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.

Influence of federal cyber workforce roadmap growing

Agencies and universities are refining job descriptions, revamping training and education programs and helping industry, academia and government to begin to reach consensus on the makeup of a modern-day cybersecurity workforce. The Office of Personnel Management also has made changes to personnel systems so that job descriptions map to the framework. The plan already has had in impact on cyber education at colleges and universities across the country.

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New cybersecurity threat could revive legislation

Congress has a lot of unfinished business to tackle during its lame duck session expected in November. The House Intelligence Committee chairman thinks new threat information could push cyber legislation up the priority list.

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Air Force wrestling with how best to define an IT 'enterprise'

As service transitions to Air Force and DoD enterprise IT models, defining what technology services should be shared is still on the to-do list. The service's AFNet program is the umbrella effort to centrally-manage many commodity IT functions.

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DoD encourages early voting

The Defense Department has marked the week of Oct. 1 as Absentee Voting Week. It's urging service members living overseas to register to vote and to take care of absentee balloting while there's still time for mail to make its way to and from local election jurisdictions.

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VA awards contract for mobile device management, apps store

Procurement will start with management of 5,000 mobile devices, plus app stores for consumers inside and outside of VA. The agency awarded a three-year, $9.3 million deal to Longview International Technology Solutions to build and manage the technology in the cloud.

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Funding boost gives DHS a head start in 2013 to fight cyber threats

The agency plans to release solicitations to help agencies implement sensors to detect threats, followed by industry-provided services to analyze them. Congress approved $183 million to begin in 2013 to help get continuous monitoring off the ground more quickly.

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Pentagon struggles to secure a supply chain it no longer dominates

Congress has told the Pentagon to stem the tide of suspected counterfeit parts that ultimately end up in military technology systems. First though, DoD has to come to grips with the fact that it can't simply mandate change to an industrial base it once controlled.

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DoD applies tighter scrutiny to business IT spending

For the first time, review panels will question not just new IT projects, but also money spent on maintaining older technologies. The changes are part of an overhaul Congress ordered the Pentagon to implement with regard to how it handles investment review boards, the internal overseers that federal agencies use to greenlight spending for business IT systems.

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Peeking inside DoD's next version of Better Buying Power

Should-cost management and affordability-cap elements of acquisition overhaul have worked well, DoD's acquisition chief says. But workforce has overreacted to Pentagon's urging toward more fixed-price contracts.

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Evaluating Better Buying and building DoD's cyber workforce

Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, discusses which elements of the Better Buying Power Initiative have been successful. Plus, Henry Sienkiewicz, vice chief information assurance executive at the Defense Information Systems Agency and Roger Greenwell, DISA's director for field security operations join us to talk about the agency's plan to build on its track record of information assurance training and develop modular, DoD-wide training for specific cyber roles across the military services.

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DoD building cyber workforce of the future

Military's cyber leaders say job satisfaction has so far trumped salary concerns when it comes to building and retaining a workforce of elite cyber warriors. Building the capacity of that training pipeline is the next challenge.

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DoD office helps veterans ease back into civilian life

Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve was set up in 1972 to help employers enable members of the National Guard and Reserve to re-enter the civilian job market.

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From the Pentagon, a plea for budget normalcy

DoD's top financial manager says the Pentagon is pressing forward to meet Congressional edicts for auditable financial statements. But constant federal budget emergencies are sapping huge amounts of energy from the financial workforce tasked with preparing for audit.

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First elements of DoD's Joint Information Environment come together in Europe

At meetings this week, DoD gives European Command the go-ahead to start building the first increment of a standards-based IT environment that will collapse thousands of networks into a single, interoperable environment.

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DoD works to institutionalize contracting lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan

Pentagon says planning for future contingencies will include contract management from the get-go rather than letting be an afterthought.

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VA's Blue Button now at 1 million users, aims at 100 million soon

Veterans Affairs PHR effort has already gone far beyond VA. After reaching 1 million users, originators of the project have set their sights on 100 million.

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FOIA backlog grows even as agencies process more requests

Agencies dedicated more money and personnel to FOIA processing in 2011, but requests grew even faster.

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New Army Reserve chief prioritizes suicide prevention, calm message on budget

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Talley took over as Chief of the Army Reserve in June. He tells Federal News Radio there are only two issues that keep him up at night.

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DoD trying to fix holes in the military voter assistance program

The DoD inspector general found more than half of military voting assistance offices were unreachable using contact information on the website. Pam Mitchell, the interim director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, said all the phone numbers now are accurate.

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Order calls for interagency cooperation on veterans' mental health

Executive order calls for vets in emotional distress to be seen by a professional within 24 hours. It also enlists HHS, Education, DoD and VA in interagency partnerships to find treatments for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.

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