Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Katherine McIntire Peters

Former HUD Executive Indicted in Procurement Fraud Scheme

Katherine McIntire Peters — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 14:13:12 -0400

A federal grand jury on Wednesday returned a seven-count indictment against a former assistant inspector general at the Housing and Urban Development Department, charging him with procurement fraud.

According to the 19-page indictment, Eghbal “Eddie” Saffarinia “steered significant government business to Company A and its business partners” at the same time he was receiving payments worth tens of thousands of dollars from the Virginia-based company’s chief executive.

Saffarinia, a member of the Senior Executive Service, worked for HUD’s Office of Inspector General from February 2012 until September 2017, first as assistant IG for information technology and later as assistant IG for management and technology. He also served as the OIG’s head of contracting activity, where he was the senior manager supervising procurements.

The indictment alleges that beginning in early 2012, Saffarinia used his procurement oversight role and access to contractor proposal and source selection information to execute a scheme under which “Company A received approximately $1,065,520 for subcontractor work performed under the IT services contract.”

Allegedly assisting Saffarinia in the scheme was another OIG employee he hired in August 2012 to head the office's new predictive analytics department, the indictment alleges, referring to that individual as Person B. According to the indictment, Saffarinia, Person B and the company executive (Person A) “were friends who emigrated from the same country, went to college together in the early 1980s, and socialized with each other on a regular basis. Saffarinia and Person B also co-owned an information technology business in the late 1990s, and Saffarinia and Person A had a long-standing financial relationship.”

The Justice Department noted in a statement: “During a period in which Saffarinia received payments and loans from his friend totaling $80,000, Saffarinia disclosed confidential internal government information to his friend and undertook efforts to steer government contracts and provide competitive advantages and preferential treatment to his friend’s company. Saffarinia also failed to disclose this financial relationship and another large promissory note on his public financial disclosure forms.”

The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. Trial Attorneys Edward P. Sullivan and Rosaleen T. O’Gara of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.

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Shake Up at Homeland Security as Border Crisis Mounts

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 09:34:48 -0400

Just days after traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border to deal with a surge in migrants crossing from Latin America, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is stepping down. President Trump announced Nielsen’s abrupt resignation in a tweet Sunday evening.

“I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!” Trump tweeted.

Nielsen’s departure follows Trump’s growing anger about the border crisis; at one point last week he threatened to close the border to all traffic, alarming both Democrats and Republicans with what many believe would be an economically devastating move. He later backed off on that threat, saying he would give Mexico a year to stem the tide of drugs and migrants flowing into the United States.

On Friday, Trump surprised members of Congress by withdrawing from consideration his nominee to lead the department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Ronald Vitiello, telling reporters, “We’re going in a tougher direction.”

Nielsen has long had a difficult relationship with the president, who came into office promising to drastically curtail immigration, both legal and illegal. According to the New York Times, “Multiple White House officials said she had grown deeply paranoid in recent months, after numerous stories about her job being on the line. She also had supported the ICE nominee Mr. Trump withdrew, Ronald D. Vitiello, and her support for him was described as problematic for her with the president.”

The shakeup at Homeland Security leaves the department with key vacancies at a critical time. Under Trump, ICE has not had a permanent leader, while Homeland Security will soon have its third leader in less than three years. (Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly served as Trump’s first Homeland Security secretary before becoming White House chief of staff. He departed the administration in December.)

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, characterized Nielsen’s tenure at the department as a “disaster,” but put most of the blame for that on the president’s “terrible and cruel policies.” In a statement, he said, “This could not come at a worse time for the day to day management of the Department of Homeland Security and the over 220,000 employees that need leadership in order to best help keep the country secure. There is now currently no permanent secretary nor deputy secretary at the department. The Department will quickly need proven, Senate-confirmed leaders in place that can work with Congress in good faith to help keep the country safe and to fix the Trump-inflicted situation at the border.”

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., the committee’s ranking member, said, “Secretary Nielsen served her country honorably as Homeland Security secretary, despite facing numerous challenges including dire conditions at our southwest border. Although Commissioner McAleenan will have his work cut out for him, I am confident the department is in capable hands. I look forward to working with McAleenan in his new role and to learning who the president intends to nominate on a permanent basis.”

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Trump on a Feb. 15 Shutdown: 'We've Set the Stage for What Is Going to Happen'

Katherine McIntire Peters — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 17:24:14 -0500

Less than a week after President Trump ended the longest-ever government shutdown, he suggested he is willing to force another partial government shutdown on Feb. 15 if lawmakers don’t provide funding for a wall along the Southwest border. Or perhaps he will declare a national emergency. What he's not willing to do is forgo building a wall. Feb. 15 is when temporary funding expires for those agencies still reeling from the 35-day shutdown that ended Jan. 25, when lawmakers and the White House granted themselves three weeks to work out a border security funding deal.

"I think that by having the shutdown we have set the table. We've set the stage for what is going to happen Feb. 15," he said. “Without a wall it just doesn’t work.”

Trump made the remarks during a meeting at the White House with American manufacturers. Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would bring a funding bill to the floor with bipartisan support, but noted, "There's not going to be any wall money in the legislation."

