FBI Focuses on Insider Threats – Plus the DorobekINISIDER’s 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• RFP-EZ is trying to make the acquisition process a little easier for federal contracts under $150,000. Now the head of the project Clay Johnson has been awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation to expand RFP-EZ to the state and local levels. Find out how it’s going.

Around the web

• CBS This Morning: CIA, FBI training video focuses on new insider threat to intelligence agencies
  

• Politico: Edward Snowden NSA leaks: 5 stubborn myths
• All Thing Said: How a Routine Malware Outbreak Cost One Government Agency Millions
• The Verge: US Commerce Department destroyed $170,000 worth of TVs, mice, and more to root out malware
• AP: Pentagon takes ‘second look’ at embattled MIA unit

The SEVEN stories that impact your life

1. The acting head of the embattled Internal Revenue Service is moving to halt $70 million in scheduled bonus payouts — potentially blunting some anger on Capitol Hill while threatening a fight with the agency’s union, reports Politico.
2. The Pentagon is awarding $20 million in grants this year to public schools that serve military children. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced the 15 winning school districts yesterday. Federal News Radio reports, together they serve 23 military installations in the United States. Hagel says the money will bolster science, technology, engineering, math and foreign-language education. A second round of competition ends Friday. Schools can compete if at least one out of every six students comes from a military family. For school districts, at least 5 percent of the student population must be connected to the military.
3. The General Services Administration is launching a reverse auction platform that it says will save agencies money on office supplies. Federal News Radio reports, the tool lets established sellers compete for agency dollars out in the open, presumably driving prices down on everything from pencils to computer warranties and installation. GSA says past reverse auctions have saved agencies up to 17 percent. The tool could help agencies become smarter buyers too, because it tracks line-item data by agency bureaus. Government reverse auctions have had mixed reviews in the past because of a lack of oversight.
4. Even as total work hours dropped again last year, the U.S. Postal Service’s overtime costs kept climbing, according to a newly released audit by the agency’s inspector general. Federal Times reports, paid overtime costs for fiscal 2012 amounted to $3.53 billion, up almost 7 percent from 2011, the IG found. At one Des Moines, Iowa, distribution center, overtime pay for seven mail handlers ranged from $65,000 to $76,000 each, more than doubling their respective salaries, according to the audit.
5. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI and are moving ahead on separate programs to buy IT gear, one by planning a new electronic storefront, the other by re-competing its expiring computer acquisition program, reports FCW. The FBI is re-competing its main contract for IT hardware, called the Prevention of Information Technology Obsolescence (PITO) program, which expires in August, according to agency spokeswoman Allison Mahan.
6. The House Homeland Security Committee again is looking at the federal response to the Boston Marathon bombings. Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) says it is examining breakdowns in information sharing and a general lack of follow-through in other terror plots, reports Federal News Radio.
7. And on GovLoop, the President is talking about management issues, and it is also the topic for the next DorobekINSIDER Live. You can register now for the hour long presentation on July 17th at noon EDT.

DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder

• Did you know there is no Patent and Trademark Office facility in the Silicon Valley? And the Silicon Valley Business Journal reports there won’t be one, for awhile at least
• CNN Money: TSA’s gun policy: Confiscate it, Instagram it.
  
• Do college students make better decisions than intelligence agents? Just maybe, the National Journal reports.

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