Government Executive - Authors - Dawn Lim

Tech Roundup

Aliya Sternstein, Bob Brewin, Joseph Marks, and Dawn Lim — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:00:00 -0400

Rebooting Federal IT

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is floating proposed legislation that would drastically reform the way federal technology is purchased and grant agency chief information officers authority over their information technology budgets—authority currently held only by the Veterans Affairs Department CIO.

If approved, the draft legislation would be the most significant amendment to the federal technology landscape since the 1996 Clinger Cohen Act, which created agency CIOs, and the 2002 E-Government Act.

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which oversees much of the government’s technology spending, described those previous acts of Congress as worthwhile reforms that had nevertheless failed to stem inefficiency, duplication and waste in government. The proposed legislation calls for the creation of a Commodity IT Acquisition Center to oversee large, governmentwide IT contracts. Agencies would be required to consult the center regarding most acquisitions that cost more than $500 million and the center would “establish guidelines that, to the maximum extent possible, eliminate inconsistent practices among executive agencies and ensure uniformity and consistency in acquisition processes for commodity IT across the federal government.”

In an op-ed on Nextgov, Issa noted “because of the antiquated way the government defines its requirements and acquires IT, we are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars each year on failed programs.”

Issa spent months gathering feedback on the proposed legislation from industry IT leaders and plans to gather more from his colleagues and others before formally proposing the Federal Information Technology Reform Act in Congress.

-Joseph Marks

As the Worm Turns

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been developing an online Android app store for troops on the battlefield since 2010, and now the agency wants to ensure any tools loaded into the marketplace are worm-proof. To help achieve that goal, officials awarded a service-disabled veteran-owned small business called Aderon LLC a $73,879 contract to help build testing software. The security tool is slated to be released in September 2013.

The software “will expose potential security vulnerabilities through fault injection”—or the introduction of errors into code—as well as enforce access controls, the federal documents state. And it will “scan, annotate, modify and instrument Android mobile application software” to comply with Defense Department security requirements.

The testing software also must be able to analyze third-party app libraries invoked by the Android tool. The work will be performed through the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s computer security division.

-Aliya Sternstein

Mind Readers

The Pentagon’s research wing is seeking technology that can determine whether a soldier is prone to commit suicide or murder. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking to fund the development of “mathematical and computational models that predict whether a person is likely to commit suicide,” contract databases reveal. The goal is to extend prototypes to “predict other neurocognitive states of extreme order, including homicidal intent.”

The algorithms, called Predicting Suicide Intent, would derive data from a person’s brain chemistry and behavior and deliver a snapshot of the individual’s frame of mind.

-Dawn Lim

Stormy Forecast

Get ready for some really bad space weather. That’s the message from four space scientists at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who warned of increased solar activity, which can disrupt all types of communications, including Global Positioning System signals, with the sun pumping out more solar flares during the next five years than any time since 2003.

The scientists cautioned, “if you are used to space weather being a nonfactor in your operations, that is about to change.”

In a presentation to a civil GPS confab in Nashville, the APL scientists warned that “solar max”—what happens when the sun tosses off a lot of high-powered flares—is approaching, resulting in increased GPS interference, including signal fading and precision errors. If you have a secret decoder ring, you can learn more at the Space Environment Applications, Systems and Operations for National Security conference in Laurel, Md., Nov. 14-16.

-Bob Brewin

]]>

Game Theory

Dawn Lim — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Last Halloween, while his friends were out reveling, Otavio Good stayed home to design a computer program to reconstruct shredded documents. The military’s research arm had issued a call for people to decipher messages that had been torn to bits, much the way someone might destroy evidence of a paper trail. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s goal: to develop new intelligence-gathering methods. Good, a 37-year-old designer of mobile software applications, had slightly different goals: “fun and worldwide bragging rights.”

Teaming up with eight Silicon Valley friends and programmers, Good refined a script that processed the ink and contours at the edges of the shredded pieces, matching them up. Deploying a multicore processor to get ample computing power, the group began running and tinkering with the script after work and through weekends. “Is your girlfriend OK with your spending all your time on this?” Good asked a teammate. The response: “We’re still in first place, so that helps.”

While his team labored to solve the challenge, DARPA used a score card to track the progress of 9,000 teams.

The eureka moment came when Good and his teammates created a computational method to map out the paper’s watermarks and stitch together its pieces. Six hundred hours and 33 days later, they pieced together five puzzles and 10,000 shreds, winning $50,000. DARPA flew the team, dubbed All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.—a play on a badly translated online video game that went viral in 2000—to Washington. There, military officials signaled interest in exploring ways to adopt what the team had created.

Critical Mass

The shredder challenge is one of dozens of experiments in crowdsourcing that federal agencies are performing to tap the expertise of people they wouldn’t otherwise reach. Military boardrooms and government laboratories aren’t always the most conducive spaces for flashes of insight and creative thought. Nor do they attract Silicon Valley types. But by mining the crowd for answers agencies can’t find on their own—with games that reward ingenuity and play—they are accessing a wealth of ingenuity beyond the civil servants, military personnel and contractors who comprise the federal workforce. Freed from the constraints of reality, gamers are able to conjure ideas that an expert in a cubicle might never think of. If these games and puzzles feed bright ideas to government leaders, they could upend the perceptions many people hold about computer games, from black holes that suck resources from society to tools with real-world impact.

Foldit, a computer game partially funded by DARPA and the National Science Foundation, showed how good game design can channel the passion for playing into answering scientific questions. Hundreds of players jiggle protein molecules on Foldit each day, scored by how efficiently their creations assume their structures. “Foldit turned novices into experts,” says Zoran Popovic, director of the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science, who led its development. When a gamer with the handle “Mimi” made the last move that deciphered a protein crucial to replication of simian AIDs that had baffled scientists for decades, her mouse click sealed Foldit’s iconic status. Still, the team she collaborated with resisted being identified in research papers; they wanted to keep folding proteins in obscurity. Fame never crossed their minds when they started playing. “I thought it would be of more benefit than wasting time on a game that was amusing but not accomplishing anything,” Mimi, a part-time school laboratory technician, said on Skype from Manchester, England.

The self-effacement of the winning team masked a subversive victory. Citizen “crowdsourcing and scientific discovery really challenge notions of expertise that are fine for some, but uncomfortable for others,” says Constance Steinkuehler, a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Steinkuehler, a game researcher on an 18-month stint from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, aims to steer the Obama administration to get serious about games.

If government leaders can overcome biases against games and crowdsourcing, there’s untapped brainpower at stake: In the United States alone, 72 percent of households play computer or video games, according to a 2011 report by the Entertainment Software Association. Government could boost a growing game industry that’s already racking up more than $25 billion in annual sales, according to the ESA report “Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry.” In the United States there are an estimated 145 million active gamers and 215 million hours a day are spent on game play, according to market research group Newzoo. The question remains, however, is the government ready to take advantage of these trends?

Military Crowdsourcing

After Foldit’s success, Popovic demonstrated to DARPA, the military’s venture capital arm, that it was possible to create a game to test for software defects. The concept: to map software code visually as a network of pipes on a screen. Players then would send as many balls as possible through the pipes, resizing and cutting the tubes to prevent them from getting stuck. Any spot where a ball got stuck located a specific point in the code that had potential security glitches.

That proof-of-concept prompted DARPA to invest $32 million in developing “fun to play” games for laptops and smartphones that help debug software code. The three-year experiment, called Crowdsourced Formal Verification, aims to help the Pentagon cut costs while it grapples with a shortage of security specialists to test weapons systems software. “No one wants to look at code,” says Popovic, “but if you cast the problem visually, more would tackle it, not just a few experts.” A crucial part of game design involves ensuring the safety and anonymity of government agencies that submit code for verification.

The Navy also hasexperimented with crowdsourcing techniques through a game that is inelegantly known as MMOWGLI, or Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet. It was created by the Office of Naval Research and partner organizations to leverage the crowd to develop an effective response to Somali piracy. Players generate cards with suggestions of less than 140 characters on ways to fight piracy that other gamers help score. Two programmers and multiple design reviewers spent 18 months developing the game, says Don Brutzman, a retired submarine officer and associate professor of applied science who led its development at the Naval Postgraduate School. Within 10 weeks of its launch in May 2011, 16,000 people signed up and 832 played. The game garnered futuristic suggestions such as, “use radio frequency identification plants in sacrifice decoys to track booty and pirate traffic, then surprise leaders with proof,” as well as feedback from users on how to improve any less-than-user-friendly interfaces.

“The jury is still out on the most relevant solution the game offered,” admits Lawrence Schuette, director of ONR’s Office of Innovation. He declined to provide funding details. “The real relevancy is that a broader community exists out there to source ideas from.” Energy MMOWGLI, expected to be released this month, will focus on how the Navy can meet energy demands. Developers are working on ways to visualize and simulate some of the plans, paving the way for MMOWGLI to transition into a more interactive platform.

“The traditional Navy analyst community did question if you could do anything out of an online game,” says Schuette. “We took science fiction to science fact.”

The Games Guru

The Navy’s efforts are laudable considering how hard it is for agencies to justify projects that may have little return on investment. “[Unlike] the typical indie game developer who will sleep on friends’ couches, if necessary, to put out a beautiful, compelling game,” says Steinkuehler, “game development in the government is done by people on top of a whole lot of complicated stuff on a workday.” Steinkuehler has the task of invigorating the nascent government game development community so that when she leaves her post in mid-2013, she will have created lasting momentum.

“If the market is unable to get the [financial] return it needs to make bleeding-edge games, such as discovery and crowdsourcing games, one of the roles of government is to seed these spaces,” she says.

Steinkuehler convened a meeting in November 2011 for agencies to troubleshoot issues around deploying games. Only 40 people were expected, but 70 showed up. It was community building for people who had been working in isolation for years. As of March, following two more meetings, the interagency working group had grown to 156 people from 33 agencies and four White House offices, with various levels of expertise. And they’re not coming for the refreshments: No snacks are provided and participants bring their own coffee. “We’re still writing up the notes and trying to see if we all heard the same thing at the meetings,” says Daniel Laughlin, a NASA research scientist and project manager.

