The Congressional Budget Office has added an online search tool on its website for users to find intergovernmental and private sector mandates in bills and public laws that are identified under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.

CBO said Tuesday the tool also features background information on the agency’s efforts under UMRA and replaces CBO’s annual report on UMRA activities that has been published for almost 20 years.

CBO said it analyzed 580 bills in 2015 and found 57 with intergovernmental mandates and 82 that have private sector mandates.

The agency added the tool covers data from calendar years 2013 through 2015 and will accommodate periodical additions throughout the year.

From that data, CBO created summary of UMRA activities in 2015 along with the search tool to identify 10 laws that contain intergovernmental mandates and 17 that contain industry mandates.

CBO says none of those laws with intergovernmental mandates in 2015 exceeded the $77 million threshold set by the UMRA law.

Six laws enacted in 2015 have eight mandates CBO estimated to have costs above the $154 million threshold for private sector mandates under UMRA.

A Federal Communications Commission task force will develop a planning framework and scorecard to support efforts by public safety agencies to shift their 911 systems to Internet Protocol-based platforms, Urgent Communications reported Tuesday.

Donny Jackson writes the FCC’s Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Points Architecture held a webcast meeting to discuss the second phase of its effort after the release of a report earlier this year on cybersecurity, architecture transition and funding structures.

Jay English, chairman of the TFOPA cybersecurity group, told the publication meeting attendees supported the report’s focus on network security.

“We’re used to protecting data, but we’re not used to having to protect the entire enterprise, because we’ve never had to do it before,” said English.

He added education of personnel at public safety answering points can help support 911 network defense efforts, Urgent Communications said.

President Barack Obama has nominated National Highway Traffic Safety Administration deputy head Blair Anderson to serve as policy undersecretary for the Transportation Department, the NHTSA’s parent Cabinet organization.

Anderson served as the deputy assistant secretary for DOT’s finance and budget office for the two years prior to his NHTSA transition in 2015 and has also held the roles of chief financial officer and assistant secretary for budget and finance at the department, the White House said Tuesday.

He was also senior adviser to Rep. John Olver from 2009 to 2013 and served as the lawmaker’s legislative director between 2007 and 2009.

Anderson supported efforts by the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee to give $10.5 billion in funds for the High Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail grant program and the panel also helped create the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant program.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton University.

NASA has validated 1,284 new planets from Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 catalog to post a new record as the single largest batch of confirmed planets to date.

The space agency said Wednesday the new additions were verified among 4,302 planet candidates after meeting the required probability of more than 99 percent to become planets.

Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said the Kepler findings build on the possibility that there are more planets than stars and will support future missions that aim to discover life in another planet.

Researchers used a statistical analysis method devised by Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University, to assess multiple candidates simultaneously, NASA noted.

Approximately 550 planets from the batch are similar in size to Earth and nine of these are likely to have liquid water since they orbit their stars’ habitable zone.

The agency further noted there are now more than 3,200 verified planets among which 2,325 were found through Kepler.

The space telescope works to discover planet candidates by monitoring decreases in brightness when planets transit in front of their stars, NASA said.

Kepler has operated since March 2009 as the first NASA mission to seek potentially habitable planets.