The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plans to recommence its Electronic Health Record (EHR) system rollout in fiscal year 2025 after a 18-month suspension due to performance challenges. Following a halted deployment in April 2023, recent improvements at five existing sites and successful implementation at a sixth site with the Defense Department have led to renewed optimism among VA officials. Senior officials, including Kurt DelBene, advocate for an incremental approach to EHR modernization to better address the needs of veterans and VA staff. Notably, updates have resulted in a 50% decrease in system crashes and lags, alongside a 60% drop in incident tickets, indicating progress in operational reliability.

VA to Resume Electronic Health Record Rollout After Performance Improvements Federal News Network

Jennifer Wendel, recently appointed as the Chief Information Officer for HHS, has outlined her priorities for 2025, focusing on enhancing cybersecurity, improving customer experience, and investing in workforce training. With 28 years of federal service, including one year as acting CIO, Wendel emphasizes the need to protect health records and sensitive data by continuously assessing cybersecurity measures, training employees to recognize threats like phishing, and maturing incident response processes. She also plans to promote digital literacy among staff to support cybersecurity efforts and reduce insider threats. Additionally, Wendel aims to modernize grants.gov to simplify the grant application process, improving accessibility for applicants and efficiency for grant makers.

New HHS CIO Prioritizes Cybersecurity and Workforce Training for 2025 GovCIO Media

Linas Beliūnas has highlighted the swift advancements made by Google in recent weeks, suggesting that the company has surpassed Apple’s innovations over the past four years. While Apple traditionally set the standard for technological design and integration, Beliūnas points to a perceived stagnation in its innovation. Google’s recent developments, including the Gemini Pro 2.0 Flash AI model, the Multimodal Realtime API for handling multimedia data, and the Deep Research tool for simplifying data analysis, reflect a robust push into AI capabilities. Additionally, technologies such as Veo 2 and Willow illustrate Google’s focus on AI content generation and advancements in quantum computing.

Google Surges Ahead in Innovation, Outpacing Apple in Tech Advancements LinkedIn

Amazon's Chief Information Security Officer, CJ Moses, outlines the company's robust cybersecurity strategies that have effectively defended its cloud services from trillions of cyber threats. Key tools like MadPot and Sonaris enhance security by identifying malicious activities through honeypots and analyzing network traffic. MadPot, a global honeypot system, captures intelligence from around 750 million daily attacks, while Sonaris prevents 2.7 trillion attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on EC2 instances. Moses highlights that 99 percent of DDoS attacks against AWS are automatically mitigated, ensuring a secure environment for customers without their awareness of the threats.

Amazon Thwarts Trillions of Cyberattacks with Cutting-Edge Security Tools CRN