Page 10 - FCW, Sept/Oct 2018

Trending
Election security bill stalls in
the Senate
An effort to advance a bipartisan election security bill out of committee is in limbo as pressure from states and technology vendors mounts.
A Senate Rules and Administration Committee markup of the Secure Elections Act was postponed at the last minute in August, surprising stakeholders and even committee staffers who heard about the postponement 90 minutes before the hearing was set to begin.
The Secure Elections Act would establish protocols for sharing information on cyberthreats between state election officials and the Department of Homeland Security. Vendors would be responsible for reporting possible hacks of their voting technology to state officials, who would then notify DHS.
The bill would also require states to field voting systems that have backup paper ballots and conduct post-election audits to double-check a random sampling of ballots. The bill would take effect for the 2020 election cycle, though waivers would be available for states that need to delay to 2022.
The audit provision has been the source of some dispute between the bill’s sponsors, Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Klobuchar favors an audit that incorporates a hand-count of ballots, and Lankford says machine counts are acceptable. Both, however, want to see the legislation move quickly.
Klobuchar said she was disappointed by the delay, while Lankford told FCW that “the issue of election cybersecurity is very important and more must be done now. Congressional inaction is unacceptable.”
— Derek B. Johnson and Adam Mazmanian
90%
of U.S. voters will have DHS-provided election system defenses by Election Day
FCW INSIDER
People on the move
David Chow is the new CIO at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He replaced Chad Cowan, who had been serving as acting CIO.
Chow spent eight years in a senior management role at the National Credit Union Administration before joining HUD.
Beth Killoran left the CIO post at the Department of Health and
Human Services for a job in
HHS’ Office of the Surgeon
director of the Cyber Division, left to take a job at Accenture. Jeffrey Tricoli, who was in charge of the FBI task force investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections, is now a senior vice president at Charles Schwab Corp.
Kay Ely, assistant commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Office of IT Category at the Federal Acquisition Service, will move to a task force created to merge some operations of the Office of Personnel Management into GSA. Ely will serve on the task force for a 90-day detail. After that, she will retire from the
federal government. Deputy Assistant
Commissioner Bill Zielinski will take over as assistant commissioner of the IT category on an acting basis. He has played a key role in setting strategy for $54 billion in agency technology spending. Joanne Collins-Smee is stepping down as deputy commissioner of FAS and director of theTechnology Transformation Service to take a job in the private sector. Kelly Olson will serve as acting director of TTS and deputy
General. CTO Ed Simcox has taken over as HHS CIO on an acting basis.
At the Interior Department, Sylvia Burns is leaving the CIO job to become deputy CIO for enterprise strategy at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has filled a number of cybersecurity and IT positions at the agency:
• Amy Hess, executive assistant director of the Science and Technology Branch, will be executive director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch.
Kay Ely
Bill Zielinski
• Matt Gorham, who was a
special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division at
the Washington field office, was named assistant director of the Cyber Division. • Michael Gavin will serve as assistant director of the IT Applications and Data Division. He had most recently been special agent in charge of the Memphis field office.
• Marlin Ritzman is now assistant director of the Information Management Division. He was most recently special agent in charge of the Anchorage field office.
The announcements came after a wave of high-profile departures. Howard Marshall, former deputy assistant
Beth Killoran
commissioner of FAS. Olson has been chief of staff at TTS since March.
V. David Zvenyach is also leaving FAS. The former acting executive director of 18F had been serving as a technical adviser to FAS Commissioner Alan Thomas and before that was assistant commissioner of the Office of Systems Management at FAS.
Judith Zawatsky took on the job of acting assistant commissioner when Zvenyach was detailed to advise Thomas and will continue in that role.
— FCW staff
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September/October 2018 FCW.COM