With the Labor Day weekend behind us, it’s time to get serious. The feds are getting serious about information sharing, cyber security, and becoming more efficient in the delivery of services.
Be sure to catch up on the latest federal IT news in this week’s Federal News Round Up.
CIO Halvorsen Encourages Data Sharing for Department of Defense
In a recent memo, Department of Defense CIO, Terry Halvorsen, directed military departments and defense agencies “to adopt standardized, machine-readable information exchange practices” to boost sharing not only between parts of the DoD but also with other federal agencies and mission partners. In the memo, Halvorsen identified APIs as the key technology and also emphasized that appropriate security and access management protocols will be in place. You can read more about the data sharing initiative on the Fierce GovernmentIT site.
State Department to Create a Cyber Security Playbook
In an effort to address recent concerns about the state of cyber security within the State Department, IT leaders are working with private sector peers to develop a series of playbooks to mitigate attacks across a wide range of surfaces and technologies. Their initiative emulates the playbook model used by the White House, which has successfully developed guidelines and best practices across the federal government to boost responsiveness and streamline mission delivery. Interested in learning more? The whole story is over at NextGov.
FDA Makes More Data Sets Available Via OpenFDA API
The FDA has released a new batch of data related to medical devices via its OpenFDA API. The data sets build on a previous release focused on medical device-related adverse events and recalls and incorporates information about the product lifecycle. Inspired by other open data programs across federal agencies, which have seen many groundbreaking apps and products, the FDA is expecting more tools to be created that will help “protect and promote public health.” This story first appeared on the FDA’s blog FDA Voice.
FCC Spends Labor Day Weekend Upgrading IT
While most of us were enjoying one last barbeque, the team over at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was hard at work completing some pretty significant IT upgrades. According to a blog post written by FCC CIO, David Bray, at the core of the upgrade was the removal of 200 legacy IT systems from the FCC to a “commercial service provider” with the specific goal of containing IT spend over the long term. Of course, as anyone who has worked in IT knows, this move didn’t go without a few complications along the way. You can find out what happened when the servers arrived at the new facility in CIO Bray’s blog post.
