At&T has shown it can meet strict security standards for the cloud computing storage offerings it provides to federal agencies. The certification is called the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and vendors must be FedRAMP certified to complete for certain cloud contracts. The FedRAMP program announced that AT&T had been granted provisional authorization. Before this announcement only a handful of vendors have gone through the FedRAMP certification process: Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Amazon Web Services, CGI and Autonomic Resources.
Monthly Archives: July, 2013
So lets have a little bit of fun today. It seems that every group, school and town is getting a list, so lets add federal employees to those groups! Feel free to add your own at the bottom of the blog. 1. When people shout “high five!” and your first thought is “over my dead body. 2. Jan. 1 doesn’t even hold a candle to Oct. 1. Its the cleanest slate you can imagine. 3. You give your children 180 days to respond to a new rule you are proposing. Corollary: You refer to your family as “stakeholders.” 4. You…
Organized labor is urging a congressional committee to allow House members to vote on two amendments dealing with federal employee furlough policy when they take up a fiscal 2014 defense spending bill. One of the amendments would “register a vote of no confidence” in the Defense Department’s use of furloughs; the other would stop furloughs of DoD employees paid through working capital funds, according to a letter this week from William Samuel, head of the AFL-CIO’s government affairs department. The letter was addressed to leaders of the House Rules Committee, which acts as gatekeeper in deciding which amendments House members…
Agencies would move to a two-year budget cycle, consolidate duplicative programs and slash travel spending under a series of bills introduced Thursday by a bi-partisan group of lawmakers. The nine separate pieces of legislation introduced by the No Labels Caucus include a number of changes to agency budgeting, procurement and spending rules. “Forget, for a moment, whether you think government should be doing more or less, which is really the fundamental debate in this town,” said Rep. Reid Ribble, a member of the caucus. “We should all be able to agree that whatever government is doing now should be done…
The Senate voted today to confirm Thomas Perez to be the next Secretary of Labor in a 54 to 46 vote. Before his confirmation Perez led the Justice Department’s civil-rights division and was previously Maryland’s labor secretary. President Obama said in a statement that Perez had dedicated his career to keeping the American dream alive for families across the country. “At the Department of Labor, Tom will help us continue to grow our economy, help businesses create jobs, make sure workers have the skills those jobs require, and ensure safe workplaces and economic opportunity for all,” Obama said.
A multi-million dollar U.S.-funded construction project to build a teacher training facility in Afghanistan remains years behind schedule and marred by shoddy construction work and dangerous conditions, a government watchdog has found. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction detailed the findings in a report released Wednesday after inspecting a teacher training facility built in the northern Afghan city of Sheberghan. Calling the U.S.-funded project an example of broken promises and unfulfilled results, the IG found contract close out files reflect the fact work was finished, even though a host of electrical problems and other issues remained unresolved. What’s more,…
Today brought some good news for IRS employees: An unpaid furlough day scheduled for this coming Monday has been cancelled. “The IRS will be open for taxpayers that day as scheduled, and all employees will be paid for that day,” acting agency chief Danny Werfel said in a blast email to workers. “This step follows a lot of hard work across the service to cut costs.” The now-cancelled furlough day was supposed to be the fourth taken by IRS employees because of sequester-related budget cuts. A fifth and final furlough day is still scheduled for Aug. 30; management will keep…
Defense Department civilian employees are appealing directly to the Obama administration to end the furloughs that are taking a 20 percent bite out of the paychecks of many. “We have taken sequestration harder than all the departments,” states the petition created today on the White House’s “We the People” site. “Department of Defense civil servants continue to ‘take one for the team’ and we will continue to do our service to our country, but would like our country to listen.” The petition, which must attract 100,000 signatures in the next 30 days to merit an official response, comes a little…
As you might have read on Federal Times or elsewhere on the web, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano announced she was resigning, effective in September. And as the day picks up more prominent people are offering their comments on her tenure: Below are some snippets: President Barack Obama: I want to thank Secretary Napolitano for her outstanding work on behalf of the American people over the last four years. At the Department of Homeland Security, Janet’s portfolio has included some of the toughest challenges facing our country. She’s worked around the clock to respond to natural disasters, from the Joplin tornado…
People who need to make a call to the Social Security Administration’s 800 number system (there are several 800 numbers offered to members of the public for SSA services) might have noticed that its been easier to get through to a live person. The average busy signal rate has fallen from 8.1 percent of calls in fiscal 2009 to 2.6 percent of calls in 2011, according to data recently posted to Data.gov by the agency. In all three years the time of the year when you are most likely to get a busy signal includes the months of December and…