Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich. and Patty Murray, D-Wash. have raised concerns about the Trump administration’s plans to dissolve the Office of Personnel Management and transition most of its duties to the General Services Administration. Peters and Murray wrote in a letter to OPM’s acting director Margaret Weichert that “alternative options” must be established to address OPM’s budget issues after the agency experienced a $69 million shortfall due to the transfer of the National Background and Investigations Bureau’s functions to the Department of Defense.

The senators noted that the budget gap has resulted in “premature and unnecessary” plans to send furlough notices to around 150 OPM employees and that a proposed merger with GSA could worsen OPM’s current workforce issues. 

“Despite months of congressional requests, the administration has failed to provide evidence that a proposed merger would save taxpayer dollars or even benefit the civil service,” the senators said. Peters is a ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, while Murray serves as the minority leader for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The Defense Innovation Board approved at its quarterly meeting in Silicon Valley a white paper calling for the Pentagon to implement zero trust architecture to counter cybersecurity threats, Fedscoop reported Wednesday. The document titled “The Road to Zero Trust (Security)” notes that ZTA can help the Department of Defense track and block threat actors and manage rules of access for devices and users across the department to facilitate secure data sharing.

“The network design and flexibility of ZTA will help DoD more rapidly adopt and implement critical network technologies and enablers, ranging from cloud computing to artificial intelligence and machine learning,” according to the paper.

The document discusses DoD’s reliance on the perimeter security approach and the three basic steps of ZTA that should be applied within the network at the level of services and applications: verify the user, verify the device and verify access privileges.

“The traditional notion of perimeter-based security is no longer sufficient,” said Kurt DelBene, a board member and one the report’s authors. He added that with ZTA, organizations assume that the network is compromised.

The board outlines several questions to ask when implementing ZTA, including the use of an encryption key management strategy, enforcement of multifactor authentication and availability of processes to screen end-user devices for malicious software.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has issued a strategic plan setting the agency’s direction through 2022. DISA said Wednesday that the plan provides a framework to guide the agency’s resource allocation, planning priorities and evaluation criteria in support of the joint forces’ efforts to counter adversaries, ensure resilience and adapt to challenges.

“This four-year plan focuses on our future within the Department of Defense and the ever-changing cyberspace environment,” Navy Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of DISA, wrote in the document. “It focuses on developing and reinforcing trusted partnerships to connect and protect the warfighter in cyberspace while contributing to the lethality of our joint fighting force.”

The document sets three strategic goals: operate and defend; adopt, buy and create solutions; and enable people and reform the agency. Under the strategic goals, DISA has outlined seven strategic objectives. One of those is to strengthen cybersecurity through the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which could help cyber defenders detect threat actors through automated analysis of threat indicators and system outputs.

Other strategic objectives cited are modernizing the infrastructure, enhancing operations, optimizing for the enterprise, driving innovation, enabling people and reforming the agency. The document also sets guiding principles to meet the strategic goals and objectives and they are enhancing customer service, partnering to collaborate, taking prudent risks and measuring what matters.

The Department of Health and Human Services has established a summit to foster discussions on further streamlining HHS-led quality programs. Eric Hargan, HHS deputy secretary, will chair the Quality Summit that would gather industry stakeholders and government officials to identify ways to further evaluate, adapt and streamline quality services for the country’s patients, the department said Tuesday.

QS is part of HHS’ efforts to review the quality and value transparency delivered to served patients. The summit also supports President Trump’s executive order for a federal health quality roadmap to guide the quality in federal health programs.

“A long-stated goal of the Trump Administration has been to shift our current government healthcare programs from paying for services and procedures to paying for better patient outcomes,” Hargan said. The department opened nominations for summit members through July 31.