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U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel has been asked by Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell to lead OMB’s management team on an interim basis until a new deputy director for management is confirmed, a White House official confirmed to FedScoop.

The Commerce Department has dramatically changed its information technology structure over the past year, delegating more authority to its 12 bureaus to better manage their own IT portfolios and providing stronger oversight from the department’s headquarters.

In an interview with FedScoop, Gray Brooks, senior API strategist for the General Services Administration’s Digital Innovation Center, pointed to two primary reasons the growth of APIs is expected to continue.

A request for proposals pilot project, developed under the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows program, is starting to gain ground in the small business IT community.

If you are currently seeking employment, the tech industry may be your best bet for finding a job — and a high-paying one to boot.

Gen. Keith Alexander reiterated his view that the federal government’s network architecture is not defensible against cyber-attacks, but added it can be if rebuilt using the latest cloud-computing technologies.

In an effort to promote interoperability and openness within the federal government, White House officials this morning released a new policy that requires agencies to make open and machine-readable data the new default for federal information.

The Small Business Administration is noting a decline in the number of government contracting firms in the 8(a) and HUBZone set-aside programs, said John Shoraka, SBA’s associate administrator of government contracting and business development.

FedScoop’s 4th Annual Tech Shoot-Out, held May 7, 2013, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., brought together government and industry IT leaders to “shoot it out” over the biggest questions related to federal cloud computing, cybersecurity and big data.

After months of uncertainty about his whereabouts — and plenty of speculation — Homeland Security Department CIO Richard Spires has announced his plans to step down.

Congress set aside May 5-11 for Public Service Recognition Week, to acknowledge and honor U.S. government civil servants.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is about to host its second of four workshops with the private sector in creating the cybersecurity framework outlined in President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order.

Developed in part during the White House Hackathon, the API provides read-only access to data on all petitions that passed the 150-signature threshold – the number needed for a petition to be publicly viewable on the site.

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Dempsey deflected criticism that the Pentagon should have included the $52 billion in sequestration cuts the Defense Department could face in the coming year if a debt agreement is not reached again.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology published the fourth revision of Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations, better known as Special Publication 800-53.

First lady Michelle Obama announced yesterday some good news for the IT community and for military personnel transitioning back to civilian life yesterday – a new public-private partnership to provide IT training and certification to service members.

“No one should mistake the common cause of securing our homeland for authority to violate the civil liberties of Americans,” Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies, said during an April 25 hearing on Capitol Hill.

You’ve heard of TechStat and PortfolioStat. Well, for the last few months, the Office of Management and Budget has been doing CyberStat sessions, Dr. Andrew Ozment, senior director of cybersecurity at the White House, said Tuesday at McAfee’s Public Sector Summit presented by FedScoop.

With the bombings at the Boston Marathon, the public got a first-hand view this week of the new ways the Department of Homeland Security is using data and analytics to protect the nation, said the agency’s acting chief information officer.

The federal information technology budget has remained effectively flat the past four years while government spending continues to be cut in different areas shows the Obama administration’s belief in the power of technology to be transformative.