Steinkuehler’s presence is a stamp of approval for federal scientists who have been trying to secure more recognition for this kind of work. For some, it also has been worrisome. “People are afraid they’ll miss the train and their agency will be the laughingstock of the government game community,” says Laughlin. Many are responding with caution. “I would imagine continuation of the group depends on who gets elected [to the White House] next,” says Eric Hackathorn, a data visualizations and games program manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Learning to Teleport

Both Laughlin and Hackathorn know that game development in government is a process that requires working around forces beyond their control.

Laughlin, who has been pressing NASA to support games that promote science and learning since 2004—by churning out reports and PowerPoint presentations—is realistic about funding constraints. “The chances of NASA providing the money that World of Warcraft took to develop are as much as the chances of me learning how to teleport,” he says of the enormously popular game.

To work around this, NASA found a commercial team that would raise capital and devise a business model for a space-themed, multiplayer game. Three video game companies, WisdomTools, Virtual Heroes and Project Whitecard, were named as partners in December 2008. NASA forked over $1.65 million for its experts to work with developers to incorporate agency data sets and educational content into the game. The three companies had to form a legal entity first because NASA demanded a structure that would act in concert before it would sign a deal. The partnership to create Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond was finally inked in August 2010. The first module of the game is expected to launch next year.

The success of an earlier NASA-funded game powered Laughlin through the bureaucratic hurdles. Moonbase Alpha, a prototype to show that NASA data could be overlaid onto a multiplayer game, was launched in July 2010, hitting 100,000 downloads in its first month. It still gets about 25,000 downloads a month. The proof-of-concept also generated ideas about how crowdsourcing could be woven into games. The day after Moonbase Alpha was released, players surprised programmers by flipping the lunar exploration rover, which had been modeled after actual vehicles. This highlighted the possibilities of using games for space equipment testing and science projects. At NASA, volunteers have been tapped to find interstellar dust grains captured in aerogel collectors on a spacecraft and mark craters on footage taken on space missions to build a map of Mars.

Hackathorn’s efforts to promote games at NOAA show the delicate negotiations that sometimes are required for support. After years of pitching a game to tap the crowd for improving weather prediction models, he couldn’t get enough funding and had to go back to the drawing board. “I’ve had a few people tell me they were worried such an idea could take jobs away from meteorologists,” he says.

To help mollify skeptics, Hackathorn focused on creating interactive spaces for scientific learning. An experiment establishing an island in virtual world Second Life where users learn about meteorology proved less than favorable. “Even though you own the content you create, it is nearly impossible to remove it from their system and use it elsewhere,” he says. A spokes-

person for Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life, says, “federal organizations have used Second Life as other organizations have in the past, generally without Linden Lab making changes to the platform specifically for them.” When the hype around Second Life fizzled and traffic dropped, Hackathorn’s team focused their attention on other game engines where vendor content wouldn’t be in a format that could be read only on the company’s platform. “If a game engine goes belly-up, I want to still have the content I’ve created,” Hackathorn says.

Fragile Earth Studios, a NOAA software development studio he leads, eventually got tens of thousands of dollars in funding to create TerraViz, a project that visualizes real-time weather, earthquake and ozone data on a virtual globe using the development tool called Unity 3D. The hope is TerraViz will start to have gamelike elements, rewarding the efforts of people who dive in and analyze that data. Hackathorn’s team is working on ways for users to annotate the globe, and creating a virtual space where users can take on avatars. “We will tackle crowdsourcing when it’s more politically favorable to look at it,” he says.

Reengineering the Expert

An Army project to study the irrationality of group conduct could offer a counter-point to the argument that crowds are infinitely wise, helping to frame crowdsourcing in a less threatening way. The project, Virtual Laboratory of Aggregate Behavior, will create a platform “to facilitate the execution of random control trial experiments that require the real-time, simultaneous participation of hundreds or thousands or more participants,” notes the call for research proposals. By studying the churn of the crowd, scientists could better understand how to control protests, neutralize the spread of extremism through online networks and avert crises. The Army hopes military planners and companies could use this to answer questions related to defense, marketing, health care and urban planning.

Technical challenges lie ahead. It will be difficult to stretch a grid that can host so many people. It will require skill designing an environment where multiple experiments can take place, while allowing each experiment to be specific enough to be useful. To have the best game designers, the government funding process has to be more transparent. Developers and bureaucrats have to learn to speak the same language. Vaporware, the term used when software fails to live up to its hype and is never delivered, remains a concern for agencies wading into emerging game technologies.

If it wants to embrace a crowdsourced future, the government will have to learn to seek out help and be challenged. This doesn’t mean expertise is dead, says Hackathorn. “It simply will be a reengineering of what an expert is.”

Dawn Lim, a journalist in New York, is a former intern for Government Executive.

]]>

Tech Roundup

Aliya Sternstein, Bob Brewin, Joseph Marks, and Dawn Lim — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Taking The Lead

The Homeland Security Department is taking over a heralded Pentagon project that shared classified intelligence with select military contractors and their communications providers.

The new arrangement puts DHS, the civilian agency responsible for facilitating the protection of private critical infrastructure, in charge of communicating with private Internet service providers. The Defense Department will continue to be the point of contact for contractors, officials say.

In summer 2011, National Security Agency employees, the military’s code breakers, had been disclosing to contractors their ISP signatures—the unique fingerprints of threats—for uploading into virus-detection systems. The goal of the so-called DIB Cybersecurity Pilot was to block intruders from accessing the computers and networks that support Pentagon operations.

The Obama administration opted to temporarily extend what was originally a 90-day initiative, DHS officials said in January.

The program remains restricted to the initial participating companies while all parties refine procedures based on lessons gleaned from the trial run. Wide interest from the military industry has sparked talks of expanding the program to all Defense Department companies and, perhaps, nondefense critical sectors, such as the power and banking industries.

During the extension, data will be exchanged only among company workers and Defense and Homeland Security personnel who have security clearances, according to a Jan. 13 privacy notice.

Firms that choose to share information about incidents are prohibited from providing customer data that identifies individuals. The threat indicators divulged by government officials, however, can contain personal information, such as email addresses or other content from infected messages.

Aliya Sternstein

Going Mobile

Easy sharing, flexibility and common standards should be major pillars of federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s forthcoming mobile roadmap, government workers and the public argue in an online dialogue.

The dialogue will help officials flesh out the mobile strategy VanRoekel announced early this year.

The mobile roadmap, a final draft of which is due this month, will tackle how the government buys and manages employee smartphones and tablets, plus how agencies build, buy and use mobile applications, either to oversee internal functions or to communicate with the public. VanRoekel plans to launch new mobile procurement vehicles by June or July.

One suggestion is to create a public shared services catalog where agencies can post “the building blocks of [mobile] apps,” such as source code and programming interfaces. Other agencies or citizens then could use those building blocks to create separate apps without duplicating efforts.

Joseph Marks

Game On

The Pentagon plans to fork over $32 million to develop computer games that can refine the way weapons systems are tested. The goal is to create puzzles that are “intuitively understandable by ordinary people” and can be solved on consumer devices. The solutions will be collected into a database and used to improve methods for analyzing software, according to the solicitation by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

As weapons systems have grown more complex, methods for verifying that the software running on them is glitch-free and secure have fallen short. Crowdsourcing this complicated task would help cut costs while the Pentagon grapples with a shortage of computer specialists.

Dawn Lim

The Navy’s Inventory Challenge

The Navy has 286 ships loaded with computers and gadgets, but the service’s top network guy has no clear idea of how many or what gizmos actually exist. Capt. D.J. LeGoff, program manager for Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, says the service hasn’t tracked everything it has installed incrementally over the years.

Marine Brig. Gen. Gregg Sturdevant, assistant wing commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, says stuff disappears: Marines install nifty antennas on amphibious ships only to have the Navy take them off when the ships go into yards for maintenance.

LeGoff says when the Navy starts installing the new CANES networks, nothing will be installed willy-nilly and there will be a master plan. Hopefully this plan will include Marine antennas.

Bob Brewin

]]>

Allegations of judicial interference roil HUD office

Dawn Lim — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Complaints filed separately by HUD administrative law judges Alexander Fernández and Jeremiah Mahoney to the federal court of the District of Columbia alleged that the director of the Office of Hearings and Appeals improperly communicated with parties appearing before the judges, interfered with their dockets and sent the Justice Department advance notice of cases that would be tried in federal court -- thus appearing to give the government an unfair advantage.

The documents claim that Director David Anderson also made deliberate choices over which cases each judge should preside over, violating the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act, which aims to minimize political influence in the adjudication process and instructs that administrative law judges try cases on a rotating basis as much as possible.

In 2008, Anderson took Fernández off all cases involving Native American housing, claiming that he lacked "sensitivity to political considerations faced by the [agency's] secretary," the allegations stated.

According to the documents, Fernández also claimed Anderson told him that he was not "sophisticated" enough to adjudicate civil money penalty cases, which involve violations of housing-related laws, in particular because they involve recovering money for the general treasury. For months in early 2009, Mahoney's case docket was "significantly higher" than his, Fernández said through his lawyers via e-mail.

The office adjudicates a range of housing cases, including housing discrimination and problems relating to HUD-insured loans. Allegations of improper judicial intervention have cropped up at the department before.

Peter Davenport, chief administrative law judge at the Agriculture Department and past president of the Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference, said that all four administrative law judges who served prior to Fernández and Mahoney left the office five years ago because of "significant encroachments on their judicial independence," as he wrote in a 2010 letter he addressed to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in 2010.

Anderson responded in an affidavit for an internal investigation that he "assigned a greater number of complex and politically sensitive cases" to Mahoney because of his experience. Mahoney retired from the Air Force as the longest-running military judge in U.S. history and has more than 27 years of experience as a military trial and appellate judge, while Fernández's "entire judicial experience was less than three months," the affidavit said.

"Experience should not be a factor in case assignment, absent other extraordinary conditions," said FALJC's Davenport, because "administrative law judges should have the requisite experience to handle any case assigned to them."

HUD began to rejigger the workload of both judges in late 2009 after Fernández filed internal complaints. Fernández started receiving civil money penalty cases and Native American housing cases, but other concerns remained, he said.

For instance, both judges allege that Anderson ignored their concerns that the office appeared biased in favor of the government by providing Justice with advance notice of fair housing cases that were going to be tried in federal court. Mahoney also claimed Anderson barred the administrative law judges from access to docket numbers for more than 100 mortgage board review cases -- "crucial for permitting judges to keep track of the numerous cases," the allegation said.

