OPM seeks data on political appointees receiving career appointments

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• Congress has requested details from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) about how many political appointees have been converted to career positions. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in a letter to Acting OPM Director Beth Cobert, said it wants to know how many political appointees have been converted since September of last year. OPM is in charge of reviewing these appointments. Critics of such conversions note that they often occur during the transitional period in which the outgoing administration prepares to leave office and the incoming administration prepares to assume office. Conversions are permissible when laws and regulations governing career appointments are followed, but they can invite scrutiny because of the differences in the appointment and tenure of non-career and career employees. (House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform)

• Law enforcement agencies have been asked to provide information about how they are using drones. The National Institute of Justice  published the request for information seeking partners to help research the use of drones for crash scene reconstruction. It wants to assess the technology’s current and future capabilities to determine appropriate uses.  (Federal Register)

• Military families living overseas military families are expected to see higher costs for food this year.  Military Times reports school lunches at most Defense Department schools outside the U.S. will go up at the beginning of the next school year in August. Commissary prices have also reportedly increased over the course of 2016 as well. (Military Times)

• The e-filing PIN option used on tax forms has been discontinued due to ongoing cyber attacks to the taxpaying tool. In February, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reported about 100,000 Social Security numbers were successfully used to access PINs. The online alternative for verifying signatures did not provide taxpayer information, but it could be used along with other stolen data such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, to file tax returns.  (Internal Revenue Service)

• The Defense Department (DoD) said it intends to improve the efficiency of headquarters organizations and identify related cost savings, but in a  report to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), it said it needs more information to make that happen. GAO said the DoD has identified up to $84 billion in potential savings it could make, but without more comprehensive databases, there’s no way to know what effect its efforts will have. (Government Accountability Office)

• The Pentagon has announced some personnel changes. Air Force Maj. Gen. John Horner was named the new Director of Special Programs in the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. Also, Air Force Maj. Gen. Steven Shepro was selected as the next deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee. (DoD)

• The Veterans Affairs Department is trying to make it easier for veterans to apply for health care. VA launched a new online application on June 30 that does not require special software to open, nor does it need to be printed by the veteran or VA staff to be processed. VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson said the new form replaces an often frustrating process that generated paper forms that needed to be manually entered into the system. Now, through the Vets.gov portal, VA is offering a HTML-based application that requires nothing more than an internet connection and 15 to 45 minutes to fill out depending on the complexity of the application. (Veterans Affairs)

• The Obama administration launched a plan to change local incarceration patterns called the data-driven justice initiative. Sixty-seven state and local jurisdictions will participate. They’ll experiment using multiple data sources to evaluate mentally ill individuals and avoid jailing those deemed low-risk. The idea is to cut jail populations without raising local crime rates. The Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice departments will lead federal participation. Several corporations and non-profits will lend technical expertise. (The White House)

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