Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said the federal government has made dramatic progress in modernizing federal hiring over the past year. Speaking at a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Berry said the Hiring Reform Initiative, which launched in May of last year, has helped to bring about the [...]

Department of Homeland Security cyber expert Phil Reitinger will step down from his post June 3, Federal News Radio reports, citing government and industry sources. Reitinger, the deputy undersecretary of DHS’ National Protection and Programs Directorate, was appointed in June 2009 after serving as chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist at Microsoft. “I have decided that the [...]

The Defense Department’s second-in-command for acquisition said yesterday the Pentagon doesn’t begrudge contractors’ profit margins, but that, in an era of compressed budgets, companies will have to earn them. “I am not opposed to high [profit] margins at all if they’re earned. I am opposed if they’re not,” said Frank Kendall, principal deputy undersecretary of [...]

Is the Defense Department prepared for a full audit by 2017? When the Pentagon released the most recent iteration of its Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness status report, a bipartisan group of senators balked, Politico reports. “Based on the findings of today’s FIAR Plan, it appears unlikely that the Department of Defense will be able [...]

Department of Homeland Security CIO Richard Spires said predictions that the government would lose its best IT experts to retirement and attrition have proven akin to the claims of Chicken Little. “It tends be a bit of a sky-is-falling discussion about this. I’m not trying to say it’s easy but, by God, we’re doing it,” [...]

Innovation was the watchword when government technology expert Dave McClure delivered his remarks at a recent ACT/IAC Management of Change conference in Hot Springs, Va. McClure, the associate administrator of the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, said, as the name of his unit implies, innovation starts with his office. “I [...]

White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra will travel to the West Coast for ConnectivityWeek, a series of workshops and panels Silicon Valley BizBlog called a “who’s who” in smart-grid technology and deployment. The event, spanning four days and some 250 speakers, will also feature representatives from Silicon Valley giants such as Intel and Cisco. [...]

The public unveiling of the administration’s international cybersecurity strategy yesterday brought out leading national security advisers, diplomats, and industry and academic representatives, all recognizing  that in 2011 cybersecurity is a part of national security. White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan and cyber coordinator Howard A. Schmidt hosted the event, which also included speeches by [...]

Forget doing more with less. Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who heads up the soon-to-be-defunct U.S. Joint Forces Command, said he believes because of lean defense budgets and evolving priorities, the Pentagon and the services “may have to do less with less.” “We must avoid the trap of doing more with less, which is a [...]

Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn said the answer to the conundrum posed by declining budgets and the need for continued investment in high-tech and cutting-edge tools is in “targeted” spending on research and development, according to a report in Defense News. Lynn took a page from the history books, likening the current budget [...]