Anderson responded in documents that giving notices of new cases to legal forums doesn't require the consent of a judge. As a former chief administrative judge who served for more than 25 years, "I am extremely sensitive to, and knowledgeable of, the need for a separation of management from the adjudicatory process," he stated.

The case is gridlocked, with both sides claiming they have been falsely accused. Several sources who would not be identified for fear of reprisal, spoke about a toxic environment at the HUD office divided between the two sides. Four people in the Office of Hearings and Appeals have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for alleged retaliatory and discriminatory actions taken against them.

Fernández's complaint included allegations that he was barred from speaking in Spanish to the office's receptionist, stonewalled when he asked for parking and telework arrangements that would accommodate his fibromyalgia and arthritis, and was suspended for two months in 2009 without notice.

HUD was at the bottom of a 2010 list from the Partnership for Public Service ranking employee satisfaction at large agencies. When HUD moved its office of Administrative Law Judges into the newly created Office of Hearings of Appeals, the reorganization and unexpected relocation in 2007 because of lease issues put unforeseen pressures on employees, sources in the office said.

The department also lacked an administrative law judge for eight months, and pending cases had to be transferred to the Environmental Protection Agency in various stages of completion before Fernández and Mahoney took office.

Fernández has agreed to enter into mediation on his case. Mahoney will push to relate his case with that of Fernández's by March to better consolidate the fact-finding process.

Neither HUD, the Justice Department, which is representing HUD, or the Office of Personnel Management, which Mahoney asked to step in on the issue, would comment publicly on ongoing litigation. Anderson also declined comment.

"People should be able to believe that an administrative law judge will make a decision that is independent of political influence or budgetary constraints within the agency, regardless of the dollar values involved in a case," said Mahoney in an interview. "Once that faith is gone, so is the credibility of an agency."

Dawn Lim is a contributor to Government Executive and Nextgov.

]]>

Union: Rising costs built into $1.2 billion Marine Corps food contract

Dawn Lim — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0500

As the largest-ever domestic military food service deal swelled to $1.2 billion, the Marine Corps failed to restructure its contract with France-based catering company Sodexo to cut escalating costs, according to new allegations from the Service Employees International Union.

Contract modifications obtained by the union through the Freedom of Information Act were heavily redacted, but offer a hint of how growing expenses were built into an eight-year contract bundle that outgrew its original price tag of $881 million by 36 percent.

The documents show that mess hall services at West Coast bases were modified at least 36 times between 2003 and 2009 to increase contractor duties and incorporate more requests for equitable adjustment.

Menu revisions that became effective in 2002 increased target costs, profit and price per meal.

After undefinitized provisions -- clauses allowing contractors to begin work before a dollar figure is inked -- were introduced in the original contract, two more undefinitized sums were allowed into the contract in 2004.

Supporters of undefinitized provisions defend them as a way to give contractors the flexibility to find the best solutions for clients. But they also are considered risky contract vehicles because "contractors lack incentives to control costs while contract terms and conditions are negotiated and definitized," said a 2010 Government Accountability Office report on use of undefinitized contract actions.

The Defense Department's obligations for undefinitized contract actions increased from $5.98 billion in 2001 to $6.53 billion in 2005.

A 2006 modification was designed to recompense Sodexo for an "increased fixed cost per meal determined to be otherwise unrecoverable" because of "a significant shortfall in meal count as a result of reduced mess hall patronage" when Marines deployed overseas.

The Marine Corps chose to "negotiate minor fixes rather than cancel or fundamentally restructure the acquisition," Josh Glasstetter, the union's representative wrote in a blog entry, adding that the government liability to terminate the contract was capped at $10 million per contract within the five non-option years.

SEIU timed its statement to coincide with Sodexo's release of its first quarterly earnings, and in the lead-up to the outcome of the company's bid to renew its military food service contract, which ends Jan. 31.

"The increased costs referred to by the SEIU are primarily due to Sodexo responding to [Marine Corps]-requested changes," Sodexo spokeswoman Stacy Bowman-Hade said in an e-mail statement, adding that new expenses are "not an unusual occurrence under a government contract."

She added that the cost increases also were related to factors such as inflation adjustments, wage changes directed by the Labor Department and collective bargaining agreements, as well as small business participation.

The union's allegations are "part of an ongoing smear campaign that attempts to force Sodexo to let [SEIU] represent our 125,000 U.S. employees," Bowman-Hade also said, when in fact, "Sodexo has enjoyed a positive and productive working relationship with the U.S. Marine Corps." The Marine Corps did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., requested in April 2010 that GAO investigate Sodexo for excessive waste and food safety issues in its contract with the Marine Corps.

The Agriculture Department reported 70 instances of food safety violations between December 2005 and September 2009 at a Tennessee processing plant where Marine-related food operations were located. These operations were terminated in 2007 when another vendor was selected to fulfill that part of the contract.

Dawn Lim is an occasional contributor to Government Executive and Nextgov.com.

]]>

Hiring Hackers

Dawn Lim — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The federal government turns to the underworld of computer cowboys for help shoring up its cyber defenses.

The federal government turns to the underworld of computer cowboys for help shoring up its cyber defenses.

When hackers convene at their annual conferences, they play a game called Spot the Fed. The rules are simple. If you think you see a federal employee walking the halls, point the person out to your colleagues around you. This might, or might not, trigger a storm of controversy or some nervous laughter. If your fed radar proves keen enough, you win a free shirt that reads, "I spotted the fed!" The person identified gets an "I am the fed!" shirt.

The tradition started in the 1990s, when the purpose was to duck from snooping law enforcement officials and avoid being detained. Today, hackers play the game mostly as a gag, a parody of their cat-and-mouse relationship with the buttoned-down establishment that used to haunt them at get-togethers like Black Hat, a weeklong gathering of phone phreaks, ham operators and hackers before it became professionalized, and DEF CON, a computer underground confab that is the more radical and freewheeling cousin of Black Hat.

And how has it changed for the feds? They aren't crashing the parties to infiltrate the hacker population anymore, at least most aren't. They're at these meetings to do some, pardon the pun, networking and to ask for help. When Michael Hayden, former CIA director and ex-chief of the National Security Agency, was invited to give the keynote speech at the 2010 Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on July 29, he spoke about the fragile state of cybersecurity. "We all get treated like Poland on the Web, invaded from the West on even- numbered centuries, invaded from the East on odd-numbered centuries," he said.

His statements were an overture to the hacking community to help secure the Internet. "Rivers, hills and mountains become a military officer's friend," because they make it difficult for networks to be penetrated, he said. "You're going to build the rivers and hills into the Web. You're going to create geography that is going to help the defense."

At the same time, representatives from the Defense Department's newly founded Cyber Command were making their rounds at the conference and at DEF CON, held right after Black Hat at the nearby Riveria Hotel and Casino, to check out the latest tricks the hacking community has up its sleeve.

Army Col. Rivers Johnson, a spokesman for the Cyber Command, explained their presence this way: "As we are a new organization, Cyber Command considers these venues important because we are always interested in the technology that may be available at these conferences." He wouldn't state on the record that representatives from the command were there recruiting possible cyberwarriors, but he did say the organization was hoping to do some networking.

The federal government needs help. More than 100 foreign intelligence organizations are trying to break into the networks that undergird U.S. military operations, Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III wrote in the August edition of Foreign Affairs. Size doesn't work to the federal government's advantage when it comes to cyber defense. The multitude of platforms increases the risk of cyberattacks. "These are really big networks that were built a long time ago, and it's really difficult to move the foundation of buildings that are in use," says Dino Dai Zovi, an independent security researcher and former security analyst at Sandia National Laboratories.

To plug the holes in its networks, the federal government is pouring billions of dollars annually into protecting its systems. A report the Center for Strategic and International Studies released in July highlighted a "desperate shortage" of people who could create tools sophisticated enough to guard systems against threats. There are only about 1,000 people in the federal government and private industry who understand operating systems deep enough to carry out front-line cyber defense, according to James Gosler, a scientist who specializes in information operations. Although Gosler has worked at the CIA, National Security Agency and the Energy Department, he spoke to Government Executive as an independent agent, and not on behalf of any agency. He estimates the government needs as many as 30,000 people with these skill sets to have adequate defense.

Federal agencies face stiff competition for these highly skilled experts, so they come to hacker conferences to tap into a subculture that used to be their foe. These computer wizards have the deep tactical knowledge of where the holes are in networks and how to exploit them-an insight agencies could use to build much needed cyber defenses.

But the alliance is an uneasy one. "Hackers feel persecuted by the rest of the world and the government . . . because they're scaring the shit out of people who are dumb," says Darren Greco, a computer specialist who does security auditing for federal agency affiliates and who attended the ideologically charged, left-leaning Hackers on Planet Earth Conference in New York in July. If the two parties can work out an understanding, then their collaboration could bolster vulnerable federal networks.

But both sides would have to put aside their paranoia.

The Cyber Squeeze

"There's no real difference between the skills needed to be a good defender and a good attacker," says James Lewis, senior fellow and director of the technology and public policy program at CSIS. "Think of it this way: Even though they teach cops how to drive fast, these are law enforcement skills." Dan Guido, a consultant at the boutique security firm, iSEC Partners, who also teaches penetration testing at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, says knowing how real attacks are performed is critical to stopping them. "If you work in a defensive role at a government agency building software, knowing exactly how that software breaks will force you to make it stronger," he says.

"Lots of people can see to it that agencies are following procedures and updating their passwords. Few have an exacting and detailed understanding of how systems work at their most fundamental level," adds Gosler. "A reasonable percentage of people with such skills probably have participated in various hacking activities." He admits when he first started dabbling in information security he spent his free time after work "reverse-engineering software and tearing apart zeros and ones."

Within the community, one definition of a hacker is simply someone who turns the original design of a system on its head. "Hackers have insatiable curiosity about how things work under the hood," says Gosler. "They appreciate the beauty of microcontrollers and computer codes. They just want to take things apart to see how they work. If they've shown the capacity to do evil but chose not to, I want to hire as many of these people as I can find." A hacking conference like Black Hat and DEF CON is such a gold mine of talent that "the government would be crazy not to do recruiting there," he adds.

