Congressional regulators want to know why a top official at the FCC was able to support what appears to be a Trump campaign initiative

• House Democrats say a top official at the Federal Communications Commission helped write a policy blueprint for a new Trump administration. Now they’re calling on government ethics officials to investigate. Lawmakers say FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr a Trump appointee wrote an entire chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calling for major changes to his own agency. Lawmakers said Carr contributed to Project 2025 in his official capacity as an agency executive. They’re calling on FCC’s inspector general the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics to look into the matter.
  (Huffman leads lawmakers decrying FCC commissioner misusing official position to advance Project 2025 - Rep. Jared Huffman )
• The Pentagon is mapping out what officials say is a “paradigm shift” in how the military handles repair and maintenance for its major weapons systems. Instead of handling most of the work in stateside facilities, DoD wants more of it to happen at overseas locations – closer to where ships and other equipment is stationed. The new approach is called the Regional Sustainment Framework. Officials plan to test the concept with allied countries in Indo-Pacific Command this year, and in Europe next year.
  (DoD looks move equipment maintenance overseas - Federal News Network)
• The 2017 defense policy bill required the Pentagon to split the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics into the offices of the acquisition and sustainment (A&S) and research and engineering (R&E). The advisory board wants the Pentagon to bring the offices under the new Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for International Integration and Cooperation. DIB member Charles Phillips says the current setup doesn’t allow the Pentagon to work well with allies and partners.
  (DIB wants Pentagon to reorganize its acquisition shop - Federal News Network)
• The Defense Department technology leaders are deepening their relationship with the Singapore Ministry of Defense in the areas of data, analytics and artificial intelligence. Radha Plumb, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer signed a statement of intent earlier this week that will allow both defense enterprises to exchange best practices on leveraging data, analytics and AI more effectively. The two countries have identified main areas of collaboration, including responsible development of AI and talent management. Singapore remains a key technology innovator in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the main partners for the Defense Department.
  (DoD to collaborate with Singapore on data and AI efforts - Defense Department)

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• The federal government’s shift from paper to electronic records has been at least a decade in the making. But this month, the National Archives and Records Administration finally stopped accepting analog record transfers from agencies, with some limited exceptions. Over the past year, agencies rushed to get their transfer requests in. NARA saw more than 1,000 offers for documents to be sent directly to the Archives, representing approximately 65,000 cubic feet of records, between July 2023 and June 2024. And NARA’s Federal Records Centers – where records aren’t stored forever – saw 40,000 transfer requests representing 930,000 cubic feet of records. Going forward, the majority of records transfers to NARA will be measured in gigabytes and terabytes instead of cubic feet.
  (NARA requests 1M cubic feet of records - Federal News Network)
• Over the next couple months, agencies will have to conduct data analysis to figure out if they need to make their pay policies more equitable. Agencies have until this October to report back to the Office of Personnel Management on their pay data and any plans for changes. The data call is one of the latest steps OPM has taken to address the government's gender-based pay gap. Currently, women are paid about 5 cents less on the dollar than men in the federal workforce. But it's a larger gap when taking into account race and ethnicity. OPM says it's looking to do more to reach its goal of bringing the federal pay gap down to zero.
  (Pay gap data analysis guidance - Office of Personnel Management)
• The Office of Personnel Management will soon be reopening enrollments into the government’s Flexible Spending Account program, FSAFEDS (F-S-A feds). OPM previously suspended all new enrollments in the program after a recent surge in fraudulent activity that impacted hundreds of federal employees' accounts. The suspension on enrollments will officially end August 1st. And in an effort to strengthen cybersecurity, FSAFEDS will also soon transition to using Login.gov. Starting in October, FSAFEDS users will have to complete identity verification steps to be able continue accessing their accounts online.
  (OPM to lift pause on FSAFEDS enrollments in August - Federal News Network)
• OPM plans to finalize a rule implementing the Administrative Leave Act by December. The 20-17 legislation puts limits on how long agencies can put employees on paid administrative leave while investigating claims of wrongdoing. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued OPM earlier this month over delays in completing the long-awaited guidance. The group said employees can wait months or years until agencies clear them of wrongdoing … which puts their careers at risk.
  (Final Rule - Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs )

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