OPM has its first deputy director in two years

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• The Office of Personnel Management has a new second-in-command. Robert Shriver will officially step in as deputy director of OPM. The Senate confirmed him in a vote of 57 to 35. Up until now, the deputy director position remained vacant for nearly two years. Shriver has had a long career at OPM, most recently serving as associate director for employee services. In celebrating his confirmation, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja noted the critical role he will have in 2023 and beyond.

• House and Senate appropriators endorsed President Biden’s 4.6 %  pay raise proposal for federal employees. The omnibus federal spending package in Congress is silent on the topic, meaning the lawmakers aligned with the White House request. But there are  still a couple things that need to happen before the pay raise goes into effect, even if Congress passes the legislation. The President would have to sign an executive order by the end of December in order for feds to see higher paychecks starting in January. (Omnibus silently endorses 4.6% pay raise for federal employees in 2023 – Federal News Network)

• Civilian Defense Department employees will join their military service counterparts in getting a 4.6% pay raise. The omnibus budget bill released by Congress called for $858 billion in defense funding for 2023. The defense budget addresses inflation with $8 billion dollars in cost increases, including assistance to military families, fuel and utilities for DoD services, medical inflation, procurement and R&D programs. Congress also gave DoD acquisition programs more than $1 billion dollars in extra funding to help address inflation, after contractors faced a year of rising costs and diminishing profit margins. (Budget comes with 4.6% pay raises for servicemembers – Federal News Network)

• Congress shows it favors one fund over another created to help agencies modernize technology. But it’s probably not the fund most would expect. The Federal Citizen Services Fund, not the Technology Modernization Fund, looks like it will be the bigger winner in fiscal 2023. Congress nearly doubled the budget of the FCSF to $90 million in the omnibus appropriations bill released yesterday. The citizen services fund, which the General Services Administration runs, would also get new authority to collect money from agencies to help pay for governmentwide initiatives like FedRAMP and Data.gov. The TMF, meanwhile, received $50 million, well below the $300 million the White House requested. The third IT modernization account, called the IT Oversight and Reform Fund, would receive nearly $14 million, which is what the White House requested. (Role of OIRA, compliance with 508 requirements highlight lawmakers’ focus on IT modernization in 2023 – Federal News Network)

• Federal employees have just a couple days left to file a claim following the 2015 data breach at the Office of Personnel Management. Those who experienced an out-of-pocket cost during the breach must submit a claim by December 23 to receive their piece of the settlement. The OPM data breach affected the personal information of both current and former federal employees in the agency’s database. The settlement of the breach will give a minimum of $700 dollars to each impacted person filing a claim.

• The omnibus spending bill includes some major cyber investments. The fiscal 2023 omnibus spending agreement hands $2.9 billion to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a $313 million increase over its current budget. That includes $1.3 billion for the agency’s cybersecurity programs, about $230 million more than last year. The spending agreement also reauthorizes CISA’s National Cybersecurity Protection System program, better known as EINSTEIN. The authorization for the intrusion detection and prevention system was set to expire at the end of this year. (Congress moves to reauthorize CISA’s cyber defense program – Federal News Network)

• Six years after its creation, the Cyber National Mission Force officially became the Defense Department’s newest subordinate unified command. CNMF falls under U.S. Cyber Command, and consists of 39 joint cyber teams organized across six task forces, totaling 2,000 servicemembers and civilians from across the services and intelligence community agencies. The elevation to a subordinate command means the Cyber National Mission Force will have new authorities and operational control over mission and personnel. Since officially reaching fully-operational capability in 2018, CNMF has executed nearly 40 hunt forward operations, thousands of remote cyber operations and participated in, or responded to, almost every national security crisis the U.S. has faced.

• The Postal Service is expanding plans for electric delivery vehicles in its future fleet. USPS plans to purchase 66,000 electric vehicles over the next five years, as part of a nearly $10 billion spending plan. The new USPS plan has the support of the White House, which has pressed the agency for a larger commitment to electric vehicles for much of this year. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said USPS will continue to explore the feasibility of achieving 100% electrification of its delivery fleet. “We will immediately begin the longtime initiative of preparing our facilities to accept these vehicles to operate in our nation’s communities in a mission-capable way,” DeJoy said. (USPS commits to 75% electric vehicles in next-gen fleet with nearly $10B spending plan – Federal News Network)

• The CIA has named a new leader for its open-source intelligence efforts. Randy Nixon is now the director of the CIA’s Open Source Enterprise. A career intelligence analyst, Nixon was most recently director of Digital Futures within the agency’s digital innovation directorate. The war in Ukraine has pushed the intelligence community to increasingly embrace open-source intelligence, like information found on social media feeds.

• After months of waiting for confirmation, the Navy finally got a new comptroller. The Senate confirmed the nomination of Russell Rumbaugh to the job of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, or comptroller, Tuesday with a vote of 80 to 10. President Joe Biden nominated Rumbaugh for the position in March. Rumbaugh currently serves as systems director for the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at the Aerospace Corporation. He previously worked at the Defense Department in the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, in addition to an earlier assignment as an analyst on the Senate Budget Committee.

• Future plans for a suburban FBI headquarters are coming into focus. But Maryland lawmakers are making the General Services Administration go through some final steps before the agency can decide whether to build in Maryland or Virginia. Language in the fiscal 2023 omnibus budget bill requires GSA to consult with Maryland and Virginia lawmakers one last time and consider how each of the final three proposed sites delivers on the Biden administration’s equity agenda. GSA in its selection criteria prioritizes proximity to the FBI’s law enforcement training center in Quantico, Virginia as part of its final decision.

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