Congress

  • The Veterans Affairs Department has been compromised by at least eight different nation state organizations that stole data from its systems, House lawmakers and other experts say. VA officials say there always are risks, but their computer security is better than ever before.

    June 05, 2013
  • The Veterans Affairs Department denies claims that systems or data are in danger. But Jerry Davis, the former deputy assistant secretary for information security in VA's Office of Information and Technology, asserts in documents that he was bullied into signing security certifications that were deficient as a condition of his departure from VA for a new job at NASA.

    June 03, 2013
  • President Barack Obama recently nominated the manager of his re-election campaign to head up the Office of Personnel Management. But who is Katherine Archuleta and what can feds expect from the woman chosen to manage the federal workforce? Archuleta's former boss at the Transportation Department tells Federal News Radio what he thinks she'll bring to the table.

    May 31, 2013
  • The Obama administration has called on Congress to cap government-reimbursed contractor compensation at $400,000, a move that the head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy said would save hundreds of millions of dollars. Joe Jordan, the OFPP administrator, said the White House would send proposed legislation to Congress next week.

    May 30, 2013
  • Members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management want to know why the NRC spent millions of dollars to renovate office space it may never use. DHS and HHS were praised by the committee for their approach to consolidating office space.

    May 23, 2013
  • Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and the GSA inspector general released separate, but related, reports that show GSA abused its authority to give Senior Executive Service (SES) members bonuses between 2009 and 2011. GSA official said they have since fixed these problems. McCaskill also found that on average the Labor Department, the Navy and the National Science Foundation handed out more than one bonus per SES employee.

    May 17, 2013
  • The Obama administration's proposed fiscal 2014 budget called for consolidating or eliminating 116 of the government's 226 STEM initiatives and centralizing the coordination of STEM programs under just three agencies: the Education Department, the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. The administration's STEM proposal is one of the government's first visible steps in reversing some of the duplication that riddles the federal landscape and which some lawmakers have seized on as examples of government waste.

    May 17, 2013
  • When you're on a vacation trip or long drive, do your kids keep asking "Are we there yet?!" Now, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says, suppose you are Uncle Sam and you've told your 1.8 million kids they are going on a sequestration vacation. If they keep asking are we there yet, what do you tell them?

    May 16, 2013
  • Government auditors told House Oversight and Government Affairs members that saving money from closing more than 1,000 data centers needs to be metric. OMB said optimization of core data centers is a more important measure than straight cost savings.

    May 15, 2013
  • The Defense Department reduces the number of furlough days from 14 to 11. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said it's possible the number could drop further, but he offered no promises.

    May 15, 2013
  • Funding reductions in 2013 appropriations act are sufficient to protect military construction accounts from further sequestration cuts, but funds used for upkeep on existing buildings are severely impacted.

    May 13, 2013
  • The Office of Personnel Management has made steady progress chipping away at a longstanding backlog of retirement claims. But Oversight Committee lawmakers and other government watchdogs remain concerned that the absence of a long-term plan to overhaul the mostly paper-based process combined with across-the-board budget cuts and a lack of strong leadership within OPM could stall or derail the progress the agency has made.

    May 09, 2013
  • Members of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs voted Wednesday to place a five-year moratorium on bonuses to senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    May 09, 2013
  • Pentagon says it will use its limited budget flexibility to compensate for unexpected war costs, not to blunt sequestration. Services continue to warn Congress about how budget cuts are impacting readiness.

    May 09, 2013