Defense Department
-
News and buzz in the acquisition and IT communities that you may have missed this week.
August 16, 2013 -
Two furloughed feds share how they turned the negative of an unpaid day off into a positive. One performed service projects for the community where he lives. The other launched a website to keep feds informed about sequestration and furloughs.
August 16, 2013 -
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel orders seven reforms based on existing "best practices" inside and outside of DoD. Critics call the announcement a missed opportunity for more sweeping changes in the fight against military sexual assault.
August 16, 2013 -
The director of the Defense Information Systems Agency says the agency will spend the next year focusing on a faster, more agile acquisition process to accelerate the way it delivers technology, rather than letting procurements drag on for years.
August 15, 2013 -
The Pentagon is making notable progress towards its 2014 and 2017 audibility mandates, according to Beth McGrath, the Pentagon's deputy chief management officer. "It's not just the responsibility of the comptroller, for example, to achieve audit readiness," McGrath tells Federal News Radio. "It's everybody has to play."
August 14, 2013 -
The Army Corps of Engineering is already having difficulty recruiting candidates for certain fields, and is convinced the problem will worsen unless STEM graduation rates increase.
August 14, 2013 -
CACI International Inc. appointed David Wennergren, DoD's former assistant deputy chief management officer, as vice president of the company's Enterprise Technologies and Services business group.
August 13, 2013 -
Due to the flood of appeals coming into its offices, the Merit Systems Protection Board has delayed processing and adjudicating furlough appeals from civilian Defense Department employees. The board will continue to process appeals from non-DoD employees.
August 13, 2013 -
The Defense Information Systems Agency will issue several contracts under a unified capabilities initiative to move virtually all of DoD's communications onto Internet Protocol-based networks, and to better integrate voice, video and data services.
August 12, 2013 -
Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale told In Depth with Francis Rose Friday the Defense Department will not be cutting any more furlough days for Fiscal 2013. Now, DoD is waiting for Congress to finish marking up the president's budget request. If it fails to do that before Oct. 1, Hale said his agency may be forced to trim $52 billion from next year's budget to offset automatic cuts from the Budget Control Act.
August 09, 2013 -
Defense Department's decision to centralize management of mobile technology is borne out of painful lessons from regular old wired IT networks. Budget pressure, officials say, makes it easier to sell the concept of doing things once and sharing the results.
August 09, 2013 -
Federal officials say the budget environment — with or without sequestration — is leading agencies to come to grips with the idea that no matter how much they cut, no matter how much they work to become more efficient, they still will not have enough people or money to get everything done. The goal is to install discipline and data into the decision making process.
August 09, 2013 -
The Navy entered 2010 with what officials say was a fleet that was well below acceptable standards for material readiness. It's made gains in its maintenance procedures since then, which the service says sequestration will quickly undo.
August 05, 2013 -
The Pentagon says no decisions have been made, but eliminating 2013 furloughs is at the top of the funding priority list if it can find any excess funds.
August 02, 2013 -
The Defense Department, General Services Administration and NASA issued a final rule today amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation. FAR must now include performance rating categories and different factors for past performance evaluations.
August 01, 2013