Report to recognize agencies' progress toward IT security

The Bush administration is readying a report that will recognize several government agencies for making tangible progress in their efforts to meet security goals for information technology, according to administration officials. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is preparing to send Congress an annual report highlighting the status of those IT initiatives, OMB analysts told members of a National Institute of Standards and Technology advisory board on Wednesday. The report will be the last IT security review by OMB before it updates its guidelines and agency reporting requirements under new IT rules created under a recent e-government law. Now in its third year of conducting security reviews for federal agencies, OMB is witnessing improvement in the arena, said Kamela White, a policy analyst at OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). “There is clearly government-wide progress happening,” she told the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board. The number of agencies that are crafting detailed security plans and adopting contingency plans, for example, continues to climb, she said. Full Story