Tuesday federal headlines – March 8, 2016

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

• The Office of Personnel Management is withdrawing a rule proposed back in January that called for amending the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance regulations. The proposed rule would have established a 3-year time limit for filing a court claim for review of agency or retirement system final decisions on FEGLI claims. OPM said it’s withdrawing the rule for further analysis. (Federal Register)

• The FAR Council wants to know more about federal contractors before awarding them contracts. It’s published a final rule implementing a section of the 2013 NDAA, which said government contractors must now disclose parent, subsidiary and successor entities into the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System.  It said it wants a better understanding of the performance and integrity of the corporation before awarding a federal contract. (Federal Register)

• The Office of Personnel Management is urging federal managers to consider Zika virus when making workforce-related decisions. OPM acting Director Beth Cobert warned HR directors and supervisors  against sending employees to areas affected by Zika. Cobert said to consider letting them opt out, and to consider teleconferencing instead. (CHCOC)

• The Veterans Affairs Department is extending the health care enrollment application period for the over half a million veterans who have pending incomplete enrollment applications. It’s extending it for 1 year, because the agency could not verify it was able to notify all of those veterans regarding their incomplete applications, which they are required to do by law. (Veterans Affairs)

• The Air Force is asking for help naming its new bomber. It’s called B-21 for now. At the Air Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium, Secretary Deborah Lee James issued a challenge to all former and current airmen, civilian employees and families to take part in naming the new aircraft. Participants may enter up to three submissions between March 7 and May 6. (AFGSC)

• The White House released a host of new open data tools to spur economic and social changes. The Opportunity Project will make federal agency data and tools available to civic leaders, community organizations and families to help them better understand information about access to jobs, housing, transportation, schools and other neighborhood amenities. The Census Bureau, for example, launched Opportunity.Census.Gov to make community data more accessible for families and businesses to use in deciding where to live or work.  Census also released a software development kit  to help developers build products with open data. (White House)

• Agencies revised, trimmed or eliminated regulations, triggering savings by industry and local government of $28 billion over the past five years. That’s according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OIRA added up results from agencies’ so-called biannual lookback reports. OIRA Director Howard Shelanski said the lookbacks identified 50 initiatives that cut paperwork or revised out-dated rules. Shelanski said  future rules would have periodic reviews built in. (White House)

• The Defense Department told its commanders and IT managers it’s time to scale back their connections to the outside Internet. The directive is one of more than a dozen specific taskings DoD issued as part of its Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation Plan, first drafted last October but finally released this week in its unclassified form. Pentagon IT officials said too many of the military’s publicly-accessible websites are still running inside of the DoD Information Network instead of in demilitarized zones, making it much easier for hackers to hop from one system to another once they’ve found a security hole. The plan also calls for a major curtailing of ad-hoc connections to the Internet via commercial ISPs.

• Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said he’d back a proposal to give federal employees a 5.3 percent pay raise in 2017. He said feds would have fewer complaints about locality pay and the areas that qualify for it, if Congress approved higher, across-the-board raises. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) introduced a bill that would give federal employees that 5.3 percent raise next year. The bill has 32 co-sponsors. (Federal News Radio)

• A second round of Base Realignment and Closure will be much more productive in saving money for the Defense Department, if the Pentagon can convince Congress to play along. That’s according to Jamie Morin, the director of cost assessment and program evaluation. Morin said an additional round of BRAC is needed because the personnel costs to maintain bases DoD doesn’t need. Morin said DoD could cut 20 percent of its infrastructure. (Federal News Radio)

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