Federal Drive

Monday Morning Federal Newscast – June 13th

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. T...

Federal News Network Staff

June 13, 2011 9:46 am

5 min read

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

The Office of Personnel Management is stepping up pressure to deny raises to poor performers. Director John Berry sends a memo to agency heads, reminding them that within-grade step increases should not be considered automatic. Employees who don’t receive a rating of full successful or equivalent should not get a raise, Berry says. The memo comes after Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, introduced legislation stop automatic raises.
Agencies are increasing the number of minority employees on the federal payroll. The Office of Personnel management says more than 31,000 minorities joined the federal workforce in 2010. The numbers come from OPM’s annual Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program Report to Congress. It shows the number of minorities exceeded 647,000. That’s a 5 percent increase from 2009. Minorities made up about 34 percent of the federal workforce in 2010.
Expect a new White House efficiency program. President Obama is expected to sign an executive order creating the Campaign to Cut Government Waste. He’ll call for a new oversight board to work with federal agencies to cut back on waste and improve performance. It will be patterned after the Recovery and Transparency Accountability Board, created in 2009 to track stimulus spending. The order will also require cabinet secretaries to hold regular progress meetings with the Vice President. One of the campaign’s first targets will be duplication among federal websites. The administration will halt the creation of new sites. And it will shut down or consolidate one-fourth of the government’s 2,000 sites in the next few months.
The FBI is expanding powers to its roughly 14,000 agents. It will issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. The New York Times reports, these new measures allow for more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance, like wiretaps, to investigate suspected terrorists. The FBI recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes.
Vice President Joe Biden’s group of negotiators returns to the bargaining table this week. Republican and Democrats are working to bridge their ideological differences to come up with a plan to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit. The U.S. could start defaulting on debts in early August. Negotiators are pushing for a deal, that includes major federal spending cuts, by the 4th of July. One thing lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree on, reports The Hill, is the can cannot be kicked down the road again.
Six industry associations are asking the government to stop issuing new federal procurement rules without opening them up to public comment first. Federal Times reports the group wrote a letter to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. In it they say the increasing reliance on interim rules is a misuse of the “urgent and compelling” circumstances those rules were meant for. The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council has issued several interim rules that change the FAR in recent months. A May 31st interim rule requires 95 percent of agencies’ new contracts to be energy-efficient or eco-friendly. The group is asking OFPP to withdraw the interim rule and republish it as a proposed rule, allowing for public comment.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s largest technology contract ever is back on track. NRC awarded Dell Services a $252 million IT support services contract in February only to see losing bidder, L-3 Stratis, protest the award. The Government Accountability Office has denied the L-3 Stratis complaint, allowing the original award to move forward. Under the six-year deal, Dell Services will operate, maintain and enhance NRC’s IT infrastructure in its Office of Information Systems.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is moving it’s email to Google’s cloud. NOAA plans to move to Google Apps for Government. Federal Computer Week reports, the move will shift e-mail for 25,000 users and modernize their calendar infrastructure. It will also synchronize their messaging technology with mobile devices. NOAA awarded the 11.5 million dollar, three-year contract to Earth Resources Technologies, based in Laurel, Maryland. ERT will then provide the Google Apps for Government.
Hospitals might get more time to go electronic. The Washington Business Journal reports a federal advisory panel recommends that the federal government give hospitals and doctors offices another couple of years to get their e-records systems in order. The Health Information Technology Committee recommends that Health and Human Services push the deadline for stage 2 “meaningful use” requirements from next year to 2014. The American Hospital Association says the process of switching from paper records to computer databases will take longer than expected.
The year’s first total eclipse of the moon will last an unusually long time. But you probably won’t get to see it. Wednesday’s lunar eclipse will be visible for five and a half hours, but only to people in eastern Africa, central Asia, the Middle East and western Australia. The period when the Earth’s shadow completely blocks the moon will last an hour and 40 minutes. NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland says the eclipse will last extra long because the moon is passing closer to the center of the Earth’s shadow. It will be April 15th, 2014 before the continental U.S. will be able to see another total lunar eclipse.