Asked by a reporter if he was willing to risk the economic damage caused by another shutdown and what his message was to federal employees, Trump said:

“As far as the people are concerned, many of those people wanted me to stay out, but I didn’t want to do it because people were getting hurt. What I think is the worst sin of all is the fact that we’re allowing people to come into this country and sell drugs and human traffic and do all of these horrible things, that if we had the simplicity of a well-constructed, beautiful barrier or wall, they wouldn’t be able to come into our country. That to me is the great sin. And everybody knows it.”

“I was elected, partially on this issue,” he said. “If we don’t put up a barrier or wall, a strong one, but one that looks good, if we don’t put up a physical barrier, you can forget it.”

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Days Into the Shutdown, the Costs Are Mounting

Katherine McIntire Peters — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 10:07:00 -0500

Government shutdowns are expensive.

For government workers, the costs are personal—the mortgage payments, school tuition and utility bills will keep coming, even if paychecks are disrupted. Feds may eventually be compensated for lost wages (Congress has authorized retroactive pay for furloughed workers during past shutdowns), but if the shutdown drags on, the interim budget squeeze and uncertainty will undoubtedly impact morale, and for some, financial stability.

The Office of Personnel Management on Thursday tweeted this advice for federal workers:

Feds, here are sample letters you may use as a guide when working with your creditors during this furlough. If you need legal advice please consult with your personal attorney. https://t.co/t6h6OzALsS
— OPM (@USOPM) December 27, 2018

But the impact of a government shutdown, even a partial shutdown, is felt far beyond the affected workers and agencies themselves. The contract workers, the janitors who clean federal buildings, the small business owners who staff the lunch joints and dry cleaners that serve federal employees all will take a hit. Scientific research will be hurt (96 percent of NASA personnel faced furloughs). Local transportation projects will grind to a halt.

Some agencies face critical revenue losses, such as the National Park Service, which will not be able to collect access fees during the shutdown. Adding insult to injury, the clean up that will be required after the parks resume full operation promises to add considerably to the park service’s maintenance backlog.

State and local governments are also feeling the pain. As Route Fifty reported, the closure of national parks over the Christmas holiday left some states scrambling to cover for Interior Department furloughs: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced that his office would activate a plan to keep the Grand Canyon open, ensuring trash pickup, bathroom access and shuttles, along with other services. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state would spend $65,000 a day to keep open the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, while Utah Gov. Gary Herbert also said that parks would be open, although staffing could be limited.

Steve Benjamin, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, told Route Fifty that a longer shutdown, could affect a variety of local government programs, from job training to transportation. “There are roads projects happening all across the country right now, some of which depend on federal funding or federal approvals.” Benjamin said. “If leadership is MIA because of a shutdown, it could have a significant impact.”

Following the 16-day government shutdown in 2013, the Government Accountability Office analyzed the impact on operations, contracts and grants at three departments: Health and Human Services, Energy and Transportation. Of those three, only Transportation is affected by the current shutdown, but the findings are instructive, as they illustrate the ripple effects that few politicians seem to fully appreciate. Transportation had to close its Merchant Marine Academy, significantly disrupting students’ lives. The Federal Transit Administration had to stop processing grants and making payments to recipients.

According to GAO, the impact on industry varied and was difficult to fully measure:

Some contractor employees were reportedly laid off during the shutdown and furloughed contractor employees were not necessarily paid by their employer during or after the shutdown. For furloughed contractors, several circumstances influenced whether they could be paid during the shutdown, including whether work was allowable based on the terms of the contract that they worked on, the availability of other assignments, and whether their company chose to or was able to compensate them out of its own pocket if contract funds were unavailable . . . In addition to furloughs, some companies with affected contracts required employees to use leave or take paid or unpaid time off if they were unable to reassign employees to training or other nongovernment projects.

At least eight states furloughed state employees during the shutdown, GAO found, because of their reliance on federal grants.

According to an official from one national association representing recipients of federal transportation grants that we interviewed, transportation entities which use the funding for operational costs were especially vulnerable. Some local paratransit services which provide transportation to seniors and persons with disabilities, including providing the elderly with rides to doctors’ appointments, expressed concerns about possible disruptions stemming from a lack of funding if the shutdown continued. During the shutdown, the association officials said that some of these entities had developed plans to prioritize life sustaining travel, but that their flexibility to continue operations was limited if the shutdown continued.

Although there are limitations to comparing the current partial government shutdown to the 2013 shutdown (that shutdown affected most federal agencies), the message is clear. Government Executive reported on an analysis by the Congressional Research Service following the 2013 shutdown, which found that while federal spending—including the retroactive pay to furloughed employees—was eventually restored, “the loss of work hours could not be similarly reinstated. The ‘supply’ created by the government was irreversibly diminished as furloughed federal workers could not contribute to the production of government output while out of work.”

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Trump’s Pick to Lead VA Is a Surprise to Many, Including the Nominee

Katherine McIntire Peters — Fri, 18 May 2018 15:30:37 -0400

President Trump on Friday announced that he intends to nominate Robert Wilkie to lead the Veterans Affairs Department. Wilkie, formerly the Defense Department Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness, has been serving as the acting VA secretary since Trump fired David Shulkin from the post earlier this year.

Trump made the announcement before a White House event on prison reform where Wilkie was in attendance. “He doesn’t know this yet," Trump reportedly said. "I’m sorry that I ruined the surprise.”

According to a Washington Post report, “As the crowd applauded the announcement, Wilkie stood to shake the president's hand, nodding his head as he did so. Wilkie then received a standing ovation.”

