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Federal News Radio is highlighting the top Reporter’s Notebook stories of 2016 based on reader’s interest and overall story impact.
The 2016 update to the Navy Force Structure Assessment, sent to Congress last week, asserts the service needs a fleet of 355 ships in order to adequately perform its missions. That’s a big change from the 2014 plan of 308 ships the Navy has been building toward.
The Army says it’s becoming the first of the military services to launch a digital service “outpost” and wants a dedicated team of technology experts from outside the government to tackle its own problems.
The federal government decided to put the Defense Department in charge of building a new information technology backbone to house and process all of the data involved in security clearance investigations, one that would be safer from foreign attacks.
Federal IT Dashboard data compiled exclusively for Federal News Radio shows the average time it takes an agency to complete an IT program to is 1,018 days and the average cost is $23.2 million per program. Both of these data points demonstrate the need to change how CIOs and mission owners measure project success.
Dave Mader, the controller, will be the second of the Office of Management and Budget's key management leaders to leave ahead of the end of the Obama administration. CMS chief data officer Niall Brennan also is moving on.
Beyond the federal scorecard, DHS and State provide details on how IT reforms are impacting their respective agencies.
The General Services Administration awarded a $149 million contract to IBM to modernize its HR systems, instead of using a federal shared services provider.
The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council is trying again to promote communication between acquisition workers and vendors as early as possible in the contracting process.
Advocates and defenders of the federal bid protest process received some welcome news last week as part of the House-Senate agreement on this year’s National Defense Authorization Act. The final deal stripped two key Senate provisions that were seen as hostile to the protest process.
The Homeland Security Department is holding a virtual hiring fair this week for recent college graduates and interns through the Pathways program.
Besides restructuring and bifurcating the large front office that’s currently responsible for both acquisition and R&D, the bill adds several new authorities that build on last year’s trend of letting DoD sidestep the traditional acquisition system.
The expected nomination of retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to become secretary of defense depends on a one-time change to federal statutes that require military officers to have been retired for at least seven years before becoming the civilian leader of the Pentagon.
Several key GOP members of Congress began to weigh in this weekend with strong disapproval over suggestions that Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, may be fired during the final weeks of the Obama administration.