We’ve got a story up on the Web site about the cybersecurity power struggle between the Homeland Security Department and the National Security Agency. It mentions Rod Beckstrom, the National Cybersecurity Center director who announced his resignation last week. His resignation letter was pretty critical of NSA’s cybersecurity role: NSA effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions, and the proposed move of… the NCSC to a Fort Meade NSA facility. NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts… I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds… the intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or…
Monthly Archives: March, 2009
We reported back in January that the president planned to nominate Harvard professor Cass Sunstein to head OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. So where’s his nomination? The White House’s nominations list doesn’t mention Sunstein. (In fact, if you search for him on the White House Web site, you won’t get any results.) The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee tells me it hasn’t heard a word about Sunstein’s nomination. And the White House hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
Carl Malamud is running for federal office. For head of the Government Printing Office, to be precise. But there’s no election. No matter, he’s running anyway. A week and a half ago, Malamud launched a virtual-roots campaign and Web site – yeswescan.org – in a bid to be appointed by President Barack Obama as the Public Printer of the United States. GPO may seem like a sleepy government outpost to some, but not to Malamud. For him, it would the opportunity of a lifetime. As founder of the California-based nonprofit group Public.Resource.org, he’s spent his career ushering years worth of…
The House Armed Services Committee is getting in on the acquisition reform action. Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Ranking Member John McHugh, R-N.Y., announced a special panel to suggest acquisition reforms for the Defense Department. The panel will evaluate the performance of the current system, assess its failures and make recommendations to fix it. The findings will guide the fiscal 2011 defense authorization act, a committee statement said. The White House gave special attention to waste, fraud and abuse in Defense Contracting when it announced its contracting reforms on Wednesday. During a Wednesday news briefing, Obama said: In Iraq, too…
Facing a $3 billion deficit, the U.S. Postal Service is cutting work hours, raising postal rates and asking Congress for permission to reduce its six-day delivery schedule and alter how it pays for retirees’ health benefits. So why then is it purchasing million-dollar homes from its employees? According to an eye-opening CNN report, the Postal Service purchased 1,022 homes during the past two years from employees who were ordered to relocate. The average cost of those homes was nearly $258,000, but the agency bought 14 homes at between $1 million and $2.8 million. Just last month, the Postal Service bought…
Should the taxman call to “tell you how it will be,” at least you’ll know it’s a fed. That’s because the Internal Revenue Service terminated its controversial outsourcing of tax collection Thursday. An agency program review found tax debt collection was cheaper and more lucrative when performed by federal employees. IRS commissioner Doug Shulman said: IRS employees have more options available to them to resolve difficult collection cases Contracts with two private debt collection firms expired March 6. The agency will hire 1,000 new tax collectors in fiscal 2009 to target collection on areas of greatest need. IRS will recruit displaced…
The Senate will pass a short-term spending measure, keeping the government funded through midnight March 10, while it struggles to reach a compromise on a $410 billion omnibus spending bill. The stop-gap bill will keep agencies funded through midnight March 10. The omnibus would provide funding for all but three agencies that have been operating under a continuing resolution since Oct. 1. That continuing resolution expires Friday. Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs departments did have their appropriations bills passed in time. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is one vote short of the 60 votes needed to invoke…
Television personality and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta has pulled his name from consideration for surgeon general, according to a statement by CNN. Gupta appears frequently on CNN as a commentator on medical and health issues. CNN U.S. President Jon Klein said Gupta made his decision to spend more time on his medical career and CNN career, according to a statement on CNN’s Web site. Though a distinguished Atlanta neurosurgeon and professor, Gupta is best known to most Americans as a prolific television commentator. However, he served as an adviser to the Clinton White House, helping craft health care speeches and policy…
Just finished a conference call with Vivek Kundra, the president’s pick for chief information officer. A few highlights. First, he promised to embrace cloud computing — which uses networked software distributed across remote servers, not on individual desktops — whenever it’s permissible under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and other security regulations. Cloud computing has been hugely successful in the private sector (Facebook and Gmail, for example, use a “cloud” model) but government has yet to really embrace it. I reject the view that the public sector has to lag behind the private sector. Kundra also promised to…
After weeks of speculation, it’s official. The White House announced today that Vivek Kundra will be the government’s chief information officer. Kundra has served as the chief technology officer for Washington, D.C. since 2007. In his new role, he will direct governmentwide information technology investments, policy and spending oversight. When a governmentwide chief technology officer is named, they will work together to advance the president’s technology agenda. We’ll have more for you following a news conference with Kundra later today.