Quick Hits

*** The Office of Personnel Management published a notice on Wednesday to allow surviving spouses in same-sex marriages to federal annuitants to apply for survivor benefits. Current rules require that the widow or widower to have been married to the federal employee or annuitant for at least nine months before their death. The change is meant to give benefits to survivors who might not have been able to meet that requirement because of laws, since deemed unconstitutional, restricting same-sex marriage. The new rule gives information about when OPM will mark that marriage requirement as satisfied for widows and widowers to provide them "with benefits they could have obtained had they been permitted to marry earlier in their states of residence."

*** The Justice Department Office of Inspector General is conducting an audit of DOJ's supply chain risk management efforts, to assess the agency's implementation of a program to identify, assess and mitigate supply chain risk. The IG referenced the audit in its annual review of management challenges, released on Tuesday. DOJ was one of the agencies hardest hit in the SolarWinds hack identified in December 2020.

*** President Joe Biden nominated Robert Storch, currently inspector general at the National Security Agency, to serve as inspector general at the Department of Defense. Storch, the first Senate-confirmed NSA IG, also served as deputy IG at the Department of Justice and vice chair of the technology committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, where he chaired its emerging technology subcommittee.