No Easy Pay: Judge orders Navy Seal who wrote book about Bin Laden raid to give money to the government

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

In today’s Top Federal Headlines, a judge orders “No Easy Day” author Matthew Bissonnette to pay the government all past and future proceeds from the book for not letting the Pentagon review it first.

• Former Navy Seal Matthew Bissonnette, the man who wrote a book on his account of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, will have to pay up for not letting the Pentagon take a look at it first. Bissonnette will have to pay the government all past and future proceeds for a total of $6.7 million. He’ll also have to pay $1.3 million in legal fees. (WTOP)

• The Office of Personnel Management needs to do a better job managing its contract operations process. The OPM Inspector General said the agency doesn’t have strong controls over its procurement compliance, oversight, workload and staffing, and training. The IG also said roughly one-third of the contracts it reviewed in the business information system were inaccurate. OPM’s Procurement Operations Office said it agrees with most of the recommendations. (Office of Personnel Management Office of Inspector General)

• The State Department wants feedback from federal employees and members of the public on its new 2016 Open Government Plan. The department said the goal is to show how it’s incorporating transparency and participation in the new plan. The online discussion runs through August 31. The Obama administration has made open government a major priority. (State Department)

• The Air Force said it’s cutting back on dozens of the extra duties it demands of its uniformed airmen. The duties run the gamut — from web page maintainer to government purchase card approving official. The bottom line, officials say, it that at least 29 out of those 61 duties are not the best use of uniformed airmen’s spare time during the busiest period in the service’s history. Some duties will be eliminated altogether, others will be reduced to commanders’ discretion, and some will be offloaded to a mostly civilian workforce that works directly for squadron commanders. (Federal News Radio)

• The Air Force also wants to quicken its portion of the foreign military sales process. Secretary Deborah Lee James said the majority of cases are developed under 90 days, but there’s still room for improvement for complex sales. She outlined a multifaceted approach to help speed things up. She said the service will increase communication between educational facilities like the Defense Acquisition University, to develop a new curriculum for Foreign Military Sales. James said they’re also going to establish a new program to aid in the development of security cooperation officers involved in the process. (Air Force)

• In an effort to create a strong cyber workforce , the Defense Department said it will ask around 3,000 employees to move from traditional civil service to the new Cyber Excepted Service. It will offer fewer protections but may give more pay and chances for promotion. Congress gave DoD the authority to create the new workforce in the 2016 Defense Authorization Act. (Federal News Radio)

• NASA’s cybersecurity woes continue. The network used by almost every NASA employee is in such bad shape, the chief information officer let the cyber authorization expire. A new Federal News Radio investigation finds the computers on NASA’s end-user network are missing more than 300,000 critical patches. NASA’s CIO issued a conditional authority to operate or ATO for some parts of the network. The CIO is requiring its contractor, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, to provide a biweekly status update of each of the fixes and develop a remediation plan. (Federal News Radio)

• Starting next year, the IRS said it wants to charge taxpayers more for establishing tax payment installment plans, but it also wants to add two new cheaper online options for paying your tax bill. In the proposed rule, the agency said the increases will bring rates up to what it actually costs to set up these agreements. (Federal Register)

• Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport joins the 17 other airports using Mobile Passport Control. MPC is an app in which travelers can submit their passport information and customs declaration form to Customs and Border Protection prior to landing in the U.S. to speed up the arrival process. (Customs and Border Protection)

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