The 12th edition of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s FITARA Scorecard issued on July 28 offered a mildly positive story of progress that the largest Federal government agencies are making against a range of IT-related goals. But that’s not where the real news came from in the committee’s semiannual exercise on keep agencies honest on the tech front.
The biggest development for Federal IT came not from the agency scores themselves, but from a further showing of the growing interest among members of Congress to get a more visible and vigorous handle on the biggest issue in Federal IT – cybersecurity.
That increasing level of demand from lawmakers – coupled with White House cybersecurity policy that is trending toward a much more in-depth and measurable view of how well the government defends its networks – means the chances are going up that cybersecurity not only takes a bigger role in future FITARA gradings, but that Federal agencies will be under a sharper political and regulatory microscope to engineer better defenses.
One legislative avenue to get there that is quickly gaining steam in Congress and with cyber experts in the Biden administration is to…