Leadership turmoil and a high number of key vacancies at the department have roiled VA at a critical time. This week the House passed sweeping legislation that would overhaul veterans health care, expand vets’ access to private sector care on the government’s dime, and close some of its federally run facilities. The legislation is expected to pass the Senate next week and the president has said he wants to sign it into law before Memorial Day.

Trump’s first nominee for the job after firing Shulkin, White House physician Ronny Jackson, withdrew from consideration following multiple reports of poor leadership and mismanagement.

Even before Jackson announced his withdrawal, VA Press Secretary Curt Cashour said the “main goal” of the department under acting Secretary Robert Wilkie was to “restore regular order” at VA.

While Wilkie’s nomination is likely to run more smoothly than Jackson’s, the fact that he is currently the acting VA secretary complicates matters for the department. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Wilkie will have to step down from the position once his nomination is formally submitted to the Senate until he is confirmed.

Eric Katz contributed to this story.

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After Last-Minute Drama, Congress Passes a Government Funding Bill

Katherine McIntire Peters and Eric Katz — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 05:32:38 -0500

It was an unexpected nail-biter: After a short “technical” shutdown, Congress early Friday passed a measure that would raise spending levels by $300 billion over the next two years.

The vote came hours after appropriations expired at midnight, shuttering agencies for the second time in three weeks after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., derailed the Senate vote in a protest over ballooning deficit spending. The Senate finally passed the legislation early Friday with wide bipartisan support on a 71-28 vote.

The House convened at 4 a.m. and finally took up the legislation shortly after 5 a.m., passing the bill on a 240-186 vote.

The Bipartisan Budget Act, now heading to President Trump’s desk, will place agencies on their fifth continuing resolution of fiscal 2018, giving lawmakers until March 23 to set line-by-line appropriations for agencies across government.

The forthcoming omnibus spending bill would give appropriators an additional $63 billion for non-defense agencies, allocating a total $579 billion for fiscal 2018 for domestic agencies. Defense spending would increase by $80 billion. In fiscal 2019, non-defense spending would increase by $68 billion to $597 billion.

While the White House urged lawmakers to support the bill, the funding increases included in the legislation create a dilemma for the administration, which is set to release its own proposal for fiscal 2019 spending next week. "Unless the White House is clairvoyant, there’s no way the fiscal 2019 budget that’s due to be released this Monday will be relevant," said long-time budget watcher Stan Collender in a statement. Collender, executive vice president of global communications firm MSL, said the administration should postpone and revise its own budget release, otherwise, "it should be dismissed as a political anachronism and a waste of taxpayer dollars."

The Office of Management and Budget, in a statement of administration policy, said Congress should “enact without delay” the cuts Trump has proposed.

“It is critical that the Congress work to decrease non-defense spending in other areas to reduce America’s growing national debt,” OMB said. “The Bipartisan Budget Act provides non-defense discretionary spending levels higher than the administration deems necessary.”

Fiscal conservatives share the administration’s concerns, but most lawmakers praised the deal, with Republicans focusing largely on the increased military spending and Democrats on the relief civilian agencies will receive from the spending caps instituted by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

“Our middle class has suffered from a Congress that imposed a needless austerity on itself, limiting investment in jobs and education, infrastructure, scientific research, and more,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Thursday. “This budget deal puts that to an end as well.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in urging lawmakers to pass the deal Friday morning, said, “The Bipartisan Budget Act includes vital disaster relief money and funding for community health centers, and it repeals Obamacare’s destructive Independent Payment Advisory Board. Most importantly, after years of underfunding and budget uncertainty, this agreement fully funds our military at the level requested by Secretary Mattis and our generals.”

To appease Democrats, who are demanding a solution for dealing with the status of immigrants whose protective status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will soon expire, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., promised to hold a series of votes on a variety of proposals on the subject. In the House, Ryan has promised to bring to the floor any measure President Trump would sign, a caveat that led many Democrats to oppose the spending agreement.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday called on Ryan to “man up” and allow the chamber to vote on an array of immigration-related issues. Pelosi, however, did not whip her caucus to vote against the measure, even though she did not support it herself.

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The Trump Transition Goes Digital

Katherine McIntire Peters — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:17:15 -0500

For folks out there concerned that the next president might not know his way around a computer, rest assured President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team does. Government’s newest website, www.greatagain.gov, offers an overview of Trump’s top priorities, from regulatory reform to building that wall, as well as information about the mechanics of the transition itself.

The site also features an online application for those who want to work in the Trump administration and invites citizens to share ideas for how to make America great again.

And for anyone involved in the transition who wants to track government reform information on the go, the Government Accountability Office is now offering a transition app. According to Comptroller General and GAO Director Gene Dodaro, the agency’s extensive experience analyzing government programs and agencies makes it the logical organization to help bring people up speed on a wide range of vital issues.

“We’ve tried to make sure the app as directly as possible lays out quick lists of the major changes needed and allows users to navigate right to GAO’s reports for all the details,” Dodaro said in a statement.

The free app is available for both Apple and Android devices.

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Bob Brewin, 1944-2014

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:35:05 -0500

Dedicated readers of What’s Brewin’ may wonder why it has been quiet of late. Here’s the story.

