’ abilities to implement the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (Evidence Act), and makes eight recommendations to better implement the law’s evaluation provisions. Top among those asks are requests for more agency funding and personnel resources to properly implement the law. […]

The National 911 Program has selected consulting firm Mission Critical Partners to pilot and evaluate the first subset of the 911 DataPath data exchange model. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) data strategy already provides an overarching vision, focus areas, guiding principles, essential capabilities, and goals necessary to transform the DoD into a data-centric enterprise. Yet, according to DoD officials, another very necessary element to making this strategy work is clear communication throughout the entire department. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) could improve how it manages its fraud, waste, and abuse practices by improving access to the data used by the agency and its contractors for data analysis, as well as using all tools available to keep the department’s research secure, according to a Nov. 26 DoE Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report. […]

Officials from the Department of Defense (DoD) emphasized this week scaling cloud and data capabilities to empower warfighters operating at the network edge is crucial to meet the Pentagon’s mission needs. […]

The Office of Management and Budget has released a 2021 action plan for Federal agencies to make progress on a list of goals under the Federal Data Strategy published in 2019, but given there are little more than two months to go in 2021, OMB characterized the year-end goals as “aspirational.” […]

Data quality and data governance are two keys to implementing emerging technologies, Federal officials emphasized on August 25 during a FedInsider webinar. […]