FCW Insider: May 14

Thrift Board backtracks on investing in Chinese-linked index fund

The decision comes two days after White House asked Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia to intervene. Lia Russell reports.

Senate panel tees up cyber legislation with expanded powers for CISA and a new White House role

At the advice of the Solarium Commission, lawmakers will likely consider adding a new senior White House cybersecurity official and grant other authorities to DHS. Derek B. Johnson has more.

Why network management is a national security issue during the pandemic

Software-defined networking is a major part of telecommunications resiliency during pandemic, said carriers on a presidential telecommunications advisory committee. Mark Rockwell explains.

How TIC pilots can help clarify federal cloud policy

As agencies migrate more of their IT systems and infrastructure to the cloud, the line has become blurred regarding roles and responsibilities between DHS, agencies and vendors. Derek takes a look.

Quick Hits

*** Labor groups including several representing federal, state and local government employees rushed to support the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, the $3 trillion COVID-19 relief and recovery bill proposed by House Democrats aimed at bolstering workers and state and local economies. The bill also includes protections for federal workers.

"We are glad to see that this legislation emphasizes the needs of front-line workers, who continue to put themselves and their families in harms' way every day they report to work," Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.

*** A predictive modeling tool from the Science & Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security could help researchers understand the ability of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to remain active under a variety of climate conditions, the agency announced in a May 13 release.

*** In a May 12 blog post, innovation group 18F explained how a process of interpreting laws and regulations as code could empower agencies to rapidly release public-facing tools that incorporate alterations to existing rules – with potential consequences for emergency management. As an example, 18F cited a tool that incorporated U.S. Department of Agriculture waivers for states to grant eligibility for food stamps in response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

"We decided to challenge ourselves and see how quickly we could add this new rule to our prototype. We found that we could add the rule in a single morning," authors Alex Soble and Mike Gintz wrote in their post.