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Congress
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The Senate Appropriations Committee rejected an amendment that would give the Office of Personnel Management an extra $37 million to make IT upgrades sooner rather than later. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) offered the amendment. She said OPM needs to fix its IT infrastructure immediately and described the amendment as "emergency funding". Zal Azmi is president and chief operating officer for IMTAS Technologies and former chief information officer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose that agencies need to rethink cybersecurity entirely.
July 27, 2015 -
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For now, former Deputy OMB Director Beth Cobert is in charge at the Office of Personnel Management. She is already talking to congressional leaders about the way forward for OPM and she's making a good first impression on them. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose that the outreach from Cobert is rather uncommon.
July 27, 2015 -
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UPDATED: Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joins a growing list of Washington-area lawmakers who are looking at whether Congress could pay for the costs from the OPM breach under emergency appropriations.
July 24, 2015 -
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The Missouri Democrat is frustrated over the lack of answers from GSA about the program to consolidate eight disparate databases holding vendor information. McCaskill said the System for Award Management is taking too long and is costing too much.
July 24, 2015 -
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The House Homeland Security Committee passed the Countering Violent Extremism Act. The bill creates a "Combating Violent Extremism" office within Homeland Security to focus on its international and domestic terrorism programs. Erroll Southers is the director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the University of Southern California and a former assistant secretary of the Transportation Security Administration. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose that countering violent extremism is important — but the committee should also think about the impacts of homegrown violence.
July 23, 2015 -
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The breach of Office of Personnel Management databases that compromised information of more than 22 million people should convince the Senate to pass cybersecurity legislation, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said Thursday.
July 23, 2015 -
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A bipartisan group of six senators introduced the Federal Information Security Management Reform Act of 2015 to give DHS the clout it’s been lacking over the last five years and, in some respects, put it on par with the National Security Agency.
July 23, 2015 -
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Veterans Affairs officials tell Congress today that they will have to begin a partial shutdown of the department unless Congress reallocates money into VA’s medical services accounts by next week. Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu reports, the shutdown would impact virtually every VA medical center in the country.
July 22, 2015 -
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UPDATED: A key Senate committee approved an amendment today to give federal employees no less than 10 years of identity and credit-monitoring services and $5 million in liability protection for related damages.
July 22, 2015 -
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A new report released by the Justice Department Inspector General’s office states that the DEA’s policies regarding use of high-risk confidential sources are out of compliance with the Attorney General’s guidelines. The IG says a lack of oversight for issues such as how sources are used, how actions in operations are sanctioned, and how benefits to sources are awarded could put operations at risk.
July 22, 2015 -
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Gen. Mark Milley said at his confirmation hearing to become the new Army chief of staff that his service still could meet the demand signal for Army forces, despite recent budget cuts. That could change, though, if demands continue to increase and if budgets continue to decrease.
July 22, 2015 -
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Senate leaders agreed in principle to a six-year highway transportation fund bill that doesn’t try to raise money by changing the way the interest rate on the G-Fund is calculated. But Democrats stopped the bill from moving to a full vote because they wanted more time to read the entire bill.
July 21, 2015 -
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The Senate is working on a long-term highway spending bill that taps billions of dollars from the Thrift Savings Plan to help pay for it. House budget writers say the G-fund is just too good of a deal and they want to base the fund's interest rate on a three month average instead of the current four-year average. Kim Weaver of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board says that would make the G-fund virtually worthless for TSP participants. Jessica Klement is legislative director of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. She tells In Depth with Francis Rose that NARFE wants Congress to come up with another solution.
July 21, 2015 -
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Four powerful lawmakers want to know why the Treasury Department hasn't ensured some of the tools used by the Recovery Operations Center will live on through the DATA Act. Leaders of two committees — the House Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees — wrote to Secretary Jacob Lew seeking answers. Federal News Radio's Executive Editor Jason Miller joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with more details on why some lawmakers are concerned.
July 21, 2015
