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The veterans of the house slam Sec. McDonough on the VA’s request for emergency funding

Online Niel November 6, 2024

Congress appropriated nearly $3 billion to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at the end of fiscal year 2024. This was to address a potential shortfall that could have delayed benefit payments to veterans. But House lawmakers said the VA had enough carryover funds to continue making those payments. VA officials tell the House VA Committee they don’t need additional funding from Congress to meet their year-end requirements. But the department defends its request for emergency funding by saying it should have delayed payments to 7 million veterans and survivors even if they were just a dollar short of the required funds.
Classified spending at US spy agencies continued its upward trend last year. Congress has appropriated $76.5 billion for the National Intelligence Program budget in fiscal year 2024, according to a new disclosure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Combined with military intelligence program spending, the total budget for the intelligence community was $106.3 billion in fiscal year 2024. This marks the first fiscal year in which intelligence community spending has exceeded $100 billion.
The State Department is releasing a handbook aimed at prioritizing the rights of people with disabilities in its workforce and diplomatic mission. The Department Playbook is now available for internal use. It expects to release a public version next month. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the handbook was meant to show employees how they could include disability issues in their own work. “History shows us that fair societies tend to be more stable, more resilient, more innovative. When our policies exclude people with disabilities, they actually fail us all,” Blinken said at department headquarters. “But when we incorporate the needs, the insights, of people with disabilities, we all benefit from their talents, their expertise, their leadership.”
The top official at the National Archives and Records Administration said NARA needs to embrace artificial intelligence. NARA is updating its strategic plan in preparation for what Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan calls a dominant digital future. And Shogan said NARA will need artificial intelligence to help manage billions of digital federal records. “We’re going to be taking in so much information that it’s going to be impossible for a large number of archivists to control that volume of records,” Shogan said in an interview. National Archives leaders are currently taking feedback on what should go into the new strategic plan from staff and other stakeholders.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has officially hired a new deputy assistant director for management. Lauren Stocker, a former General Services Administration official, steps into the role starting this week. She replaces longtime OMB Director Dustin Brown, who moved to the Social Security Administration (SSA) earlier this year. Brown now serves as SSA’s director of operations and acting chief of staff.
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is considering creating a cooperative agreement to support its national OnRamp strategy. DIU’s national OnRamp strategy aims to make it easier for companies to collaborate with the Department of Defense by building presence across the country through distributed offices and hubs. DIU currently has five main offices and operates in eight geographical regions with a distributed team. It has also established five OnRamp hubs in Phoenix, Dayton, Honolulu, Seattle and Wichita and plans to open more hubs next year. The deal DIU is exploring would allow it to streamline its engagement with the commercial and academic sectors through a single partner. Answers are due by November 15.
The Army’s contract writing system is reaching another key milestone. The Army Program Executive Office (PEO) Enterprise, along with the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, integrated the Army’s contract writing system with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ financial management system. This integration will streamline contracting processes and financial management for projects managed by the Corps of Engineers. The system is being implemented in phases, with full implementation expected by April 2025.
A longtime Department of Defense (DoD) technology leader is leaving the Pentagon. Danielle Metz, the director of intelligence and management and chief intelligence officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has left the Department of Defense after more than 16 years. In an email to staff obtained by the Federal News Network, Metz, whose last day was last Wednesday, said he had made a difficult decision to accept a new role outside the DoD. She did not say where she will work next. Metz has been OSD CIO for more than two years and previously served as DoD Deputy CIO for Information Enterprises and the Defense Information Systems Agency.
The Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has taken an important step towards standardizing and more easily integrating cyber security data from more than 100 dashboards under its Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, or CDM, programme. CISA awarded ECS a six-year, $528 million task order to normalize data in federal civilian agency systems. This will provide CISA with a higher quality of information to make cyber decisions. CISA’s CDM dashboard pulls device, user, privilege and vulnerability data from over 100 agencies, including all 23 CFO Act civilian departments. ECS also won a $276 million contract in 2019 to provide agencies with the dashboard platform through CDM.