The Department of Veterans Affairs faced tough questions Thursday from a House subcommittee after an internal audit found nearly 1,400 contracts intended for veteran-owned businesses were awarded to ineligible companies. Federal Times reports the contracts are supposed to be set aside for veteran-owned small businesses and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. However, companies can self-identify and [...]

The government could use cellular data to track the location of Americans as they move around the U.S., National Security Agency General Counsel Matthew Olsen said Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reports Olsen discussed the possibility at a confirmation hearing in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Olsen has been nominated to lead the National [...]

New behavior detection techniques are coming to airport checkpoints as soon as next month, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole said Thursday. According to Politico, Pistole was interviewed on-stage by CNN reporter Jeanne Meserve at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. TSA has officers trained to detect behaviors in potential terrorists at 161 airports around [...]

Federal agencies have made mixed progress in developing and implementing policies regarding the use of social media, a Government Accountability Office report says. The GAO audited 23 major federal agencies that use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in its 90-page report, issued Thursday. The GAO found 12 of the 23 agencies developed and outlined processes and [...]

The final Space Shuttle mission is not the end of human spaceflight, according to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Bolden wrote a guest column Sunday in the Orlando Sentinel, addressing the future direction of NASA’s human spaceflight mission. Bolden said NASA is working on a crew capsule that can send astronauts to new destinations such as [...]

The increased sharing of information and the increased speed of information are crucial to future military operations, Army Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr. said Tuesday. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency spoke to about 200 people at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Burgess addressed both the Program of Terrorism [...]

Fears surrounding the security of public cloud computing have been exaggerated to discourage the federal government’s move to the cloud, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said Wednesday. Computerworld reports Kundra spoke at a forum on Capitol Hill he organized with Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), with Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) also speaking at the forum. [...]

Federal agencies hosted a job fair Tuesday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. for job seekers looking for employment after the Space Shuttle program ended, Greenwire reports. NASA and the Office of Personnel Management hosted the job fair to help the nearly 5,500 employees at the Kennedy Space Center who have lost their jobs. Including the Energy [...]

The 20-year retirement system the military has used for generations should be phased out and be replaced with a corporate-style program, a Defense Department panel said. The Defense Business Board released its proposal July 21, recommending the corporate-style program contribute money to individual retirement savings accounts rather than future monthly pensions. Air Force Times reports [...]

Federal employees are rarely tied to their desks anymore and that means future workspace will be different, GSA Administrator Martha Johnson said July 21 at the FOSE Conference. Only 50 percent of the GSA office is occupied Tuesday through Thursday, with Mondays and Fridays seeing only 30 percent capacity. “To sit at a desk is [...]