In Depth Show Blog – December 2, 2013

The Justice Department’s demonstration of identity management and access control is creating a thirst among other agencies. Other federal, state and local agencies are thinking about how they could use the concepts behind the back-end attribute exchange. Mike Kennedy, executive for assured interoperability for the Program Manager of the Information Sharing Environment, told Federal News Radio’s Executive Editor Jason Miller in part two of their conversation about why expanding the back-end attribute exchange would be easy.

Jason Miller also spoke to Francis Rose about these stories:

• ITI seeks dismissal of TechAmerica lawsuit, calling claims ‘fatally flawed’
• GSA kicks off 3rd generation of strategic sourcing for office supplies

Your chance to save money in 2014 on your health insurance premiums is running out. Federal News Radio Senior Correspondent Mike Causey writes in his column today that you need to remember four very important things when you shop for health insurance during Open Season. But Mike says it’s really important to remember the deadline to decide is coming right up.

The Marine Corps’ Agile Bloodhound program is supposed to be the pipeline to push information from collection by drones to the warfighter in the battlefield. Over the past decade, the amount of battlefield intelligence data the military collects via unmanned aerial systems and other platforms has exploded. But the military hasn’t developed all of the processes it needs to turn that data into real-time, actionable information for small units of warfighters on the ground. John Moniz manages the program at the Office of Naval Research. He told Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu about some emerging IT capabilities that offer the promise of delivering vital real-time data that Marines have never had on the battlefield before.

Contract bundling and consolidation are important tools for the Defense Department and General Services Administration to cut paperwork and save money. They claim to use that method all the time, but it turns out they aren’t using it as much as they say.

The deadline Congress set for itself to make a budget deal for the rest of the fiscal year is next Friday. That deal may include items like changes to your pension contributions and health insurance premiums. But some external factors may play into how Congress makes a final deal.