The Wrap: DOGE Efficiency Call; CISA Incident Response Update; Meet us at Tech Tonic Dec. 19

Welcome to The Wrap for Monday, December 16!

From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:

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DOGE Efficiency Call

Veteran Fed-Tech observers want the DOGE – President-elect Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency advisory group – to take a swing at making government more efficient, rather than focus just on taking a bite out of costs. That was an emerging point of consensus today at GovExec ’s?Trump & GovCon?event, where observers weighed the merits of the twin DOGE missions. “No one can argue that there’s room for more efficiency in the Federal government, but talking about improving efficiency and talking about cutting … $2 trillion, a third of the Federal budget, if that’s really what your goal is, you’re talking about way more than efficiency,” said Joel Friedman, the senior vice president for Federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who added, “you’re talking about gutting important programs.” Jenny Mattingley, the vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, added that the DOGE should focus more on “the other E-word besides efficiency, which is effectiveness.” Mattingley explained that every new administration must answer the question, “What is it you want to do?” and then staff and budget accordingly to meet set outcomes. She hopes the DOGE will set specific outcomes, as well as help with what she referred to as “myth busting.” Mattingley added, “there’s a lot of myths around the Federal government. So, if this is an opportunity to get out there and collectively myth bust on some of that while looking for ways to make it more effective, that would be a positive.”

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CISA Incident Response Update

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) wants to hear from you by Jan. 15 with feedback on a draft update unveiled?today of the agency’s National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP), which was first published in 2016. What does NCRIP do? It’s the plan that lays out the U.S. response to major cyber incidents, along with what the private sector needs to do in that event. What’s new in the updated version? Among other points, a defined path for non-Federal stakeholders to participate, streamlined content, legal and policy changes, and a predictable cycle for future updates. “It includes coordination mechanisms, key decision points, and priority activities across the cyber incident response lifecycle,” CISA said in a?press release?today. “The NCIRP also identifies structures that response stakeholders should leverage to coordinate cyber incidents requiring cross-sector, public-private, or federal coordination; however, it is not meant to be a step-by-step instruction manual,” the agency said.

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Meet us at Tech Tonic Dec. 19

For the final time in 2024, please plan to stop over at MeriTalk’s?Tech Tonic?on Dec. 19 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Morton’s the Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., to make merry with your best friends in Federal IT and toast the year’s many accomplishments. On the toasting front, we’ll be dishing out well-deserved FITARA Awards to tech officials from 17 of the largest Federal agencies to recognize all of their efforts in creating record-shattering grade gains on the latest FITARA Scorecard. If your networking cup is not yet running over, the invite list is jammed with the people we need to know better including from the 美国国务院 , U.S. Department of Homeland Security , U.S. Department of the Treasury , National Science Foundation (NSF) , U.S. Department of Labor , U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) , U.S. Department of Transportation , NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration , U.S. Department of the Interior , U.S. Department of Education , U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) , U.S. Department of Commerce , Social Security Administration , US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , U.S. Department of Justice , USDA , and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) . The?Go Button?is a click away.

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Merritt Named NIH CIO

Congrats to Adele Merritt, who started work today as the new chief information officer (CIO) at The National Institutes of Health (NIH).?She joins the new agency after running technology operations at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) since 2022. Before that Merritt was the principal deputy CIO for cyber at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and held senior positions as a staffer for the National Security Council, The White House . At NIH, Merritt will report to Sean Mooney, who serves as the agency’s associate director for information technology, cyberinfrastructure, and cybersecurity.?Dennis Papula, who had been the NIH acting CIO since January 2023, has taken on the new position of CIO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response as of Dec. 15.

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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more tomorrow. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy. And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected].