FCW Insider: April 30

SBA offers time sharing on stressed loan processing system to small lenders

The push to give smaller lenders exclusive access to the system that supports the Paycheck Protection Program for 12 hours comes a day after agency IGs briefed Congress on plans to conduct "flash" oversight of the $2.2 trillion and more in COVID-19 relief and recovery funds. Lia Russell has more.

Solarium boosters pivot to acknowledge pandemic parallels

Members of the Solarium Commission on cybersecurity are retooling their pitch to Congress focus on recommendations that draw parallels to the current coronavirus crisis. Derek B. Johnson explains.

HASC chairman: DOD doesn't need more stimulus money

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the House Armed Services Committee chairman, said the Defense Department doesn't need any more money from a future coronavirus stimulus bill. The news comes as some Pentagon watchers are worried ballooning deficits will take a toll on defense spending in the future. Lauren C. Williams has the story.

Feds caught up in Trump's meat processing order

The executive order declaring meat processing plants as critical infrastructure means that federal food inspectors must visit plants that had been closed by their owners because of COVID-19 outbreaks. The move has led to sharply worded complaints from federal employee union officials who worry that more inspectors could become sick. Adam Mazmanian reports.

Quick Hits

*** A data storage system for the first U.S. computer capable 1 quintillion calculations per second, aren't off the shelf material, so Argonne National Labs wants ideas from industry on how to make one.

Last summer, the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago said it would house Aurora, the first the first U.S. computer capable of 1exaflop performance. Intel Corporation and Cray expect to deliver the computer in 2021 on a contract worth more than $500 million. In a request for information issued on April 21, Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) asked for ideas for a the a storage solution that will provide the bandwidth, reliability and scalability required for the next-generation of HPC systems, that could be moved into production in the second quarter of 2022.

*** Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee want the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management to explain what the agency has done to harmonize its various rounds of human resources guidance across the federal enterprise in the COVID-19 response. In an April 27 letter, led by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, the lawmakers also want to know what OPM has done to identify frontline workers and make sure they have access to protective equipment on the job.