The Defense Department's 2014 budget proposal reduces the size of the civilian workforce slightly, increases TRICARE premiums, and requests another round of base closures. It also calls for a slight raise for both civilian employees and uniformed servicemembers. The budget significantly exceeds the Defense spending caps in current law.
A new memo from Navy Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen tells the Navy and Marine Corps to move public-facing data to commercial cloud service providers.
A crane lifted the 250-ton stern of the dismantled USS Guardian on Saturday from the reef, where it accidentally got stuck Jan. 17, officials said.
The chief of naval personnel says the Navy wants to keep the service's tuition assistance program funded through the remainder of this fiscal year.
The Army expects to mostly finish the migration to enterprise email by the end of this month. The Air Force and the Navy begin pilot tests using the cloud applications.
With sequestration now in effect, the Defense Department says it will have to begin to make decisions that cross the threshold between "reversible" cuts to military capability and those that will have long-lasting impacts.
Small firms already have taken a disproportionate hit from DoD's pullback in 2013 spending, Pentagon officials say. Military acquisition leaders worry the sudden cuts will bankrupt small businesses that provide one-of-a-kind capabilities.
The Department of the Navy has announced it may spend up to $1.2 billion more for support of its Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). In a Feb. 20 FedBizOpps posting, the Navy issued sole-source justification, detailing a notice of intent to increase the price of Hewlett-Packard's continuity-of-service contract (CoSC). The notice also allows the Navy to extend the CoSC services from April 2014 through September 2014 to ensure the department can complete the transition to its Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN). However, that contract option would only be exercised if the NGEN transition is further delayed.
Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work will become the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, a prestigious defense think tank with close ties to the Obama administration. Work will start at CNAS April 22.
The fledgling effort to replace IT systems aboard 193 Navy ships, called CANES, will take longer than expected. With or without sequestration, the Navy expects eight installations scheduled for 2013 to be interrupted.
As the Navy scours its IT systems to determine exactly what it owns, it's discovered it operates double the data centers and tens of thousands of servers and applications more than it previously thought. The findings come more than a decade after the Navy implemented its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, which was supposed to reduce the number of disparate systems run by the agency and eliminate stovepipes. All told, Navy's IT budget could be as much as $4 billion more than it initially thought.
Sharon Roth of the Merit Systems Protection Board discusses a new survey on federal management. Lt. Cmdr. Jean Marie Sullivan of the Navy Office of Women's Policy talks about the new DoD decision to open up combat jobs to women. Greg Kutz, a senior audit executive with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Audit, talks about a new report his agency released. Keith Lucas, vice president for AFGE Council 228, discusses a new contract his union signed with the Small Business Administration.
Spending on conferences is among first casualties as various defense components make cutbacks. DoD's online meeting service is suffering from its own popularity.
DoD's operations and maintenance accounts will likely be hit first if sequestration goes into effect. Unlike its procurement and research and development activities, which can continue to function on funds obligated in prior years, O&M dollars generally get spent right away. In preparation for sequestration, the Pentagon has already let go of tens of thousands of temporary hires and is drawing up a contingency plan for one-day-a-week furloughs. Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter says the unpaid furloughs would begin in April and continue through the remainder of the fiscal year if sequestration is not avoided.
Robert Work, the Navy's undersecretary, will not serve a second term under President Obama.