Breaking the Mold

At this year's DEF CON, hacker Chris Paget built a rogue cell phone base station that could intercept and record mobile phone calls. He did it using only $1,500 worth of hardware and open source software. Paget's device tricked cell phones in the vicinity into believing that it was a legitimate cell phone tower, causing calls to be routed through it. Paget was trying to make the statement that GSM cell phone networks-which are the dominant mobile phone standard-are not secure. But his homemade tower also made a mockery of the commercially available version intelligence and law enforcement agencies use, the IMSI catcher, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was a slap in the face to federal authorities. The day before Paget was scheduled to speak on July 31, a Federal Communications Commission officer contacted him and warned he would be violating federal law if did a live demo of how the homemade device worked. Paget shrugged off the phone call as a "scare tactic," and went ahead anyway. There were no repercussions. Brilliance doesn't always fit the cookie-cutter. Sometimes it also breaks the law.

"There is a huge trend where people who explore cybersecurity weaknesses on the Internet-and this is completely illegal-later use the skills they develop to become penetration testers for the government," says Alan Paller, research director at the cybersecurity training school, the SANS Institute. "Because they have no way to get prepared, there are no real places for young people to do that."

There were even fewer outlets for security enthusiasts in the early 1990s when the penetration-testing industry hadn't ballooned yet, Paller says.

"Back in the '90s, hacking NASA was always a rite of passage in the community," says Dai Zovi, a hacker-turned-security-professional who is known for his hijacks of MacBooks. "People would say, 'It's just NASA. What are they going to do? It's just a bunch of servers set up for scientists to share data.' "

Gosler, currently a Sandia National Laboratory fellow and NSA visiting scientist, has been called on to advise senior federal leaders on how to deal with potential hires whose specialty comes with a criminal record. "The impact of compromise of U.S. government computers can be very high," he says. "Think in terms of systems used to control the security of physical facility or nuclear control."

Job candidates are required to disclose whether they've had close contact with foreign nationals, or international intelligence sources, or engaged in criminal activity. For low-level IT security jobs, background checks for prospective recruits reach back five years. For higher-level jobs, agencies dig deeper and further into their history. Typically, most information security defense contractors undergo background checks dating back seven years.

At the same time, government gatekeepers are slowly relaxing their hold, making tenuous overtures to the hacking community.

Lewis says Pentagon sources have confided they're realizing they need to be more tolerant of those who break the traditional mold. And Gosler notes there is less stigma surrounding law-breaking that is now seen as "gray cases." Self-professed "hackers gone legitimate" form a robust, growing network of Beltway security consultants. One such case is DEF CON and Black Hat founder and director Jeff Moss, who goes by the handle The Dark Tangent. Moss was sworn in last June as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

"Since these skills are in such high demand, greater latitude is given on a case-by-case basis," Gosler says. "You give people the benefit of the doubt because of the critical shortage. Maybe they broke into systems when they were 16, but now they're 21. You have to take that into account."

The government, however, still errs on the side of caution as a function of security when it recruits from the hacker community. "Of course, there's a threshold, and if you go beyond that threshold no one will make an exception," Gosler adds.

But that threshold isn't always clear. It's an open secret that at conference after-parties, FBI agents hang out and extend their feelers into the community over drinks and loud music. In a close-knit community and in the post-WikiLeaks landscape, it's not clear who's an informant and who's not. Hackers are finding themselves in a difficult position, villainized for the very skills that paradoxically give them that coveted edge in information security.

Not What It Seems

Andrew Strutt, a hacker and a defense contractor, wears many hats. He's volunteered to conduct digital forensics to tackle botnets and child pornography for law enforcement, and has contracted with the military to guard the IT networks that support satellite imaging. Now he is waiting for the green light on a security clearance that would allow him to deploy overseas to support military operations.

In hacking circles Strutt cuts a deviant figure under the handle RØd3nt and hosts the IRC network for 2600, a group known for its anti-institutional bent and support of WikiLeaks.

Strutt, who stresses that his opinions are not representative of the organizations he is affiliated with, recalls sitting in on a meeting and discussing network vulnerabilities. "I told them, you could just bust that open with XYZ-I've done that. They responded with, 'Oh my God, we thought you were just a good network administrator,' " he says.

"I've had to work hard to build up trust," Strutt adds. He doesn't disclose his identity as a hacker to the people he refers to as his handlers. And he doesn't advertise to hackers that he works for the .mil or .gov community either. At a DEF CON party, one hacker gave him the cold shoulder. "When he found out about my contracting work and figured that I was sort of a fed without arresting powers, his tone changed," Strutt says. "He said, 'So you work for them, you're basically a fed.' "

Strutt's predicament reflects the ambivalence and growing pains of a community as it sorts through its allegiances against the backdrop of a ballooning, multimillion-dollar cybersecurity industry. As the more corporate Black Hat crowd spills into DEF CON, occasionally clashing with the traditionally unruly cousin, there's a sense that the community is being pulled in two directions.

"The hacker community is just starting to become the development community," says Greco. "It appears softer, but at the same time, there are still a lot of hard-core people out there." On that other end of the spectrum are the die-hard anarchists: They tend to be younger; they've drawn the line in the sand on any contact with the feds, and they might be sneered at as "script kiddies"-a derogatory term for those who use programs that others develop to break into systems.

Luring Young Gurus

One group is trying to carve out a controlled space where hacking skills are being legitimized and detached from the politics of this underworld. The U.S. Cyber Challenge, a series of national competitions sponsored by agencies and organizations such as the Defense Department's Cyber Crime Center, the Air Force Association and the SANS Institute, aims to give students and information technology professionals a laboratory where they can compete as hackers.

"What is considered today's hacking may be against the norms," says Karen Evans, director of the U.S. Cyber Challenge and former chief of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology. "But it might become tomorrow's best defense if you can draw in these skills in a positive, controlled environment."

Cyber Challenge's home page reads, "Be the next cybersecurity top gun," and dangles the chance for competitors to "earn respect among your peers," "get noticed by a nationwide cybersecurity community," and "help the U.S. beat the bad guys." The aim is to scout for 10,000 experts to help the nation gain the lead in cyberspace.

"The key to attracting people with the right skills is that these competitions must have realistic threats and involve real sites and real problems," Paller says.

In 2009, for instance, USCC's inaugural NetWars competition featured a cybersecurity simulation exercise that required participants to hack into a computer without a password to access and play an online game. The winner was Michael Coppola, a.k.a. SevenM7, a precocious 17-year-old who hacked into the computer that hosted the game and rigged his own score. In July, USCC organizers made sure scores for its Capture the Flag competition in New York were computed with pen and paper.

Lawmakers have caught on to the realization that talented tricksters like Coppola need to be cheered on, not reprimanded. In June, Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Tom Carper, D-Del., called for more cyber competitions to inspire students. Federal agencies were on hand to recruit during a cybersecurity camp that led up to the New York event.

Not all participants at that competition were convinced the federal government was the right fit for them, however.

"It's a little bit difficult for participants to think about the federal government. A lot of times they think of private industry and big bucks," Evans says. Gosler knows cybersecurity experts who came on board with the government after Sept. 11 in a burst of patriotism. They had to settle for $100,000 to $150,000 federal paychecks after years of earning higher six- and seven- figure salaries, he estimates.

The deeper problem is the perception that there are irreconcilable differences between hackers and feds.

Nasir Memon, director of the Information Systems and Internet Security lab at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, where USCC's New York Capture the Flag competition was held, said about 100 of his students have been placed in federal agencies in the past decade. "I never thought some of them would join the government," he says. "They looked too deviant, and now they're sitting in agencies. It surprises me."

But being able to bend the rules doesn't always mean breaking them, hackers say. "If someone used the word 'legitimate hacker,' they clearly have no idea what this is about," says Greco.

"But I want a place to practice my craft," he adds, "At some point, you say, 'I have to buckle down and be something that's respected-even if I'm feared-and able to support myself in the environment I live in.' "

Lewis agrees: "There has always been this wild cowboy element at DEF CON and Black Hat, but hackers wear suits when they have to."

Dawn Lim, a journalist in New York, is a former intern for Government Executive and its sister publication Nextgov.

]]>

From Nextgov.com: Government taps an uneasy alliance with hackers

Dawn Lim — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Read the full story on Nextgov.com

]]>

From Nextgov.com: Supreme Court upholds search of a police officer's messages

Dawn Lim — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Read the full story on Nextgov.com.

]]>

NASA sued for failing to disclose contracting information

Dawn Lim — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

In a bid to hold NASA accountable to meeting federally mandated goals for small business contracting, advocates demanded for the third time that the agency release contracting information for its space operations.

The American Small Business League filed a lawsuit on June 8 asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to require NASA to release subcontracting reports involving United Space Alliance LLC, a spaceflight operations company co-owned by defense giants Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., and NASA's primary industry partner in managing the space shuttle and the International Space Station programs.

The advocacy group wants to know if United Space Alliance has complied with small business subcontracting goals under those contracts. The organization alleges that NASA violated the Freedom of Information Act by withholding agency records, while NASA claims the data was exempt from disclosure as "commercial or financial information obtained from a person which is privileged or confidential."

The suit is the latest in a series of legal actions the small business group has taken since 2004 against various federal agencies -- including the Army and the Energy Department -- to make them account for any large corporations listed as small businesses in government awards. ASBL has won about half the cases.

ASBL suspects NASA is withholding data that will prove it is allowing major prime contractors to falsify compliance with small business subcontracting goals, as well as inflating fulfillment of small business targets by counting "clearly large" firms as small, according to Lloyd Chapman, the group's president.

The federal government sets out to award 23 percent of the total value of all prime contracts to small businesses annually. The Small Business Administration negotiates individual objectives for each agency, ensuring that when combined they meet the overall statutory goals.

In 2007, SBA instituted requirements for long-term federal contracts to be recertified every five years and at every option point going forward. This would take into consideration the possibility of growth and ensure agencies receive credit for making contract awards to small businesses only as long as the firms remain small. But advocates say instances of large corporations being listed as small businesses in federal contracting awards keep cropping up.

ASBL spokesman Christopher Gunn said large companies that showed up in data on small business awards in 2008 included Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp.

Corporations that raked in billions of dollars in federal contracts and did not meet the criteria for being small were labeled as such in Washington Technology's top 2010 government contractors, a list compiled from government procurement data, said Guy Timberlake, chief executive officer of The American Small Business Coalition, which helps small businesses win federal contracts and strengthens their partnerships with the government.

Whether these cases resulted from mistakes in data entry or fraud remains a point of contention between the federal government and advocacy groups.

