Customs and Border Protection

  • News and buzz in the acquisition and IT communities that you may have missed this week.

    March 22, 2013
  • Employees at TSA, CBP and Bureau of Prisons will no longer be able to work overtime. SSA offers its employees a new round of early retirements to deal with budget shortfalls. AFGE continues to press Congress, White House to stop sequestration.

    March 14, 2013
  • In order to counter funding reductions due to sequestration, Customs and Border Protection has begun sending furlough notices to many of its 60,000 employees. An officer in the union representing CBP agents says these measures amount to a 40 percent reduction in salaries.

    March 08, 2013
  • National Border Patrol Council Vice President Shawn Moran says the CBP furlough plan could cut agents' pay by 40 percent. Francesca Grifo of the Union for Concerned Scientists talk about a new report on scientific integrity at federal agencies. Registered employee benefit consultant Ed Zurndorfer talks about what furloughed feds should do instead of taking money from their TSP funds. Priya Jaisinghani of USAID discusses the Mobile Solutions team which capitalizes on cell phones' popularity in developing countries.

    March 08, 2013
  • Ever wonder what feds who work at airports actually do? Many people complain that they mostly slow down important people, like us, who are on a mission or heading for vacation. But it turns out that they do some pretty dramatic and important stuff all the time, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

    March 08, 2013
  • Customs and Border Protection became one of the first civilian agencies to notify the union that represents their employees that they want to begin discussing the implementation of furloughs under sequestration. NTEU and AFGE expect to hear from more agencies in the next two weeks if cuts from sequestration go into effect March 1.

    February 27, 2013
  • The National Treasury Employees Union was informed by Customs and Border Protection that agency-wide furlough notices of up to 14 days will be issued in mid-March as a result of sequestration. CBP told NTEU that it will have to make $754 million in cuts from March 1 through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

    February 21, 2013
  • John Wagner of CBP talks about his agency's new customer service kiosk. Allyson Robinson of OutServe-SLDN discusses legal hurdles facing gay service members seeking equal treatment. Gary Barlet of USPS' Inspector General Office talks about smartphones and tablets. Greg Juneman of IFPTE discusses the impact of potential furloughs on members of his union. Former NASA CIO Molly O'Neill discusses Fed-RAMP security testing.

    February 07, 2013
  • Building on the success of its Global Entry program for pre-enrolled travelers, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has developed a self-service kiosk that anyone can use. John Wagner, executive director for Admissibility and Passenger Programs at CBP, tells Agency of the Month about this and other new technologies coming to an airport near you.

    February 05, 2013
  • Charlie Armstrong, the agency's assistant commissioner for the Office of Information and Technology and chief information officer, said a new cloud initiative is the target environment for mission support systems. CBP recently moved all of its employees to email-in-the-cloud. January 3, 2013

    January 03, 2013
  • Federal News Radio hosted an online chat with Charlie Armstrong, assistant commissioner and chief information officer at Customs and Border Protection. If you missed it live, view an archived version of the chat here.

    December 18, 2012
  • The agency has chosen to let some acquisition schedules slip, as a solution to constrained budgets. By doing so, CBP increases the likelihood of successful acquisition projects, said an agency executive.

    September 24, 2012
  • Since March 2010, the device has helped to catch 450 drug traffickers, weapons smugglers and potential terror suspects. The developers of the technology are finalists for the 2012 Service to America Medal.

    August 21, 2012
  • Not all agencies are using TechStat for IT projects that are in trouble. In an exclusive report, Federal News Radio finds agencies are seeing unexpected benefits in applying the evaluation tool to programs that are on track. Treasury used TechStat to figure out how best to consolidate three procurement systems.

    August 16, 2012