Wednesday federal headlines – September 2, 2015

In today's news, a new We the People petition on White House.gov calls on President Obama to give federal employees a "meaningful pay raise," OPM and DoD award ...

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.

  • A new We the People petition on White House.gov calls on President Barack Obama to give federal employees a “meaningful pay raise.” It needs 100,000 signatures to get a response from the White House. The petition was posted a few days after Obama proposed a roughly 1 percent pay raise for civilian feds and a 1.3 percent raise for military members. The author of the  petition said a raise would boost morale, retention and recruiting in government. (Federal News Radio)
  • The Office of Personnel Management and the Defense Department awarded a three-year contract to provide identity theft protection to federal employees. The award goes to Identity Theft Guard Solutions LLC. It’s worth $133 million. It will provide identity theft protection and credit monitoring to some $21.5 million current and retired federal employees affected by a data breach at OPM. (Federal News Radio)
  • The federal government will stay open when Pope Francis visits town for three days later this month. But the Office of Personnel Management said federal employees might want to work from home. It expects Washington streets and Metro to be clogged with security and visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of His Holiness. OPM is asking agencies to let employees telework or adjust their schedules. People who have to get to the office should give themselves extra time to commute. The Pope’s visit is Sept. 22-24. (Federal News Radio)
  • The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments announced that $5 million veterans signed up to use the e-benefits website a month ahead of schedule. VA said E-Benefits is a one-stop-shop for veterans to find benefits related tools and information. Veterans can file and check the status of claims, message their VA doctors, fill prescriptions and obtain official military documents online through the site. VA said it reached the benchmark early by working with DoD and Veterans Service Organization partners in conjunction with aggressive outreach efforts. (VA)
  • Logistics Marines will soon test unmanned aircrafts that can haul thousands of pounds of gear and equipment in a single flight without the use of CH-53-E heavy-lift helicopters. Military Times reports Marine Corps Installations and Logistics recently published a roadmap for future Marine operations with new drones called AACUS and ARES, two potential platforms for equipment transport. Widespread use of AACUS and ARES would free up other transport aircraft for other uses, such as support or assault. The Marine Corps plans to move forward with a prototype in 2016 that could deploy with a Marine expeditionary unit in three or four years. (Military Times)
  • The General Services Administration awarded blanket purchase agreements for identity monitoring, data breach response and protection services. The BPA is good for five years with an estimated value of $500 million. It’s open to all federal agencies. (GSA)
  • Bill Zielinski, the Social Security Administration’s chief information officer, is heading to the Office of Management and Budget on detail. Zielinski will lead the federal CIO’s agency oversight team, where he’ll  work with other CIOs during FedStat sessions and in other initiatives. OMB announced FedStat in May as part of the 2017 budget development process. OMB held the first round of FedStat sessions earlier this summer, with a goal of having one coordinated meeting to address mission and management issues. Robert Klopp replaces Zielinski as SSA’s CIO. (CIO)
  • Transportation Department components now have access to a cloud computing broker contract for data center migration and other services. The FAA awarded a $108 million deal to a team led by Computer Sciences Corporation. CSC’s team includes Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and others. The award is open to all DoT components and could be worth $1 billion over 10 years. Under the initial part of the contract, CSC will lead an effort to consolidate FAA data centers and migrate data and systems to a hybrid cloud environment. (Business Wire)

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