Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

  • An in-depth analysis report by a Senate committee exposes inadequacies in spending on counternarcotics contracts in Latin America, which may affect future expansion to Afghanistan.

    June 08, 2011
  • OFPP administrator Dan Gordon told a Senate committee that a new rule to add more oversight to multi-agency contracts should be out soon. Agencies wanting to develop new multiple award contracts will have to justify them before going forward. OFPP is also trying to use strategic sourcing to take advantage of the government\'s buying power.

    May 26, 2011
  • The White House\'s draft bill includes many similarities with the one sponsored by the Sens. Lieberman, Collins and Carper. The biggest issues are around the President\'s powers over the Internet during emergencies and whether there should be a Senate-confirmed cyber coordinator at DHS. Senate Majority Leader Reid is making comprehensive cyber legislation a priority this session.

    May 23, 2011
  • Agencies asked 125 annuitants for help last year with Army leading the way, bringing 44 retired federal workers back to help with acquisition processes.

    May 19, 2011
  • By Jason Miller Executive Editor Federal News Radio The Senate yesterday approved the ability of vendors to protest task and delivery orders from civilian agencies worth more than $10 million to the Government Accountability Office…

    May 13, 2011
  • OMB\'s Jeff Zients told Senate lawmakers that his office has held 250 meetings to discuss agency reorganization ideas. Zients also said the lack of funding for e-government programs will slow the advancement of transparency websites.

    May 11, 2011
  • The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee agreed to legislation Wednesday that would take roughly 200 presidential appointees out of the Senate confirmation process. The vast number of Senate-confirmable positions has become unwieldy for the upper chamber, and has deterred too many qualified candidates from accepting executive branch appointments, committee leaders said.

    April 14, 2011
  • The agreement between the White House and Congressional leaders to fund the government through the remainder of 2011 would strip the E-Government fund of more than three quarters of its dollars. The fund, managed by the General Services Administration, pays for several of the Obama Administration\'s government transparency websites.

    April 12, 2011
  • Several sites, including Data.gov, the IT Dashboard and the FEDRamp cloud efforts, could be shut down in the next two months if the administration doesn\'t get more money under the E-government fund. In all, nine sites are on the list to be discontinued by July 30 if OMB doesn\'t find money to keep it going. Experts say OMB has several ways to keep the sites up, including pass-the-hat among agencies.

    March 31, 2011
  • The Senior Executives Association and the Partnership for Public Service testified before a subcommittee with improvement to SES and ways Congress can help.

    March 30, 2011
  • OPM told a Senate subcommittee that recruitment, training and onboarding are among their top priorities to improve the Senior Executive Service. More than half of all SESers are eligible to retire by 2013. OPM\'s Nancy Kichak said SES pay compression is the biggest challenge in need of Congressional help.

    March 30, 2011
  • The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today approved the nomination of Heather Higginbottom to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

    March 16, 2011
  • From “State Department’s training program falls short” by Josh Rogin: The State Department spends over $250 million a year to train its professionals but lacks a good overall strategic plan to ensure that training is…

    March 11, 2011
  • Fears that the leak of thousands of State Department memos to the website WikiLeaks would reverse progress on interagency sharing of national security information have not materialized, officials testified Thursday. Agencies have responded by recognizing the need to protect data rather than by hoarding it, they said.

    March 11, 2011