House Veterans slam Sec. McDonough over VA request for emergency funding

Federal Newscast

The department is defending its request for emergency funding, saying it would’ve had to delay payments to 7 million veterans and survivors.

Michele Sandiford

November 5, 2024 2:57 pm

< a min read

Congress gave nearly $3 billion to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at the end of fiscal 2024. That was to address a possible shortfall that could have delayed benefits payments to veterans. But House lawmakers said the VA had enough carryover funding to keep making those payments. VA officials tell the House VA Committee they didn’t need the supplemental funding from Congress to meet their year-end requirements. But the department is defending its request for emergency funding saying it would’ve had to delay payments to 7 million veterans and survivors even if they were just a dollar short of the necessary funds.
(House Republicans Slam McDonough: Who is Counting the Money at VA? - House VA Committee )

Classified spending at U.S. spy agencies continued its upward trend last year. Congress appropriated $76.5 billion for the National Intelligence Program budget in fiscal 2024. That’s according to a new disclosure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. When combined with military intelligence program spending the total budget for the intelligence community was $106.3 billion in fiscal 2024. That marks the first fiscal year in which intelligence community spending has topped $100 billion dollars.
(DNI releases appropriated budget figure for 2024 National Intelligence Program - Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

The State Department is launching a playbook meant to prioritize disability rights across its workforce and its diplomatic mission. The department’s playbook is available now for internal use. It expects to release a public version next month. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the playbook is meant to show employees how they can incorporate disability issues into their own work. "History shows us that equitable societies tend to be more stable, more resilient, more innovative. When our policies exclude those with disabilities, they actually fail all of us,” Blinken said at the department’s headquarters. “But when we incorporate the needs, the insights of people with disabilities, we all benefit from their talents, from their expertise, from their leadership.”
(State Dept urges workforce to prioritize disability rights in accessibility playbook - Federal News Network )

The top official at the National Archives and Records Administration said NARA needs to embrace artificial intelligence. NARA is updating its strategic plan in preparation for what Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan calls a dominant digital future. And Shogan said NARA will need AI to help manage billions of digital federal records. “We are going to be taking in so much information, it will be impossible for any number of archivists to be able to have a handle on that volume of records,” Shogan said in an interview. National Archives leaders are currently taking feedback on what should go into the new strategic plan from employees and other stakeholders.
(Top National Archives official eyes ‘dominant digital future’ - Federal News Network )

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has officially hired a new deputy assistant director for management. Lauren Stocker, a former official from the General Services Administration, is stepping into the role starting this week. She replaces long-time OMB executive Dustin Brown, who moved to the Social Security Administration (SSA) earlier this year. Brown now serves as SSA's chief operating officer and acting chief of staff.
(New deputy assistant director for management - Office of Management and Budget)

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is considering creating a cooperative agreement to support its National OnRamp strategy. DIU’s National OnRamp strategy aims to make it easier for companies to work with the Defense Department by building presence across the country through distributed offices and hubs. DIU currently has five main offices and operates in eight geographic regions with a distributed team. It has also established five OnRamp Hubs in Phoenix, Dayton, Honolulu, Seattle, and Wichita and plans to open more Hubs next year. The agreement DIU is exploring would allow it to streamline its engagement with the commercial and academic sectors through a single partner. Responses are due by Nov. 15th.
(DIU seeks to develop cooperative agreement for National OnRamp - SAM.gov)

The Army contract writing system reaches another key milestone. The Army program executive office (PEO) enterprise, along with the office of the deputy assistant secretary for procurement, integrated the Army contract writing system with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers financial management system. This integration will streamline contracting processes and financial management for projects managed by the Corps of Engineers. The system is being deployed in phases, with full implementation expected by April 2025.
(PEO Enterprise integrates Army contract writing system with Army Corps financial management system - Army PEO Enterprise)

A long-time Defense Department (DoD) technology leader is leaving the Pentagon. Danielle Metz, the director for information and management and chief information officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has left the Defense Department after more than 16 years. In an email to staff obtained by Federal News Network, Metz, whose last day was last Wednesday, said she made a difficult decision to accept a new role outside of DoD. She didn't say where she would be working next. Metz has been the OSD CIO for more than two years and previously worked as DoD's deputy CIO for information enterprise and for the Defense Information Systems Agency.
(OSD CIO Metz moves on from DoD - Danielle Metz)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) took an important step toward standardizing and more easily integrating cybersecurity data coming from more than 100 dashboards under the continuous diagnostics and mitigation or CDM, program. CISA awarded ECS a six-year, $528 million task order to normalize the data from federal civilian agency systems. This will provide CISA with a higher quality of information to make cyber decisions. CISA's CDM dashboard pulls data about devices, users, privileges and vulnerabilities from more than 100 agencies, including all 23 civilian CFO Act departments. ECS also won a $276 million contract in 2019 to provide the dashboard platform to agencies through CDM.
(ECS wins $528M CISA CDM data services task order - ECS)