Department of Homeland Security
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Nick Nayak is leaving as the DHS procurement chief in early July after more than three years on the job.
June 17, 2014 -
The Homeland Security Department's approach to purchasing has never been great. Acquisition management programs have been on the Government Accountability Office's high risk list for years. But a bill that passed the House this week takes aim at the management of these faulty acquisition programs. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) says the bill forces DHS to improve its management. Cameron Leuthy, senior budget analyst for Bloomberg Government, joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to discuss the bill's intended effects.
June 12, 2014 -
After six years, the Department of Homeland Security decided in April to abandon its strategy to upgrade biological weapon detection equipment in large U.S. cities. But there is no backup plan so far, and the current system won't last much longer. To date, DHS says it has actually expended only $61 million on Biowatch 3, and officials told the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday that they are moving quickly to come up with a new acquisition plan.
June 11, 2014 -
The Homeland Security Department needs more budget clarity to fix a broken acquisition portfolio. Elaine Duke is former undersecretary of management at the Homeland Security Department. She's now principal of Elaine Duke and Associates. She's looking at how DHS can try to stabilize its funding levels. The Government Accountability Office says more than half the major acquisition projects at DHS are experiencing schedule delays and cost overruns because of sequestration, the shutdown and continuing resolutions during the past two years.
June 03, 2014 -
The Government Accountability Office takes a look at the effects of the 2013 sequester and how agencies prepared.
May 30, 2014 -
Under the continuous diagnostics and mitigation program, DHS wants to ensure systems administrators have data on the most pressing threats and vulnerabilities first so they can fix them as soon as possible. John Streufert, DHS's director of federal network resilience, said the recently-awarded dashboard will be set up to do just that.
May 29, 2014 -
The Federal Protective Service will no longer coordinate security at DHS headquarters on Nebraska Avenue in Northwest D.C. according to a May 1 memo from the agency's chief security officer to the undersecretary for management. The memo was brought to light Wednesday by members of a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee at a hearing on the security of federal buildings. Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management, cited the DHS memo as a possible sign that "confidence in FPS may be eroding" from within DHS.
May 21, 2014 -
Larry Zelvin, the director of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in DHS's National Protection and Programs Directorate, is expected to tell the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday that the implementation of the advanced intrusion detection and prevention program known as Einstein is hampered by the lack of clarity of the exact role DHS is allowed to play under the current set of cybersecurity laws.
May 21, 2014 -
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Thursday the committee plans to mark up a bill on May 21 to give DHS more tools to hire cyber workers more easily.
May 16, 2014 -
No new recommendations when you're on the high risk list might seem like good news. But the Government Accountability Office says that's partly because it's already made more than 2,100 recommendations since the Homeland Security Department was stood up in 2003. The GAO's latest look at DHS high risk list items shows more than a third of them still need work. David Maurer, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office, is writing about some of the ongoing leadership problems that are keeping the department on the high risk list. He joined In Depth with Francis Rose to talk about it.
May 13, 2014 -
What is the DHS's acquisition strategy? What are the key procurement and acquisition challenges facing DHS? How is DHS improving the operational performance of its acquisition function? Join host Michael Keegan as he explores these questions and more with Nick Nayak, Chief Procurement Office, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
May 09, 2014 -
DHS says it found out about the Heartbleed vulnerability at the same time everyone else did. But unlike most other organizations, it had to wade through layers of legal negotiations before it could help federal agencies fix the cyber vulnerability in their own systems.
May 09, 2014 -
Federal employees are growing increasingly frustrated with budget cuts, stagnant pay levels and a negative perception of the federal bureaucracy, government surveys reveal. At a townhall event hosted by the Partnership for Public Service, the heads of the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security and Labor say they're getting the message.
May 08, 2014 -
Kevin Kern comes to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement after spending most of his career in industry.
May 06, 2014 -
The Homeland Security Department re-issues asylum rules to immigration officials. This follows concerns that asylum officers have been misinterpreting decisions about which immigrants get to see a judge for asylum claims. Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, explained to Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Emily Kopp how the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has had an uptick in credible fear claims.
May 05, 2014