The Wrap: DOGE Taps Real Power; CISA Red Team Raid; Burrell Heading to FDIC; Hello CHAPPIE!
Welcome to The Wrap for Friday, November 22!
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 Taps Real Power
Up until yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort was mostly made of two high-profile people – Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy – talking up big government cuts on social media. Today, DOGE is primed to tap real power in Congress after Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee –?said?he plans to create a new subcommittee of House Oversight to work with DOGE?and act as a conduit to turn its ideas into legislation. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is set to head the new DOGE subcommittee. Rep. Comey sees big things ahead for the effort. “We have jurisdiction over the Federal workforce. We’re the good government committee that tries to root out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the Federal government,” he said. “We’re going to try to implement their recommendations, because that’s all that Musk and Ramaswamy are going to be able to do is recommend things for either Donald Trump to pass as an executive order or for Congress to pass as a law,” Rep. Comer emphasized. “We don’t care if someone’s feelings get hurt because we eliminate their fat-cat bureaucratic job in Washington, we want to work for the taxpayers, not the bureaucrats,” he said, adding, “I think it’s going to be a pretty good match.”
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CISA Red Team Raid
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is talking up its recent red-team probe of an unnamed critical infrastructure organization, which ended up with mixed results depending on one’s perspective. The bad news: CISA was able to gain initial access through a web shell left by a third party’s previous security assessment and ended up compromising the target’s business systems. The good news: everyone learned some security lessons that the agency is publicly sharing to help others minimize cyber risk. A few of those lessons: the target had insufficient technical controls to prevent and detect malicious activity; its staff needs more training and support to secure software configurations and detect malicious activity; and leadership minimized the business risk of known attack vectors for the organization.?Please click through here for the whole story.
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Burrell Heading to FDIC
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration ’s (NARA) loss is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) ’s gain as Sheena Burrell is leaving her CIO post at NARA to become head of the FDIC’s Office of Innovation, whose mission is to promote the adoption of technological innovations in the banking sector. When Burrell clears out of NARA at the end of next week, Gulam Shakir – who now is chief technology officer at NARA – will step in as the acting CIO as the agency continues to pursue its digital transformation plans. Shakir has served as CTO since May 2020, and previously was the agency’s chief data officer.?Prior to NARA, Burrell held tech leadership roles at the Social Security Administration and NASA and has been on the board of the Technology Modernization Fund since May 2021.??
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Hello CHAPPIE!
There’s a new robot dog in town in town and we think it’s a friendly one unless you’re smuggling deadly threats onto the Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colo., and in that case, watch out. The four-legged robot, affectionately called CHAPPIE, ?has been in use on the base since July, according to the dates on some photos?released?by the service to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), and is walking the chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) beat. CHAPPIE includes remote CBRN sensing capabilities using the department’s current inventory of detectors, distinguishing it from other systems and making it a significant technological advancement in CBRN defense. The latest robot pup “is not only an operational game-changer for CBRN defense but also serves as a proof of concept for technological innovation within the Air and Space Forces,” United States Air Force Master Sgt. Dominic Garcia, section chief for Installation at the Office of Emergency Management, said.
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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more next week. 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].