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NEWS: July 20, 2016
GOP Platform: Feds Are Paid Too Much and Are Too Hard to Fire The Republican Party's 2016 platform, finalized at this week's party convention, calls for a slew of reforms targeting the federal workforce, including cuts to pay and benefits. The party says federal workers' compensation is "wildly out of line with the private sector." The platform also suggests civil-service reforms to make it easier for federal agencies to fire "bad workers, tax cheats, and scammers." >> Government Executive Committee Probing Foreigners' Access to OPM Data A House committee is questioning whether foreign nationals may have had direct access to sensitive Office of Personnel Management data before last summer's OPM hacking of national security background checks and personnel records for 21.5 million people. >> Nextgov California Still Negotiating 14 State Employee Contracts Fifteen California state employee bargaining units' contracts expired between June 1 and July 2, but so far only one of the unions has come to an agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown. >> Sacramento Bee Veterans' Services | The Nation VA Health Care Is at Least as Good as Private Sector's, Rand Study Finds A new Rand Corp. study examining the Department of Veterans' Affairs health-care system has found that the care provided by the agency is equal to or better than that of its private-sector counterparts. The report says that on 83 measures covering a variety of types of care "the quality of VA health care exceeded that of non-VA care." >> Federal Times Veterans Committee Chairman Drops Support for VA Chief U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican who is the chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee and Donald Trump's top veterans adviser, backed off his support for Veteran Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald, saying the department leadership needs a full overhaul. >> Military Times
Citing Costs and Security, University Withdraws from Hosting First Debate Wright State University President David Hopkins announced that because of costs and security concerns the university has withdrawn from hosting the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The Sept. 26 event will instead be held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Hopkins cited "a growing crescendo of concern about what it would take to guarantee the safety and security of the campus and the community" as well as "daunting" expenses. >> Dayton Daily News, Reuters Transition Advice: Raise Accountability for Execs Expert committees convened by the National Academy of Public Administration are calling for the next administration to incentivize cross-agency collaboration and accede to pressures from Congress to raise the accountability bar for underperforming senior executives. >> Government Executive Cybersecurity | Washington, D.C. Cyberattack Slams Library of Congress The Library of Congress was the target of a denial-of-service cyberattack that knocked out Congress.gov and the U.S. Copyright Office website while causing outages at other library-hosted sites. A spokesperson said the attack, launched Sunday, continues to affect library operations, including internal websites and employee email. >> Federal Computer Week NASA, VA Name New Chief Information Security Officers Two federal agencies are getting new chief information security officers: NASA selected Jeanette Hanna-Ruiz, who has spent 20 years in public information-security positions, and the Department of Veterans Affairs chose Roopangi Kadakia, a federal IT veteran. >> FedScoop, Federal News Radio
GAO Blames Patent Office for Surge in Inventors' Lawsuits Inventors are filing an exploding number of lawsuits against companies that appropriate their products illegally, and a new Government Accountability Office report blames the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, saying it is so focused on rewarding its employees for the number of applications they review that the quality of patents they give out is in jeopardy. >> Washington Post Election Administration | Wisconsin Judge Allows Voting Without Photo ID People without photo identification will be able to vote in November's general election by signing an affidavit stating they could not obtain identification, a federal judge ruled, granting an injunction in the American Civil Liberties Union's challenge to the state's voter-ID law. >> Wisconsin State Journal ACLU Sues Kansas Secretary of State over Voting System The ACLU sued Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, charging that he has created a two-tiered voter-registration system that will unlawfully deny thousands of Kansans the right to vote. >> Topeka Capital-Journal >> Follow GovManagement on Twitter >> Share this edition:
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DATAPOINT 54% Percentage of federal employees who think Hillary Clinton received "special treatment" from the Justice Department in its investigation into her email practices during her tenure as secretary of state, while 55 percent think those practices were "unacceptable" for a presidential candidate, according to a poll by the research arm of Government Executive Media Group >> Government Executive | More data
“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.” Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to a friend in 1855 expressing his feelings about the rise of the American Party, popularly known as the Know Nothing Party, whose leaders appealed to many Americans' anti-Catholic hysteria by promising to protect Protestant America from Catholic immigrants by restricting immigration, lengthening the time required for immigrants to achieve citizenship, deporting "foreign" paupers and restricting government office-holding to native-born Americans >> The Conversation | More quotes VIEWPOINT Politics and Academia | Jonathan Zimmerman Trumping the Values of a Historian I yield to nobody in my disdain for Donald J. Trump. But I won't join Historians Against Trump, which indulges in some of the same polarized, overheated rhetoric used by Trump himself. The group warned recently that Trump's candidacy represents "an attack on our profession, our values, and the communities we serve." But that claim is itself a repudiation of our professional values, which enjoin us to understand diverse communities instead of dismissing them as warped or deluded. >> Chronicle of Higher Education | More commentaries UPCOMING EVENTS General Services Administration Webinar: "How to Acquire Cloud and Make it Secure" Today, noon ET Heritage Foundation Book event: "Failure: The Federal Misedukation of America's Children" Today, noon-1 p.m., Washington, D.C. Center for American Progress Discussion with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro: "Addressing Lead Exposure in Low-Income Communities" Today, 1:30-2:30 p.m. ET, Washington, D.C. Brookings Institution Discussion with French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian: "Reinvigorating the Transatlantic Partnership to Tackle Evolving Threats" Today, 3:30-5 p.m. ET, Washington, D.C. Environmental Council of the States State Environmental Protection Meeting July 21, Washington, D.C. Engaging Local Government Leaders Technology Efficiency Webinar July 21, 1 p.m. ET American Society for Public Administration National Capital Area Chapter Discussion: "The Crowd and the Cloud: Government's Role in Citizen Science" July 21, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Washington, D.C. National Association of Counties Annual Conference and Exposition July 22-25, Long Beach, Calif. Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education Program for Senior Managers in Government July 24-Aug. 12, Cambridge, Mass. National Association of State Personnel Executives Annual Meeting July 24-27, Biloxi, Miss. >> Full events listings |
