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• Agencies spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours preparing paper records each year, but new guidance from the Office of Management and Budget has set deadlines for them to switch to electronic records by December 2022. The National Archives and Records Administration will not be able to accept non-electronic records after the deadline. The memo also requires the Office of Personnel Management to update job descriptions for archivist and records management positions to include proficiency in electronic recordkeeping skills. (White House)

• Federal employees are a big step closer to receiving paid family leave. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) joined Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) in adding provisions to the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. If the language survives passage of the NDAA, employees would receive up to 12 weeks of paid leave for family events ranging from giving birth or adoption to taking care of a parent, spouse or child if they have a serious health issue. Maloney introduced a standalone bill in March and for the previous four years. (Rep. Carolyn Maloney)

• Inserted into the supplemental border appropriations bill, an important procurement provision for the Department of Homeland Security. At least through the end of the fiscal year, the bill restores DHS’ permission to use other transaction authority for projects of up to $500 million, letting it skip the Federal Acquisition Regulation for prototypes as defined under Title 6 of the U.S. Code. That authority had elapsed at the end of 2017. To the border bill, Congress simply added the Defense Department’s enabling OTA language. (GovTrack)

• A former government contractor pled guilty to creating fake training certificates from the Transportation Department. Antonio Jones admitted to falsifying HAZMAT training certificates for clients applying for work in Afghanistan. No word yet on a sentencing date. (Department of Justice)

• Outdated internet of things devices can become a vulnerability for agencies when manufacturers stop releasing cybersecurity updates and patches. New recommendations in the first of several upcoming IoT reports released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology outline best practices for agencies to protect IoT devices, protect data security, and prevent the loss of personally identifiable information if a cyber-attack happens. (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

• For nearly 35 years the Pentagon has not analyzed how its contracting methods affect industry. In a new report, the Government Accountability Office recommended DoD regularly assess how its contract financing and profit policies impact industry. DoD officials acknowledged last year that they need to update their analysis. (Government Accountability Office)

• The protest of DoD’s $10 billion cloud procurement is about to come to a head and both sides are jockeying for position. Oracle took one last stab at convincing the Court of Federal Claims that the Defense Department’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) procurement is tainted and should be reconsidered. The software giant filed last week what will likely be its final brief before oral arguments on July 10, Oracle made its case to the judge that Chanda Brooks, the contracting officer for JEDI, consistently made bad decisions throughout the year-long procurement. Oracle’s filing is in response to those briefings made by the government and AWS earlier in June. (Federal News Network)

• The Air Force awarded the third and final contract to test out the concept of enterprise IT-as-a-service. The Air Force picked Accenture Federal Services under an “other transactional agreement” to experiment with delivering computing and storage capabilities “as-a-service” to eight bases. Under the deal, Accenture will test out an approach of bringing cloud computing to the “edge” to better enable resilient, data-driven base operations and support artificial intelligence initiatives. The year long pilot is part of the broader effort that includes OTA agreements with AT&T and Microsoft for cloud hosted enterprise services. (Air Force)

• The Air Force is changing the way it delivers medicine. The service is delivering medical teams to its airmen as part of its new medical reform model. The teams will reach out to airmen to keep them in healthy condition instead of waiting for airmen to seek medical attention on their own. The goal is to cure or resolve lingering healthcare issues that may keep airmen from deploying. Last year then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis mandated that service members who were not able to deploy for 12 months or more will be separated from the military. (Air Force)

• The Senate made a handful of confirmations to fill empty ranks within the Defense Department. Air Force General John Raymond was confirmed as the head of the new U.S. Space Command. The Senate confirmed Christopher Scolese as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office. He currently serves as the director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. Finally, the Senate confirmed Veronica Diagle as assistant defense secretary for readiness.

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