The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear crackdown on contractors that cheat the tax system. The President is expected to sign new regulation today. Details are sketchy, as the formal announcement is expected Thursday morning, but sources tell us the directive stems from GAO work that found tax abuses by federal contractors. A recent study revealed $58 Billion in unpaid payroll taxes by 1.6 million companies.
The Office of Personnel Management is proposing new rules for how federal employees’ files are handled. Under the new draft rules, posted in the Federal Register, agencies would have to pay OPM for the creation and maintenance of Official Personnel Folders. OPM wants agencies to keep and maintain employees files until workers leave government. Then their files would revert to OPM for safekeeping.
A redesigned web site is coming for the Thrift Savings Plan, whose site hasn’t been updated since 1997. TSP participants should find it easier to access their account information, and to navigate the site generally. The new design is scheduled to go online in May. TSP officials say a follow-on upgrade in July will add features such as TSP calculators, and sections on career and retirement planning. A review panel submitted 7,000 suggestions for improving the site.
Federal agencies can use a free Web tool help them meet a key mandate in the president’s Open Government Directive. The General Services Administration has launched a public dialogue system that agencies can use to engage the public for ideas and feedback. President’s Obama’s Open Government Directive sets a February 6th deadline for adding some sort of public feedback mechanism. The Web tool is developed by Idea Scale.
The people behind FederalReporting.gov are spending most of their money on technical support. The Recovery Board has budgeted $12 million dollars for the help desk out of a $19 million dollar total spending plan. NextGov reports the Recovery Board has taken thousands inquiries from stimulus recipients who need help filing. The most recent reporting deadline has been extended to Friday, partly because rules for calculating jobs were changed.
There’s a new leader for the IT shop at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center: Adrian Gardner takes the helm as Chief Information Officer. Gardner comes to the agency from the CIO’s office at the National Weather Service. He replaces Linda Cureton, who moved on from Goddard to become NASA’s IT chief.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other senior security officials head to Capitol Hill today for two days of hearings about how purported a Nigerian al-Qaida operative boarded a plane for Detroit on Christmas Day armed with a bomb. White House reports showed a series of missteps, including name misspellings, ignored warnings and human oversights. Some fixes could be costly. Putting federal marshals on all 29,000 daily flights would cost billions. Also being considered, having the State Department temporarily suspend U.S. visas when security concerns are raised.
More news links
Why Can’t Obama Fill 177 Key White House Jobs? (Foreign Policy)
Judge: No misconduct finding in Blackwater case
Aid workers frustrated with relief effort (CNN)
Body of US diplomat killed in quake arrives in LA
World’s Smallest Hot Rod Made Using Nanotechnology (LiveScience.com)
10 things not to buy in 2010 (SmartMoney)
THIS AFTERNOON ON FEDERAL NEWS RADIO
Coming up today on The Daily Debrief:
** Times are tough and the private sector is really struggling. Is the federal market a safe haven? Grant Thornton has surveyed federal contractors and we’ll get their analysis.
** And we continue looking at how the government’s response to the earthquake in Haiti. We’ll hear about an open source platform that was created following the tsunamis for these catastrophic situations.
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