Michael Rigas, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a memo Wednesday outlining temporary procedures on how agencies can facilitate vetting and appointment of employees amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The memo states that agencies that have capabilities to collect and process fingerprints are allowed to continue and comply with guidance for screening new personnel and their eligibility for personal identity verification credentials.

OPM will also allow agencies seeking to onboard new hires but do not have the capacity to perform fingerprint collection and processing must follow the current guidelines to advance the vetting process.

“Agencies will delay reporting the final adjudication of the background investigation until a fingerprint check has been completed and considered in the adjudication,” Rigas wrote in the memo. “Existing mechanisms for measuring the timeliness of adjudication compliance will continue; however, agencies will not be held accountable for adjudication reporting timeliness during the period this guidance is in effect.”

Rigas noted that the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency is establishing a procedure for background investigations processing that allows agencies to defer the requirement for fingerprint submission. “Once an agency is able to collect fingerprints for an individual whose investigation was submitted without them, the agency must submit the fingerprints to DCSA as described in DCSA’s procedure,” he added.

In-person identify proofing is required for the issuance of a credential. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, agencies seeking to onboard new hires may consider to perform identity proofing through remote inspection via email or video link.

Space and Missile Systems Center, now part of the U.S. Space Force, approached California’s state and local officials to maintain space technology production activities amid the coronavirus outbreak, Space News reported Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. John Thompson, SMC’s commander, said they had to sustain authorities’ awareness of work being done in support of national defense.

“We worked very closely last week with Santa Clara County in California, for example, to help Lockheed Martin and ensure the county knew the work done at Sunnyvale is critical to national defense,” he said in a home-based interview with Space News.

The commander also pointed out SMC’s priority to sustain work with small businesses and nontraditional contractors. He said these contractors offer technologies that SMC intends to incorporate into the defense procurement ecosystem.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a web-based software application for community planners to evaluate and compare projects aimed at increasing resilience of buildings and infrastructure assets to natural disasters.

NIST said Wednesday its researchers used input from government officials at the state and local levels to create the Economic Decision Guide Software in an effort to help planners determine an economical disaster preparedness approach.

“We have tried to make EDGe$ as user-friendly and straightforward as possible for economists and non-economists alike,” said Jennifer Helgeson, a NIST research economist who led the tool’s development.

Her team used the agency Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems as basis for the EDGe$ project. She also worked with Delaware Department of Transportation engineers to test the software’s beta versions in a real-world setting and to improve user interface.

The online tool bases its results on disaster-related variables input by users. Such considerations also include multipurpose benefits and potential effects on nearby communities.