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The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it is seeking to cut its business relationship with a firm that may have had inside access to the agency's procurement decisions. Lawmakers also questioned agency decisions to award the company special status as veteran-owned and serving economically-disadvantaged areas.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently he believes there will be a continuing resolution for fiscal 2014. He said the inability for the parties to compromise is the key reason budget bills have not gone to conference.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) sends another letter to another agency on ways to cut spending. This is the Senator's second letter in June; he wrote to the DOJ earlier this month.
The Veterans Affairs Department made it a top priority earlier this year to handle all disability claims from veterans who've been waiting two years or longer. The department mostly succeeded in its two-month surge operation, but serious questions linger about the sustainability of the backlog elimination effort.
In an effort to incorporate iris, facial and fingerprint recognition technologies across the government, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee pressed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to set a date for the release of national biometric recognition standards.
Patrick McFarland, the inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed to a Senate subcommittee Thursday that his office has been investigating USIS, the government's largest contractor for background-investigation services, since late 2011. He said at least 18 security clearance investigators have been convicted of falsifying investigations since 2007. McFarland said there may be "considerably more" fraud that hasn't been uncovered due to "alarmingly insufficient oversight" of the security-clearance process.
Reducing the contractor compensation cap to the level of the salary drawn by the President ($400,000) or the Vice President ($230,700), as suggested by some lawmakers and the White House in the past, would dramatically increase the number of employees who earn compensation above the allowable limits GAO said. But the changes would mostly affect large companies, auditors said, because few of the small companies it surveyed pay their employees more than the amount earned by the President and Vice President.
GSA acting administrator Dan Tangherlini said the agency wants to work with Congress to offer creative ways for agencies to maximize their assets. In its own headquarters, the GSA is using modern techniques to save space.
USPS issued final determinations Wednesday to close three Capitol Hill post offices by July 21, which is expected to save about $2 million over the next 10 years. That's only a drop in the bucket in the agency's stretched-thin budget, but top House Republicans on the Administration and Oversight and Government Reform Committees hailed the move for sending a strong message.
Under intense congressional and media pressure, VA has moved aggressively to eliminate its backlog of new claims for disability benefits. But veterans who appeal VA's decisions are still waiting years, on average.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members support Dan Tangherlini to be the permanent administrator of the General Services Administration. Lawmakers, however, wanted more answers about the troubled SAM program and the recent IG report on management interference of contract negotiations.
A new commission, proposed by David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, would recommend ways to streamline government by removing duplication and extraneous spending from government agencies. Federal-employee unions criticized the proposal and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawmakers expressed skepticism that such a proposal could gain congressional approval.
Federal agencies need to step up their use of TechStat sessions, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report. The face-to-face meetings of IT officials and agency leaders have been put to use by the Office of Management and Budget and individual agencies to turn around or terminate dozens of failing IT projects. But only about a third of the agency projects deemed most at risk of cost overruns or schedule slips have undergone the reviews, GAO reported.
The first major IT reform bill in a decade has cleared the first of three hurdles to become law. The bill would empower CIOs by reducing the number of people with that title to one per agency, and give that person authority over the IT budget and personnel decisions.