The Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012 passed Thursday by a 93-7 vote with a provision requiring contractors to monitor their supply chain. The amendment, sponsored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), also requires contractors to buy parts from trusted suppliers as determined by the Defense Department. [...]
The non-profit group Expert Labs recently released a new social media dashboard. Results from its Federal Social Media Index, which ranks 125 federal agencies based on public engagement on Twitter, showed a trend of agencies with less followers engaging with more with their followers than the more popular agencies. The dashboard measures Twitter success and, [...]
DARPA recently announced that its shredder challenge, issued about a month ago and tasking participants to piece back together five shredded documents, was solved in 33 days. The winning team was a San Francisco-based group who used custom-coded algorithms to aid through suggesting fragment pairings to human assemblers for verification. “Lots of experts were skeptical that a solution [...]
The Postal Service announced Monday it will proceed with its plan to cut future spending costs. The financially-strapped agency is proposing to shift first class mail to a 2-3 day standard in contiguous U.S. destinations. The announcement comes just weeks after the government agency closed its books on fiscal year 2012, recording a $5.1 billion [...]
The Defense Department is planning to set up an intelligence-gathering hub at the former Bethesda, Md. home of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Washington Business Journal reports. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Defense Intelligence Agency are working on the large-scale project, which could take nearly five years. The corps, responsible for the military’s [...]
IBM’s public sector business analytics and optimization practice and the Partnership for Public Service recently released a report on the role of analytics in measuring agency performance. The report revealed that data collection is only the first step in turning facts and figures into usable information. “Without good measures, without good data to track progress, to foster collaboration, to [...]
The House Intelligence Committee passed a cybersecurity bill on Thursday with a few amendments. The bill aims to increase sharing of cybersecurity intelligence between agencies and private companies. By a 17-1 vote, the committee passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011. The bill builds on a pilot Pentagon program for sharing sensitive information with defense [...]
Smaller budgets calls for more creative means and smart contracting. This was the topic at a recent discussion in Washington, where some called for the acquisition workforce to take the necessary risks to enable innovation, according to a Government Executive report. The discussion, co-chaired by Reps. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and entitled “Innovation in [...]
A key official in the government’s efforts to increase small business contracting is headed to the White House. As typical as such a move may sound, it may also foreshadow the news of who replaces Dan Gordon, outgoing administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. Joseph Jordan, the Small Business Administration‘s associate administrator of [...]
The New York Times’ “You’re the Boss” blog recently reported on reaction regarding the Obama administration‘s “QuickPay” program for small businesses. The program reduces payment time for small-business invoices from 30 to 15 days. However, the issue at hand is whether or not the 15 days is within the time and point of which the [...]