The greatest professional pleasure any editor can have is to work with an exceptionally talented reporter. I’ve worked with many excellent reporters, but none more passionate, fearless or committed than Bob Brewin, the originator and driving force behind What’s Brewin.’ To borrow a marketing tagline from a defense contractor, Bob never forgot who he was working for. That is to say he never was happier than when he was taking on powerful interests on behalf of the powerless.

Bob was a brilliant reporter with a gift for slogging through jargon-laden government documents to find hidden gems—the stuff lesser reporters lack the patience for, but which was Bob’s stock in trade. FedBizOps never had a more committed reader. Bob could ferret out waste and inefficiency in the defense world more quickly and effectively than a team of inspectors general. He was not impressed with rank—a legacy of his days as a Marine infantryman in Vietnam—but if you earned his respect, you could find no better friend.

I first began working with Bob in the fall of 2010, three years after he joined Nextgov to help launch the publication. He had just begun reporting what would become his Broken Warrior series of stories on Nextgov and in Government Executive magazine, chronicling the health consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for troops and their families. The series earned a Jesse H. Neal Award, the country’s premier business journalism prize, in 2011.

Bob’s passion was personal as well as professional. From participating in an annual commemoration of the Bataan Death March to challenging Memorial Day traditions, he was bold and committed in his life and his work. After Bob’s service in Vietnam as a radioman, he returned to write about the war and its aftermath in his book “Vietnam on Trial: Westmoreland v. CBS.” He also confronted the toll that war took on his own life and spent his last decades helping others deal with similar experiences.

Bob was a character like none other. He once talked his way into a job at Reuters despite not having a college degree. My guess is they decided it would be easier to hire him than to endure his efforts to wear them down. Bob was by no means perfect. His spellcheck-evading misspellings were legendary in the newsroom, and if a story involved numbers you could count on him to mangle the math. But he always got the story straight. Bob had grit.

Bob lost his fight with cancer last week. For a man who fought and won so many battles in his life, that hardly seems possible.

Semper Fi and rest in peace, Marine.

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Wanted: Bold Leaders Who’ve Taken Risks to Make Government Work Better

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 19 May 2014 13:11:36 -0400

It’s time for the annual Nextgov Bold Awards to honor federal employees who are using technology in innovative ways to tackle some of government’s thorniest problem and, against considerable odds, are succeeding. You know who we’re talking about. It’s the woman in the cubicle next to you who wouldn’t take no for an answer, who refused to be dissuaded from solving that seemingly insoluble problem your agency faced. It’s the man on your staff who hacked his way to an idea that dramatically improved customer service. It’s the team you worked on that reinvented a critical operation, saving lives or money or both.

In other words, we’re looking for those uncommon government employees most of us know about but rarely hear enough about. They’re the people who are on a mission to tap the potential offered by new technologies to make government work better. We want to tell their stories and honor their service. Here are the particulars:

We’re accepting nominations through June 23.
Our editorial team will select a dozen or more finalists (last year we had 19 finalists), which will be announced in July.
You, dear reader, will have an opportunity to vote for a “people’s choice” winner online from July 28-August 8.
We’ll announce the winners, including the People’s Choice, at Nextgov Prime on Sept. 8-9 in Washington.

Last year’s winners were an eclectic group whose work improved the lives of veterans, reduced the threat to endangered whales and boosted the effectiveness of humanitarian aid. We’re looking forward to learning about all the transformative things the 2014 nominees are up to. If you know of a worthy candidate (or team), please nominate them today.

Please note the nomination period has been extended through June 23.

(Image via kentoh/Shutterstock.com)

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Pentagon CIO Shuffle: Navy Exec Takes the Reins at Defense

Katherine McIntire Peters — Wed, 14 May 2014 15:24:06 -0400

Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced in a memo to staff Tuesday that Navy Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen would become the department's acting CIO next week. David Devries, the department's deputy CIO for information enterprise, has been holding the post in an acting capacity since Teri Takai stepped down from the position May 2.

The news was first reported by Politico.

Work, who served as deputy secretary of the Navy from early 2009 to March 2013, worked closely with Halvorsen on Navy IT issues. Among the most important was the Next Generation Enterprise Network contract, valued at $3.5 billion and designed to replace the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Ultimately it will serve 800,000 military users in the United States.

Takai, as the former Defense CIO, pushed the military services hard to embrace departmentwide enterprise IT operations based on cloud computing as a way to operate more efficiently and cut costs. But Halvorsen hasn't fully embraced those concepts for the Navy. In November, he told Nextgov that the Navy would conduct a business case analysis before signing on to a Defensewide email system pushed by Takai. The service had already built email into its NGEN contract.

Halvorsen's appointment as acting Defense CIO does not necessarily mean he will assume the title formally, a Pentagon spokeswoman told C4ISR.

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Federal Managers Need Better Training in Data Analytics

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 12 May 2014 16:16:33 -0400

While agencies are generating a lot more data than they used to, the promise of "big data" remains elusive for many organizations because the information is either insufficient, unreliable or managers don't know how to use it -- or all three.

"Our No. 1 objective is to make sure data is valid," said Angela Bailey, chief operating officer at the Office of Personnel Management, speaking at Government Executive's Excellence in Government conference in Washington on Monday. But accuracy isn't enough if it doesn't tell you what you need to know. For example, while OPM can say how many federal employees will be eligible to retire at a given time, it's much more difficult to predict how many are actually likely to retire at that point.

