Air Force, Space Force offer day off for servicemembers to get bivalent booster shot

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• The Postal Service is falling behind on a plan to reverse its long-term financial losses, citing record inflation and what it calls unsustainable contributions to a federal retirement fund that covers some postal retirees. As for long-term resolutions to its finances, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the USPS Board of Governors that the agency is not expected to reach a financial “break-even” point in 2023, as spelled out in the agency’s 10-year reform plan. Notwithstanding that bad news, DeJoy said USPS has stabilized its workforce and is ready for the busy holiday delivery season. (USPS ready for holiday crush after influx of mail-in ballots — Federal News Network)

• What should be in the forthcoming national cyber workforce strategy? Some groups have put forward their top recommendations. The public comment period on the cyber workforce strategy closed earlier this month. The National Cyber Director’s office is now working through the initial feedback. Several groups said getting better data on the cyber workforce will be crucial to filling talent gaps. “In order to understand how well we as a nation are doing on this issue of cyber workforce, we need to understand the demographics of that workforce,” MITRE’s Irv Lachow said. “And we don’t actually have a good snapshot of that at the national level.” The White House is expected to finalize the strategy next year. (Better data, training, hiring processes are key to cyber workforce strategy, groups say — Federal News Network)

• The head of Customs and Border Protection has stepped down. Chris Magnus submitted his resignation on Saturday, and the White House said President Joe Biden has accepted it. Magnus was reportedly asked to resign by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. A former police chief in three states, including Arizona, Magnus had been on the CBP job for less than a year. (US border agency leader resigns amid wave of migrants — Federal News Network)

• There’s been some progress toward IT modernization at the Office of Personnel Management, but it’s still a major challenge for the agency. OPM’s office of inspector general said the agency still has obsolete applications and outdated infrastructure. But there are some barriers to making updates, such as a limited IT budget. At the same time, OPM is trying to recruit more IT employees, after some left during a failed merger between OPM and the General Services Administration. The agency also plans to maximize its use of cloud-based systems by 2025. Currently, just 10% of the agency’s IT systems are in the cloud. (IT workforce, budget among top modernization challenges for OPM – Federal News Network)

• The Veterans Affairs Department is making progress on an effort to digitize veterans’ military service records. The VA is working with the National Archives and Records Administration to proactively scan military records for veterans who may file an initial claim for benefits under the recently passed PACT Act. The VA has digitized about 38% of the 170,000 PACT Act files it has received so far and expects to complete this digitization project in the second quarter of fiscal 2023. VA Secretary Denis McDonough said the agency’s priority of digitizing service records dates back to the early 2010s. “This reliance on paper was buckling the floor up in the VA regional office in Baltimore, and was impossible to timely review those records. So we are going through the process of digitizing them,” McDonough said. (McDonough says VA making progress on digitizing veteran service records – Federal News Network)

• The Air Force and Space Force are offering servicemembers a full day off from their regular duties as an incentive to stay up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccinations. Airmen and guardians will get a one-day special pass as long as they get the bivalent booster shot by December 1, but commanders will decide when the day off will actually happen, depending on mission needs. Air Force civilian employees will still follow the rules that apply for the rest of the government: They’ll be allowed to take leave during a workday to get vaccinated, but only as much time as it takes to get to and from the vaccine site.

• The Army is planning a new procurement to help move its intelligence IT systems to the cloud. It’s called Army Cloud Adoption Technology Support Contract (ACATS). The Army wants to use the contract for a wide range of services to migrate military intelligence systems to the IC’s GovCloud and other platforms, as more commercial cloud services get Top Secret accreditation. The Army issued an initial request for information for ACATS last week. Vendors’ responses are due by the end of this month.

• Three agencies are teaming up to help veterans better understand their protections against employment discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, along with the departments of Labor and Justice, outlined several workplace protections specific to servicemembers and veterans in a first-of-its-kind document. The document outlines veterans’ protections against, for example, age, gender and disability discrimination.

• The Biden administration is taking steps to require major federal contractors to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. A proposed rule would require all large suppliers receiving more than $50 million a year in federal contracts to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and set emissions reduction targets. All federal contractors with less than $7.5 million in annual contracts would be exempt from the rule.

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