Title 38 health care workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs will have eight weeks to get fully vaccinated, per a new mandate from the agency.
Due to a backlog of as many as 2 million pending applications, the State Department is taking up to 18 weeks to process routine passport needs, and up to 12 weeks to handle expedited applications. Lawmakers are pressing the department to move more aggressively to address the issue, while the union that represents passport services employees said they are struggling to dig out from the workload because of staffing shortages, combined with a renewed demand for international travel. The department is hiring more staff and expanding overtime as locations reopen.
A recent change to the CIO-SP4 solicitation is forcing many small firms to change their bidding strategy at the last minute, leading to calls for NITAAC to pause the entire effort.
As employees were forced to work from home, companies and government agencies had to expand their IT infrastructure to accommodate an increased risk in networks, especially from insider threats, according to Tommy Todd, vice president of security at Code42.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will reimburse American Federation of Government Employees representatives for any leave they took over the last three years to handle union duties in the absence of official time.
The Biden administration has proposed a $6.5 billion advanced research projects agency as part of the National Institutes of Health.
A new bill in the Senate would require federal contractors, agencies and critical infrastructure operators to report cyber intrusions within 24 hours.