To understand if someone is likely to retire you'd need to know much more than their age or years of federal service, Bailey said. Are they married? Do they have alimony obligations or young children or children in college? Do they have a large mortgage? Are they in good health? Are their parents alive and financially secure or in good health? That's the kind of information people factor into retirement planning. Without it, you can't make informed projections about individuals' intentions.

Steve Goodrich, vice chairman of the Government Transformation Initiative, said agencies are much more adept at collecting and using data than in the past, but they still have a long way to go.

In particular, agencies need to focus on developing and promoting data-savvy managers and executives. "Education and training programs need to adapt" to new expectations and requirements of leaders, Goodrich said.

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, which President Obama signed into law on Friday, could increase exponentially the amount of data agencies generate and will have access to. It requires them to standardize the way they track and report procurement information with the goal of improving insight into federal spending.

The DATA Act is expected to have a huge impact governmentwide, but especially at the Defense Department, which completes about 9,000 procurement transactions every month, Goodrich said.

As data becomes standardized it will become much more useful, he said.

(Image via bloomua/Shutterstock.com)

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One Chart Shows Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Feds With Your Data

Ross Gianfortune and Katherine McIntire Peters — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 14:08:39 -0400

We reported in January about the spike in government data breaches that has compromised the personal information of federal employees and citizens.

A report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office shows that security incidents involving personally identifiable information more than doubled between 2009, when there were 10,481 such breaches, and 2013, when the number climbed to 25,566.

Collectively, the breaches affect hundreds of thousands of people and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. For example, in July 2013, hackers stole a variety of information, including Social Security numbers, bank account numbers and security questions and answers associated with more than 104,000 individuals from an Energy Department computer system. According to Energy’s inspector general, the costs of assisting affected individuals and lost productivity stemming from the breach could top $3.7 million, GAO noted.

Among other problems, GAO noted that only one of seven agencies reviewed by auditors correlated an assigned risk level with breaches of personal information and none of the seven consistently documented lessons learned from their breach responses.

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State Taps Atlantic Media CTO to Manage Digital Diplomacy Program

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 09:37:56 -0400

Tom Cochran, the former director of New Media Technologies at the White House before becoming chief technology officer at Atlantic Media, Nextgov's parent company, returned to government today to work in the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs. As managing director, Cochran will support the Obama administration's foreign policy initiatives.

"I'm really excited to help establish a worldwide platform, connecting online and offline assets for digital engagement," Cochran said. "I'd like to apply my experiences from a global media brand, digital startup, and online advocacy to [the bureau] and public diplomacy."

The Bureau of International Information met with controversy last year when the department's inspector general reported that officials spent $630,000 to buy facebook fans in an effort to build engagement with foreign audiences. According to the IG report, "Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as "buying fans" who may have once clicked on an ad or "liked" a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further. Defenders of advertising point to the difficulty of finding a page on Facebook with a general search and the need to use ads to increase visibility."

One of Cochran's most visible initiatives during his earlier service in the Obama administration was leading the team that created the We the People petition site . The site has driven public engagement on a range of topics, from whether pop star Justin Beiber should be deported to gun control .

At State, Cochran will work under Macon Phillips , the former White House director of digital strategy who moved to the department last year to serve as coordinator for IIP.

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Cloud Computing Isn’t Just for Email

Katherine McIntire Peters — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 18:10:19 -0400

For a lot of federal IT managers, cloud computing offers tremendous potential for tackling a range of challenges, from optimizing data storage to maintaining the most up-to-date software and security. But for most agencies, it remains just that -- potential.

On April 8, Nextgov will explore that potential -- both tapped and untapped -- at a half-day event in Washington: The Path to Open Cloud. David Bennett, chief information officer at the Defense Information Systems Agency, will give a keynote presentation drawing on his experience leading one of the most complex IT organizations in government.

During Bennett’s tenure, DISA has given the nod to a number of commercial cloud service providers, most recently Amazon Web Services, allowing the companies to compete for departmentwide contracts handling low-risk unclassified information. The cloud service providers have met security standards established through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, known as FedRAMP, as well as additional Defense-unique security standards. Even DISA is getting into the cloud business. Last week the agency launched its own cloud computing service for the department, called milCloud.

Also speaking at the event will be FedRAMP Director Maria Roat, who will discuss how this critical program is evolving. Roat brings a wealth of experience to the issue from her previous stints at the Homeland Security Department and her 26-year Navy career. Speakers will discuss the potential for savings and increased efficiency, case studies in public cloud integration and security challenges and requirements.

Federal employees can register for the free event here.

(Image via Semisatch/Shutterstock.com)

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Give Us 3 Minutes of Your Time

Katherine McIntire Peters — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 16:58:28 -0400

In partnership with the Government Business Council (the research arm of Government Executive Media Group) Nextgov is conducting quarterly surveys of federal IT professionals to gauge, among other things, how well agencies are doing in meeting the Obama administration’s IT priorities.

Our Federal Tech Insiders Poll will explore things such as the influence of CIOs and CTOs on agency missions; barriers to innovation; the opportunities and challenges posed by cloud computing; the risks and benefits of releasing more data to the public.

We know you’re busy, so we’ve designed this to be quick and painless (it will take you 3 minutes, according to our research team). And for making that small investment of time, we'll share the results with you first. Please take the survey here.

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Do You Work in Federal Technology? We Want to Hear From You.

