Pence nominates Commerce Department for maintaining safety in space

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• The Commerce Department will have responsibility for safety in space, as the administration takes on space junk. Vice President Mike Pence said the National Space Council will soon recommend giving Commerce the task of maintaining space situational awareness to be shared with civil, commercial and military users of satellites. Pence said the 1,500 active satellites are threatened by tens of thousands of dead ones and orbiting debris. The policy will encourage data sharing and standards development cooperation between the space industry and government. (White House)

• Seven Defense Department organizations are on the chopping block. House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) wants DoD to save at least $25 billion from agencies in its Fourth Estate, those that don’t fall under a military service or the Defense Secretary. The requirement will be in the House 2019 defense authorization bill. (Federal News Radio)

• A federal judge ordered the Defense Department not to ban transgender troops from serving in the military because it’s unclear if the policy is constitutional. The Pentagon released a policy last month that would ban most transgender troops. The decision is being challenged in four different court cases. (Associated Press)

• Scott Blackburn, acting chief information officer at the Veterans Affairs Department, announced his resignation. He didn’t give a specific reason, but said he’ll continue to support VA “from afar.” Blackburn’s departure creates another gaping hole in VA’s leadership ranks, and more uncertainty around the electronic health record modernization project. (Federal News Radio)

• President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Veterans Affairs Department is telling senators he has no intention of privatizing the agency. Ronny Jackson, the president’s personal doctor, is set to appear for a formal confirmation hearing next week. Ahead of his testimony before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, he’s met with at least two senators who say he’s assured them that he’s against privatizing VA health care. Committee’s Ranking Member Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said Jackson seems committed to the same policies former Secretary David Shulkin pursued: expanding veterans’ access to private doctors, while also spending more on VA’s own health system. (Federal News Radio)

• The Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general said the agency needs a contingency plan when it decides on a long-term care plan for feds. The IG said OPM followed procurement regulations when it signed a new contract with John Hancock back in 2016. But the IG is concerned OPM isn’t prepared to handle skyrocketing long-term care premiums. OPM disagreed. (Office of Personnel Management)

• The Internal Revenue Service is giving taxpayers an extra day to file their taxes after its processing systems went down yesterday. The agency will now accept tax returns and payments until midnight Wednesday. The system crashed Tuesday morning, on the busiest day of the filing season. The agency said a hardware issue was the likely cause of the outage. Last year, the IRS received more than 50 million tax returns on the final day of the tax season. (Federal News Radio)

• The Homeland Security Department secretary is promising a more aggressive stance against cyber attacks. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen laid out the tenets of her agency’s new cybersecurity strategy and it came with a clear warning. Speaking at the RSA conference in San Francisco yesterday, Nielsen said complacency is being replaced by consequences. She said the U.S. will not stand on the sidelines while our networks are compromised and the nation will not accept the theft of our data,  innovation and resources. Nielsen said this idea of cyber deterrence is one of five tenets of the forthcoming strategy. (Federal News Radio)

• The use of software robots has grown so fast and furious at the General Services Administration it had to create a governance board. GSA had multiple pilots running in different offices and a growing stakeholder community. The board helps ensure there isn’t duplication and that users are improving the processes being automated.

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