Wednesday federal headlines – October 14, 2015

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive and In Depth radio shows. Our headlines are updated twice per day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — with the latest news affecting federal employees and contractors..

• The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association is announcing its support for Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Steve Russell (R-Okla.). The congressmen have proposed taking sensitive security clearance data out of the hands of the Office of Personnel Management after the two most recent cyber attacks. FLEOA represents over 28,000 members of the federal law enforcement community, all of whom have been jeopardized by those cyber attacks. (FLEOA)

• A federal judge has found the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Staff manipulated the federal hiring system to create jobs for three unqualified candidates who worked on President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. The Washington Post reports the judge explained how hiring officials  change jobs descriptions to match the three candidates’ resumes in order to please a new incoming commissioner back in 2010. Katherine Coffman, who was assistant commissioner of human resources, has been found not guilty, though she said she was unaware of the misconduct. (The Washington Post)

• The federal government now has more workers with disabilities than any time in the 34 years agencies have kept track of the statistic. OPM announced Monday between 2013 and 2014, the percentage of workers with disabilities rose to a total of over 247,000 —that’s 13.5 percent of the federal workforce. Still not at the goal set by President Barack Obama, OPM said they will keep working so the federal government remains a model employer for people with disabilities. (Federal News Radio)

• Some agencies have more work to do than others in implementing their insider threat programs. National Insider Threat Task Force Co-Director Patricia Larsen said some civilian agencies are changing their cultures to adopt an insider threat program, but progress has been slow. Some agencies are working on pilots to test how social media and continuous evaluation will factor into their insider threat programs. The Defense Intelligence Agency said it has a human psychologist on its insider threat team. (Federal News Radio)

• NASA will spend as much as $1.4 billion dollars to keep astronauts healthy, well-fed and supplied over the next five years. The space agency awarded a huge contract to Wyle to provide a broad range of human spaceflight activities, including fundamental and applied biomedical research, operational space medicine, occupational health and medicine.
  The five-year contract is a follow-up to one Wyle also held called the Bioastronautics Contract.

• The Justice Department wins another big settlement from a major corporation. Pitney Bowes agreed to pay $9.4 million to resolve allegations that it underpaid postage for mail processed at its Reading, Pennsylvania, facility by claiming discounts to which it was not entitled. The Postal Service’s inspection service and DoJ looked into allegations that Pitney Bowes claimed discounted postage rates for mail that failed to comply with the Move Update standard, which requires that mail be updated with change-of-address information provided by the Postal Service. (Justice Department)

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.