The Government Accountability Office is requesting $647.6M in funds to continue its operations for fiscal year 2020, GAO said Wednesday.

Gene Dodaro, the U.S. comptroller general and head of the government watchdog, said in a testimony before the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch that GAO is also requesting for the authority to use $38.3M in reimbursements and offsetting receipts. 

Dodaro noted that the funding would support full-time equivalents and investments addressing GAO’s security needs, building maintenance, information technology and infrastructure. He added that for FY 2020, GAO plans to increase its capabilities to review Department of Defense investments, evolving science and technology issues, rising healthcare costs and cybersecurity development issues.

“The activities planned for FY 2020 will better position GAO to assist the Congress in meeting its legislative and oversight responsibilities, accomplish our mission objectives and goals, and improve government performance and accountability,” he said.

Up to $1.1B in funding has been allocated to the U.S. Air Force in a new Senate bill intending to help the government in disaster-relief efforts, Air Force Magazine reported Wednesday.

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The Air Force budget is part of the $13.6B government-wide funding package to address the aftermath of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and wildfires, among other natural disasters. The bill was introduced by Republican Sens. David Perdue and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Alabama Democrat Doug Jones.

The over $1B budget for the Air Force would fund construction, operations and maintenance of the service’s installations affected during the 2018 hurricane season. Up to $700M would go to planning, design and construction projects for facilities damaged by Hurricane Michael, while the remaining $400M would be for emergency spending. The bill states that the funding could support the service’s construction projects through Sept. 30, 2023.

If signed into law, lawmakers intend to require Air Force officials to submit a plan for how it will spend the funds before releasing the money.

A top official at the Small Business Administration said previous changes in processes and operations allowed the agency to resume work immediately after the 35-day government shutdown, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

William Manger, associate administrator of SBA’s Office of Capital Access, said the process improvements placed by the agency’s head Linda McMahon “greatly enhanced” their ability to get back to business. Manger made the remarks during a meeting with House Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations on Tuesday.

In late 2018, the SBA reduced the time to process and approve loan applications and stopped operations of its central service system during the government shutdown to limit the loans in queue. Both efforts allowed SBA to resume operations without any backlog of loan applications after the shutdown, Manger said.

Since reopening on Jan. 28, the agency approved nearly 8,000 loans and released a total of $3.7B. SBA said it also remains on schedule to implement changes in its Office of Credit Risk Management as required in the Small Business 7(a) Lending Oversight Reform Act of 2018. The law seeks to change OCRM’s supervisory duties by June.

A Pentagon cyber adviser said the lack of personnel and complicated security clearance process has slowed implementation of a congressional authority for faster hiring of cyber and tech workers at the agency, FCW reported Tuesday. During a recent meeting with the Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Marines Corps Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall, deputy principal cyber adviser for the Department of Defense, said the agency faces delays implementing the Cyber Excepted Service program.

Congress granted DoD the CES authority to accelerate the entry of cyber and tech workers. Crall said the agency is set to enter phase 2 of the program but the same personnel and security clearance issues remain. He cited that the Pentagon needs to increase the five full-time personnel tasked with the initial rollout of CES. The official suggests hiring 10 people for the team to handle the hiring and training of thousands of cyber workers.

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Crall also called on other defense leaders to address security clearance concerns that are affecting CES. “The onboarding process can be very frustrating” and the long process could lead workers to “potentially lose interest,” he said.

A new government watchdog report shows that the Department of Energy remains on the government’s High Risk List for inadequate contractor management and oversight despite spending $200B on awards over the past decade and contracting changes. The Government Accountability Office issued the report on Tuesday highlighting the lack of proper reporting by DOE on the performance of its contractors.

The agency relies on the industry and academia for the management and operations of its facilities, particularly federal nuclear weapons laboratories, GAO said. However, DOE has been found providing less information on contractors’ cost performance in its Performance Evaluation Reports for fiscal year 2016. GAO said the PERs were not detailed, did not indicate significance of performance and applied only to specific activities.

“A key reason PERs did not include more cost performance information is that the DOE offices’ policies do not require specific assessments of cost performance or discuss how to ensure cost information is useful for future acquisition decision-making,” GAO said. 

Despite the lack of information, DOE still provided its contractors high performance ratings and more than 90 percent of performance incentives, the watchdog said. To improve data reporting, GAO recommends that DOE update its policies to require that PERs include quality information for overall assessment of contractor cost performance.