Timberlake said because federal contracting programs are such complicated bureaucratic exercises, some corporations exploit the loopholes and lack of oversight. They go "code shopping," seeking out industry codes that will identify them as a small business, even if the definitions do not apply to their actual operations, he said.

Whether a corporation meets the criteria of being coded as a small business depends on a host of factors, including its subsidiaries, affiliations, primary industry, number of employees and annual revenues.

"Some out there may say, 'Uncle Sam is really bogged down right now, so they'll never notice me.' " Timberlake said. "In addition to deliberate efforts to scam the system, just as many corporations are simply not getting good information from various expert resources."

He added, "There is a level of enforcement with teeth that is needed" in a more competitive climate, but "additional scrutiny entails process, which entails costs." It is difficult to come up with extra money for oversight at a time when the government is tightening its belt, he said.

United Space Alliance, which received $1.5 billion in contracts from NASA in fiscal 2009, according to ASBL, said it has both large and small businesses as subcontractors. "Small businesses play a vital role in our efforts to support the nation's space program," said spokeswoman Tracy Yates, "and USA is absolutely committed to working with as many small companies as possible to meet that goal."

SBA declined to be quoted for this story. A NASA spokeswoman said the agency is looking into the matter, but has no further information to provide at this point.

]]>

Bold Thinkers

Dawn Lim — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Nextgov Awards honor eight managers who have conquered bureaucratic resistance to push through innovative ideas.

Government Executive's online federal technology publication has named the winners of its inaugural Nextgov Awards, which recognize federal managers who overcome bureaucratic inertia, political resistance and entrenched business processes to push through bold ideas for using technology to improve government operations and, ultimately, citizens' lives.

Nextgov named eight winners from a field of 19 finalists, who were honored at a luncheon on May 27 during the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington. They represent a range of efforts, including supporting diplomacy, making it easier to apply for benefits, improving security and giving troops on the battlefield better tools.

A panel of seven judges reviewed the nominations that federal managers submitted and chose the following 2010 Nextgov Award winners based on how innovative their ideas were and what risks they faced to deploy them.

Tiffany Smith
Program Analyst, Office of eDiplomacy
State Department
Smith designed the Virtual Student Foreign Service program, which engages college students in virtual diplomacy through collaborative Web-based projects. Within three months, she set up the initiative, which has facilitated partnerships between 40 diplomatic missions and 50 college students on projects such as developing the Iraq National Museum website and using social media to teach English. More than 200 people follow the program on Facebook.

Daniel Stoian
Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Management
State Department
Stoian developed IdeaLab, an information-sharing application that solicits suggestions from State employees to improve business processes. The online tool challenged the department's long-standing hierarchical structure and convinced workers they could express themselves without fear of reprisal. Detractors still point to poor suggestions and ignored ideas, but the system is now an institution at State. IdeaLab's success prompted the department to launch Sounding Board, an online forum that has collected 900 suggestions from employees worldwide to improve operations and policies, including developing software to automate repetitive manual tasks.

Anita Kelly Bible
Lead Project Manager for Ready Retirement
Social Security Administration
Bible oversaw the first release of iClaim, an electronic form that simplifies retirement and disabilities applications and automates calculation of claims at Social Security. The project was a top priority for the SSA commissioner to begin creating a process that will make it easier to process the coming wave of baby boomer retirements. The application replaced an online tool that was receiving a low volume of traffic, and many in the agency doubted a new app would be successful. But iClaim received the highest customer satisfaction score for any government application and exceeded its goal for the number of Internet claims filed.

Jeffrey L. Wheeler
Deputy Chief of the Office of Boat Forces
Coast Guard
Wheeler brought together the fractious maritime community of law enforcement and emergency responders under the Boat Operations and Training program, a single system for training federal, state, local and military organizations to protect U.S. ports. He had to convince federal leaders that training would be more effective if maritime officers learn in the areas where they operate, using familiar equipment and systems. Wheeler won the support of a doubting bureaucracy by enlisting outside experts to create training standards that met the jurisdictions' legal and local policy requirements.

Daniel Hogan
Program Manager
Fish and Wildlife Service
Hogan harnessed cloud technology long before it was the topic of conversation to build the Habitat Information Tracking System. It's the first program to marry detailed geographic information, including the location of habitats, program accomplishments such as acres of habitat restored, and financial information for each project. He overcame resistance to privacy issues by focusing on security and compliance. The system improved communications with the agency's partners, standardized data gathering and saved millions of dollars.

Lynn A. Mokray
Chief of the Legal Division
Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps
Mokray helped the military services combine their buying power and develop a system that provides nearly 15,000 Defense Department personnel advanced legal research tools and a first-of-its-kind video teleconferencing system that has slashed travel costs and allows face-to-face contact worldwide. She overcame ingrained preferences for specific vendors within each service, finger-pointing when development problems arose and concerns that the savings would not be realized. The services saved millions using the legal research system. The $3 million teleconference system is expected to pay for itself in several years and has facilitated speakers and instructors who could not appear in person.

Susan Burrill
Director of the Risk Management Division
Federal Protective Service
Burrill replaced disparate and outdated systems with the Risk Assessment and Management Program, a Web-enabled tool that revolutionized how the agency collects and shares security information to protect 9,000 federal facilities nationwide. The fate of the Federal Protective Service rested on the performance of RAMP, which standardized security procedures for public buildings that 1.1 million employees and visitors pass through every day. It also gave some offices more control over agency activities and provided a risk-based approach to dealing with multitenant facilities accessible to the public.

Christopher Jackson
Deputy Chief of the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Integration Division
U.S. Joint Forces Command
Jackson recognized the potential of a system that disseminates videos generated from unmanned aerial systems before it had been tested on the battlefield. But networks in Iraq were severely constrained, making it difficult to send video. Despite fears that videos streamed at lower bandwidths would not provide troops with clear images of the battlefield, he pushed to develop the Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Information Service. ISRIS has become widely used throughout the theater and provides soldiers on constrained networks access to videos that inform tactical decisions.

]]>

House votes to overturn ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

Dawn Lim — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The repeal passed 234-194 as an amendment to a fiscal 2011 Defense policy bill (H.R. 5136) that authorizes more than $700 billion in funding for the Pentagon, Energy Department security programs and overseas contingency operations. The vote came just hours after the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 16-12 in favor of repealing the ban.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen requested in April that lawmakers hold off on a vote until after a review was completed, but a compromise deal between Democratic lawmakers and the White House cleared the way for Congress to act on the issue.

The provision would not allow the repeal to take place until the Defense Department has finished its study on the impact of implementing a policy reversal. That study is due to Congress by Dec. 1. The legislative language also prohibits any policy change that would affect military readiness.

On the floor, supporters of the bill framed it as a push to end discrimination, while critics maintained that it would disrupt cohesiveness and morale in the Armed Forces.

President Obama announced he was pleased that Congress took bipartisan steps toward the repeal, but added, "key to successful repeal will be the ongoing Defense Department review."

]]>

Moving On

Dawn Lim — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Families of federal law enforcement officers who die in the line of duty would benefit from a bill that passed in the House on Tuesday, which would oblige federal law enforcement agencies to offer surviving family members financial help to move back to their homes of record.

The House unanimously approved the Special Agent Samuel Hicks Families of Fallen Heroes Act (H.R. 2711), named for the FBI special agent who was shot and killed while trying to serve an arrest warrant on a suspected drug dealer in Pittsburgh. The FBI could not assist his family with moving expenses for their return to Baltimore because no legal obligation existed.

Relocation costs could range from $10,000 to $20,000, said Konrad Motyka, president of the FBI Agents Association, which offered financial aid to Hicks' spouse and son. The group's lobbying wing worked with lawmakers to craft the legislation.

Motyka said the bill attempts to put the service of federal officers on par with military benefits. Law enforcement agencies most likely would rely on existing relocation benefit models to set aside the money for financial assistance, he said. The benefit is expected to cost agencies less than $1 million annually.

"The assistance that would be available through this legislation to their surviving families is but a nominal token of our appreciation for their courageous commitment to their jobs," said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

Motyka praised lawmakers for passing the legislation, but added he would liked to have seen broader provisions tacked on to the bill, including one requiring agencies to foot funeral expenses for law enforcement officers killed on duty. "But that has to be a project for another day," he said.

"If you introduce a bill, other entities outside law enforcement will say, 'What about us?' That would weigh the bill down," Motyka said.

As employers go, the federal government is known for acknowledging that family matters. The Dependency and Indemnity Compensation program, which the Veterans Affairs Department manages, issues monthly checks to compensate the families of military members killed during active-duty service or who die as a result of a service-related injury. And the Defense Department also pays lump sums to the families of service members who die in those circumstances.

Also, the 1993 Federal Employees Compensation Act provides 50 percent of an employee's salary as a survivor benefit if a worker dies from a job-related illness or injury.

]]>

White House and Pentagon clear way for repeal of military ban on gays

Dawn Lim — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

In response to letters from lawmakers eager to press for a vote, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag said the White House would support measures to repeal the ban, with the provision that changes would be rolled out only after a Pentagon working group finished a review on how to implement a policy reversal. That study is due to Congress by Dec. 1.

Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., and Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, announced the legislative proposal on May 24 after Congress and the White House reached a compromise. The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to vote on the amendment to the fiscal 2011 National Defense Authorization Act by the end of the week, and the House is expected to vote on a similar measure this week.

Ideally, Congress would take legislative action after the review, Orszag said in his statement. But, he added, holding off on immediately implementing changes "recognizes the critical need to allow our military and their families the full opportunity to inform and shape the implementation process through a thorough understanding of their concerns, insights, and suggestions."

In a similar vein, Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged under ideal circumstances, the review would have been completed before lawmakers took any action. In late April, Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen wrote to Congress requesting that lawmakers hold off on a vote to repeal the policy until after a comprehensive study.

"With Congress having indicated that is not possible, the secretary can accept the language in the proposed amendment," said Gates' chief spokesman, Geoff Morrell, in a statement.

The circumstances are surprising, considering statements made in Congress last week that indicated lawmakers were reluctant to address the hot-button issue.

During a May 19 markup of the authorization bill, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he and the panel's ranking member, Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., "agreed to support Adm. Mullen and Secretary Gates' request for time to study the issue. And we do not support this issue being raised in this markup."

According to the watchdog organization Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, more than 13,500 soldiers have been discharged since 1994 because of the ban.

