Monday federal headlines – December 8, 2014

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.

• The General Services Administration’s Office Supplies 3 contract is open again. GSA wins the last of six bid protests against the O-S-3 contract. The Government Accountability Office said Coast-to-Coast Computer Product’s protest does not have merit. All six vendors who submitted a bid protest were unsuccessful. Twenty-one companies earned an award from GSA back in August. (Federal News Radio)
• Open Season ends today. Federal employees have until midnight to make changes to their Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan for 2015. Find all of our coverage on Open Season and more on these stories here. (Federal News Radio.)
• More than 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan early next year. The Defense Department had planned to cut the number of troops to 9,800 by the end of 2014. But the troops will stay to fill a temporary gap in a mission to train and advise Afghan security forces. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the Pentagon will restart its drawdown from Afghanistan mid-next year. It’s scheduled to reach 5,500 troops by the end of 2015. (Federal News Radio)
• Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the Pentagon is not reviewing the use of special-operations forces to rescue hostages. That’s after Saturday’s failure to rescue two hostages held by militants in Yemen. It was the third failed rescue mission by U.S. special forces. The Wall Street Journal reports, Hagel told reporters the mission was launched after thorough planning and review of intelligence. Somehow the element of surprise was lost and militants shot a captive photographer before rescue forces could get to him. (The Wall Street Journal)
• A Navy civilian engineer is indicted on charges that he tried to steal aircraft carrier schematics and have them sent to Egypt. Federal prosecutors said Mostafa Ahmed Awwad tried to steal technical design data for the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is under construction. Prosecutors said Awwad gave the data to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Egyptian intelligence officer. They met multiple times since September and traded sensitive material for cash. Awwad was arrested Friday and could face a maximum of 20 years in prison. He is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia. (Federal News Radio)
• The number of federal employees filing for retirement dips in November. The Office of Personnel Management said it received about 5,700 claims last month. That’s 2,000 fewer than it projected for the month. OPM also processed 2,000 fewer claims than it had planned. The November numbers are a sharp contrast to October’s. More than 10,000 feds filed for retirement in October, surpassing OPM’s projection of 7,800. The agency expects to receive about 5,600 retirement claims in December. (Federal News Radio )
• The Interior Department’s inspector general says federal officials violated ethics rules in a contract for Native American schools. The investigation concerns an $800,000 contract awarded to assess school management and student achievement. The contract was awarded to a company that had employed Brian Drapeux, who was serving as an official at the Bureau of Indian Education. A department contract specialist raised concerns about conflict of interest and then canceled the contract. But the Interior IG found the company was able to stay on the project as a subcontractor. The IG report followed one by the Government Accountability Office that found the schools had millions of unaccounted dollars. (Federal News Radio)
• President Barack Obama signs an executive order to close agencies on Friday, December 26th. Obama said agency managers can choose to keep certain offices or installations open that day for reasons of national security, defense or public need. The president also granted an extra day off in 2012, when Christmas fell on a Tuesday. (Federal News Radio)
• NASA is looking ahead to future assignments for its newest space vehicle. Orion completed its first test flight Fridday, a significant milestone for the space agency, which is still feeling the loss of its shuttles. Orion reached a peak altitude of about 3,600 miles, 14 times higher than the International Space Station. The next Orion flight is four years off. It’s also unmanned, like Friday’s test flight, but NASA hopes Orion will carry astronauts by 2021. (Federal News Radio)
• The Defense Department has a thorough cloud computing policy it isn’t following. That’s according to the DoD Inspector General. The IG said acquisition and contract specialists didn’t receive adequate training in how to buy cloud services. In three cases, DoD components that went to commercial cloud providers failed to obtain required waivers. Blame goes to the department’s chief information officer. The IG said the CIO didn’t create an implementation plan with detailed roles and responsibilities. The IG said these lapses compromised security of Defense Department data. The IG has asked the CIO’s office for more information by Jan. 5. Acting CIO Terry Halvorsen has been in place since the permanent CIO, Teri Takai, left in May. (DoD IG)
• A serious cyber security hole has been discovered in an IBM mobile device management product used by several federal agencies. Federal Times reports, the flaw was discovered by a German company, RedTeam Pentesting. It found a hacker could inject cookies that execute code when pushed to mobile devices by the product. The code could have full administrator rights and could therefore compromise data on the device. RedTeam Pentesting ranked the vulnerability as a nine on a scale of one to ten. In a bulletin, IBM advises users of its Tivoli M-D- M to upgrade to a newer version of the software. (Federal Times)
• A Treasury inspector general is withholding documents a court said it should disclose. The legal group Cause of Action in September won a ruling in the District Court of the District of Columbia. It was seeking documents showing whether the White House had seen confidential tax returns from conservative groups. GovExec reports now the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said it will withhold most of the documents. More than 2,000 pages are involved. TIGTA said it’s being responsive to Cause of Action’s Freedom of Information Act request in pulling the documents together. But it cites the IRS code protecting taxpayer privacy, in not releasing them. (GovExec )

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