Long and near-term issues incoming DoD officials will face in the future

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on  Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

• Speeding up the Defense Department’s business enterprise is one of the challenges the Defense Business Board said leaders will face in the future. The DBB released an outline of near- and long-term difficulties DoD officials will see. Along with increasing the speed of business, the board said focusing the secretary’s time on strategic objectives and tracking performance are among DoD’s long-term issues. Recognizing budget constraints and managing personnel and infrastructure costs are the main near-term obstacles the board says could hamper long term success. (Defense Business Board)

• The Defense Department’s Chief Information Officer said his agency needs to move faster when it comes to cybersecurity. Terry Halvorsen said his department is too slow on things like cloud service accreditation, but he’s willing to push the envelope in ways to work with industry. One example is through a recent trip to Silicon Valley, where he talked directly with tech companies about what they offer for cloud computing and security credentials. (Federal News Radio)

• No one seems to be at the helm of the Defense Department’s space acquisitions. That’s according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The report states responsibilities for space are fragmented over 60 stakeholder organizations in the government. As a result, buying products for space takes too long. The report stated scattered leadership, redundant oversight and bad coordination is causing the problem. (Government Accountability Office)

• Twelve military and veterans service organizations have filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit arguing the Veterans Affairs department should be able to fire senior executives more easily. The case involves former VA senior executive Sharon Helman. They’re defending a provision in the VA Choice Act that the Justice Department recently ruled unconstitutional which gives the VA an expedited to timeline and authority to fire senior executives.

• Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton wants the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments to develop better relationships with each other. That’s according to Clinton’s policy plan on veterans. She said she would personally convene regular meetings with both secretaries to help streamline DoD and VA procurement in IT and consolidate their health footprint. She’s also pushing for more overtime work and collaboration between the two agencies to help the VA close its disability claims backlog. (Federal News Radio)

• IRS Commissioner John Koskinen speaks out about House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz’s (R-Utah) ongoing campaign to impeach him. The Salt Lake Tribune reports Koskinen, while visiting an agency facility in Chaffetz’s home state of Utah, said the congressman’s relentless pursuit of his impeachment will scare away talented individuals from entering government service. Chaffetz replied saying he thinks Koskinen provided false testimony to Congress and there should be a penalty for that. (Salt Lake Tribune)

• The Food and Drug Administration steps further into the effort to stop the spread of the Zika virus. The FDA told two big Florida counties to stop collecting blood donations. The call comes from Peter Marks, director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. He said before they can resume collection blood centers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties must establish a way of testing each donation for the Zika virus or its RNA. (Food and Drug Administration)

• Do private Facebook groups qualify as union meetings? The National Weather Service Employees Organization thinks they should. The Washington Post reports the union filed a complaint to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, saying management at NWS are illegally monitoring the activity on a members-only Facebook page for union members, and even sometimes commenting on the discussions. (Washington Post)

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