• President-elect Donald Trump promised yesterday to dismiss any feds who don’t come to work onsite full time. During a press conference, Trump decried and threatened legal action over the five-year telework agreement signed by the Social Security Administration and its employee union, AFGE. In response, AFGE expressed support for its agreement with SSA, and for federal telework more broadly. In a statement Monday, the union emphasized that collective bargaining agreements are binding, emphasizing they expect the incoming administration to abide by their obligations to honor lawful union contracts.
  (Trump slams SSA, telework - PBS Newshour)
• President-elect Donald Trump said he’s revisiting plans to privatize the Postal Service. Trump told reporters he’s once again considering plans to privatize the Postal Service, after scrutinizing the agency’s operations during his first term in office. “There is talk about the Postal Service being taken private, you do know that — not the worst idea I’ve ever heard." The first Trump administration unveiled plans to restructure and potentially privatize USPS as part of a 2018 government reorganization plan, but the proposal never gained momentum after pushback from unions and Congress. House Republicans, especially those in support of Trump’s incoming Department of Government Efficiency, expressed support for privatizing some USPS operations at a hearing last week.
  (Trump revisits plan to privatize USPS, a first-term goal that didn’t go far - Federal News Network )
• The National Institutes of Health is hiring a familiar face to fill its CIO role. After two years without a permanent chief information officer, NIH hired Adele Merritt to be its top technology executive. Merritt comes to NIH from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She was the Intelligence Community CIO for the past three years. Merritt replaces Andrea Norris who retired from NIH in December 2022. Dennis Papula has been acting CIO for two years. Papula recently took the CIO's job at HHS's Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. As the NIH CIO, Merritt inherits a much smaller organization as the agency separated the CIO from the Center for IT after almost 25 years of combining the roles. She will report to CIT Director and Associate Director for IT, Cyberinfrastructure and Cybersecurity Sean Mooney.
  (NIH names new CIO - National Institutes of Health)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is getting an extensive list of changes to how it delivers health care and benefits. The House passed the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act. The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk. Among its provisions, the Dole Act would expand pay flexibilities for some VA health care workers, and allow the VA to provide backpay to health care workers who exceeded pay caps between January 2006 and December 2017. The bill would also require the VA to develop a plan to expand same-day scheduling for medical appointments.
  (House sends bipartisan Dole Act to the president’s Desk - House Veterans Affairs Committee )

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• Vendors who want to protest contracts awarded by the Defense Department will have to think twice before filing their compliant. The 2025 Defense authorization bill includes a provision for DoD to set up a process where unsuccessful protesters at GAO will have to reimburse DoD for costs incurred in processing the protest. DoD will have 180 days to establish the benchmarks to measure the average costs to DoD and GAO based on the value of the contract under protest. Congress passed a similar, but more limited provision in the 2018 Defense policy bill, only to repeal it three years later.
  (NDAA provision would require vendors to pay when they lose a protest - Congress)
• Defense contractors can now seek out a Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification assessment. The Defense Department’s CMMC program rule went into effect on Monday after passing the 60-day Congressional review deadline. That paves the way for CMMC assessments to begin in January. The Pentagon expects to finalize a related CMMC acquisition rule early next year. That will allow DOD to begin putting CMMC requirements into contracts.
  (DoD CIO announcement on CMMC program taking effect - LinkedIn)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is detailing how agencies and industry should respond to major cyber incidents. CISA’s draft national cyber incident response plan tells agencies to make sure they have the resources and plans to respond to an incident that could affect the security of the nation. And it tells industry how they can work with government organizations when a major cyber incident happens. The draft plan is the first update since 2016. CISA did not become a standalone federal agency until 2018. The cyber agency is accepting comments on the new plan until Jan. 15.
  (CISA lays out how agencies, industry should respond to major cyber incidents - Federal News Network)
• A number of Defense Department components did not keep accurate or complete inventory records of mobile devices used for transmitting and storing classified information. DoD's office of inspector general also found that some DoD components did not include all required elements in their classified mobile device training programs and user agreements. In addition, there was a consistent failure to annually review and approve incident response plans. The inspector general has made 40 recommendations to tighten security measures, including advising the Defense Information Systems Agency, European Command and Special Operations Command to review their classified mobile device programs, identify cybersecurity deficiencies, and create corrective action plans to address these vulnerabilities.
  (DoD compnents failed to keep inventory records for classified mobile devices - DoD office of inspector general)
• The Air Force A3 operations directorate is rolling out the air resource tool enterprise mission information system, also known as ARTEMIS, which will replace the service’s outdated aviation resource management system. The service relies on the aviation resource management system to track training, medical compliance and flight hours for thousands of aviators, but the last major system update occurred decades ago. ARTEMIS will also integrate with a suite of tools that supports essential operational functions like scheduling and grade books.
  (Air Force to replace its outdated aviation resource management system - Federal News Network)

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