With aging IT infrastructure, outdated job classification system and a greying government workforce, agency executive and human capital officers face a trifecta of challenges in the years ahead. Soaring demand for cybersecurity experts and data scientists are just two examples of the newer professional specialists that the government is struggling to hire. With the rise of vaccinated workers, questions have arisen about the reopening of federa...

In just a few short years, Robotic Process Automation has gone from a few scattered pilot projects to an essential tool deployed by dozens of agencies. Hundreds of thousands of staff-hours have been saved, and organizations are increasingly looking to leverage artificial intelligence to automate more-complicated workflows. Automation at scale comes with challenges, however -- from credential management to siloed systems to ensuring that outdat...

Although it got an encouraging $1 billion funding shot in the arm from the American Rescue Plan Act in early 2020, the effort to modernize and transform an aging infrastructure remains a complicated task that takes coordination, executive buy-in and detailed security and data strategies to make it work. The $1 billion set aside for the Technology Modernization Fund in the ARP smooths some modernization budgeting issues for agencies, which have...

Federal agencies must shift fully to electronic records management by December 2022, when the National Archives and Records Administration will stop accepting new paper records. Successfully making that transition entails far more than simply digitizing existing documents. Meeting the goals set by M-19-21 demands changes to current business processes, dramatically different approaches to content classification, new systems that are digital thr...

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), the government-wide plan to secure cloud products and services, is almost a decade old. It is still evolving, however. Early in 2021, the House of Representative passed a bill that would have codified a number of its provisions into law, standardizing its processes for agencies to on-ramp cloud computing technologies. To date, the Senate has not acted on the bill. At the same tim...

Current and immutable backups are essential to a well-designed disaster recovery strategy. For many government organizations, however, the data powering mission-critical systems is growing and changing at a dizzying rate. Deciding the frequency of those backups is a complex balancing act, and the risk of ransomware hiding undetected on a system complicates those complications further.In this webcast, GCN Editor-in-Chief Troy Schneider will dis...

As the global pandemic continues and countries wait for a vaccine, estimates about when federal employees will return to their offices in force range from Summer 2021 to Never. Many organizations have discovered the advantages of telework and now plan on expanding its use, even when there is not a snowstorm or health crisis. Although some jobs require on-site personnel, the Office of Personnel Management said that 42% of federal employees are...

DOD put into effect at the end of Nov. 2020 a new DFARS rule that requires Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) for all DOD contractors. Although anticipated for some time, questions remain about the certification process and the scope. The rule requires that contractors register on the Supplier Performance Risk System, produce and maintain a System Security Plan and a Plan of Actions and Milestones. In addition, each company is r...

Most government agencies have made the journey to cloud since the Cloud First and Cloud Smart strategies came from OMB starting in 2010. Many organizations have more than one cloud. The challenge becomes blending the different types of cloud and service models to provide access to needed data, while at the same time protecting a much enlarged attack surface created by the large number of workers who are accessing the data remotely. If there is...

The federal government is fast approaching the midway point in its push for the fully electronic recordkeeping mandated by M-19-21. And while most agencies have made significant progress in identifying the myriad systems business processes that must change, translating those assessments into action remains a daunting challenge. This year's COVID-19 crisis, continued churn at the executive level and the uncertainty surrounding FY 2021 funding h...