Tuesday federal headlines – April 28, 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.

• Draft guidance for the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act from the Office of Management and Budget will come out this week. OMB will tentatively post guidance on CIO.gov. It includes input from chief human capital, financial, acquistion and operating officers. The guidance will likely include how FITARA will impact non-IT communities. (Federal News Radio)
• The Capitol Dome is still under construction and now the Architect of the Capitol has a new project on his plate. It will soon begin restoring the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial near the Capitol reflecting pool. Workers will clean, wax and repair bronze on the statue. They’ll also put new bronze casting on some missing and broken items. Fencing and scaffolding will go up around the statue during the repairs. (Architect of the Capitol)
• The Social Security Administration wants to make customer service, employees and innovation some of its top priorities. The agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, released Vision 2025. The document will serve as a guide for SSA to accomplish its priorities over the next decade. Colvin says Vision 2025 will ensure the agency keeps up with changing trends in technology and society. SSA used input from stakeholders, employees and labor unions to create the guide. It also surveyed the public and used that feedback. (Social Security)
• An inspector general finds Army families’ sensitive information may be at risk. General Services Administration contractors could access personal information of families applying for the Army Fee Assistance program. The program gives childcare subsidies to eligible Army families. The GSA IG found contractors had access to phone numbers…addresses, medical history and social security numbers. But GSA’s contractors hadn’t completed background checks and not all of them signed non-disclosure agreements. The IG recommends GSA enforce training requirements and non-disclosure agreements for contractors handling sensitive information. (GSA IG)
• When it comes to finances, service members’ biggest complaint is debt collection. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says 4 in every 10 complaints it gets from service members and their families are related to debt collection. Families were continuously asked to pay back debt that they didn’t actually owe. In some cases, the debt was already paid off. In others, the debt was a result of identity theft or it was never there to begin with. The bureau also gets complaints about mortgages, credit reporting and student loans. Three-quarters of service members filing credit report complaints say the information is incorrect. (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)
• The nation has a new attorney general. Loretta Lynch was sworn in yesterday, becoming the first African-American woman to serve in the role. She pledged to “restore trust and faith in the laws and those who enforce them,” in apparent reference to relations between police and local communities. Lynch had to wait months for a Senate confirmation. Her first tasks will not be easier. After being sworn in, she met with President Barack Obama at the White House. She pledged to monitor the riots in Baltimore that broke out following the funeral of Freddie Gray, the young black man who died while in police custody. She plans to send multiple Justice Department officials, including the head of the civil rights division, to the city. (White House)
• The Pentagon would send weapons to Ukraine and be forced to maintain an aging aircraft under a budget draft released by the head of the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) released his so-called “chairman’s mark” of the National Defense Authorization Act. The bottom line is $604 billion, which comes very close to what the Obama administration wants to see. But the devil is in the details. The House bill would keep the A-10 “Warthog” jets alive, despite the Pentagon’s attempts to retire them. It would also stop the administration from transferring detainees out of Guantanamo, making it harder for President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to close the military prison. (Federal News Radio)

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