• Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth is asking President-elect Donald Trump to support her legislation to expand insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization for military personnel. In a letter to Trump, Duckworth is urging the President-elect to mandate the federal government and insurance companies to pay for all IVF-associated costs. Both House and Senate versions of the defense policy bill have provisions that would provide service members with the same level of IVF services coverage that federal employees and members of Congress are able to receive. Meanwhile, two House Republicans are urging Congress not to include any provisions in the 2025 defense policy bill that can expand access to in vitro fertilization.
  (Sen. Duckworth asking Trump to expand insurance coverage for IVF for service members - Sen. Tammy Duckworth's website)
• The State Department is trying to make the Foreign Service promotion process to be more fair inclusive and effective. The Government Accountability Office found promotion panels had a higher diversity rate in recent years. But also said those boards represented some ethnic groups and people with disabilities at lower rates than the Foreign Service workforce.
  (Foreign Service Promotions - General Services Administration )
• Two senators are calling for an investigation into the Pentagon’s “failure to secure unclassified telephone communications” from foreign spies. In a letter to the Defense Department inspector general, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said the Pentagon, despite being one of the largest buyers of wireless phone services in the country, has failed to leverage its purchasing power to require better cybersecurity practices or accountability from wireless carriers. The letter comes more than three months after Chinese government-backed hackers penetrated deep into the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, including companies such as Verizon and AT&T . The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials said the nation’s telecom companies are still struggling to kick hackers out of their networks.
  (Senators urge DoD IG to investigate Pentagon’s telecom security failures amid Salt Typhoon attack - Federal News Network)
• Agencies have completed the transition to a new online form for initiating background investigations. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency said its new e-App platform is now being used by all customer agencies. The platform includes the SF-86 and other standard forms used to initiate personnel background investigations. E-App is a part of the National Background Investigative Services IT system. Other parts of that new software system remain under development.
  (DCSA announces full transition to NBIS eApp for background investigation initiation - DCSA)

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• A new data privacy rule aims to protect federal employees and members of the military from surveillance. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed data broker rule released this week is partially aimed at addressing national security risks. The CFPB said countries like China and Russia can purchase detailed information about members of the military, veterans, and government employees for just pennies. The rule would require data brokers who sell certain sensitive consumer data to comply with regulations and protections under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
  (CFPB proposes rule to stop data brokers from selling sensitive personal data to scammers, stalkers, and spies - CFPB)
• The General Services Administration is stepping up plans to offload federal office buildings its tenant agencies no longer need. The federal government’s landlord is putting another eight underutilized federal buildings through its sale and disposal process. That’s in addition to 26 other properties it added to the disposal queue since November 2023. All told every building in GSA’s disposal pipeline adds up to 6 million square feet. Not counting revenue from any potential sales. GSA said getting rid of these properties will save the federal government nearly $2 billion in maintenance costs over 10 years.
  (GSA steps up plans to offload underutilized federal buildings - Federal News Network)
• A proposed rule to boost wages for thousands of blue-collar federal employees is close to being finalized. In October, the Office of Personnel Management issued proposed regulations aiming to improve pay parity for feds who are paid hourly through the Federal Wage System. OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver said the agency plans to finalize the rule before the Biden administration ends. The proposal would align the map of that pay system more closely with the pay map for the General Schedule. In practice, more than 160,000 blue-collar feds would receive pay increases as a result of the updated map.
  (FWS final regulations coming soon - Office of Personnel Management)
• President-elect Donald Trump is naming plenty of picks for key federal positions, but growing delays could block up the Senate confirmation process for them. The time it takes to confirm presidential nominees is now longer than ever. According to new data from the Partnership for Public Service, President Joe Biden’s nominees took three times longer to confirm than nominees during the Reagan administration. On average, Biden nominees also spent 70 days pending on the Senate floor before being confirmed. That’s compared with 5 days during the George H.W. Bush administration. To speed up the process, the Partnership recommended starting by reducing the number of positions that need Senate confirmation in the first place. The organization also says there are opportunities to bundle certain confirmations together, and streamline paperwork.
  (Delays in Senate confirmation process likely to grow in second Trump term - Federal News Network )
• The Office of Personnel Management has a plan to retire its 40-year old COBOL retirement system. OPM is embarking on a program to take the four decade old software code that underlies its retirement system and transition it to a modern language like Java Script or Python. OPM CIO Guy Cavallo said he will use the $18.3 million from the Technology Modernization Fund the agency received earlier this week to award a contract in the coming year that will use artificial intelligence and a limited number of software programmers to accomplish this feat. Cavallo said by transitioning the COBOL code to a modern language, OPM will be able to improve front-end user services more quickly as well.
  (TMF award to help OPM modernize COBOL code via AI - Federal News Network)
• Agencies have until Feb. 28 to decide whether to use their own system or the governmentwide platform to publicly post their procurement forecasts. A new memo from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy details seven short term goals and seven ongoing objectives to make it easier for vendors to know what acquisitions to expect from agencies. Along with the decision whether to use the Forecast of Contracting Opportunities platform on acquisition.gov, agencies also must standardize their procurement forecasts and develop a process to update their procurement forecasts at least quarterly. OFPP said the new policy, in part, is based on feedback it received on a request for information released earlier this year.
  (OFPP memo strengthening federal agency procurement forecasts - Office of Management and Budget)

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