A policy tweak by the Social Security Administration should make it easier to give money to recipients it underpaid

• The Social Security Administration says a recent policy change should make it easier to compensate beneficiaries who received underpayments. To try to get reimbursements out more quickly, SSA recently updated its requirements for payment distributions. Now any underpayment less than $15,000 can be distributed without a peer review. Previously, that was capped at just $5,000. As a result, SSA says more underpayments are going out more quickly. In total, the SSI program has released more than $900 million in underpayments to about 80,000 people.
  (SSI policy change - Social Security Administration)
• A coalition of employee organizations is heightening calls of support of women in law enforcement. Advocacy groups are pushing back against recent stories calling the assassination attempt on former President Trump a result of the Secret Service’s efforts to promote gender diversity in hiring. In a memo published Tuesday, the coalition, led by the 30-by-30 initiative, says blaming women in law enforcement for the attack is “disingenuous” and “dangerous.” Increasing public safety is a matter of expanding, not shrinking, the federal law enforcement applicant pool, the coalition says. The group adds that it will continue to push in favor of agencies hiring officers based on their skills and qualifications — not based on their gender.
  (Statement supporting women in law enforcement - 30x30 Initiative)
• Agencies are sitting on more real estate than they need, and could recover billions of dollars by selling off excess space. The Public Buildings Reform Board is looking at 27 high-value federal properties in cities with a strong federal presence. Those include DC, Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles. The board found that most of these 11 million square feet of federal office space is underutilized, and that agencies could save about $3 billion in the long term by eliminating about 60% of this space. Here’s the board’s executive director, Paul Walden. “The board views this current reality as an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the government to right-size its portfolio,” Walden said.
  (Federal buildings board: Agencies can save billions by shedding ‘vastly underutilized’ office space - Federal News Network )
• Top Republicans who oversee the Small Business Administration are calling on the agency to delay an overhaul of its online certification portal, at least until after the end of the fiscal year. SBA is planning to upgrade its online certification platform, starting on August 1. The agency says the upgraded system will be available for new applications by early September. Lawmakers say taking the platform offline in the final months of fiscal 2024 could cause problems for firms with critical year-end contracting deadlines that may need to recertify their small-business status.
  (GOP lawmakers demand SBA postpone IT upgrades amid year-end contract spending surge - Federal News Network )

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• Agencies just passed a major digital records deadline. They submitted requests to transfer nearly 1 million cubic feet of analog records to the National Archives and Records Administration over the past year. Those transfer requests came in advance of the June 30 deadline for analog records transfers. Going forward, NARA will only accept records in an electronic format, with some limited exceptions. The only governmentwide exception is for federal official personnel folders and employee medical files. Agencies will still have more time to digitize those records.
  (NARA sees requests to transfer nearly 1M cubic feet of records ahead of deadline - Federal News Network )
• The Defense Department is looking for acquisition professionals to join a 12-month immersive fellowship program. The Defense Innovation Unit and Defense Acquisition University launched the program in 2022 to help the DoD adopt best practices for commercial procurement within the department. The program includes virtual classroom training and experiential learning focused on other transaction authorities through DAU's Defense Acquisition Credentials program. Applications are open through early August.
  (DoD looking for acquisition professionals to join fellowship program - Defense Department)
• The Defense Department is preparing to recompete its contract for Advana. Since 2021, the General Services Administration has provided most of the lifecycle IT support for the Advana platform. Advana has grown exponentially in the last three years, prompting the DoD to open up the platform to multiple vendors. Recompeting the contract for Advana platform is part of the Pentagon’s broader approach to scale data, analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities across the DoD known as Open DAGIR.
  (DoD recompeting Advana contract - Federal News Network)
• A bipartisan bill in the Senate would direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services to tighten their collaboration on cybersecurity initiatives. The “Healthcare Cybersecurity Act of 2024” would create special liaison to HHS within CISA. The legislation would also direct those agencies to share cyber threat indicators and defensive information with the health sector. The new bill comes after several major cyber attacks on the healthcare organizations this year, including the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.
  (Rosen, Young, King introduce bipartisan bill to improve cybersecurity in healthcare, public health - Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) office)

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