Gen. Raymond T. Odierno has overseen the U.S. Joint Forces Command as it transitions out of existence — part of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates‘ far-reaching efficiencies initiatives — and will now transition to a new role, himself. President Barack Obama announced this week he will nominate Odierno to be the Army’s next chief of [...]

Far from imposing another layer of bureaucratic IT chaos onto the Department of Homeland Security, the agency’s chief information officer says the ambitious 25-point federal IT reform plan has actually helped further “unite a largely decentralized agency into one.” Writing on CIO.gov, DHS CIO Richard Spires said the agency had made “substantial progress” on several [...]

The Army’s acquisition chief, Malcolm O’Neill, will resign after a little more than a year on the job, according to a report in Defense News. O’Neill sent an email to staff May 31 saying he is stepping down because for personal reasons. “The effective date of my resignation is as soon as possible, but I [...]

On the heels of the announcement that Barack Obama would nominate former energy executive John Bryson to head the Commerce Department comes news that former Microsoft executive and Clinton administration official Malcolm Lee would join Commerce’s policy shop. In a news release yesterday, the department announced Lee would take the helm of the Office of [...]

Lisa Schlosser, an Environmental Protection Agency official, will join the Office of Management and Budget as federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra’s deputy administrator in the Office of E-Government and Information Technology, according to various media reports. Schlosser, now the principal deputy associate administrator for EPA’s Office of External Affairs and Environmental Education, is reported [...]

The House Appropriations Committee has cut funding by 14 percent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and a number of other smaller agencies in a spending bill the committee passed this week, according to Federal Times. The White House originally requested some nearly $23 billion for the upcoming fiscal year, [...]

Federal agencies are having a slow-go of evaluating their use of service contracts, Federal News Radio reports, and some may, in fact, end up missing the June 30 deadline. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010 directed the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance on agencies’ use of service contractors. As part of the [...]

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence still has yet to disclose an official count of personnel and contractors holding top-secret security clearances, according to a Federal Times report. However, the agency says it will do so in a forthcoming report. In December, the head of the intelligence agency’s Special Security Center, John Fitzpatrick, [...]

The Defense Department has announced Shay Assad, who used to head up the department’s  Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy shop, has been named the director of defense pricing. The announcement came in the Defense Department’s listing of new members of the Senior Executive Service — the upper echelon of the federal government’s civilian workforce. Assad’s [...]