Tuesday federal headline – December 8, 2015

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive.

• The Office of Personnel Management is saying even those who are no longer with us were affected by the data breach at the agency earlier this year, and are in need of ID theft protection. A section on the agency’s Cybersecurity Resource Center explains why deceased individuals received notification letters. An OPM spokesman told the website Nextgov about 300,000 of the 21.5 million victims were deceased individuals. (OPM)

• The House of Representatives approved Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) legislation to strengthen coordination among federal agencies to identify and prevent improper payments. The Improper Payments Coordination Act of 2015 now heads to the President for his signature. In a statement after the passage, Sen. Carper said despite agencies’ efforts, improper payments continue to cost agencies billions of taxpayer dollars, undermining the effectiveness of the services that Americans rely upon. (Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee)

• The Environmental Protection Agency has plans to create a new marketplace of vendors who specialize in modern digital practices. Vendors who qualify for this marketplace will be able to bid on EPA contracts for digital services. It wants to distinguish this marketplace from previous efforts by evaluating vendors based on their expertise in environmental business issues and their pattern of environmentally sustainable behavior. (Digital Gov)

• Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, wants to better prepare the branchs back up power suppliers. She wants to create more smart microgrids which use renewable energy as a backup if power goes down in the main grid, as opposed to ‘dumb’ microgrids, which do not. Hammack said the main challenge the Army faces with this plan is navigating differing state utilities’ polices. (Army)

• The Labor Department is moving its case management system to the cloud. Labor awarded a five-year, $30 million blanket purchase agreement to eGlobalTech to provide systems and technologies to the entire department. Under the deal, Labor components will receive licensing and configuration of a commercial-off-the-shelf Business Process Model and Notation platform. Labor is buying case management modernization services including updating its aging mission management systems, a FedRAMP-complaint cloud environment and functionalities based on each components’ needs. (PR Media)

• The 2015 Best Places to Work report is out today, and things are looking up. For the first time in four years, employee satisfaction and commitment improved from the previous year’s ranking. This year the government scored 58.1 points, up more than 1 point from last year. NASA once again grabbed the top spot for large government agencies, according to the Partnership for Public Service, which compiles the list of rankings. DHS and the Department of Veterans Affairs finished the year with the two lowest scores. (Federal News Radio)

• The Department of Homeland Security is releasing a new terror alert system. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said the nation needs a system that informs the public of what the department is seeing regarding terror. DHS currently uses the National Threat Advisory System. The system has never been used because the threshold for what constitutes a threat situation has never been reached. Johnson said the new system will be more sensitive to threats. (Federal News Radio)

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