Chris James, associate administrator at the Small Business Administration‘s office of intergovernmental affairs, has been appointed to serve as associate administrator under the agency’s office of field operations in addition to his current role.

SBA said Thursday James oversees a number of programs at SBA such as Startup in a Day, which seeks to drive entrepreneurship, and the White House-led SupplierPay program designed to help support U.S. small businesses.

“I am honored to join the office of field operations and look forward to continuing to serve the President and the U.S. small business community,” said James.

He previously worked at SBA’s office of native American affairs and held management roles for the Treasury Department and Sequoyah Fund.

He is currently a member of various White House organizations working on native American affairs, rural programs, community solutions and insular affairs.

James holds a bachelor’s degree in communication studies from the University of North Carolina in Wilmington and master’s degrees in entrepreneurship and project management from Western Carolina University.

Barney Krucoff, former geographic information officer in the state of Maryland’s information technology department, has been appointed as chief data officer for the Washington, D.C. city government.

He aims to increase the flow of information between the district’s agencies as well as help the local government establish rules intended to facilitate data sharing and people connections,  according to a DC.gov blog post published Wednesday.

The post stated his appointment is part D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s push to modernize and expand the district’s central data catalog to provide citizens, media, entrepreneurs and academic organizations access to public data such as traffic patterns and health statistics.

He initially joined the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer in 2004 as geographic information officer, then moved to Maryland to serve in a similar role from September 2011 to March 2016 before he returned to OCTO in June.

Krucoff previously served as a community planner at the National Capital Planning Commission, geographic information system manager at civil engineering firm Michael Baker Jr. Inc.

The Office of Personnel Management has issued final regulations for the enforcement of a new disabled veteran leave category as part of an effort to extend the time for veterans to address medical issues.

OPM said Thursday federal employees hired Nov. 5, 2016 and beyond with a service-related disability rating of at least 30 percent will be able to avail of the disabled veteran leave established under the Wounded Warriors Federal Leave Act of 2015.

“This rule ensures the federal government supports our service members who have sacrificed their own health and well-being to serve our country,” said Beth Cobert, acting OPM director.

“We want these veterans to have sufficient leave during their first year of federal service in order to take care of any medical issues related to their service-connected disability,” added Cobert.

The disabled veteran leave will start on an employee’s first day of employment as a one-time benefit during a 12-month period.

A NASA program has opened opportunities for accredited educational institutions and nonprofit organizations to design, build and operate nanosatellites and flight hardware.

NASA said Friday it seeks partners for the next round of its CubeSat Launch Initiative to help facilitate the agency’s research programs in the areas of science, exploration, technology and education.

Interested parties can submit proposals through Nov. 22 and NASA will consider selected experiments as potential auxiliary payloads on agency space missions in 2017, the space agency noted.

The agency deploys CubeSats to support missions on planetary exploration, Earth observation and fundamental Earth and space science.

CSLI was established to create opportunities for small satellite payloads flown as auxiliary payloads on rockets planned for upcoming launches.