Right-leaning groups have argued overturning the ban would adversely affect military morale and readiness. But a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released on Tuesday revealed that 78 percent of the public supports openly gay people serving in the military.

]]>

House committee votes to honor public servants killed on home soil

Dawn Lim — Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

last year's shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and at a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting station the same benefits and recognition as those wounded in combat zones.

The House Armed Services Committee passed the amendment by voice vote as part of a daylong markup of the fiscal 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, which carves out $760 billion in funding for the Pentagon, Energy Department security programs, support for overseas contingency operations and relief efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The panel passed the authorization bill 59-0.

The language would set a precedent of recognizing as combat casualties those wounded by terrorist acts in noncombat zones and on U.S. soil.

Reps. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., and Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., proposed the amendment to acknowledge the borderless realities of war.

"Things have changed in this country," Coffman said. "That's why it is significant that we have, in fact, listed both of those events in this bill as well as defined under what circumstances prospectively others will be defined as combat casualties."

Also during the markup, the panel approved an amendment that would protect conversations between victims of sexual assault and counselors from disclosure.

The provision, offered by Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee, follows reports of increasing sexual assault in the armed services. It would require conversations with sexual assault victim advocates to be treated in the same way as confidential communications between patients and psychiatrists, encouraging service members to seek help without fear that information divulged could be used against them.

Service members would not be the only beneficiaries of the bill. The committee also included a provision to establish a pilot program that would give military spouses customized career guidance.

Another amendment would require Defense to review programs to advance educational opportunities for military spouses, and to study how such opportunities could affect retention.

But amid discussions of workforce and personnel-related amendments, one hot-button issue remained taboo. Committee Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., established at the outset that the ban on open gays in the military would be off-limits at the request of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

In late April, Gates and Mullen wrote Skelton, asking that Congress hold off on a vote to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy until the Pentagon had thoroughly reviewed how to roll out changes.

Skelton said he and the panel's ranking member, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., "have agreed to support Adm. Mullen and Secretary Gates' request for time to study the issue. And we do not support this issue being raised in this markup."

]]>

White House to name FBI deputy director as new TSA head

Dawn Lim — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Pistole is the third person the Obama administration has named for the position. The FBI veteran would inherit an agency that has been without a permanent leader for more than one year.

"The talent and knowledge John has acquired in more than two decades of service with the FBI will make him a valuable asset to our administration's efforts to strengthen the security and screening measures at our airports," the president said in a statement. "I am grateful that he has agreed to take on this important role, and I look forward to working with him in the weeks and months ahead."

Pistole, who began his FBI career as a special agent in 1983, led investigative and recovery efforts for the 1999 Egypt Air Flight 990 crash off the coast of Rhode Island and led an Information Security Working Group in 2001 after the espionage arrest of Robert Hanssen.

Obama's first choice for the spot, Erroll Southers, withdrew his nomination in January after Republicans jumped on news reports that indicated he had provided Congress with misleading information on whether he had accessed a federal database to obtain confidential records. GOP opponents also were concerned Southers would support efforts to grant airport screeners collective bargaining rights.

The second choice, retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding, withdrew his name from consideration in March, after congressional staff learned his previous defense contracting firm was found to have overbilled the government for interrogation work in Iraq.

]]>

Lawmakers push potty parity

Dawn Lim — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Lawmakers can't hold it any longer. They're pushing for potty parity again in the federal workplace.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members expressed support during a May 12 hearing for the 2010 Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Building Act (H.R. 4869), which would require new or renovated federal buildings to have an equal number of restroom facilities for both sexes.

"Public restrooms have been the site of institutional discrimination by race, physical ability and gender," said Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., committee chairman and the bill's main sponsor. Towns added, "Women are often forced to wait in long lines to use public restrooms, [while] men rarely have the same problem."

He blamed this on the fact that public buildings were built "before women had entered the workforce in large numbers, [during] a time when contractors, architects, engineers, builders and government procurement officials, were overwhelmingly male, and rarely considered the needs of women."

This is the second time Towns has tried to pass legislation establishing federal restroom parity. A 2007 bill requiring twice as many toilets in women's restrooms in federal facilities as the number of toilets and urinals in men's restrooms, stalled.

Robert Peck, commissioner of Public Buildings for the General Services Administration who testified at Wednesday's hearing, said gender parity in bathrooms has not been a priority at the agency. "We're mostly an office environment. We don't get the surge that you get at a ballgame or in a concert during intermission," he said.

The agency, which provides office space for more than 1 million federal employees and contractors, said its facility standards in most cases require an equal number of toilets in women's and men's bathrooms. Women's toilets outnumber men's toilets and urinals by a 3-2 ratio in its training and conference facilities, Peck said.

"I was not aware of any complaints … that indicate we have an inadequate number of women's facilities versus men's," said Peck, but he acknowledged GSA has more than 500 buildings built before the 1950s.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the committee's ranking member, was concerned the bill's mandated ratios would be arbitrary. He asked if there should be "further study to get the numbers more broadly right in the sense of future flexibility," to avoid implementing a blanket ruling for "a place that has surge versus one that doesn't, a place where women are younger versus older, a place where women are in evening gowns or flats."

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., said, "Studies just delay this decision."

Towns agreed with Watson. "We really want to move this forward.…We do not need a lot of studies. I think this has been studied," he said.

]]>

Private employees face barriers entering the federal workforce, observers say

Dawn Lim — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Dawn Lim/GovExec.com

NIH recruiter Chris Pugh (right) fields questions at a May 8 job fair on the National Mall.

Private employees don't understand the government hiring process, recruiters and human resources observers said this week.

Although the federal market has outpaced industry in job creation, according to Gallup's Job Creation Index for April, not enough private employees are willing to make the leap to the government sector, observers say.

"[First,] they don't understand where they fit into the government; second, job postings aren't written in plain language, [and] finally, coming into the system requires extra work," said Tim McManus, vice president of education and outreach at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. The Partnership focuses on improving government recruitment and administers a pilot program that helps experienced private sector employees approaching retirement transition into the federal government.

Although federal agencies will need to fill 600,000 positions during the next three years, McManus noted, they are not being filled quickly enough. On average, it takes five months to fill positions in the government, compared to 80 days in the private sector, he said.

He supported the Obama administration's hiring reform effort , announced on Tuesday, that among other things, eliminates the government's traditional essay-based applications, which McManus said have been an obstacle for candidates from the private sector.

"People always say that job seekers aren't interested in government. That's baloney," said McManus. "People just don't understand how to apply for [government jobs]." In addition, he said salaries and positions don't translate easily between the private and public sectors. He urged federal recruiters to advertise jobs in ways those outside the bureaucracy can understand.

The government was in recruitment mode this past week. Job hopefuls, many of them former private employees, flocked to recruiting tables set up on the National Mall in Washington on May 8 as part of Public Service Recognition Week.

Among them was Sagar Pokhahel, dressed in a suit and clutching a résumé portfolio, who said he had been searching for a job for the past seven months and applied for two federal positions in the past month. He complained the online application was cumbersome: "It asked a lot of questions and kept repeating the same thing two or three times."

Chris Pugh, a recruiter at the National Institutes of Health, is sensing "more desperation" among applicants in the current economic climate, but noted many private sector employees don't know how to build a federal résumé or understand government's language.

Those from the private sector "often express surprise and bewilderment when I walk them through the hiring process," said Richard Gudnitz, recruitment program manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The fact that agencies hire differently makes the hiring process even more convoluted, he said.

]]>

Administration to announce hiring overhaul Tuesday

Dawn Lim — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The hiring reform memorandum will ask agencies to do away with hand-graded knowledge, skills and abilities essays by Nov. 1, at least in the early stages of the hiring process, Jeri Buchholz, associate director for human resources operations and policy at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said during a federal jobs fair Saturday on the National Mall. The fair was part of Public Service Recognition Week.

OPM Director John Berry said during Government Executive's Excellence in Government conference in April that he was surprised by the number of KSA defenders who emerged while he was working to reform hiring, but added he was determined to eliminate the essays, which have been required along with résumés.

Critics have said KSAs are cumbersome and turn away talented private sector employees not well-versed in the language of the bureaucracy. But defenders argue these statements are useful for narrowing the applicant pool, which has been large in the current economic climate. For instance, at NRC, 22,000 people applied for 252 positions in 2009.

Under the new guidelines, recruiters will have to find other ways to evaluate applications. Some might devise their own multiple choice tests, while others could require specific writing samples. The hiring overhaul will bring more flexibility into the recruiting process.

"There will be no one way on how to apply for a government job. Every vacancy could require a different process," Buchholz said.

"The challenge moving forward is to apply hiring tools used by the private sector, but still work within a merit-based system," she added.

An exception would be made for agencies that have arrangements with trade unions that require KSAs. In addition, recruiters might solicit such essays from a smaller group of applicants once finalists have been identified, Buchholz said.

Berry and federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients will be joined by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan during Tuesday's official announcement.

On Wednesday, OPM is hosting a closed-door meeting for human resources personnel that will further clarify new federal hiring practices.

]]>

First lady applauds USAID employees

Dawn Lim — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Dawn Lim/Govexec.com

First Lady Michelle Obama visited the U.S. Agency for International Development on Wednesday to praise its employees for their work in Haiti and Afghanistan.

"Much of the work that you do is quiet," she said, "but I do think the events of the last few months have given the American people just a glimpse of the kind of people who work here -- the sacrifices you make, the exhaustion, the tragedy and the risk that you endure."

USAID will play a central role in the Obama administration's efforts to make development a cornerstone of American foreign policy, she said.

"It's been really truly a pleasure that as first lady I've been able to visit so many agencies throughout the federal government over the last year to thank folks like you," she said.

This week is Public Service Recognition Week.

]]>

President honors top feds

Dawn Lim and Jessica Lambertson — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Each year the president holds up an exclusive group of top senior executives as prime examples of dedication to good government by awarding them the Presidential Rank Award. The 2009 winners represent a wide range of professionals working to save time, money and lives through better health care and financial systems; uncover financial and cyber fraud; advance scientific research on Earth and in space; and shore up the nation's defenses against terrorism, natural disaster and crime.

Executives are nominated by their agency heads and reviewed by boards made up of private citizens before the president's final selection. They are evaluated on leadership qualities and performance results. Distinguished Rank Award recipients receive a payment of 35 percent of their annual salary and Meritorious Rank Award recipients receive 20 percent of pay.

