Assessing Top Secret clearances – Plus the DorobekINSIDER’s 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• Today the big issues facing our government do not fall neatly into one agency’s mission. In order to find real solutions we need an enterprise approach. But right now agencies don’t speak the same language so collaboration is borderline impossible. We get nine solutions from Booz Allen Hamilton’s Ron Sanders.

The SEVEN stories that impact your life:

1. The Obama administration is losing its top intellectual property official, Victoria Espinel, who led an aggressive campaign to beat back intellectual property theft over the last four years. According to Federal News Radio, Howard Shelanski, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has been asked to be the acting head of IPEC. He will serve as acting head until the White House names a new coordinator and he will also continue to lead the OIRA.

2. VIP/Meridian has been awarded a $95-million single-award blanket purchase agreement (BPA) with the Department of Homeland Security to provide more than 250,000 agency employees with a secure, cloud-based enterprise talent management system (ETMS). According to a press release by VIP, the contract is the first major consolidation of learning and talent management systems in the federal government within a FedRAMP certified infrastructure. The ultimate goal is to provide DHS with a single platform for analyzing employees’ skills and automating the design, delivery, and tracking of programs for developing talent.

3. Due to the leaks by Edward Snowden, GAO has been asked by Congress to perform a thorough assessment of the current classification system. The Federation of American Scientists reports that the GAO accepted the request and will begin the work shortly. The main starting point is a concern that unnecessary secrecy may put legitimate secrets at risk and that overclassification is bad security policy.

4. This week, the Air Force announced that it is prepared to shut down its Space Surveillance System in October as it seeks to comply with sequester cuts in its 2014 budget. The National Journal reports that the Air Force will save $14 million a year by cutting the program, which uses radar to detect meteors entering the atmosphere, such as the one that hit Russia in February. Last year, the Air Force insisted the program was critical to defense, but is changing courses this year as they aim to save money.

5. On Tuesday, House Republicans demanded work-related email from the personal account of IRS official Lois Lerner. According to the Washington Post, the House Oversight Committee Chairman requested the communication in a letter to Lerner, who was placed on administrative leave in May after an inspector general’s report revealed that the agency had screened groups for extra scrutiny based on their political ideology. Investigators have learned that Lerner sent documents relating to her official duties to a personal email account labeled “Lois Home.”

6. Col. Bill “Sweet” Tart, the head of the Air Force’s remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) Capabilities Division, expects a major review to be complete by the end of September. Defense News reports that the review will be about 100 pages and focus on large themes for RPA use for the service. The report will also be used to help development and design of future RPAs, capitalizing on both interoperability and connectivity.

7. When sequestration kicked in, the Obama administration began an across-the-board campaign to discuss the devastating impact the automatic cuts would have on agency operations. According to Government Executive, many departments told Congress that they would have to furlough employees, but changed their tune after reexamining funds, such as the Education and Justice departments. Recently, many departments reduced the number of furlough days employees would receive. The American Federation of Government Employees attributes the reductions and cancellations to the success of its negotiations.

The DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder

• The Atlantic: DOJ: American and US Airways Can’t Merge, Because Flying Is Already Horrible for Everyone