Industry and lawmakers want the General Services Administration to consider changing its green building standards, Federal Times’ Andy Medici writes. According to the report, the government is reviewing its green standards, shaping how building greenness will be measured and how to spend federal funding on construction over the next five years. The government currently relies [...]

The Commerce Department and the Environmental Protection Agency launched an effort Monday as part of an initiative to expand the U.S. environmental industry’s global presence. EPA recently held a Technology Market Summit, where Administrator Lisa Jackson and Commerce Secretary John Bryson detailed their agencies’ environmental technology and job creation efforts. The agencies created a web-based [...]

Defense Information Systems Agency officials recently detailed the agency’s plans to develop a mobile strategy in the coming months, FierceGovernment IT reports. DISA plans to establish a policy allowing personnel to use their own device to connect to unclassified networks by fall 2013 at the earliest. In the interim, the agency is planning structured testing [...]

The Department of Homeland Security plans to integrate its core missions to create synergies, Alice Lipowicz of Federal Computer Week reports. Richard Spires, DHS chief information officer, told attendees of a Northern Virginia AFCEA chapter event that DHS has already begun to integrate programs in its 13 major mission areas across 22 component agencies, Lipowicz reports. Spires [...]

The departments of Defense and Homeland Security are expanding a voluntary program for sharing cybersecurity information with the defense industrial base, the Pentagon announced Friday. In April, Defense Department Chief Information Officer Teri Takai told a conference that the Pentagon was seeking White House approval to expand the number of participating organizations from 37 to [...]

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is proposing the Veterans Health Administration reduce its number of regional medical administrative offices as part of a larger effort to streamline healthcare for veterans, Military Times reports. Burr told writer Patricia Kime these offices divert money largely towards overhead and other costs unrelated to healthcare. The VHA currently operates 21 [...]

Gen. Mark Welsh has been nominated to serve as the Air Force‘s next chief of staff, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced in a release Thursday. If confirmed, Welsh would succeed Gen. Norton Schwartz, who began serving as chief of staff in August 2008 and will complete his four-year term this coming August. Panetta said he [...]

By a largely party-line vote, the House passed a bill to replace defense cuts required under sequestration with cuts to social programs, The Hill newspaper’s Erik Wasson reports. In the 218-199 vote, 16 Republicans voted no to the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act and all Democrats opposed it. Nearly $72 billion in cuts to the Pentagon’s [...]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) believes the Defense Department should be in charge of defending the U.S. and critical infrastructure against cyber attacks, he wrote in a letter to the country’s highest-ranked cyber military officer. In the letter obtained by Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller, McCain told Army Gen. Keith Alexander that he, like Alexander, believes [...]

The House Appropriations Committee has proposed a budget authorizing a 6.5 percent increase in the information technology budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs, reports Alice Lipowicz for Federal Computer Week. The bill proposes a $3.3 billion budget for VA’s IT systems, a $200 million raise for VA CIO Roger Baker’s office from the previous [...]