Wednesday federal headlines – April 8, 2015

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 power outage sent home federal employees in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. Power company Pepco said an explosion at a Maryland power plant caused a transmission line problem yesterday afternoon. The outage affected federal offices including the IRS, General Services Administration and Homeland Security’s St. Elizabeths campus. The White House and Capitol building went dark until a generator kicked in. Many Smithsonian museums lost power and had to temporarily evacuate and close to the public. Homeland Security officials said they don’t believe the power outages are an act of terrorism. (Federal News Radio)
• NASA picked three companies to develop materials for deep-space journeys. The companies will create ultra-lightweight materials that could reduce the mass of a spacecraft by 40 percent. The awards go to HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California; ATK Space Systems in Magna, Utah and Dynetics of Huntsville, Alabama. Phase one of the awards are worth half a million dollars, and give funding for 13 months. Steve Jurczyk is the associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. He said lightweight structures and materials are a top priority for the space agency. They allow NASA to launch stronger but lighter spacecraft to asteroids and eventually Mars. (NASA)
• Voice of America Director David Ensor said he’s leaving the agency in May. Broadcasting Board of Governors CEO Andy Lack left a month ago, after just six weeks on the job. Ensor has been with the VOA four years. BBG didn’t give a reason for the departure. But Ensor said he was planning to leave once Lack was in place. GovExec reports VOA’s audience grew by 49 million people per week under Ensor’s tenure. He’s credited with moving VOA to a “digital first” organization. (GovExec)
• If that dot-gov site isn’t mobile-friendly yet, it probably should be. A study from the Pew Research Center found 40 percent of smartphone users go to government websites on their mobile devices. Young adults, minorities and those with lower income levels are most likely to depend on smartphones for information, including government services. Pew found 10 percent of Americans have a smartphone but no other Internet connection at home. The study also found nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners use their phone to follow news. (Digital Gov )
• A federal judge in Texas is keeping in place a temporary hold on President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration. If allowed to go forward, the plan would shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. The ruling came late last night from District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville. He said the government hasn’t shown a credible reason why the White House plan must be carried out immediately. The Justice Department has appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. That court will decide whether Hanen’s injunction should be lifted, but not until April 17. The executive action affects the operations of several federal agencies, including the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Federal News Radio)
• A reported break-in of unclassified White House computers has officials on the defensive. Presidential adviser Ben Rhodes said the White House’s classified computers are secure. He wouldn’t confirm a CNN report saying the White House lost sensitive data from its unclassified systems. Information included the President’s schedule, which isn’t secret but is said to be prized by foreign intelligence agencies. CNN reports Russian hackers launched the White House attack from computers they’d infected at the State Department. State spent months trying to rid its systems of the malware. (CNN)
• The Obama administration notified Congress it’s approved a big military equipment sale to Pakistan. The State Department said the deal would help a vital U.S. partner in counterterrorism, and therefore enhance U.S. national security. The deal is worth nearly $1 billion. Pakistan will buy 15 Bell Viper attack helicopters plus General Electric engines and other spare parts. It will also acquire computers, communications equipment and 1,000 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles made by Lockheed. Deliveries will take place over five years. The deal also includes training, technical support and maintenance by U.S. personnel. (Federal News Radio )
• The Defense Department inspector general has dredged up an old matter. It found technology leadership still hasn’t completed a project with an original deadline of 2008. Namely, updating DoD networks to IP version 6. The investigation found technology officials are still working on a 10-year-old conversion plan that doesn’t take into account the 2009 establishment of U.S. Cyber Command. DoD missed a 2012 deadline to upgrade public-facing servers. And it missed a 2014 deadline to upgrade internal application servers. The IG found the new Internet protocol simply wasn’t a high priority for the service chief information officers. They disagree with many of the auditors’ findings. The 4.3 billion addresses available under the older IP version 4 ran out in 2011. Experts consider IP version six more secure than the old protocol. It offers virtually unlimited numbers of addresses. (DoD OIG)
• A RAND Corporation study found more sleep for military members could help reduce the risk of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers said many service members have persistent sleep problems after deployment. Those problems are a common reaction to stress, and they often precede the onset of mental disorders. A survey of 2,000 troops shows sleep problems have negative effects on mental health, daytime functioning and operational readiness. But military culture sometimes discounts the importance of sleep. Service members in the survey say the need for sleep is a sign of weakness. ( RAND)
• Lots of things are banned in prison, but tweeting isn’t one of them. Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning is now on Twitter. She’s in prison for giving military secrets to Wikileaks. Manning uses the Twitter handle @xychelsea. Her first tweet got nearly 2,000 retweets and more than 1,000 favorites. She has more than 45,000 followers. (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/03/chelsea-manning- starts- tweeting-from-military-prison/?mod=WSJBlog” target=”_blank”>Wall Street Journal)

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