For a full list of the winners, click here.

]]>

Lawmakers honor outstanding feds on Capitol Hill

Dawn Lim — Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The Partnership for Public Service on Wednesday announced 32 federal employees as finalists for the 2010 Service to America Medals.

The breakfast on Capitol Hill, held during Public Service Recognition Week, honored employees from across the country, including 17 from the Washington area and two who now live and work in Afghanistan. The nonprofit Partnership will name eight winners during a Sept. 15 gala in the nation's capital.

Many of the 2010 finalists work in the fields of health, science and security. The awards celebrate the achievements of outstanding civil servants and are aimed at recruiting more people to work in the federal government.

"There is no greater way to recognize public service than to lift up those who have served so well," said Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry.

Finalists included Pius Bannis, field office director in Haiti for the Homeland Security Department's Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who expedited the immigration process to unite 1,100 orphans with adoptive families after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and Karthik Ramanathan, retired director of the Treasury Department's Office of Debt Management. Ramanathan orchestrated the sale of Treasury bills to raise $1.7 trillion to stabilize the U.S. banking system.

Feds "don't receive the kind of bonus you see on Wall Street," said Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., at Wednesday's event. "Their bonus is the satisfaction of having made a difference…that is the bonus of all the money in the world." Since May 2009, Kaufman regularly has addressed the Senate with stories of notable federal workers.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., stressed the importance of public service during difficult times. "Government is more important to the care and protection of people [now] than any other time," he said, "It's not surprising that recent polls of customer satisfaction with government employees is at an all-time high -- for you. For Congress, it's quite a different situation," he added, to chuckles.

Click here for a complete list of 2010 finalists.

]]>

Prize Performers

Dawn Lim and Jessica Lambertson — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Presidential Rank Award winners play critical roles in missions ranging from project management to scientific research and defense.

The following pages contain profiles of the latest Distinguished Award winners, who will be honored at a reception and dinner sponsored by the Senior Executives Association on May 6.

Agriculture

Dennis Gonsalves

Director

Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center

Controlled virus problems in tropical crops while researching how to control pests in Hawaii, including the fruit fly. His work on the transgenic virus- resistant papaya helped control the ring spot virus that nearly killed off the plant in that state.

Steven Mark Kappes

Deputy Administrator

Agricultural Research Service

Mapped the bovine genome and identified specific challenges to beef cattle genetics research. Advanced the study of farm cattle by uncovering ruminant biology and evolution with bovine genome study.

Commerce

Lisa A. Casias

Deputy Chief Financial Officer

Office of the Secretary

Transformed Commerce from a department with poor record-keeping and financial management to one with sound practices, internal controls and systems. Responsible for ensuring federal financial management reforms are effectively implemented governmentwide. Helped Commerce earn consistently clean audit opinions.

Mary M. Glackin

Deputy Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Responsible for management of U.S. fisheries and marine sanctuaries, as well as daily delivery of essential environmental information such as weather warnings and forecasts. In previous positions, she established the Office of Program Planning and Integration and led a program to modernize the National Weather Service.

Deborah A. Jefferson

Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer

Office of the Secretary

Designed, developed and implemented human capital management initiatives at the departmental and bureau levels. Responsible for HR and payroll services for six of Commerce's 13 bureaus.

Thomas R. Karl

Director, Climate Data Center; Program Manager, Climate Observation and Monitoring Program

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Authored many climatic atlases and technical reports. Published more than 150 journal articles to increase the scientific community's knowledge of global warming. Member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Kathleen A. Kelly

Director, Office of Satellite Operations

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Provides expertise in 24-7 satellite operations. Led move into new building without any loss of data. Created a more reliable flow of satellite information to the National Weather Service. Recovered the GOES-12 satellite from a life-threatening problem and restored it to full operations within one week.

Richard W. Spinrad

Assistant Administrator, Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Oversees seven laboratories, 1,200 researchers and a $400 million budget. Led the development of the nation's first Ocean Research Priorities Plan. Previously received the Navy's Distinguished Civilian Service Award.

Maureen E. Wylie

Chief Financial Officer

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Responsible for multibillion-dollar budget and financial operations. Manages a workforce of more than 350 people in 10 locations. Contributes strategic counsel on the agency's programmatic issues.

Defense

William J. Carr

Deputy Undersecretary for Military Personnel Policy

Office of the Secretary

Built the Defense Travel Management Office from the ground up. Now it is a 150-person organization with oversight of $9 billion in commercial travel- related spending. Reopened 2,500 homes on military bases while trimming annual rental outlays by nearly $30 million. Directed a review of $90 billion in military compensation programs.

John A. Casciotti

Associate Deputy General Counsel for Health Affairs

Office of the Secretary

Improved the Military Health System by reforming the medical and disability programs for wounded soldiers. Reduced costs with regulatory and legislative initiatives. Successfully defended programs such as the anthrax vaccine immunization project.

Steven M. Huybrechts

Principal Director, C-3 Space and Spectrum

Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration

Oversees the nation's space launch infrastructure. Reduced the cost of a weather satellite program by $2 billion. Transformed the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base from a cataloging function into a command center capable of understanding space events in real time.

J. Alan Liotta

Principal Director

Office of Detainee Affairs

Oversaw development of Defense's international detention activities and held various posts in Asia. Managed national effort to recover unaccounted American service personnel from the Vietnam War, Korean War and World War II.

Alfred J. Rivera

Director, Computing Services Directorate

Defense Information Systems Agency

Leads 2,600 personnel at 13 Defense Enterprise Computing centers around the globe. Provides critical support programs and control systems to Defense combatant commands, services and agencies.

Theresa M. Whelan

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense Domains/ Support of Civil Authorities

Office of Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs

Spent 20 years in the intelligence and policy communities, focusing on African issues. Served as a negotiator during the Kosovo crisis. Currently oversees homeland defense preparedness and operations in land, maritime and air domains.

Air Force

Siva S. Banda

Director, Center of Excellence in Control Science

Air Force Research Laboratory

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Ensures the Air Force maintains innovative flight control solutions to protect national security and maintain U.S. air dominance.

Timothy A. Beyland

Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, Manpower and Personnel

Responsible for comprehensive plans and policies for all stages of military and civilian personnel management. Develops policies for military and civilian end strength management, education and training, and compensation and resource allocation.

Bruce Stuart Lemkin

Deputy Undersecretary, International Affairs

Office of the Undersecretary for International Affairs

Led a 200-person organization and managed an $85 billion Foreign Military Sales portfolio. Established stronger relationships with nations and air forces worldwide. Oversaw a 50 percent expansion of the Military Personnel Exchange Program.

Army

Kwong-Kit Choi

Senior Research Scientist for Physical Sciences Army Research Laboratory

Developed radiation sensors and imagers to aid Army operations, including night vision and missile guidance. Demonstrated the highest quantum efficiency and the broadest spectral band QWIP cameras to date.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald

Auditor General

Headquarters

Manages all audit issues pertaining to the Army and more than 600 employees worldwide. Responsible for audit policy, training, follow-up and coordination with external audit organizations.

Joseph A. Lannon

Director

Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center Led the investment of $200 million in state-of-the-art research and development centers. Manages more than 3,000 employees in 64 laboratories. Through his leadership, the center won 34 Army R&D Achievement Team Awards.

Tracey L. Pinson

Director

Office of Small Business Programs

Office of the Secretary

As the top female in the Army acquisition career field, she's responsible for implementation of federal acquisition programs designed to help small businesses. Manages the Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Institution program, and develops policies and initiatives to enhance their participation in Army-funded programs. Established implementation strategy for Defense Mentor-Protégé Program.

John L. Shipley

Director, Special Programs (Aviation)

Aviation and Missile Life-Cycle Management Command

Leads development, acquisition and modernization of Army's Special Operations classified and unclassified aviation fleet. Brought unmatched aviation capability to unit, and has contributed significantly to the war against terror.

Larry Stubblefield

Deputy Administrative Assistant to the Secretary Office of the Secretary

Manages several Armywide initiatives and provides information technology services to the Pentagon. Supervises the Military History and Resources Operations Center, which employs 2,300 personnel. Prior to his current position, led the Army Resources and Programs Agency, with an annual budget exceeding $10 billion.

Mark B. Tischler

Senior Research Scientist for Physical Sciences Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center

Led a group of 15 scientists who planned and executed a $4.2 million annual flight control program on unmanned and manned rotorcaft. Helped advance flight control systems through research and collaboration with industry partners.

Navy

Iona E. Evans

Chief Information Officer

Initiated the move of public shipyards into the Voluntary Protection Program, resulting in a significant decrease in injuries and improved safety awareness. Saved more than $300 million in IT expenditures across the five-year planning cycle.

Pasquale Tamburrino Jr.

Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations

Senior civilian responsible for policy, program and resource allocation for worldwide readiness and logistics. Manages a $32 billion budget for a staff of more than 300 employees while also serving as principal adviser for management of civilian executives for the chief of naval operations.

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

Timothy J. Dwyer

Technical Director

Responsible for ensuring health and safety oversight programs targeting the most dangerous facilities and operations. As a captain in the Navy Reserve, he leads 15 units that support the Office of Naval Research in crafting high-tech solutions in the war on terror.

Environmental Protection Agency

Brian J. McLean

Director

Office of Atmospheric Programs

Designed cap-and-trade programs, establishing an efficient market-based approach to reducing emissions. Encouraged collaborative solutions to environmental problems by setting up partnership programs with public organizations and the private sector.

Stephen D. Page

Director

Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards

In previous roles, he oversaw the implementation of the Clean Air Act, which defined EPA's responsibilities for protecting the nation's air quality, and directed urban and rural air quality management programs. Manages annual state grants funds of more than $185 million.

General Services Administration

Gail T. Lovelace

Chief Human Capital Officer; Chief Privacy Officer; Director of Presidential Transition

Oversees all matters related to personnel security clearances at GSA. Promotes workforce flexibilities such as teleworking and alternative work schedules. Implemented information technology to support HR management processes. Provided assistance and counseling to agencies during the 2008 presidential transition.

Health and Human Services

Anna Michelle Snyder

Deputy Chief Operating Officer

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Streamlined accounting by introducing an integrated system that enabled CMS to achieve its first clean audit opinion. Promoted partnerships between government agencies and private corporations, and encouraged efficient use of technology and health resources, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

Donalda L. Wilder

Area Director, Portland

Indian Health Service

Collaborated with tribal leaders to promote participation in health programs. Managed and negotiated health care contracts. Reorganized the Office of the Director at headquarters to promote more interaction with field operations.

