The Marine Corps is testing new capabilities it hopes will cut mobile computing costs in half. The service is working with Verizon, Sprint and AT&T on a small beta program to test the feasibility of wireless carriers managing the security of mobile devices, based on Marine Corps policies and standards. The devices will be managed using a dual persona solution, which will allow the carriers to manage government data and applications but not personal use of the phone by military and civilian users. “If the beta goes well and we prove the technical requirements that need to be employed, then…
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More than a year after the administration released its digital strategy to speed adoption of secure mobile devices, agencies are still grappling with standards for vetting the security of internal and commercial mobile apps. Today, there isn’t a federal standard for securing mobile apps, but government officials are hopeful a process will be created similar to what’s in place for vetting cloud products and services used in the government. “In order for an app that’s developed by DHS to be put in a DoD app store there’s going to have to be some level of assurance,” said Robert Palmer, director…
With the Defense Department expected to announce a final furlough policy as early as this week, a union has asked the Merit Systems Protection Board for a heads-up on how it would rule on behalf of DoD employees who appeal decisions to make them take unpaid time off. Issuing “a pre-emptive statement of opinion” on whether those employees could win appeals would save the board “from deciding thousands of cases that would likely come,” Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said in last week’s letter to MSPB chairman Susan Grundmann. A board spokesman declined…
The Navy today told its employees that furlough letters — which were scheduled to go out Monday — will be delayed until further notice. A Navy official told Federal Times that because the service hadn’t gotten the final furlough policy from the Pentagon, it was putting its notification effort on hold. Unless Navy hears otherwise, it is still expecting to furlough employees for up to 14 days by the end of fiscal 2013. “We understand [the furlough process] causes angst and concern, and to mitigate that, we’ve tried to be as informative as we can,” a Navy official said. “Until…
Raytheon CEO William H. Swanson received a slight salary bump in 2012 but his overall compensation grew by $1.4 million, the defense contractor disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday. Swanson received a base salary of $1.4 million for 2012, a small increase from 2011. But his overall compensation with incentive pay and stock holdings came to $16.4 million. That’s up from $15 million overall in 2011 and $14.8 million in 2010. In explaining the compensation, the company noted in the SEC filing that Raytheon had “strong operational results” in 2012, including an increased backlog from $35.3 billion…
The Defense Information Systems Agency is one step closer to standing up cloud broker services for the Defense Department. As DoD’s cloud broker, DISA will manage the use, performance and delivery of cloud services and negotiate contracts between cloud service providers and DoD consumers. DISA announced Tuesday that it has developed a process for gathering and assessing DoD’s cloud computing requirements, evaluating vendors’ cloud offerings against contract requirements and has created a catalog for cloud services. In a June 2012 memo, DoD Chief Information Officer Teri Takai said all DoD components must acquire government or industry-provided cloud services using DISA, or obtain a…
The head of the Defense Department’s closely watched audit-readiness effort has left for the private sector. Joe Quinn is now a senior manager at Ernst and Young’s federal practice, where he will advise clients on strategies “to improve financial, accounting and cost management capabilities,” the firm said in a news release last week. As director of the Pentagon’s financial improvement and audit readiness (FIAR) program for the last three years, Quinn was point man for the mammoth undertaking of getting DoD’s books in order. Under a timetable that Congress has now written into law, the department is supposed to have an auditable statement…
Thousands of rogue Apple, Android and Windows devices found operating on the Army’s network could pose major security risks to sensitive data and Army network operations, according to a recent report. Army commands failed to report more than 14,000 commercial smartphones and tablet computers being used across the service for research activities, data collection, mobile device pilot programs and other tasks, according to the March 26 inspector general report. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., were among the locations using unapproved devices. Army officials at…
Some big breaking news, courtesy of the Associated Press: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has decided to cut the number of furlough days for hundreds of thousands of Defense Department civilian employees from 22 to 14 by the end of the fiscal year in September. According to unnamed officials cited by the AP, Hagel made the decision today. But a DoD spokesman had no immediate confirmation this evening, telling FedLine that the number of furlough days remains at 22 as officials analyze the effect of newly passed spending legislation. “The legislation could have some impact on the overall number of furlough days,…
About halfway through this American Forces Press Service story today, Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall tosses out an observation likely to catch the attention of Defense Department civilian employees. Although furloughs will still take place even if a fiscal 2013 spending bill now in Congress wins approval, fewer furlough days could be needed, the story paraphrases Kendall as saying at a conference. Currently, DoD plans to furlough most of its approximately 800,000 workers for 22 days between April 25 and the rest of the fiscal year as the result of the sequester-related spending cuts that began this month. But as…