GSA, Commerce collaborate on government’s latest innovation lab

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

• The General Services Administration and the Commerce Department are teaming with the city of San Francisco to launch a new innovation lab. The lab’s goal is to solve urban problems through collaboration among the public, private and non-profit sectors. The lab, called Superpublic, aims to bring together multiple layers of government in the same location and act as a catalyst to drive more responsive and efficient government. GSA will help run the lab that is housed in the same building as teams from 18F and the U.S. Digital Service. (Commerce Department)

• A new collaborative effort by the Defense Information Systems Agency, National Security Agency, as well as the Defense Department Chief Information Officer aims to update cybersecurity architectures across the DoD Information Network infrastructure. DISA said the program will rate current cybersecurity capabilities against current techniques used by adversaries. (DISA)

• There are more than 700 outstanding recommendations for improving efficiency and accountability at the Justice Department. DoJ’s inspector general has made a third of them in the last six months. But the IG said some of them date back to 2005. (Justice OIG)

• A proposed rule by the Federal Acquisition Regulation council has laid out what fees federal contractors can’t charge new employees. A March 2015 policy bans contractors from charging recruitment fees but doesn’t clarify what counts as one. The new rule said they wouldn’t be allowed to charge new or potential employees anything related to the recruiting process, including charges for testing and training. (Federal Register)

• A few former feds have found new homes in the private sector. Former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, as well as former chief of staff at the Energy Department Joe McMonigle, have joined Blank Rome Goverment Relations. The firm Saul Ewing also announced former associate general counsel for Intelligence Law at the National Security Agency April Doss will be leading its Cybersecurity and Privacy practice. (Blank Rome/Saul Ewing)

• The House technology service desk has warned representatives about a new string of ransomware attacks. It sent an email to all members explaining how the attackers are targeting third-party email applications such as Yahoo and Gmail according to the website TechCrunch. It’s blocking users from accessing YahooMail on House networks. (TechCrunch)

• The Homeland Security Department’s information network with state and local law enforcement agencies gets a new identity management strategy. HSIN now controls access based on a user’s job function and attributes, not only names and other basic identifying information. DHS Information Sharing Environment Executive Director Donna Roy said it’s a big step forward at the department level. Local and state agencies are still struggling with authentication standards. Two factor authentication is often too expensive for those agencies. HSIN is now about 10 years old. (Federal News Radio)

• USPS’s period of profitability was short-lived. After posting positive results in the first quarter of the fiscal year, it reports a $2 billion loss for the second quarter. On pure operations, revenues exceeded spending by $576 million. But that’s before a temporary first-class rate hike expired. Overall, Postal lost because it must pre-fund retiree health care benefits. And it saw interest rates on workers comp rise. (Federal News Radio)

• Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) wants to know when a cyber attack constitutes an act of war. Rounds introduced legislation that would require the White House to develop a policy to determine whether a cyber attack can be an act of war. The proposal is an extension of a battle fought between the Obama administration and the Senate Armed Services Committee over a cyber deterrence policy last year. The bill requires the White House to compare how the effects of a cyber attack could be equivalent to an attack by conventional weapons in terms of casualties and destruction. (Federal News Radio)

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