House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz is calling for IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's impeachment. He and 18 members of his committee introduced a resolution earlier this week. Chaffetz says Koskinen didn't comply with the congressional subpoena investigating controversial email scandals and audit backlogs at the IRS. The Senate says it wants to see more evidence of accountability at the agency. More now from Federal News Radio's Nicole Ogrysko.
Low margins and skimpy new contracting opportunities are driving federal vendors toward mergers and acquisitions. That's what a new survey from Grant Thornton and the Professional Services Council seems to say. It shows why consolidation keeps happening among contractors. Rich LaFleur is a managing partner with Grant Thornton, and helped lead the survey. He tells executive editor Jason Miller why so many vendors are looking to get out of the federal market.
In March of last year, a security panel urged agencies to monitor their employees for suspicious behavior. This was after a contractor killed 12 colleagues at the Washington Navy Yard. Agencies are still wrestling with the privacy implications, but some companies are far ahead. Pentagon officials have studied Lockheed Martin's two-year-old continuous evaluation program. Lockheed's director of counterintelligence Doug Thomas described it to Federal News Radio's Emily Kopp.
In Thursday's Federal Headlines, the Veterans Affairs Department spent more than any other agency on paid administrative leave in fiscal 2014. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is concerned the VA is putting its employees on paid leave while the department considers pending disciplinary actions.
The big stories that have broken are more about beginnings than conclusions.
The Senate finally passed a cybersecurity bill. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, sailed through. Now it's the House's turn to act. For a look at what comes next, Federal Drive host Tom Temin caught up with Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a freshman who chairs the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has released a new plan. He wants to increase the transparency of the intelligence community. Federal News Radio's Scott Maucione has more.
The Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards honor many of the individuals and businesses among the region’s government contractors. The awards are co-sponsored by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce and the Professional Services Council. Tom Romeo is the president of Maximus Federal Services and a finalist for the Executive of the Year award in the greater-than-$300 million in sales category. He has more about his company and his nomination.
Declaratory orders are a tool for regulatory agencies to use when they want to give an extra push to companies or industries they regulate. It's a tool agencies are hesitant to use because of their supposed finality and the agency's fear of subjecting itself to a judicial review of legally binding orders. The Administrative Conference of the United States, or ACUS, says agencies should increase their use of declaratory orders to provide clearer directions for the regulated. Emily Bremer is an assistant professor of law at the University of Wyoming and former research chief of the ACUS. She tells Federal News Radio's Eric White more about declaratory orders and why the conference wants to see agencies use them more often.
In Wednesday's Federal Headlines, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) he is committed to creating an operation plan for the Arctic as the Army moves ahead with its plan to cut 2,700 troops from Alaska by the end of 2017.
Simulation exercises need not apply only to technical responses to cyber attacks. How management handles emergencies can determine how well an organization recovers from the damage, says Federal Drive host Tom Temin.
The Census Bureau is in the midst of what it calls a digital transformation. It operates one of the biggest, but also most complex, websites in the federal government. It hopes to improve the user experience and try to make its data easier to find. Bureau officials awarded that job to Accenture. Ed Meehan is senior managing director of U.S Safety and Citizens Portfolio at Accenture. He joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more on the task at hand.
The Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards honor many of the individuals and businesses among the region’s government contractors. The awards are co-sponsored by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce and the Professional Services Council. Mark Testoni is CEO of SAP National Security Services, and a finalist for the Executive of the Year award in the greater than $300 million in sales category.
The Homeland Security Department is getting a clearer picture now of its own asset portfolio. The department is working on the second phase of the DHS Management Cube. It's a tool that gathers and consolidates financial, acquisition, human capital, contracting, real property and security data from across all 22 DHS components. Kirsten Dalboe is the cube's program manager. She tells Federal News Radio's Nicole Ogrysko what kinds of information DHS is trying to tie together.
The Health and Human Services Department identified $712 million this summer in false health care billings and brought charges against 243 people. It's the largest action the Medicare Fraud Strike Force has ever taken. The department's inspector general credits the success to the datasets it gathered and studied to find new cases of waste, fraud and abuse. Caryl Brzymialkiewicz is assistant inspector general and chief data officer at HHS. She tells Federal News Radio's Nicole Ogrysko where she thinks agencies are headed with big data, and what best practices her office has found.