Growing disagreement between OMB and GAO is no act

• President Biden’s top cyber adviser is stepping down. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis is retiring next week. His office confirmed that his last day will be February 15. Principal Deputy National Cyber Director Kemba Walden will step up to become acting director. Inglis was confirmed by the Senate as the first-ever national cyber director in July 2021. His office has been working on a new national cyber strategy, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. It’s anticipated to feature a stronger role for cyber regulations to help secure U.S. critical infrastructure sectors.
  ( - White House Office of the National Cyber Director )
• Lawmakers have reintroduced a bill to adjust retirement benefits for a group of Customs and Border Protection officers. The bipartisan bill would fix an error CBP made over 10 years ago. The agency mistakenly told 1,300 new officers at the time that they would be eligible for an enhanced annuity. But the CBP rescinded the benefits for these officers once realizing the error. Under the bill, the impacted officers would receive the enhanced retirement coverage they were initially promised, and would get a retroactive annuity adjustment.
  (CPBO Retirement Corrections Act - Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee)
• Defense Department personnel are putting unauthorized apps on their DoD phones. The DoD Office of the Inspector General issued a management advisory that department employees are conducting official business on their work mobile devices using applications that violate federal electronic messaging and records-retention policies. The advisory said some of the applications could pose operational and cybersecurity risks to Pentagon information systems. The IG's office recommends better training and a clear policy on acceptable use of DoD mobile applications.
  (Management Advisory: The DoD’s Use of Mobile Applications - DoD OIG)
• A new bill would require agencies to increase access to regulatory guidance documents. The "Guidance Out of Darkness Act" ("GOOD Act") would call on the Office of Management and Budget to create an easily accessible website where all agencies can publish documents and regulatory guidance. That could include, for example, agency memos, notices and news releases. House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) introduced the bill, saying it would improve federal transparency to the public. There is also a companion bill in the Senate. If enacted, OMB would have three months to set up the website.
  (Guidance Out of Darkness Act - House Oversight and Accountability Committee)

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• The Defense Department is testing out AI to help the agency write contracts faster. DoD’s Chief Digital and AI Office is prototyping an AI-powered bot that is supposed to speed up the contracting process. The AI tool is a prototype, and doesn't make any contracting decisions. There’s also a human in the loop, reviewing and validating the AI-generated text at every point in the process. The AI bot is part of DoD’s Tradewind initiative, which is focused on developing and funding AI solutions. Tradewind Execution Lead Bonnie Evangelista said the tool is part of DoD thinking big on what AI can do. “We're not going to settle for the low-value stuff. We want to, if we can, break the mold and break the glass ceiling, from an acquisition perspective," Evangelista said.
  (DoD builds AI tool to speed up ‘antiquated process’ for contract writing - Federal News Network)
• Agencies have new goals under the category management initiative. They have a goal to spend about $450 billion through category management in fiscal 2023. This is about $23 billion less than what they achieved last year. The Office of Management and Budget released new governmentwide goals on Wednesday. The decrease in the top line spending will come from all 10 areas of the effort, including facilities and construction, technology and professional services. At the same time, agencies are expected to increase their spending under management to 72% across these 10 areas, a 2% increase over 2022.
  (Governmentwide category management report - OMB)
• A disagreement is brewing between the Office of Management and Budget and the Government Accountability Office over whether the acting federal controller is violating the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. GAO said Deidre Harrison has been acting controller for more than the 210 days allowed by law. OMB disagrees with GAO's opinion. It said the nomination of Laurel Blatchford and subsequent withdrawal in October reset the clock, allowing Harrison to be acting until May. The OMB controller position has not had a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration ended in January 2017.
  (Government Accountability Office legal opinion - GAO)
• The Postal Service is addressing a surge in letter carrier robberies and postal-related crimes. Criminals are targeting postal employees for the “arrow keys” they carry, which open up blue mail-collection boxes. The USPS Board of Governors met this summer with the leadership of its Postal Inspection Service. Options on the table include deploying postal inspectors to high-crime areas and moving collection boxes to an “arrowless” system. USPS Governor Ron Stroman, a former deputy postmaster general, said robberies of postal employees are growing. “These trends continued over the recent holiday season and are now almost a daily occurrence," Stroman said.
  (USPS outlines plan to address 'dramatic escalation' in letter carrier robberies - Federal News Network)
• The National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency is digging into the supply chain of one of its high-profile software programs. NGA released a request for information this week on supply chain risk management for Project Maven, an artificial intelligence and machine learning program. NGA said there is often limited visibility into the prime vendors and the sub-tier suppliers that provide critical components and personnel to the AI initiative. NGA’s effort comes as agencies across government seek to better understand risks in their software.
  (NGA Maven Supply Chain Risk Management - Sam.gov)
• The Air Force will hold a BRAVO hackathon next month at Hurlburt Field in Florida. The event features contestants working in teams on enterprise challenges associated with data. Prior BRAVO projects have produced multiple prototypes and inventions influencing Defense Department programs. Any U.S. citizen can enter and a security clearance is not needed unless the specific dataset requires it. BRAVO allows participants to rapidly commingle and run open-source software and data otherwise unapproved for production with classified or protected data.
  (Department of the Air Force to conduct hackathon - Air Force)

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