Katherine McIntire Peters — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 18:14:17 -0500

The link between mission success and solid IT performance has never been clearer. That’s long been the case, but the rocky rollout last October of the website designed to support the Affordable Care Act, the Obama Administration’s signature policy achievement, brought home how easily an ill-managed technology program could undermine and jeopardize a major government initiative.

While software glitches, schedule delays and cost overruns have become a staple of more large IT programs than not, the spectacular Obamacare debacle reinforced the efforts of lawmakers in both parties to reform the way agencies buy and manage large technology programs. As such, the roles of chief information officers, chief technology officers, chief information security officers and their staffs are shifting -- or at least there’s a growing contingent of observers who believe they need to evolve to better manage programs that have in many ways become unmanageable.

To better understand the changing dynamics of IT management, the Government Business Council -- the research arm of Government Executive Media Group -- is launching quarterly surveys of government IT professionals. We intend to explore a number of issues, including the influence of CIOs and CTOs on agency missions; the opportunities and challenges posed by cloud computing; the value of opening more government data to the public; the risks and benefits of commercial and open source products; and advances in digital government.

If you’re involved in any of these issues, we hope you’ll take the time to participate. We promise we won’t take up much of your time and we’ll share the results. You can sign up here:

Fill out my online form.

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VanRoekel: Don't Let Sunk Costs Sink Innovation

Katherine McIntire Peters — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 16:23:22 -0500

Too many federal officials believe that to do more you have to spend more, but in fact that opposite can be true, acccording to the Obama administration's top technology official.

"There's a general culture of big failure," said Steven VanRoekel, federal chief information officer. Big ideas too often lead to big vendors and big contracts -- generallly an unsustainable approach to implementing major changes, he said.

VanRoekel spoke at an innovations awards program sponsored by ACT-IAC, a government-industry partnership organization.

He challenged the audience to think about what they could do for $10,000 or $50,000 to demonstrate new ideas before jumping into full-blown technology investments.

Agencies need to figure out how to test new ideas quickly and move on if they prove untenable, he said. His advice to feds:

Think about the outcome you want to achieve and strive for continuous achievement.
Take a customer-centeric approach.
Don't let sunk costs or sunk culture define the way forward.

"This is an all hands on deck effort," VanRoekel said, noting that it's critical for agencies to break down the stovepipes between acquisition, human resources, finance and technology staffs.

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Edward Snowden and the Power of Cloud Computing

Katherine McIntire Peters — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 13:11:16 -0500

Allison Stanger has an excellent piece over at Quartz titled “Why Edward Snowden is not a whistleblower.” Setting aside the title’s assertion, the Leng Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College makes a compelling case for the revolutionary power of cloud computing.

Cloud computing itself isn’t exactly new, as anyone who remembers the era of mainframe computing and dumb terminals knows. What is new is the scale of cloud platforms and the broad access to computing power and software applications those platforms offer. The announcement earlier this week that IBM will soon offer Watson Supercomputer cloud services to interested businesses drives home the point.

But there’s a clear tradeoff that accompanies such computing power, at least until the law catches up with the technology, Stanger notes:

“Cheap and powerful cloud computing potentially serves the interests of companies, consumers, and democracy alike. It also poses a great challenge. Whatever aspect of your life has been uploaded to the cloud does not currently have the same constitutional protection as the same information stored in a drawer in your home. The Fourth Amendment requires government to justify to a court why it has a compelling interest in your personal information. It protects the contents of your laptop from illegal search and seizure, but once you deposit something up in the cloud, you lose that protection. While there are some protections that treat emails like sealed letters, Fourth Amendment protection largely ends where virtual reality begins, since Americans are volunteering to share in this way, not being coerced to do so.”

Unfortunately, there’s little indication Congress is prepared to bridge the gap between law and technology anytime soon.

Get the Nextgov iPhone app to keep up with government technology news.

(Image via Rena Schild / Shutterstock.com)

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Drone Testing Could Soon Come to an Airfield Near You

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 14:06:07 -0500

Following a 10-month evaluation process, the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday announced it had picked six entities across the country to research and test the use of remotely-piloted aircraft in domestic airspace.

While the potential widespread use of drones has alarmed privacy advocates and some safety officials, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement, “These test sites will give us valuable information about how best to ensure the safe introduction of this advanced technology into our nation’s skies.”

A September report by the department’s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, conducted at the request of the Air Force, estimated that civilian agencies at all levels of government will operate as many as 70,000 unmanned systems in domestic airspace by 2035, many for emergency response. What’s more, the center predicts that as the market for unmanned systems evolves, commercial drone sales will approach 250,000 by 2035, of which 175,000 will be in the commercial marketplace.

“Safety continues to be our first priority as we move forward with integrating unmanned aircraft systems into U.S. airspace,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. “We have successfully brought new technology into the nation’s aviation system for more than 50 years, and I have no doubt we will do the same with unmanned aircraft.”

