Quick Hits

*** Labor groups including several representing federal, state and local government employees rushed to support the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, the $3 trillion COVID-19 relief and recovery bill proposed by House Democrats aimed at bolstering workers and state and local economies. The bill also includes protections for federal workers.

"We are glad to see that this legislation emphasizes the needs of front-line workers, who continue to put themselves and their families in harms' way every day they report to work," Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.

*** A predictive modeling tool from the Science & Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security could help researchers understand the ability of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to remain active under a variety of climate conditions, the agency announced in a May 13 release.

*** In a May 12 blog post, innovation group 18F explained how a process of interpreting laws and regulations as code could empower agencies to rapidly release public-facing tools that incorporate alterations to existing rules – with potential consequences for emergency management. As an example, 18F cited a tool that incorporated U.S. Department of Agriculture waivers for states to grant eligibility for food stamps in response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

"We decided to challenge ourselves and see how quickly we could add this new rule to our prototype. We found that we could add the rule in a single morning," authors Alex Soble and Mike Gintz wrote in their post.