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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, veterans will now be able to apply for Veterans Affairs health benefits by phone.

• Veterans will now be able to apply for Veterans Affairs health benefits by phone. The VA published a final rule allowing vets to do so in order to make it easier for them to enroll. The paperwork to do so used to require signatures from the applicant, but now they’ll use information provided as a legal equivalent to one. (Federal Register)

• USAJobs.gov turns 20 this week. And the Office of Personnel Management has finished a series of new updates to the job site. It adds a new help center and page for frequently asked questions. There’s also a new responsive page for mobile users that will replace the USAJobs app. These are all part of a series of incremental improvements OPM has been making to the site over the past year. (Federal News Radio)

• The Office of Personnel Management has picked four companies to support the new National Background Investigations Bureau. Keypoint Government Solutions, CACI Premier Technology, CSRA and Securitas get the nod. The agency is scheduled to launch in early October. It will replace OPM’s Federal Investigative Services which handles 95 percent of federal security clearance checks. (Federal News Radio)

• The Transportation Security Administration needs to do a better job with background checks on those they allow to access the nation’s maritime facilities. Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said TSA is not providing proper oversight to the Transportation Worker Identification Credentials programs. The IG is worried criminals or immigration law violators may gain access to secured areas of maritime facilities. (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General)

• The Defense Department’s inspector general is moving to a new policy of openness-by-default. The IG is redacting its more sensitive reports so it can post them online.Ordinarily, reports with even a few lines marked For Official Use Only would never see the light of day, unless someone made a Freedom Of Information Act request. That can take months. The DoD IG’s new orders require staff to release as much information as possible — unless it conflicts with privacy or national security interests — without a FOIA request. (Department of Defense Office of Inspector General)

• Defense Secretary Ash Carter is heading west this week to court tech companies. He will travel to Northern California and Texas, and talk with tech leaders about innovation and redefining defense. Carter will also participate in a recruiting event and explores the Capital Factory technology incubator in Austin. (Department of Defense)

• New details on how much vendors are spending to get certified to be a cloud provider for agencies. On average, it costs $2.2 million to successfully make it through the cloud cybersecurity gauntlet known as FedRAMP. A new blog post by FedRAMP lays out in detail the costs associated with each step. For example, vendors pay on average $1.1 million for engineering work to get their cloud technology to meet the federal standards. FedRAMP said typically vendors spend about 50 percent of their budget on engineering and 50 percent on going through the process approval process. (FedRAMP)

• Congress has sent the Native American Tourism and Improving Visitor Experience, or NATIVE Act, to the President. The plan calls on the Departments of Interior and Commerce to include Native Americans in their tourism programs, as well as coordinate with tribal organizations on creating tourism infrastructure to help them start their own industries. (Rep. Markwayne Mullins)

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