• President-elect Donald Trump is creating a new Department of Government Efficiency to drive large scale structural reform across the agencies. Trump named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE. The new organization isn't an official department. It is charged with working from the outside of the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget. Trump said on a post on X that DOGE will help drive out massive waste and fraud that exists within the federal budget. DOGE's work will conclude by July 4, 2026.
  (Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will form outside group to advise White House on government efficiency - AP)
• NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is making more than 300 layoffs today after struggling to meet fiscal 2025 budget limitations. The cut represents about 5 percent of JPL’s overall staff, mostly in the lab’s technical, business and support components. Today’s staff reductions are the latest in multiple rounds of cuts at JPL. In a message to employees on Tuesday, JPL Director Laurie Leshin said she believes this round of layoffs will be the last.
  (NASA JPL workforce update - NASA Jet Propulsion Lab)
• A bill to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) has reached a new milestone. The House passed the Social Security Fairness Act Tuesday evening in a vote of 327 to 75. The passage of the bill brings federal annuitants one step closer to seeing the removal of the WEP and GPO. The two provisions reduce and, in some cases, fully cancel out Social Security benefits for certain federal annuitants and other public sector workers. The Senate’s companion bill has 62 cosponsors, but so far there has not been any action toward a vote.
  (Bill to repeal WEP and GPO clears House - Social Security Fairness Act)
• Federal employee groups are highlighting how commercial data brokers can put national security at risk. In a new letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), groups including the National Federation of Federal Employees are urging CFPB to better highlight national security risks as part of its ongoing data privacy rulemaking. They said sophisticated foreign adversaries can use commercial data to profile members of the military and law enforcement, as well as federal employees. CFPB is targeting potential abuses by data brokers under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
  (Letter to CFPB on FCRA data - National Federal of Federal Employees)

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• Ann Lewis, the director of the Technology Transformation Service (TTS) at the General Services Administration, is leaving after almost two years in the role. Lewis's last day will be Nov. 22. Her deputy, Mukunda Penugonde will serve as acting director. Lewis didn't say where she would be going next. During her tenure as TTS director, Lewis oversaw a major overhaul of the cloud security program known as FedRAMP and the restoration of faith in the Login dot gov platform. This was Lewis's second stint in federal service, having worked for SBA during the Obama administration.
  (TTS Director Lewis leaving - General Services Administration)
• A federal court ruling brings a nine year Secret Service overtime lawsuit closer to its end. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has denied the federal government’s motion for summary judgment in the lawsuit. The case dates back to 2015 and challenged an Office of Personnel Management policy that Secret Service agents had to work two consecutive hours of unscheduled extra duty to receive overtime pay. A federal appeals court overturned that policy in a separate case and the Secret Service has updated its pay policies to comply with the appeals court’s decision. The agency said it still hasn’t compensated more than 1,800 agents who may have worked split-overtime hours in recent years.
  (Federal court ruling brings 9-year Secret Service overtime lawsuit closer to its end - Federal News Network )
• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is hiring a chief information security officer. The SEC is using direct-hire authority to recruit for the position. Applications are due by Nov. 22. The SEC increasingly oversees key cybersecurity issues among publicly traded companies including through a cyber incident disclosure rule finalized last December. The regulatory agency has also faced security issues of its own: the SEC’s X account was hacked earlier this year.
  (SEC CISO job posting - USAJobs)
• The Postal Service is upgrading tens of thousands of blue collection boxes with electronic locks making them harder for thieves to break into. But its inspector general’s office said the agency needs to do a better job of managing the handheld scanners employees use to open these new mailboxes. The watchdog office finds inclement weather affected the performance of scanners in some locations. It also recommends some USPS facilities do more to train employees on how to use these scanners and ensure they’re properly charged.
  (Security and efficiency of the new carrier scanners and electronic locks - USPS Inspector General’s Office )
• After a five-month prototype phase, the Foreign Military Sales – Army Case Execution System program moves into the Software Acquisition Pathway execution phase. This milestone is a significant shift for the Defense Integrated Business Systems as it moves from a traditional waterfall approach to a dynamic agile methodology for software development. The new system will allow the foreign military sales community to have end-to-end modernized case execution and management capabilities, as well as logistics, financial management, audit compliance, and data visualization tools. The program plans to deliver a Minimal Viable Capability Release (MVCR) to end users within a year, with continuous updates to follow.
  (Army’s Foreign Military Sales program enters software acquisition pathway phase - PEO Enterprise)
• The Defense Contract Management Agency employees can now access a dictionary-like tool for Defense Department’s acronyms and key phrases. Dubbed Information Dictionary, the tool secured second place for its innovative approach at the agency’s IT Training Summit Innovation Contest held in August. The team that created the dictionary leveraged Power BI to streamline the process of compiling and organizing terms and definitions. The next step is to automate the process of updating DoD’s ever-changing terms and acronyms to ensure the dictionary remains up-to-date.
  (DCMA creates centralized information dictionary for its employees - Defense Contract Management Agency)

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