For federal agencies, to quote Yogi Berra, it’s looking like déjà vu all over again. Congress isn’t close to finishing up work on the fiscal 2012 budget bills, meaning that a new continuing resolution is coming Oct. 1. And in regard to fiscal 2013, it’s not clear how much planning agencies can do when they have no idea what their FY12 budgets are going to be. What effect is this having at your agency and how do people feel about it? And are agencies doing anything different to prepare for the upcoming continuing resolution than they did last year? We’d…
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As of today, the Information Security Oversight Office has a new director in the person of John P. Fitzpatrick, a former top security official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ISOO, part of the National Archives and Records Administration, is a small but critical cog in oversight of the government’s security classification system. The agency has also been charged with bringing order to the mishmash of agency approaches for handling controlled unclassified information. “A strong advocate for information sharing and protection, he has demonstrated his ability to lead and oversee change both within and beyond the intelligence…
On July 23, a group of students were hiking 93 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska, when they were attacked by a Grizzly bear. One of the students activated an emergency personal locator beacon, which alerted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-11 satellite, which worked with a European satellite to pinpoint their location. The coordinates were relayed to the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center, which alerted Alaska State Troopers and the Alaska Air National Guard, who rescued the group. Four had been injured, with two requiring hospitalization. A brief explanation of how the system works (from NOAA): When a NOAA satellite…
About 300 employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development headquarters in Washington, D.C. have been moved out of the 10th floor because of work being done to reinforce a sagging roof. The agency is retrofitting support joists with extra support brackets. The work will take over a month to complete. HUD Secretary Sean Donovan’s office has been relocated from the 10th floor and other employees have either been relocated or are teleworking, according to a spokesman.
Hackers operating under the name Anonymous said Monday that they infiltrated a server on Booz Allen Hamilton’s network, swiping some 90,000 military email addresses. “We infiltrated a server on their network that basically had no security measures in place,” the group posted on the website PirateBay. “We were able to run our own application, which turned out to be a shell.” Titled “Military Meltdown Monday,” the post said the group gained access to about 90,000 military emails and password hashes and alluded to having other sensitive information. On its Twitter account, Booz Allen Hamilton said as part of the company’s security policy, “we generally do not comment on specific…
The Defense Department has launched its Information Technology Exchange Program to share IT civilian employees with the private sector. The personnel assignments will range from three months to a year and focus on sharing best practices and expertise on cloud and mobile computing, infrastructure management and cybersecurity, according to a July 1 announcement. Private sector participants will work with the chief information officer, Joint Staff, U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency and other departments. Workers must be US citizens, be equivalent to a grade level 11, and lending organizations will pay the salaries of their workers. Secrete clearance is required,…
The Defense Information Systems Agency will not move to U.S. Cyber Command, following concerns of major policy, operational and practical challenges, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an undated memo. After reviewing the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Gates said he recognizes that shifting DISA to U.S. Cyber Command is no longer “a viable approach.” As part of Gates’ push to eliminate billions in spending, he directed Chief Information Officer Teri Takai to shutter the Pentagon’s Networks and Information Integration by Sept. 30. The portion of NII responsible for major automated information system acquisition oversight and command and control…
Jeff Zients, the government’s chief performance officer, and Dan Gordon, the top contracting policy official at the Office of Management and Budget, just announced they are directing agencies to cut their services contracting by 15 percent, from a total of $40 billion now to $34 billion by 2012, according to our reporter Sarah Chacko, who is at OMB now covering the event. Stay tuned for more coverage . . . .
Uh oh. Scarcely does President Obama herald an end to the paper version of the Federal Register, then we get a reminder of why people like to keep hard copies around. Although the table of contents for today’s Register was available online as usual, none of the links to the actual rulemakings and other administrative actions appeared to be working until late this morning (Eastern Standard Time). Instead, you got a “content unavailable” message. In a blog post on the Register’s site, the Government Printing Office said it was looking into the problem and apologized for any inconvenience. In an…
All non-essential personnel have been evacuated from Los Alamos National Laboratory after a wildfire approached the facility Sunday night. The laboratory has remained closed since Monday, according to a spokesman, and will remain closed Thursday. The laboratory has more than 12,000 employees, including contractors and a number of students. At one point Monday there was a small fire inside the 36 square mile laboratory grounds but was extinguished within hours.