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• President Donald Trump named Neil Chatterjee the new chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He will take over the position after Kevin McIntyre resigned late Wednesday. McIntyre announced he suffered a serious health setback while being treated for a brain tumor and that he will remain on the commission but wanted to relinquish chair duties. (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)

• Industry is waiting on the final request for proposals for the $9 billion Defense Enterprise Office Systems contract. But the Defense Information Systems Agency is already thinking about how to implement it. Brian Hermann, DISA’s enterprise-wide division chief, said DoD needs to change the way it tests commercial off the shelf tools. It should prioritize the business practices and cybersecurity around the tool, rather than just functionality. (Federal News Network)

• The Department of the Navy is transforming everything from modernization to readiness to personnel and business structure in an attempt to trim down and align itself with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ National Defense Strategy. The 66-page document, required by Congress, lays out specific plans and timelines for sections of the Navy to improve business processes, better the Department of the Navy’s information infrastructure and even improve relations with allies. By tying itself closer to the defense strategy, the Navy hopes to prepare itself for near peer competition with entities like China and Russia.

• A subsidiary of LexisNexis is paying a $54,000 fine for publishing misleading advertisements about the SSA Verify system. Social Security’s Inspector General claims LexisNexis Risk Solutions marketed the service as an identity verification system. Auditors said the system neither verifies identity, nor provides customers with direct access to Social Security records. (Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General)

• The Offices of Personnel Management, and Management and Budget want feedback from agency program and project managers. They’re issuing a survey to first help them identify the program and project manager population in government. OPM Acting Director Margaret Weichert said future surveys will solicit feedback from the program management community about their skills, and career paths. The Program Management Improvement Accountability Act requires OPM to establish a new career path for program managers. (Chief Human Capital Officers Council)

• The Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks qualified employees who are prepared to deal with catastrophic disasters like Hurricane Harvey. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reviewed a variety of systemic challenges plaguing the agency since its troubled response to Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. The committee also said the Homeland Security Department mismanaged premium overtime pay for FEMA employees. (House Oversight and Government Reform Committee)

• Tyndall Air Force Base is allowing airmen who lived on the base more time to visit their homes after the installation was destroyed by Hurricane Michael. Airmen and their families now have until Nov. 2 to head back to collect items and take pictures. Air Force leaders said it may be years before the base returns to its full capacity. (Air Force)

• Over 7.8 million paper records have been digitized by the Veterans Affairs Department. They were previously sitting in 60 locations across the country. VA starting removing paper records from 59 regional offices in 2013. That’s when VA started extracting paper records from its Records Management Center in St. Louis. VA said it’s working with the General Services Administration to return the records warehouse it previously leased, back to GSA. (Department of Veterans Affairs)

• The Defense Department wants to keep getting hacked — by the good guys. DoD announced it has awarded contracts to three firms to hold more bug bounty programs. Bugcrowd, HackerOne and Synack will share in the $34 million contract vehicle. DoD wants the companies to expand the program scope and capacity, targeting private DoD assets, which include products and systems for meeting defense mission needs. Since the launch of the crowdsourced security program in 2016, thousands of ethical hackers have found more than 8,000 valid vulnerabilities. (Department of Defense)

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