Tuesday federal headlines – September 1, 2015

In today's news, there are 57 new standards to improve how agencies report spending data, Defense Secretary Ash Carter plans to lay out his vision for what he c...

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive and In Depth radio shows. Our headlines are updated twice per day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — with the latest news affecting federal employees and contractors.

  • There are 57 new standards to improve how agencies report spending data. The Office of Management and Budget reported agencies signed-off on the new approach as part of the Digital Accountability and Transparency, or DATA Act. OMB said the agreement means agencies can bring disparate databases together and provide a clear and consistent picture of how federal dollars are spent over the next two-plus years. OMB released these data standards in May, asking for comments in an effort to reduce the burden on recipients and contractors. (White House)
  • Later today, Defense Secretary Ash Carter will lay out his vision for what he calls the “force of the future” in a televised and online discussion with troops around the world. The Pentagon said Carter will give an update on potential overhauls to DoD’s personnel system before taking questions via Skype, Twitter and Facebook. Earlier this year, Carter ordered the Pentagon’s personnel chief to deliver a plan to update DoD’s talent management practices. Among the options on the table are an end to the military’s “up-or-out” promotion system and more flexible assignment practices that would let service-members stay in one position for more than a few years at a time. (Federal News Radio)
  • The General Services Administration and Homeland Security Department awarded two major task orders under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program. Now 11 agencies will receive advanced cyber tools. Booz Allen Hamilton won its second task order under CDM, this one worth $82.9 million over three years. Booz Allen will provide cyber tools and services to the departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury, GSA, the Social Security Administration, NASA and the Postal Service. HP Enterprise Services won a $21.7 million award to provide tools and services to the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Science Foundation and the Small Business Administration. GSA and DHS still plan to award three more task orders over the next few months for other agencies to receive these CDM tools. (Federal News Radio)
  • Federal agencies are learning what their employees really think about them, now that the results of the 2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey are out. Agencies are going through their data, although the Office of Personnel Management has not made the governmentwide results public yet. The survey asked federal employees for their opinions about their work, their colleagues, their agencies and their leaders. Last year, the survey showed a dramatic loss of confidence in senior managers across the government. The Obama administration has launched a concerted effort to boost employee engagement scores. (OPM)
  • The top Republican and top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee are demanding answers from the Air Force about how it miscalculated the cost of its forthcoming long-range strike bomber by tens of billions of dollars. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) want a new, line-by-line accounting of the classified program’s cost projections. In a press briefing last week, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James acknowledged that because of “human and process errors,” officials gave Congress several different 10-year estimates for how much they’d need to spend on the new bomber. First, $33 billion, then $58 billion and eventually $42 billion. The Air Force said the newest 10-year projection is correct, but that its shorter five-year estimates have been consistent all along. (Senate Armed Services Committee)
  • Discrimination complaints aren’t usually things to brag about. But the Government Publishing Office is celebrating what officials said will be a record low year for Equal Employment Opportunity complaints at the agency. Eight formal complaints have been filed in 2015. That’s the fewest number since 1998. GPO, with just a couple thousand employees, used to receive the most complaints of any mid-sized agency. In a press release, agency Director Davita Vance-Cooks said the agency has put in place new policies and training. This year’s results show that they are working. (GPO)
  • CSC’s Government Services division will combine with SRA International to create a new company. The pair said they’ll announce a name by mid-November. The new company will become the largest  IT services provider to the U.S. government sector with combined revenues of about $5.5 billion and nearly 19,000 employees. The new company will receive about three-quarters of its revenues from cybersecurity, software development, cloud and IT infrastructure services. The merger is the latest on a growing list of consolidations of federal contractors. Others include the TASC merger with Engility, the Harris and Exelis merger and ASM Research’s union with Accenture. (CSC)

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