The six operators include:

University of Alaska. The university will operate multiple test sites, including in Hawaii and Oregon, in seven climatic zones. The research plan includes development of standards for unmanned aircraft categories, state monitoring and navigation. Alaska also plans to work on safety standards.
State of Nevada. The state will concentrate on UAS standards and operations as well as operator standards and certification requirements. Nevada will examine how air traffic control procedures will evolve with the introduction of UAS into the civil environment and how these aircraft will be integrated with NextGen.
New York’s Griffiss International Airport. Griffiss International plans to work on developing test and evaluation as well as verification and validation processes under FAA safety oversight. Research will focus on sense-and-avoid capabilities and the complexities of integrating unmanned systems into the congested, northeast airspace.
North Dakota Department of Commerce. The state agency plans to develop airworthiness essential data and validate high reliability link technology. It will also conduct human factors research. North Dakota’s application was the only one to offer a test range in the temperate (continental) climate zone and included a variety of airspace, which will benefit multiple users.
Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. The university will develop system safety requirements.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Virginia Tech plans to conduct failure mode testing and identify and evaluate operational and technical risks areas. The school’s proposal includes test site range locations in both Virginia and New Jersey.

The six were selected among 25 proposals from 24 states.

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HHS Chief Seeks Investigation Into Obamacare Website Contracts

Katherine McIntire Peters — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:32:03 -0500

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday asked the department’s inspector general to investigate the contracting process behind the government’s botched rollout of the online health insurance exchange in October.

In a letter to Inspector General Daniel Levinson, Sebelius said it’s critical to understand the factors that contributed to the failed launch of HealthCare.gov. “I am requesting that your office undertake a review of the work of our contractors, and the management of and payments to those contractors, in the development of HealthCare.gov,” she wrote.

Specifically, she requested an investigation of the acquisition process; contractor selection and project management; contractor performance and monitoring; and payments to contractors throughout the process.

In a blog post on HHS’ website this morning, Sebelius said the investigation was one in a series of steps she was announcing to “better understanding the structural and managerial policies that led to the flawed launch of HealthCare.gov.”

“These actions will also focus on our work with contractors. This is critical, because HHS is the third largest federal contracting agency, and CMS alone spent $5.3 billion in 2013 on contracting engagements. We must take steps to ensure that our contractors are well managed, and that they fulfill their commitments and provide good services and products for our tax dollars.”

In addition to requesting the IG investigation, Sebelius asked Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the HHS agency responsible for developing the health exchange website, to create a new position for a chief risk officer at the agency.

“The chief risk officer’s first assignment will be to review risk management practices when it comes to IT acquisition and contracting, starting with identifying the risk factors that impeded the successful launch of the HealthCare.gov website,” Sebelius said. “I will ask this individual to report back to me in 60 days with recommendations for strategies to mitigate risks in future large-scale, CMS contracting and IT acquisition projects.”

Finally, she said CMS will update and expand employee training on best practices for contractor and procurement management, rules and procedures.

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IT Procurement Reform Comes with a Price Tag: $145 Million

Katherine McIntire Peters — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:07:58 -0500

A bipartisan bill aimed at reforming the way agencies buy information technology would cost $145 million to implement through 2018, the Congressional Budget Office has determined.

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, known as FITARA, would give agency chief information officers more authority and responsibility for justifying IT expenditures and establish a center to coordinate IT acquisitions.

The bill would create the Federal Infrastructure and Common Application Collaboration Center, which would advise agencies on IT procurement. To fund the center, the legislation directs 5 percent of the amounts currently set aside from money appropriated for goods and services through governmentwide and multiple award contracts be deposited in a Federal IT Acquisition Management Improvement Fund. The collaboration center could tap the fund to improve IT purchasing and recruit and train IT personnel.

FITARA would expand the role of agency CIOs and require them to fulfill new reporting requirements. CBO estimates it would cost about $50 million to pay for the new staff authorized by the legislation and another $15 million for administrative outlays. An additional $18 million in new spending would be required for improvements to federal IT infrastructure, CBO found.

FITARA is notable for being one of the few bipartisan bills to emerge from the House this Congress. California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly, ranking member on the subcommittee on technology, procurement and information policy, cosponsored H.R. 1232. A version of the bill was amended to the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House in June.

CBO conducted its assessment assuming the bill would be enacted in early 2014.

(Image via Odua Images/Shutterstock.com)

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Three Technology Trends Driving Big Changes for Federal Managers

Katherine McIntire Peters — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 16:41:40 -0500

The bungled rollout of HealthCare.gov has created a crisis of confidence in government’s ability to execute technologically complex undertakings. Nevermind the human genome project, NASAs exploration of Mars or a host of other breakthrough initiatives, the collateral damage inflicted by the malfunctioning insurance exchange has politicians, taxpayers and even federal employees questioning whether agencies can operate effectively in a digital world.

There’s no better place to dig into those concerns than at Nextgov Prime, our annual conference on technology and the future of government. We’ve tapped an outstanding line-up of speakers inside and outside government to discuss the range of challenges federal leaders and managers face when it comes to implementing tech programs. The conference is Nov. 20-21 in Washington and registration is free for federal employees. Among other things (like recognizing our Bold Award finalists and winners), we’ll be exploring the following trends:

