DoD officials claim success in first test of new electronic health record

In today's Top Federal Headlines, after a one week deployment, Defense Department leaders say they are receiving positive feedback on its new electronic health ...

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

In today’s Top Federal Headlines, after a one week deployment, Defense Department leaders say they are receiving positive feedback on its new electronic health record system.

  • After one week of deployment, Defense officials are claiming success for DoD’s new electronic health record system. The electronic health record, MHS Genesis, went live last week at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. Stacy Cummings, program executive officer of Defense Healthcare Management Systems, said initial feedback from healthcare providers was positive. (Department of Defense)
  • The White House is preparing a new executive order to require agencies to plan how they would reorganize the government. Federal News Radio has learned a draft order could be issued this week now that Mick Mulvaney has been confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The draft order requires agencies to quickly turn around plans to improve how the department meets its mission. It details a list of elements the agencies need to include in those plans ranging from a list of programs that are duplicative to whether state and local governments or the private sector could do the work better to the costs of ending or merging the capabilities. (Federal News Radio)
  • Can a federal agency disappear with only a single sentence? Only if one of the shortest bills ever passes both houses of Congress and the president signs it. HR 861, filed by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), now has its text posted online. It’s exactly 10 words. Those include the date, Dec. 31, 2018, on which the Environmental Protection Agency “shall terminate.” The bill must clear four committees before a full House vote. (Congress.gov)
  • The Air Force finishes moving the first of its bases to a new cloud-based email service, and work is underway at nine more installations. The project, called Collaboration Pathfinder, is based on Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud platform. The Air Force had already rolled the service out to a handful of small agencies as test sites, but Holloman Air Force Base in southern New Mexico is the first large installation to migrate all of its users to the cloud. The Air Force Network Integration Center has started the process at nine other bases under a $296 million contract with Dell. Officials said the cloud service gives users about 2,000 times as much space in their inboxes as they had in the Air Force’s legacy system, and lets them access their messages from home. (Air Force)
  • The Homeland Security Department hopes a second time is a charm for its enterprisewide cloud computing services contract. DHS made a second set of awards earlier this week to three companies under a nine-year blanket purchase agreement. DHS initially made awards in November to four companies, but was forced to take corrective action after a bid protest. Under the ECS contract, DHS will have access to private, public, community and hybrid cloud environments. Vendors also will provide both infrastructure- and platform-as-a service offerings and tools and services specific to the applications hosted on the infrastructure. (FedBizOpps)
  • The Government Accountability Office said it’s happy to see progress on 23 out of 34 high-risk areas over the past two years. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said some of that progress is moving too slowly, though. He’s especially concerned with agencies’ pace on improving federal cybersecurity, and Veterans Affairs health care. Cybersecurity has been on the High-Risk List since 1997. GAO’s issued 2,500 recommendations since then. Agencies have implemented half of them. (Federal News Radio)
  • After almost 30 years, the Defense Department still has some issues on GAO’s High-Risk List. The newest version cites DoD infrastructure management as one of the major problems. Other problems include business transformation, getting rid of duplicative offices and department auditability. DoD did improve its supply chain management, though. (Federal News Radio)
  • The government wasted $97 million dollars for every $1 billion dollars it invests, according to the Project Management Institute. In a new report, it said the Project Management Improvement Accountability Act would help with reducing federal waste by letting agencies put governmentwide standards in place to help reign in some of their largest projects. (Program Management Institute)
  • Life goes on for two former government officials. Former White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel is named the first president of nonprofit organization Cyber Threat Alliance. Also, Mary Jo White former Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission returns to legal practice at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. She’ll also serve as Senior Chair of the firm. (Cyber Threat Alliance/Debevoise & Plimpton)

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