Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has announced proposed changes in committee chairmanships and memberships for the 109th Congress. The changes will be voted on by the Republican conference after the Jan. 20 inauguration.
In the wake of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunamis last week, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Conrad Lautenbacher has renewed his call for a Global Ocean Observing System that could patch together many governments' stovepiped sensors.
The General Services Administration made it official yesterday, setting a one-time fee of $2,500 for vendors and the public to receive a direct, continuous feed from the new Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation via Web services.
About $2 billion in federal contracts were miscoded as going to small rather than large businesses in fiscal 2002, resulting in distorted procurement statistics, according to a new SBA report.
The Office of Management and Budget is requiring agencies to use one of three approved shared-service providers for public-key infrastructure and electronic-signature services.
If it has to, the Federal Aviation Administration will forgo some of its systems modernization to cover salary and training for the 12,500 air traffic controllers it expects to hire during the next 10 years.
James Loy, deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department and administrator of TSA, joins DHS Secretary Tom Ridge in leaving the agency, creating what some fear will be a leadership vacuum.
The Small Business Association is now requiring businesses to self-certify that they are still a small business when they acquire companies with set aside contracts.
In the coming year, the Office of Management and Budget wants to see major improvements in systems security and the quality of the business cases agencies submit.
The General Services Administration will re-establish a governmentwide working group to evaluate telecommunications security and draft standards. The effort is part of GSA's Multitier Security Profile Program to package security services for agencies.
Before signing to use the General Services Administration's procurement services, agencies will need to answer a simple question: Why can't this buy be performance-based?
In November, Congress finished two tasks many thought it wouldn't: work on all appropriations bills, thus avoiding a long-term continuing resolution, and the confirmation of David Savafian as the new administrator for Federal Procurement Policy. Both are welcome turns of events.
	If agencies under the Commerce, Justice and State appropriations bill do not, by mid-to-late January, offer all eligible workers the opportunity to telecommute, they will lose $5 million under a provision passed as part of the fiscal 2005 Omnibus spending bill.
	Robert Dix, staff director for the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, will leave Capitol Hill for a job in the private sector after Jan. 1, said David Marin, press secretary for the Government Reform Committee.
