A new push to relaunch Congress’ expert tech office

A bipartisan bill to resurrect Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment and rebuild it as the Congressional Office of Technology was introduced last week, with just about two months left on the congressional calendar to pass the legislation. This new bill is the latest attempt to restore the OTA, which provided bipartisan tech-based information for Congress from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s before it was defunded. Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the bill’s lead sponsor, said the shuttering the office amounted to “stripping Congress of the ability to access unbiased scientific and technological expertise as we entered the digital age.” The bill is co-sponsored by California Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte, as well as Democratic Reps. Sean Casten and Bill Foster of Illinois and Don Beyer of Virginia. Similar bills to revitalize the office have been introduced but did not advance in previous congresses. The office would coordinate with the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service so it doesn’t duplicate work, as GAO and CRS have filled in the gaps left by the OTA since it was defunded. The office would report on emerging science and tech trends “of national importance” with a staff possibly consisting of scientists and engineers on leave from universities, industry, or research groups, who could serve for up to one year.

The General Services Administration is “not effectively” protecting controlled unclassified information in its Google Drive, exposing it to all GSA users and contractors, its Office of the Inspector General found in a recent report. The OIG found that 116 files in its search included physical security information, personally identifiable information, general proprietary business information or other CUI that were shared agency-wide. This included Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses and vendor proposals with pricing information, as well as site and floor plans, with details on building vulnerabilities and security areas, it said. The report said: “These exposures leave GSA vulnerable to significant reputational risk and potential litigation.” More than half of the files identified contained physical security information, and five of the files contained PII. The OIG put some blame on ineffective management of the agency’s third-party data loss prevention tool, which it did not explicitly name, though GSA Chief Information Officer David Shive mentioned a tool called Cloudlock in his response. This tool, which GSA has spent $7.8 million on as of September, did not detect exposed documents with current search terms and can only handle files up to 15 megabytes. About a third of the files contained the phrase “for official use only” or some variant of it, which was not caught by the tool.

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.