This Week in Government Tech Media – January 23, 2026

By Brad Bass /

Once again, cybersecurity was a trending news topic this week – with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) serving as a focal point for the government tech media. We also noted a lot of news related to acquisition reform. You can find links to many of those article below:

CISA on the Hot Seat

CISA continues to draw attention for multiple reasons, ranging from questions about its ability to fulfill its mission in light of workforce reductions to controversy related to attempted firings of agency officials, including the CIO. Much of the media coverage focused on a hearing this week in which acting CISA chief attempted to address these issues:

  • Madhu Gottumukkala, the acting CISA leader, was grilled by Congress about a reported attempt to fire the agency’s chief information officer, efforts to push out a large number of staff and whether CISA had enough people to do the job, Tim Starks reported in CyberScoop.
  • Gottumukkala used the hearing to defend the Trump administration’s mass layoffs at CISA and reassure lawmakers that the agency was still prepared to defend government and critical infrastructure networks from hackers, according to coverage by Eric Geller in Cybersecurity Dive.
  • Justin Doubleday of Federal News Network quoted Gottumukkala’s statement to lawmakers that CISA is “getting back on mission” but added that he provided few specifics after the agency lost nearly a third of its staff over the past year.
  • Gottumukkala also hinted at plans to pursue hiring this year, saying the agency would “continue targeted hiring” for key roles, David DiMolfetta reported in Nexgov/FCW.
  • Covering the hearing for MeriTalk, Weslan Hansen wrote that Gottumukkala denied failing a polygraph test administered after he requested access to highly sensitive cyber intelligence information.
  • According to an article in Politico by John Sakellariadis, Gottumukkala took steps last Thursday to fire Robert Costello, CISA’s chief information officer, but was blocked after other political appointees at the department objected.
  • In related news from the Hill, Chris Riotta of GovInfoSecurity noted that a funding bill published this week is slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from CISA’s budget for programs focused on federal threat hunting, analyzing hostile activity across federal networks and supporting frontline cyber operations.
  • DiMolfetta’s take in Nextgov/FCW highlighted that Congress is using appropriations language to reaffirm support for CISA’s staffing and election security mission even as the White House moved last year to scale back the size and scope of its workforce.
  • Starks reported in CyberScoop that the bill would also extend the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act of 2015 – which provides legal protections for sharing cyber threat data between companies and the government – through the end of the current fiscal year. 

Spotlight on Acquisition

From contracting activity at the General Services Administration (GSA) to procurement overhauls at the Pentagon, changes to the ways federal agencies buy technology drew lots of attention this week. Here’s a sampling of news from the world of federal acquisition:

  • Nick Wakeman of Washington Technology reported that GSA issued a notice to contractors that it will increase its scrutiny of markup prices that value-added resellers charge on IT hardware sales to the federal government.
  • Covering the GSA action for FedScoop, Miranda Nazzaro quoted top officials as saying the agency wants to hear directly from VARs about the “value they add to the government within the supply chain.”
  • GSA’s OneGov initiative continued to grab headlines this week, with the agency announcing a new agreement with Broadcom that will offer federal agencies significant discounts on a suite of enterprise software solutions from Broadcom’s VMware portfolio, according to coverage by Grace Dille for MeriTalk.
  • Edward Graham noted in Nextgov/FCW that the Broadcom deal will provide agencies with discounts of up to 64% for a host of AI-ready products.
  • In other tech-related acquisition news, Nazzaro also reported that Congressional appropriators plan to reauthorize the Technology Modernization Fund, which provides money to agencies for tech projects but expired last month and froze nearly $200 million in unused funds.
  • On the Defense acquisition front, Jennifer Hlad of Defense One covered a speech this week by Mike Cadenazzi, assistant defense secretary for industrial base policy, calling for industry to “bring us your most disruptive, most unconstrained ideas” for overhauling the Pentagon’s acquisition system.
  • In an analysis for Space News, Sandra Erwin wrote that 2026 is shaping up as a test for defense space companies of “whether commercial tech integration translates into lasting capability.”
  • Anastasia Obis of Federal News Network wrote that Congressional appropriators are backing the Pentagon’s push to speed up acquisition, but warn that speed “must be factored alongside cost, performance, lethality and scalability.”
  • Her colleague Jason Miller reported that the Defense Department is also joining a growing list of agencies auditing the use of sole source contracts through the 8(a) small business program. In a subsequent article this week, Miller also noted that the Small Business Administration suspended more than 1,000 companies in the 8(a) program after it deemed those businesses non-compliant with its financial data request from December.

Upcoming Industry Events

The number of industry events has been increasing every week since the beginning of the year. Below, we’ve provided a list of some that look like they could be worth your time:

If you would like your event included in this list, please fill out this form.

Finally, I would like to direct you to the latest of the “Gov & Beyond” podcast, in which my colleagues Luca Pagni and Joyson Cherian interview leaders in government tech media. In the latest episode, they spoke to Colin Demarest of Axios, who produces the weekly “Future of Defense” newsletter. 

That covers it for now. I’ll be back next week with more trending news from the government tech media. Subscribe to this newsletter on LinkedIn or via the form below.