Management

  • The service's new acquisition strategy tries to imagine the Army's needs over the next three decades as the focus shifts away from large counterinsurgency and stability operations.

    October 25, 2012
  • Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini shifted responsibility for the troubled System for Award Management to the CIO's office and the Federal Acquisition Service and out of the Office of Governmentwide Policy. GSA is reconsidering all of its options, including possibly recompeting the contract for SAM. OASIS, Networks 2020 and changes to the schedules program also are making progress.

    October 25, 2012
  • On this week's Bloomberg Government Capital Impact, analysts discuss whether a health tax credit will work as intended plus the unintended consequences of deficit reductions for healthcare providers.

    October 25, 2012
  • An inspector general report found that while the Energy Department "moved swiftly" to reduce travel spending by its employees following a White House directive, it omitted a sizable chunk of its workforce from those efforts: contractors. The IG recommended the agency take steps to reduce contractors' foreign travel spending. Because contractors greatly outnumber federal employees at DoE and make up the lion's share of foreign travel, they should be included in cost-reduction efforts, the IG said.

    October 24, 2012
  • David Muntz serves as the principal deputy national coordinator at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. He joins Federal News Radio as this week's guest on Agency of the Month.

    October 24, 2012
  • The Office of Management and Budget said the PortfolioStat tool helped agencies find duplicative technology costs and opportunities to buy in bulk. Acting OMB Director Jeff Zients wrote in a blog post agencies listed 98 opportunities for savings.

    October 24, 2012
  • Two brigades of the Army's 10th Mountain Division are training on a ready-to-go set of networking capabilities as they prepare to deploy to Afghanistan. The IT comes out of the Network Integration Evaluation process.

    October 24, 2012
  • Six years after the Veterans Affairs data breach, civilian agency networks and computers are more secure. Current and former federal officials and cyber experts say from secretaries on down, the threat of a cyber attack and the impact on mission is well understood.

    October 24, 2012
  • John Montague talks about life insurance and Sean Reilly discuses the U.S. Postal Service's finances and more this week on Your Turn.

    October 24, 2012
  • David Dowd, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP, discusses three significant bid protests involving blanket purchase agreements.

    October 23, 2012
  • A group of experts released a white paper recommending changes to OMB Circular A-130. The suggestions center on continuous monitoring, the role of DHS in overseeing FISMA and the definitions of a major IT system and a national security system.

    October 23, 2012
  • Federal News Radio polled current and former federal cybersecurity experts for their opinions on what were the most significant cybersecurity accomplishments since 2006 to secure federal networks and improve public- private partnerships. The accomplishments are in no particular order.

    October 23, 2012
  • During Monday night's debate, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney discussed their different approaches to cutting the budget, particularly in the area of military spending. Romney criticized the Obama administration for proposing cuts to military spending, particularly through sequestration. Obama countered sequestration would not happen, and he said he would maintain military spending based on the needs of the Defense Department.

    October 23, 2012
  • In wonkier parts of the Washington area, the talk of the town is about fiscal cliffs and sequestration followed by sex and the Redskins, not necessarily in that order. But beyond the Beltway, folks seem to have a firmer grip on what's important, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

    October 23, 2012