Jared Serbu covers the Department of Defense for Federal News Radio. Jared's reports can be heard Monday - Friday on the Federal Drive and In Depth.

Buying commercial in DoD: 15 years after acquisition reform

During the last Defense drawdown, Congress and the White House pushed the Pentagon to make smarter buying decisions in the hopes that it would save a lot of money. The idea was to have the military buy many products the same way businesses do. A decade and a half later, DoD now spends tens of billions of dollars a year under the commercialized models Congress set up. In a two-part, exclusive report, Federal News Radio examines the debate underway over how well it has worked out.

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DoD ready to meet pent up demand for cyber threat sharing program

The Defense Department has been testing ways to securely send cyber threat information to members of the defense industrial base for years. Now the information sharing pilot has been made permanent and could expand to as many as 1,000 companies.

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House drops DoD request to change definition of commercial products

The Pentagon says the way it buys certain commercial products has been abused for more than a decade. The Defense Department asked Congress to include new rules for buying commercial-of-a-type products, which are commercial in nature, but the military is the only or largest customer by far. Industry was pleased to see the House Armed Services Committee not include the change in the Defense authorization bill.

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Panetta to Congress: Don't mess with my budget

Hours after a key House committee voted to give the Pentagon more money than it asked for in next year's budget, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said thanks, but no thanks. Panetta warned passing a $3 billion increase would set a showdown with the Senate and force sequestration to happen.

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Congressional committee considers criminal referral for TSA

House staff report suggests TSA delayed, misled congressional investigators about contents of Texas warehouse that holds security screening equipment.

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Navy releases long-awaited final solicitation for NGEN

The Navy is looking for someone to run the world's second-largest computer network. At least two consortiums of vendors are vying for the $4.5 billion deal.

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Lockheed joins Northrop, HP for NGEN bid

Lockheed Martin will join a team of several other large companies in a bid for the Navy's forthcoming multibillion dollar Next Generation Enterprise Network contract.

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Military sexual assault survivors storm Capitol Hill

Ahead of the markup of the annual defense policy bill by key House committee, hundreds of survivors of military sexual assault take to the Capitol to demand change.

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Defense bill lets feds in national security jobs rotate between agencies

As part of the annual Defense authorization bill, House lawmakers will take up a provision designed to let federal employees gain experience and share expertise while working temporarily in other agencies.

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Navy says CANES network is 44 percent cheaper than expected

Competition, reliance on commercial technology drove down prices for IT consolidation on ships, Navy official says. The service still is figuring out how to integrate CANES with its NGEN shore-based system. The RFP for NGEN is expected any day.

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DoD to begin rollout of cloud-based joint network

The Pentagon will begin testing cloud-based joint networking environment in Europe this summer. Effort aims to eliminate seams between service-and-mission-specific networks.

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DoD calls off annual procurement conference

Defense Department officials have called off large annual contracting-focused conference just weeks before it was set to begin. The invitation-only DoD Procurement Conference and Training Symposium was to have taken place in Orlando, Fla., later this month. However, a departmental notice said officials needed more time to better align the training programs with DoD acquisition policy.

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Pentagon's post-9/11 security agency marks 10-year anniversary

The Pentagon Force Protection Agency is now ten years old and four times bigger than the security agency that guarded the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. PFPA is trying to guard that workforce growth amidst budget reductions.

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Agencies explore possibilities of virtual worlds

Paulette Robinson, the iCollege's associate dean for teaching, learning and technology, said the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds has grown from five members from four federal agencies in 2007 to 3,000 members this year.

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House panel declines to approve hike in DoD's health insurance fees

House military personnel subcommittee asserts retirees have already paid for their health care via their military service, omits DoD proposal to hike TRICARE fees.

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VA, National Archives team up to help dig out of claims backlog

The Veterans Affairs department has signed a deal with the National Archives and Records Administration to start digitizing billions of pages of paper documents dealing with Veterans' benefit claims.

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Army IT agency head departs for Energy

Donald Adcock, who served from 2010 until this month as the executive director of the Army Information Technology Agency, has left the Pentagon to become the associate CIO for IT services at the Department of Energy.

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Pentagon nears expansion of cyber information sharing effort

A pilot program DoD established to share cyber threat information between the NSA and Defense companies will be made permanent and expanded to include approximately 200 companies in the coming months.

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Air Force 'appalled' by $1B IT system that produced few capabilities

The Air Force's comptroller poured $1 billion into a new enterprise resource planning system with virtually nothing to show for it after seven years. The service is restricting the ERP with details to come in the next few weeks.

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Budget glass is more than half full for Navy, Marine Corps

Navy and Marine Corps officials are upbeat about how they'll fare under the current round of budget cuts. Navy Department officials said the strategy DoD developed following the passage of the Budget Control Act aligns perfectly with the capabilities of the maritime services.

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