Homeland Security

Keith L. Prewitt

Deputy Director

Secret Service

Spearheaded an interagency working group that allowed intelligence sharing with the FBI during the 2008 presidential campaign. Pushed for accreditation standards improving law enforcement training, and initiated major cyber investigation uncovering fraud schemes worldwide.

Thomas S. Winkowski

Assistant Commissioner, Field Operations

Customs and Border Protection

Developed national and international programs to support the administration's anti-terrorism agenda after September 11, 2001. Responsible for enforcing customs, immigration and agriculture laws at U.S. borders.

Justice

Lee J. Lofthus

Assistant Attorney General for Administration

Pushed to consolidate and modernize the department's financial management system. Issues its public financial statements and manages key financial initiatives. Achieved the rare feat of bringing three clean audits in a year to the agency in former position as chief financial officer. Transformed the human resources department through technology.

Andrew G. Oosterbaan

Chief of Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section

Criminal Division

Developed technology to monitor child exploitation and obscenity offenses. Designed an interagency strategy to deal with child prostitution. Led undercover initiatives and drafted legislation targeting sex trafficking.

Clifford J. White III

Director

U.S. Trustee Program

Led agency efforts to implement bankruptcy reform and developed fair means testing policies to weed out fraud. Promoted a balanced approach to addressing violations of the bankruptcy code, targeting debtors as well as creditors and attorneys. Pushed to oust managers engaged in fraud during corporate bankruptcy reorganizations.

John L. Wodatch

Chief

Disability Rights Section

Chief author of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Removed barriers for Americans with disabilities by enforcing laws prohibiting discriminatory practices in workplaces, public transportation and housing.

NASA

John H. Campbell

Director (retired), Wallops Flight Facility

Goddard Space Flight Center

Managed NASA's principal facility for suborbital research programs, directed acquisition and certification efforts of expendable launch vehicles. In his previous job, he was responsible for the development and operation of all Goddard Space Flight Center's spacecraft, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

Debra L. Johnson

Director, Office of Procurement

Johnson Space Center

Manages $5 billion in annual expenditures, including complex contracts involving the International Space Station Program, Space Shuttle Program, and Constellation Program. In previous roles, coordinated business decisions with headquarters and external audit agencies.

Mary Denise Kerwin

Deputy Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs

Key contact between NASA and Capitol Hill. Translates NASA's complex initiatives into comprehensible concepts for Congress, secures NASA's annual $17.5 billion budget and ensures congressional priorities are aligned with those of the agency.

Samuel H. Moseley

Senior Astrophysicist

Goddard Space Flight Center

Leader in the development of thermal detectors for infrared detection and X-ray spectroscopy. Implemented the infrared array camera to detect emission from the earliest generation of galaxies to form in the universe after the Big Bang.

Jonathan Q. Pettus

Chief Information Officer

Oversees NASA's $2 billion IT budget and applications supporting human space flight, scientific and aeronautical programs. In previous positions, he managed IT to support the Marshall Space Flight Center's missions and led a team that integrated NASA's enterprise-level applications.

J. William Sikora

Chief Counsel

John H. Glenn Research Center

Leads the team that provides legal counsel on missions at the John H. Glenn Research Center. Legal adviser to the accident investigation board looking into the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Anthony J. Strazisar

Chief Scientist

John H. Glenn Research Center

On temporary assignment to headquarters, he is responsible for investing nearly $30 million in early-stage exploration for creative, high-risk concepts with the potential to become breakthroughs in aircraft and engine technology.

Michael C. Wholley

General Counsel

Leads team of attorneys in overseeing NASA's legal affairs and ensures agency's compliance with patent, international and employment law. Previously, he served as a fighter pilot, before being selected by Marine Corps to attend law school and become a judge advocate.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Roy P. Zimmerman

Director, Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response

Spearheaded creation of office to enhance nuclear power plant security after Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Led review of emergency preparedness regulations and strengthened partnerships with other federal agencies to address threats to national safety.

State

John R. Byerly

Deputy Assistant Secretary, Transportation Affairs

Engaged in several negotiations of air services agreements and development of civil aviation and maritime policy. Lead negotiator in the 2007 historic Air Transport Agreement that liberalized U.S. aviation relations with 27 European Union countries.

Jonathan B. Schwartz

Deputy Legal Adviser

Counsels the secretary, national security adviser and president on efforts to promote peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors. Forged diplomatic ties with Libya. Supervised offices within the agency's legal bureau, including African and Middle Eastern Affairs.

Transportation

Theodore P. Alves

Deputy Inspector General (retired)

Supervised audits and investigations of federal transportation agencies. Oversaw HR, procurement and accounting activities. In his previous position at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he directed financial management operations and IT audits.

Treasury

Richard Ervin Byrd Jr.

Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division

Internal Revenue Service

Led a program that examined tax returns and resolved millions of cases involving underreporting. Orchestrated outreach effort to assist Americans filing tax returns to receive 2008 stimulus payments. Delivered successful 2008 filing season despite budget shortfalls.

John R. Swales III

Assistant Commissioner, Office of Retail Securities

Bureau of the Public Debt

Merged programs to save the department more than $1 million annually. Pioneered technology to protect billions of dollars in investor accounts. Guided an error-free accounting operation, achieving 15 consecutive years of timely and accurate interest payments.

Veterans Affairs

Elizabeth J. Freeman

Director

Palo Alto Health Care System

Manages 5,000 employees and volunteers with an annual budget of more than $700 million. Procured $350 million in construction funds in two years for major projects. Under her leadership, VA Palo Alto has achieved the highest employee satisfaction scores in VHA's last four surveys and became the only VHA Center of Excellence in Women's Health Care in 2008.

Glen W. Grippen

Network Director

Rocky Mountain Network

Limited large, expensive hospitals and pushed for accessible, local hospitals with same-day surgery centers. Developed communication networks for telemedicine applications. Connected Native American veterans on reservations to telemedical services in 2007.

Alan S. Perry

Director

Roseburg Healthcare System

Directed three VA federal medical stations in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike. Led a politically charged panel review of a hospital restructuring. Served as lead liaison and interim director of VA operations in the Philippines.

James M. Sullivan

Deputy Director

Office of Asset Enterprise

Management

Primary business adviser to secretary on capital asset portfolio management. Implemented an interdepartmental Green Building Council for environmentally friendly and sustainable construction. Created a business case model that used electronic databases to evaluate capital asset proposals.

]]>

From Nextgov.com: Justices question public employees’ expectations of privacy

Dawn Lim — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

During arguments on Monday about whether personal text messages sent by public employees on government-supplied devices are private, a top Justice Department official cautioned Supreme Court justices not to "freeze into place" privacy requirements on electronic communications.

Read the full story on Nextgov.com

]]>

Lawmakers announce initiative to increase diversity on Capitol Hill

Dawn Lim — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Lawmakers have launched an initiative to increase diversity among House staff after a recent report spotlighted the lack of minorities working on Capitol Hill.

The plan, announced on Tuesday by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Administration Committee Chairman Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., will require House officers and legislative agencies to report on minority participation and submit plans on how to boost diversity at all staff levels.

The committee, which oversees daily operations in the House, will work with an advisory council made up of the congressional Asian Pacific American, Black, and Hispanic caucuses, to boost training and build job and resume banks for candidates of color.

A diverse pool of talent in the House would bring "innovative solutions to our complex national challenges," Pelosi said in a statement.

The move by House leaders follows longtime efforts by the federal government to boost diversity rates, particularly at senior levels of the executive branch. Those efforts have produced mixed results.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's most recent Report on the Federal Workforce found some progress but "little overall change" in the composition of the workforce from 1999 to 2008. The participation rates of Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders rose marginally, while African-American representation fell slightly. A Hispanic work group report by the EEOC noted that Hispanic participation in the federal workforce has increased only from 6.4 percent in 1997 to 7.8 percent in 2007.

But diversity efforts have quietly kicked in at specific agencies.

The Interior Department, for instance, said in January that it would boost hiring outreach to students in historically disadvantaged communities as well as programs to move interns into full-time jobs. Interior announced it would use a software system to track workforce demographics and monitor the results of diversity efforts.

And in June 2009, federal employee groups began ramping up efforts to support a bill -- now in subcommittee -- that would increase minorities in the Senior Executive Service.

Pelosi's Tuesday announcement garnered praise from members of the Congressional Hispanic Staff Association, a networking group interested in advancing opportunities for Hispanics on the Hill. But the group also noted that more needs to be done to boost minority presence in the legislative branch. A March report from the organization said Latinos made up only 2.7 percent of chiefs of staff and 2.1 percent of legislative directors -- despite the fact that Hispanics constitute nearly one-sixth of the total U.S. population. There are no Latino legislative directors in the Senate, and only one staff director out of the 40 top Senate committee positions is Hispanic.

]]>

Lawmaker questions consistency in crackdown on unpaid interns

Dawn Lim — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Earlier in April, the Labor Department announced it would crack down on firms that failed to pay interns in accordance with the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. "If the administration insists on pushing these requirements on private firms, it raises the question of whether the administration intends to simultaneously ensure governmentwide compliance with FLSA both in federal agencies and the White House," wrote Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in an April 12 letter to President Obama.

Under FLSA, internships can be unpaid if six conditions are met, including: Participants are not used as substitutes for paid employees, and if the programs are "for the benefit of the trainees," comparable to vocational or educational instruction, and give the employer no immediate advantage.

According to the White House Web site, its three- to four-month internships are unpaid positions and "applicants should expect to work at least Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m." The FAQ section of the site says "the White House Internship Program is highly competitive and we are experiencing great enthusiasm this year."

There is a statutory provision for unpaid internships in the federal government -- as long as interns are students, said John Palguta, vice president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group interested in workforce issues. The White House Internship Program is "a different animal" because it welcomes non-students on board, Palguta said.

Issa called on the White House to detail how many unpaid interns and volunteers it had this year and outline whether its internships meet FLSA criteria for unpaid positions. He also asked the White House to calculate the potential liability it has incurred since 2005 for any failure to pay minimum wages to interns.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the Office of Personnel Management could not be reached immediately.

Alyssa Rosenberg contributed to this report.

]]>