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The Secret Service failed to effectively secure and manage mobile devices used for official business, including during protective operations, creating risks that adversaries could intercept sensitive communications and use them to target U.S. leaders and other protectees, according to a watchdog report issued Thursday.

EDITOR's NOTE: This article has been updated to include the correct terminology for the authority to operate a governmentwide contract -- executive agent designation. The General Services Administration still plans to take over NASA’s SEWP IT contract vehicle, but is taking a slow and steady approach.

The General Services Administration’s push to centralize government buying is as much a return to its roots as it is a Trump administration initiative, according to one of the leading architects of the consolidation. Laura Stanton, acting commissioner for GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, gave a bit of a history lesson during remarks at the GovExec-produced SAP NOW event on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. GSA started in 1949 as part of a series of recommendations from the Hoover Commission.

Federal agencies have spent the last few years launching artificial intelligence demos and investing in pilot programs. You would expect that we'd be further down the road by now, but the reality is that turning isolated experiments into reliable, repeatable operations isn't easy. It's particularly difficult to do so without creating a massive security, compliance, or sustainment burden. The goal for 2026 isn't just to acquire and stockpile more AI tools.

Artificial intelligence has already helped the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shave years off its typical licensing review process, an agency official said on Thursday. Now, the NRC is looking at how it can safely adopt other emerging capabilities to further speed up its review processes.

Artificial intelligence and other technological advances are streamlining federal hiring and improving employee skills assessments, senior agency human capital officials said at an event on Wednesday sponsored by the software company SAP. The event was produced by GovExec, Government Executive’s parent company.

The Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum to federal agencies on Wednesday outlining the steps they need to take to migrate select government systems to post-quantum cryptography, or PQC, an encryption standard intended to withstand the anticipated code-breaking capacity of a fault-tolerant quantum computer. The memo expands on requirements outlined in President Donald Trump’s June 22 executive order on government PQC migration.

Swaths of consumer streaming devices and passive-income services are quietly turning Americans’ home internet connections into cover for cybercrime, fraud and foreign-linked hackers, according to a new investigation that found suspicious behavior from devices and apps sold through major online marketplaces.

Will Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration, was placed on administrative leave as part of a broader personnel shakeup at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that has removed roughly 50 career and political staffers from their roles since Bill Pulte became acting director Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon’s recently released strategy for defending against quantum computing technologies will ensure “the integrity of our systems for decades to come,” its IT lead said Wednesday, adding that network modernization “is only a first step” in readying the U.S. military for future threats.