• A group of employees is calling for the government to address sexual misconduct in the federal workplace. The Department of Justice Gender Equality Network (DOJ GEN) says despite steps to curb sexual misconduct already, the White House Gender Policy Council needs to do more. DOJ GEN leaders are calling on the Biden administration to issue an executive order or new regulations to help mitigate the issue. Currently, DOJ GEN says, there aren’t definitive steps to ensure agencies have adequate response systems to sexual misconduct. A letter addressed to the White House and the Office of Personnel Management details clear actions agencies could take to address the issue.
  (Letter to White House, OPM on sexual misconduct in federal workplaces - Department of Justice Gender Equality Network )
• Republican lawmakers are scrutinizing vacant office space at agency headquarters. Senators Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are asking the Government Accountability Office to take a closer look at underutilized office space at the Departments of Transportation and Commerce, and the Federal Trade Commission. GAO found Transportation’s headquarters had a 14% utilization rate in early 2023. But lawmakers say the watchdog office didn’t look at the rest of the department’s real estate holdings that account for more than $200 million in annual costs. Commerce and FTC had higher office utilization, but the senators are still pressing GAO for an update on how they use their space.
  (Letter to GAO - Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas))
• The Postal Service is still seeing billion-dollar losses, despite cost-cutting efforts. USPS increased revenue for the fourth quarter in a row. But it still saw a $2.5-billion net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2024. USPS is cutting work hours, and reducing transportation costs, but its total operating costs continue to grow. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy says more work lays ahead for USPS to become financial healthy in the long term. “While we are growing revenue and cutting costs at an aggressive rate, it is still not enough to overcome the historic trajectory, the substantial inflation, our difficulties in making changes and the cost of doing so.”
  (Higher USPS revenue ‘still not enough’ to outpace costs, DeJoy tells board - Federal News Network)
• Senate appropriators are pushing agencies to do more to encourage military spouses to join the federal government’s ranks. Agencies have a special hiring authority aiming to more easily and quickly onboard military spouses. But the lawmakers say agencies are not using the recruitment options enough. One provision in fiscal 2025 spending bills tells the Office of Personnel Management to act as a mediator for the military spouse hiring authority. The lawmakers say OPM should make sure military spouses are fully aware of the hiring authority, and also help agencies more easily connect with the candidate pool.
  (Odds of a 2% federal pay raise and other workforce items from Senate spending bills - Federal News Network)

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• One of the two rules implementing the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification or C-M-M-C program cleared a final hurdle and could be published in the coming weeks. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs completed its review on Wednesday of the proposed rule to change the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations to require contracts to include CMMC requirements. The last step in the process is the proposed rule goes back to DoD before being released in the Federal Register. OIRA is still reviewing the DoD's final rule that lays out the nuts and bolts of CMMC at the program level from December 2023. That final rule has been before OIRA since late June.
  (DFARS proposed rule for CMMC - Reginfo.gov)
• A new alert says GSA ran afoul of federal acquisition rules in awarding a recent contract. The General Services Administration should immediately cancel an almost $14 million contract awarded by the Office of Administrative Services in February. The reason is it didn't have the authority to use DoD's enterprisewide software initiative blanket purchase agreement that it awarded the task order under. GSA's inspector general's management alert says the ESI program is open to only DoD, agencies ordering on behalf of DoD or if OMB designates the contract as best in class, which ESI is not. GSA used the ESI program to buy internal research membership licenses, benchmarking and consulting services, and to assist with GSA’s management of government IT services.
  (Alert memorandum: GSA’s Office of Administrative Services’ award of a $13.7 million task order is invalid - General Services Administration Office of Inspector General)
• Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu defends her signature initiative. Senate appropriators said the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve program is not transitioning technologies into the military services fast enough. Shyu says the program is moving slowly mainly due to budget delays. “ You guys have to understand what the PPBE process we're in, whatever you plan — you have to hurry up and wait for two years before you get the budget. And CR kills us, so we gotta wait even two years later for the CR to finish, so another six or seven months is lost.” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said initiatives like RDER are critical to the Defense Department’s ability to innovate.
  (Shyu defends her signature initiative RDER - NDIA Emerging Technologies Conference)
• The Defense Information Systems Agency is setting up its Joint Operational Edge cloud capability in Japan and Germany. The goal is to allow the mission partners to host their critical applications closer to their location with less latency. The agency has already rolled out the JOE capability to Hawaii. Stratus, the agency's private cloud capability, is also up and running in Hawaii and the agency is deploying the cloud offering to additional overseas locations.
  (DISA deploying JOE to Japan, Germany - Defense One)

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