• Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working under a new enterprise strategy to fill workforce gaps. ICE’s 2024 annual report details how the agency used direct-hire authorities to make several hundred job offers in the past year. And ICE also made 185 tentative job offers at the Department of Homeland Security’s June hiring expo. ICE said that recruiting and hiring is a major piece of a multiyear “Enterprise Transformation Initiative” kicked off in 2024. The immigration agency is expected to ramp up recruitment under the incoming Trump administration.
  (ICE 2024 annual report - Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
• State chief information officers said cybersecurity remains their top priority heading into 2025. But the National Association of State CIOs survey found artificial intelligence, including chatbots and virtual assistants, rated second highest priority up from their number three priority for 2024. Data management and analytics also jumped up the list to number four from number six. Budget control and accessibility are among the new entrants into the top 10 priority list for 2025. Three top priorities for 2024 didn't make the 2025 list, including broadband and wireless as well as creating a new operating model for their state's CIO.
  (Top 10 state CIO priorities for 2025 - NASCIO)
• The White House is detailing federal plans to shore up cybersecurity in the energy sector. Agencies are working on 32 high-impact initiatives to secure the energy sector from cyber threats. That’s according to the White House’s new Energy Modernization Cybersecurity Implementation Plan. It covers actions on issues ranging from distributed energy systems to battery supply chains and electric vehicles. The Energy Department is leading the charge to expand its Energy Threat Analysis Center over the next two years. The goal is to share more cyber threat data with partners across the energy sector.
  (Energy Modernization Cybersecurity Implementation Plan - White House)
• President-elect Donald Trump taps Emil Michael to serve as the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. Michael was the senior vice president of business and chief business officer at Uber, a ride-sharing company, from 2013 to 2018. In 2012, he was the chief operating officer of Klout, an app that measured users’ online social influence. He also served as special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates during the Obama administration. In his announcement, Trump said that Michael will “ensure that our Military has the most technologically sophisticated weapons in the world, while saving A LOT of money for our Taxpayers.”
  (Trump names undersecretary of defense for research and engineering - Federal News Network)

        Join us Jan. 27 for our Industry Exchange Cyber 2025 event where industry leaders will share the latest cybersecurity strategies and technologies.

• The General Services Administration’s IT projects could get more Congressional scrutiny under a bill that became law this week. President Biden signed the GSA Technology Accountability Act on Monday. It requires GSA to submit an annual report to Congress detailing the allocation and usage of funds from the Citizen Services Fund and the Acquisition Services Fund. Backers said it’s meant to keep the agency honest about how its spending resources on IT projects and the capabilities they deliver.
  (More Congressional scrutiny coming for GSA's IT projects - White House)
• The chief digital and artificial intelligence office has completed its implementation plan for the AI Adoption Strategy and the DoD’s AI chartering directive. It is a significant milestone for the agency that will help clearly define the agency’s roles and responsibilities in managing the DoD’s data, analytics and artificial intelligence initiatives. The agency provided the AI adoption strategy implementation plan to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General shortly before it released its report that investigated whether the CDAO is on track with its AI strategy and policy for the DoD. The DoD’s AI policy was published several days after the release of the IG report, which fulfilled most of the DoD IG’s policy-focused recommendations for the CDAO.
  (CDAO provides AI implementation plan, policy to DoD IG - Federal News Network)
• The Pentagon is telling military services and DoD agencies they’ll need to keep tabs on their progress toward adopting modern internet addressing standards. An updated policy DoD issued last week requires quarterly reports on systems that are enabled for IPv6. The implementation tracking is one of several new pieces of guidance in the new DoD instruction. It’s an update to a memo DoD officials issued three years ago, when the department started implementing new OMB directives on IPv6 implementation.
  (DoD takes on the tracking of modern internet addressing standards adoption - Department of Defense)
• US Transportation Command said it’s continuing to ramp up the implementation of DoD’s new multi-billion-dollar household goods moving contract. TRANSCOM gave the go-ahead to start using the Global Household Goods contract at 20 more military installations by the end of this year. That brings the total to 94 bases in the continental U.S. DoD is also adding routes to the new contract as it continues to gradually move away from its legacy contract structure for moving service member’s belongings. International moves under GHC aren’t expected to start until late next year.
  (U.S. Transportation Command ramps up implementation of household goods moving contract - U.S. Transportation Command)

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