Friday federal headlines – September 5, 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.

  • A new Office of Personnel Management decision makes the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program that much more flexible. OPM announced that federal workers who participate in the flexible spending program will now be able to roll over up to $500 from one year to the next in unspent funds from their limited expense and health care flexible spending accounts. The decision replaces the current system that’s given employees a grace period of up to 2-1/2 months to use any remaining money. (Federal News Radio)
  • Federal managers can no longer hide from the annual Employee Viewpoint Survey. The Office of Personnel Management has sifted the data so finely, it can give individual performance reports to 20,000 managers. OPM posted the reports on an internal website not open to the public. Director Katherine Archuleta says the dashboard will help managers create and maintain a culture of employee engagement and inclusion. (Federal News Radio)
  • Silicon Valley comes to Washington yet again. President Barack Obama looked to Google in picking the country’s next chief technology officer and to Twitter for her deputy. Megan Smith was rumored to become Todd Park’s successor, but the President announced her as his pick for chief technology officer yesterday. The deputy U.S. CTO will be Alexander Macgillivray, a former Twitter lawyer known as a staunch defender of the free flow of information on the Web. Smith’s charge is to guide the administration’s information-technology policy and initiatives. Smith is an MIT trained mechanical engineer who has been a vice president at Google. Macgillivray has been Twitter’s general counsel since 2009. His focus will be on policy matters, from intellectual property to the intersection of big data and privacy. (Federal News Radio)
  • Hackers successfully breached HealthCare.gov. But officials say no consumer information was taken. The health insurance website serves more than 5 million Americans. A Health and Human Service spokesman said the breach occurred on a single server used for testing software. Officials believe the hackers weren’t after personal information, but instead wanted to use the server to launch denial of service attacks. They said the attack occurred July 8 and was detected last Monday during a scan of system logs. The HHS inspector general is coordinating an interagency investigation. (Associated Press)
  • A government website launch is plagued with problems. Sound familiar? This time it’s not HealthCare.gov that’s the victim. A new Defense Department website designed to help service members and their families find available rental housing has been delayed indefinitely. The site was actually supposed to go live last week for property managers, and this coming Monday for troops and their families to begin using. Not so fast, Defense officials said. The site, Homes.mil, has to undergo a security review by Navy officials. And there is no time frame for that review yet. (Army Times)
  • The U.S. Agency for International Development says it will spend nearly $100 million in aid for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Director Rajiv Shah reveals that number in a Wall Street Journal interview. Much of the money will be used to build treatment centers with 1,000 beds in Africa. USAID will also recruit hundreds of doctors and nurses from the U.S. to staff the centers and deliver medical equipment. The agency has already committed more than $21 million worth of protective clothing, chlorine bleach, body bags and food. Shah says, more than 100 federal government personnel are deployed to West Africa. (Wall Street Journal)
  • Smores aren’t just for campfire roasting anymore. They’re the object of a fight that’s heating up between one House member and a federal agency. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is picking a fight with the U.S. Forest Service over a recent blog post the agency penned discussing the finer points of safely toasting marshmallows over a fire. GovExec reports that Eric Cantor’s successor as House majority leader got so mad about marshmallows being the blog’s focus that he wrote a memo to House Republicans scolding the Forest Service. McCarthy wrote that “this perfectly captures what’s wrong with government.” No response yet from the agency. (GovExec)
  • It’s not the Defense Department or Veterans Affairs. This agency is much smaller and less talked about, but a group of lawmakers is pushing for reauthorization in a hurry. The Export-Import Bank offers loans to foreign companies buying American products. And the agency’s charter is set to expire at the end of the month, GovExec reports. Most of the 423 employees are General Schedule employees who could be out a job if Congress doesn’t pass a reauthorization bill. (GovExec)
  • Avoidable miscommunication led to the deaths of five U.S. soliders and one Afghan in friendly fire. That’s the conclusion of a Central Command Investigation. In the June 9 incident, laser-guided bombs from a B-1 aircraft accidentally hit a U.S. position. The probe found, the pilots failed to double check conflicting pieces of information about who they were aiming at. Ground forces commanders were faulted for giving wrong location information. They failed to realize the B-1 targeting gear could not read markings indicating they were friendly forces. As a result, the bomber crew thought it was aiming at insurgents. (Associated Press)
  • The first active-duty soldier of Korean descent to rise to the level of brigadier general is being benched. The Army said yesterday that it temporarily suspended John M. Cho, the head of its Western Regional Medical Command in Washington state. That command is in charge of Army hospitals in 20 western states. The Army isn’t explaining exactly why he’s being suspended. But the inspector general is conducting an investigation centered on “the command climate of the organization.” In the meantime, Cho will be assigned to the office of the Army surgeon general at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. (Associated Press)

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.