Wednesday federal headlines – Oct. 1, 2014

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com reade...

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive and In Depth radio shows each day. Our headlines are updated twice per day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — with the latest news affecting federal employees and contractors.

  • Homeland Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson appointed Joseph Clancy to be the interim acting director of the Secret Service. Clancy left his position as Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Division back in 2011. Johnson appointed Deputy DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to lead a review of the Sept. 19, White House security breach. Johnson said the full report is due to him Nov. 1. He’s also appointing a panel of independent experts to recommendations on White House security. (Federal News Radio)
  • The Veterans Affairs Department expects to field a new patient scheduling software by 2017. Next Gov reports, the VA plans to issue a request for proposal for the software sometime in October. The contract award was pushed back to January 20-15. VA Secretary Robert McDonald said it wanted to push back the RFP to look at feedback from industry. (Nextgov)
  • One congressman is calling on the new VA secretary to use his power to quickly get rid of senior executives for poor performance or misconduct. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) is chairman of the Veterans Affairs subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He wants action against Susan Taylor, the deputy chief procurement officer in the Veterans Health Administration. A new inspector general audit stated she misused her office and created conflicts of interest in dealings with the reverse auction firm FedBid. Coffman also wants Secretary Bob McDonald to examine whether FedBid is a responsible contractor. He called Taylor “the personification of the morally bankrupt and ethically impaired culture that exists within the department.” (Federal News Radio)
  • The Pentagon is conducting its bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in the dark. Current and former officials say a dearth of intelligence has led to bombing empty buildings and a general lack of precision. Tom Lynch, a retired colonel now with National Defense University, said the military lacks a network of ground-based spies and surveillance technology near the Islamic State group in contrast to the intelligence assets it had in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lynch said the military has a hard time knowing who it has killed and the extent of collateral damage. The U.S. military said its airstrikes have been discriminating and effective in disrupting an al-Qaida cell called the Khorasan Group and in halting the momentum of Islamic State militants. (Associated Press)
  • Tuesday turned out to be a rough day for the Secret Service. Director Julia Pierson was questioned sharply by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in open session, which was followed by a secret session. She acknowledged procedures weren’t followed when a knife-carrying Army veteran scaled the perimeter fence of the White House and scampered into the mansion. The Washington Examiner reports the Secret Service also let an armed contractor employee with a rap sheet in Atlanta ride on an elevator with President Obama at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa called for a top-to-bottom review of the Secret Service. (General Services Administration)
  • 2013 saw a rise in the number of workplace deaths among federal employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found fatal occupational injuries among government workers rose by 5 percent. There were 453 such deaths in 2012, and 476 in 2013. Workplace deaths in local government are up by 10 percent, and in the federal government, deaths are 19 percent higher than the previous year. On the brighter side, fatal injuries among state government workers were lower by 22 percent, and federal work was less deadly than work in the private sector. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
  • How do you measure the success of a federal manager? It’s tough — and the Government Accountability Office finds that most agencies aren’t doing a great job at it. A new report found that 24 agencies haven’t made progress on implementing performance measures for managers from 2007 to 2013. GAO maintains that using a system to assess the decision-making of federal managers makes agencies better equipped to handle future challenges. Only two agencies, the Office of Personnel Management and the Labor Department, showed slight improvement. Four agencies were cited by GAO for significant decline: NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Department and the Veterans Affairs Department. (Government Accountability Office)
  • While the United States has been dispatching people to West Africa to help in the fight against Ebola, the deadly virus has landed in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a team to Dallas to help investigate. A Liberian who traveled to the U.S. is infected, and is in an isolation unit at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. The person had no symptoms when he arrived. CDC investigators want to find out who he had contact with after developing symptoms, which is when Ebola becomes contagious. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
  • Mexico helps pay the application fees for some of its citizens to apply for DACA — President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. NPR reports that Mexican consulates in the U.S. have set aside funding for those who would have trouble paying the $465 fee to Homeland Security to apply to stay in the country. An official who oversees programs for Mexico’s 50 consulates in the U.S. said funding is limited and granted on a case-by-case basis. Citizenship and Immigration Services said foreign governments are not restricting from filing the fees. (NPR)
  • Hoping to avoid waiting in line to vote this November? Move to Alaska. The Government Accountability Office released a report on wait times for voters. It found that in 2012, Alaskans waited an average of 1.4 minutes to vote. Who has it the worst? Floridians, who waited from 25 to 43 minutes. Maryland and Virginia also top the list of longest waits, with about 12 percent of those voters waiting an hour or more. The good news? GAO estimates that 78 percent of local jurisdictions don’t have waits it considers too long. (Government Accountability Office)

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