Every manager has an IT portfolio, whether they recognize it or not. The best ones will learn how to leverage technology as effectively as they manage people and resources. I’ll be moderating a session on software applications that advance the mission with two of our Bold Award finalists: NOAA’s David Wiley, who helped develop the successful Whale Alert app; and Jonathan Rubin, who runs GSA’s governmentwide usability testing program. We’ll also hear a lot about innovation from Leigh Heyman, the White House director of new media technologies, and Clay Johnson, a former presidential innovation fellow in the news recently for his take on what went wrong with HealthCare.gov.
Data is driving big changes in the way agencies track everything from spending to productivity. The executive staff of the Recovery Board, including CIO Shawn Kingsberry, CISO Veda Woods and CTO Hemanth Setty, will discuss how they quickly built a mammoth data library to track disaster assistance contracts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Gray Brooks, senior API strategist at GSA, and Michael Byrne, geographic information officer at the FCC, will discuss how open data policies can serve agencies as well as citizens.
Agency leaders need to think like the entrepreneurs behind successful tech start-ups. Richard Boly, former director of the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy, will explain how it’s as important to be able to hack the bureaucracy as it is to wield technical skills to get things done in government. In a similar vein, former White House innovation fellow Ben Balter, now at Github, will talk to Mark Schwartz, CIO at Citizenship and Immigration Services, and others about how agencies can operate more like lean start-ups. In addition, you’ll learn how a handful of people at the Veterans Administration drove a revolutionary idea from concept to reality in just six months when my colleague Bob Brewin leads a discussion with Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and craigconnects, and Peter Levin, former VA CTO, about the department’s Blue Button program, which gives millions of veterans across the country easy, one-click access to their own health care records.

(Image via pedrosek/Shutterstock.com)

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How to Build an Effective Government Website

Katherine McIntire Peters — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:47:37 -0400

You might not know it from all the negative publicity surrounding the rollout of HealthCare.gov, but it really is possible for federal officials to create a searchable, public facing website that integrates complex government data sets from disparate sources and computer systems. Just ask the folks at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, the organization created in 2009 to track $840 billion in federal stimulus spending. Based on its success, it was later tapped to do the same for disaster relief spending following Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The Recovery Board executive staff will discuss how they did it at Nextgov Prime Nov. 20. Shawn Kingsberry, chief technology officer; Veda Woods, chief information security officer; and Hermanth Setty, chief technology officer, will talk about how they created the architecture on a very tight timeline to effectively track spending.

Their experience speaks directly to the challenges agencies will likely face if Congress passes the 2013 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, which aims to create a single website for citizens to track federal spending.

“Americans should be able to go to one place to see information about federal spending,” Earl Devaney, the former chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said Monday in remarks at the executive leadership conference sponsored by ACT-IAC, a public-private technology group.

The Data Act, introduced by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., (S. 994) and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., (H.R. 2061) in May, has a good chance of becoming law next year, Devaney said. All the more reason you should join us at Prime next month. Registration is free for federal employees.

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Obama’s Top Tech Official: HealthCare.gov Is a ‘Teachable Moment’

Katherine McIntire Peters — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 09:42:31 -0400

Correction: This story initially said VanRoekel did not take questions from the audience. He did take questions later, following another speaker's remarks. There were no questions on HealthCare.gov.

In his first public remarks in seven months, Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel told an audience dominated by IT contractors that the debacle surrounding the Obama administration’s online health insurance exchange represents “a teachable moment for government.”

He said the administration should be applauded for its boldness in creating the health exchanges. He offered no explanation for why the administration failed to adequately test the website, HealthCare.gov, prior to launching it Oct. 1.

“We should all be proud of the fact that something this complex, this integrated to legacy systems -- and there are mainframes out there this thing hooks to -- was done at Internet scale and taken online in this way. Just the fact that we have transactions moving between agencies using open data, using modular development, using technology in a way that moves really from a 19^th and 20^th Century government paper approach to an online approach is something we all should be proud of,” VanRoekel said.

VanRoekel made his remarks in Williamsburg, Va., at the annual executive leadership conference hosted by the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council, a public-private technology group known as ACT-IAC. He did not elaborate on how the administration is addressing problems that have nearly crippled HealthCare.gov since its launch.

“It is a complex project,” VanRoekel said. “The fact that we’re moving transactions around securely, respecting privacy and other things -- there is incredible complexity out there.”

“Even in large multinational companies this stuff happens,” he said, recalling his days as a Microsoft executive.

“Our goal here is to definitely fix this thing and make sure it’s working and meet people’s expectations,” he said.

Join Nextgov's Joseph Marks at 2 p.m. today as he moderates a Google Hangout discussion with three technology experts using screenshare and examples on how to fix Healthcare.gov from a user and back-end standpoint. The discussion will be archived on Nextgov's Google+ page and on the Nextgov YouTube channel.

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Feds Could Exploit Open Data Policies to Improve Management

Katherine McIntire Peters — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 17:18:19 -0400

My colleague Brittany Ballenstedt has a blog post today about how innovative feds can use application programming interfaces to bypass reluctant leaders who may not see the value of changing the way their organization does business. Most of the discussion about APIs has focused on how data can be marshalled to improve citizen services or support entrepreneurs.

But new open data policies are also creating opportunities for improving agencies' internal operations. It's an issue we'll be exploring at Nextgov Prime in Washington Nov. 20-21. In one session titled "The Federal Startup," Ben Balter, a former White House innovation fellow now at GitHub, will moderate a discussion about how some federal leaders are building lean, agile organizations to tackle big challenges. In another, Socrata's Safouen Rabah will talk to VA Chief Technology Officer Marina Martin and GSA senior API strategist Gray Brooks and others about how feds can tap APIs behind their agency's firewall to share data more efficiently and make more informed operational decisions.

Registration for federal employees is free.

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