Friday federal headlines – January 15, 2016

In Friday's Federal Headlines, the Postal Service tested its plan for responding to mass data breaches three times over the last six years.

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

  • The Postal Service tested its plan for responding to mass data breaches three times over the last six years. The USPS inspector general said the plan needs a major update. The Postal Service focused more on responding to cyber attacks that happen within the agency, not external attacks. It also doesn’t have a security clearance requirement for the chief information security officer and others who might respond to a breach. The IG said USPS should test its plan at least once a year. (USPS OIG)
  • Three Government Accountability Office reviews released this week say IRS units who audit individuals and small businesses need to do a better job ensuring audits are fair and the agency’s reasoning is consistent. GAO also said the IRS’ call centers need improvement, it provided the lowest level of telephone service during 2015 compared to prior years, with only 38 percent of callers who wanted to speak with an IRS agent able to reach one. (GAO)
  • A new report from the Department Homeland Security inspector general says the government placed both federal screening personnel and the public at risk during last year’s Ebola crisis. The report said although the department responded quickly to implement domestic Ebola screening with HHS, it lacked coordination, training, and consistent screening of people arriving at U.S. ports of entry. (DHS OIG)
  • IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said customer service will be better this year, thanks to $290 million extra it got from Congress. But it’s still not enough to solve all of the agency’s problems. The IRS will do fewer audits this year because it has 5,000 fewer enforcement officers and investigators than it did before. Koskinen predicts he’ll lose 2,000 to 3,000 employees this year through attrition and has no plans to hire them back. (Federal News Radio)
  • Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the Obama administration’s new cyber deterrence policy is a hack. McCain calls the policy “thin” and lacking new information about the administration’s plans to integrate ways of meaningfully deterring attacks. The plan was more than a year overdue after the 2014 defense authorization act mandated its creation. The policy outlines how the Defense Department will pursue law enforcement measures and sanction malicious cyber actors as a means of responding to cyber attacks. (Federal News Radio)
  • The demand for mobile computing brought a record year to the General Services Administration’s Connections 2 contract. Agencies spent $172 million through the governmentwide acquisition contract in fiscal 2015. GSA said among the most popular services agencies bought were unified communications, radio access networks, distributed antenna systems and land mobile radio services  GSA said agencies spent 31 percent more money on Connections 2 last year as compared to 2014 and 60 percent more than what they did in 2013.  (GSA)
  • In its report for 2015, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel worries about what it calls the “accretion of risk” in plans to use commercial rocket companies to take astronauts to the space station or moon orbit. The panel said a growth in risk levels NASA has been willing to accept could delay tests and endanger crews. But the Panel praises NASA for how it’s handling long-term plans to send people to Mars. (NASA)
  •  The Defense Information Systems Agency has created a “center of excellence” to help the military services run their back-end business systems more efficiently. The  new center will focus mainly on the massive enterprise resource planning systems the armed services have been building over the past decade. Since most of them are based on the same underlying commercial software – Oracle and SAP being the most common examples, DISA wants to ensure they’re not building redundant capabilities that could otherwise be shared among various ERPs. The agency is currently working with planners from four Army systems, and one from the Air Force.

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

Related Stories