DorobekINSIDER: 7 stories you need to know: Big Data Webinar

The EIGHT stories that impact your life for Wednesday May 30th, 2012

1. The pay freeze is effecting federal employee satisfaction. ThePartnership for Public Service said it was no surprise, considering pay was frozen for two years. The non-profit says the attitudes of highly-paid government employees dropped more than those who aren’t paid as well. Senior Executive Service members’ satisfaction dropped nearly 8 percent in a year.
2. In the wake of the sophisticated cyber attack against a Thrift Savings Plan contractor the TSP is offering free credit monitoring. Serco, the contractor responsible for maintaining the agency’s data centers, compromised the information of 123,000 TSP participants. Despite the attack the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board is sticking with Serco. Government Executive reports that the attack could be part of a more extensive breach of U.S. government information.
3. Two key Obama administration nominees have won Senate confirmation — Joseph Jordan to be administrator of the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and Frank Kendall as Defense undersecretary for acquisitions, logistics and technology. Both were cleared without objection. Government Executive reports that Jordan, who had been serving the Office of Management and Budget as an adviser, replaces Dan Gordon, who left in December 2011 to become a law dean at The George Washington University.
4. The General Service Administration’s lavish Las Vegas conference has another victim. Jeffrey Neely who organized the conference has left the agency. The Washington Post says Neely had been on administrative leave since early April after an inspector general inquiry found rampant waste and abuse associated with the 2010 event. At the time of the conference, Neely was acting regional commissioner.
5. The Defense Department is facing a massive backlog of unaudited contracts. The Federal Times says, millions of dollars in defense contract costs could go unaudited because of a mounting backlog at the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency. The audit agency says its focus on quality and thoroughness are the reason for its huge backlog, which includes $560 billion in unaudited contracts that agencies have already paid.
6. Fifty-four information technology contractors won places on the newest governmentwide acquisition contract. The NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center made the awards. The GWAC is known as Chief Information Officers – Solutions and Partners 3 — or CIO-SP-3. It is a 10-year deal that’s open to all civilian and Defense Department agencies. NIH said all prices were pre-competed at the master contract level. That should speed the ability of contracting officers to award task orders. Among the large contractors are Accenture, BAE, Booz Allen, Deloitte, GTSI, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Unisys.
7. National Labor Relations Board Member — Terrence Flynn — is resigning after a sharing sensitive information with a political ally. Government Executive says the NLRB inspector general completed a probe concluding Flynn violated standards of conduct by releasing “deliberative, predecisional information” on pending board rulings to Peter Schaumber. Schaumber is a former NLRB chairman whom Flynn had served as counsel, and to another former board member. Schaumber served last fall as a key labor adviser to the Mitt Romney presidential campaign but left that position.
8. And on GovLoop, big data it’s the latest buzz word floating around government. But how do you harness its power? Bob Gourley, editor of CTOvision.com and founder of Crucial Point teams up with us for an interactive online chat focused on all things Big Data. We will be discussing the business case for Big Data, the future of Big Data in the public sector, and common roadblocks to success. Most importantly, we will provide tactical solutions on how to best overcome these common pitfalls. The online webinar kicks off tomorrow at 2pm so register today.