FCW Insider: May 15

The Trump administration plans this week to propose legislation to merge the Office of Personnel Management into the General Services Administration. Acting agency Director Margaret Weichert said that OPM is facing a $70 million shortfall with the revenue generating National Background Investigation Bureau moving to the Defense Department. Adam Mazmanian has the story.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, Americans like the Post Office, NASA and the Secret Service, but aren't thrilled by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. And the Department of Veterans Affairs is at the bottom of the list. Adam has more.

A winner on the $8.2 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions procurement is expected to be announced this summer, with integration and initial testing planned for the fall. Get the story from Lauren C. Williams.

Chris Krebs, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told a Senate panel that federal networks, particularly defense networks, face potential risks from interconnecting with systems that use China-made 5G infrastructure. Mark Rockwell explains.

New legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) would make it harder to sell certain technology products to China or Chinese-owned businesses, but it's not clear whether it would cut down on economic espionage. Derek B. Johnson takes a look.

Quick Hits

*** Florida Governor Ron DeSantis disclosed that election systems in two counties were breached by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. DeSantis said he could not reveal the counties because of a non-disclosure agreement he signed with the FBI.

In a May 14 press conference, DeSantis said he learned of "intrusion into the supervisor of election networks," but that voter information wasn't altered. The systems accessed were not connected to vote counting, DeSantis said.

Reports of at least one Florida election system breach were included in the report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller which was released in April. At the time, DeSantis promised to obtain answers from federal law enforcement, and he said he wanted to disclose the affected systems, but that it wasn't his call.

"I think they think if we name the counties, that may reveal information to the perpetrator that we know what they did, but you'd have to ask them. I think it should be named," he said.

*** A bipartisan group of senators are pushing a bill to have the Department of Homeland Security participate in setting cybersecurity guidelines for voting systems. Under the Voting System Cybersecurity Act of 2019, DHS would be included on the Election Assistance Commission's committee that creates voluntary standards used by voting system manufacturers. Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced the bill.