On Monday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Martha Johnson to lead the General Services Administration. In anticipation of the big event — and in celebration of Friday – we bring you some fun facts about Pres. Barack Obama’s pick to lead GSA, as harvested from this lengthy questionnaire released prior to Johnson’s June 3 confirmation hearing. She was born in New Haven, Conn. In the summers of 1967 and 1968 she was a waitress at Sims Café in Dickinson, N.D. She taught English in Taiwan from 1974-1976 In 1992, she was…
Browsing: Agencies
The House adopted an amendment to the Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act to allow TSA employees to voluntarily wear protective equipment during a public health emergency. The House passed the amendment by voice vote Thursday during floor debate on the bill, HR 2200. The House later passed the bill 397-25. The amendment, offered by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., would allow workers to wear surgical and N95 masks and gloves and use hand sanitizer during an emergency. The amendment was spurred by departmental reactions to the recent H1N1 flu outbreak. Unions pushed the Homeland Security Department to allow TSA and Customs…
Happy first day of hurricane season everyone! Your fellow feds at the National Weather Service are predicting a “near-normal Atlantic hurricane season” this year, with “nine to 14 named storms, of which four to seven could become hurricanes, including one to three major hurricanes.” With this news, both the National Weather Service and FEMA remind us that “be prepared” should be everyone’s motto, not just the Boy Scouts’ motto. FEMA had this to say in a news release today: Everyone, even, those living outside of hurricane-risk areas, should check personal preparations such as emergency kit supplies (enough to last at least…
The intelligence community has talked about using open-source data for years, but a George Mason University doctoral candidate and his cohorts are taking the concept to the next level. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Curtis Melvin and about a dozen other “citizen snoops” — some of whom are former military analysts — have spent the last two years using Google Earth’s satellite images to map out the infrastructure of North Korea. It’s not easy, since North Korea is perhaps the most secretive country on the planet. Melvin and others sift through news reports, photographs and eyewitness accounts,…
Deadline day around here and things are a bit busy, but I wanted to comment on an FDA appropriations hearing I covered this morning. The agency is getting a huge boost in the president’s 2010 budget proposal — $511 million, or 19 percent. Much of that money will pay for more than 1,200 new hires. That means a 30 percent staffing boost over two years, when you include the 1,500 new employees hired this year. The numbers prompted some back-and-forth with legislators, as you might expect. A few Republicans thought they were too large; Democrats hinted they might be too…
I’m at the release event for the Partnership for Public Service’s 2009 “Best Places to Work” report, which measures employee satisfaction at agencies across the government. We’ve got a quick summary of the results, and you can view the whole survey (which contains lots of interesting data) here. One interesting point: OMB director Peter Orszag just gave a quick speech, and he said this about the survey results: We will be looking to include the results in the fiscal year 2011 budget process, because we should not just let this be a report that generates a one-day news story. It…
More than 100,000 Social Security numbers as well as Secret Service and White House operating procedures are on a hard drive missing from the National Archives and Records Administration. NARA’s inspector general briefed members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Tuesday about the national security information breach at the administration’s College Park, Md., facility. The drive contains one terabyte of data from Clinton administration records, according to a news release from the committee’s Republican staff, including: 100,000 Social Security numbers, including one of then-Vice President Al Gore’s daughters, Contact information, including addresses, for Clinton administration officials, Secret Service…
The Senate approved more than a dozen nominees Monday, including the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Margaret Hamburg to be FDA commissioner, Department of Health and Human Services. Roger Baker to be an assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs. Charles Blanchard to be general counsel of the Air Force. William Gunn to be general counsel of the VA. Thomas Lamont to be an assistant secretary of the Army. Raymond Mabus, Jr. to be secretary of the Navy. Daniel Poneman to be deputy Energy secretary. Jose Riojas to be an assistant secretary of the VA. David Sandalow to be an…
Dr. Thomas Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Health Department, will be the new director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, President Barack Obama announced Friday. He will replace acting CDC Director Dr. Rich Besser, who will return to his role leading the CDC’s Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. Please visit Federal Times for updates on this story.
As a condo dweller with precious little outdoor space, I naturally love Home and Garden Television (HGTV). And like many network viewers, I’ve drooled over the spacious HGTV “Green Home” in Port St. Lucie, Fla., which the network is raffling off. But I did not realize the home had a government connection: It’s EPA certified! I also didn’t know EPA certified TV prizes, but according to this EPA press release the home has “earned EPA’s Indoor AirPlus and Energy Star labels.”