While the Transportation Security Administration has made headway in defending against insider attacks, the agency lacks specific policies and procedures to mitigate those threats, according to a recent inspector general audit. The September audit, released this week, found that TSA has not implemented insider threat policies and procedures that clearly explain its employees’ role in defending against insider threats. TSA also lacks a risk mitigation plan that ensures all employees address the risks of insider threats in a consistent way. TSA defines insider threat as “one or more individuals with access or insider knowledge that allows them to exploit the…
Monthly Archives: October, 2012
For anyone who’s keeping count, a grand total of 4,189 postmasters took advantage of a $20,000 buyout/early-out deal, according to a final tally from the U.S. Postal Service. The vast majority of those left in July; several hundred more departed in August and September. USPS executives announced the package in May at the same time that they unveiled plans to reduce customer service hours at some 13,000 post offices. The final number is a bit more than the Postal Service had predicted back in August; it represents about one-fifth of all postmaster positions on the rolls earlier this year.
The Merit Systems Protection Board released a report the other day that said one in eight federal employees witnessed workplace violence over a two-year period. And that 54 percent of those incidents were committed by current or former federal employees — compared with 34 percent committed by agency customers and 12 percent committed by employee relatives or others. But what the report didn’t do is attempt to quantify the number or types of incidents, which makes it hard to gauge what might be occurring at offices across the country. That’s where we need your help. Please share in the comments…
For clerks, drivers and anyone else out there represented by the American Postal Workers Union, if you’re considering (or have already made a decision on) taking the $15,000 buyout offer announced this week, we at Fed Times are interested in speaking with you for a story about the reaction this offer is getting from the USPS career workforce. Just send me an email at sreilly@federaltimes.com and let me know how to reach you and what’s the best time. Thanks!, Sean Reilly Federal Times Ph: 703-750-8684
The Government Accountability Office on Monday denied a protest against Lockheed Martin’s $4.6 billion contract award to support the Pentagon’s global data network. In its June protest to GAO, Science Applications International Corp. claimed that the Defense Information Systems Agency unreasonably evaluated Lockheed’s technical risk and costs, according to GAO. SAIC also said that DISA failed to meaningfully investigate whether Lockheed had unequal access to information pertaining to the contract, which would have been an organizational conflict of interest (OCI). GAO determined that DISA’s evaluation of Lockheed’s proposal was “reasonable and consistent with [the] solicitation’s evaluation criteria,” Ralph White, GAO’s managing…
Several agencies have partnered to launch an online system for streamlining Freedom of Information Act requests. The website, Foiaonline.regulations.gov, allows the public to submit FOIA requests, file appeals, search through requests from others and access previously released documents, the National Archives and Records Administration announced Monday. NARA is partnering with the Commerce Department and Environmental Protection Agency to develop the website, which was built on the same infrastructure as EPA’s Regulations.gov website. “FOIAonline avoided many start-up costs, resulting in a total of $1.3 million to launch and an estimated cost avoidance of $200 million over the next five years if…