FCW Insider: June 11

'COVID penalty' could cost Pentagon at least $10 billion in contractor claims

Ellen Lord, the Defense Department's top acquisition official, told Congress that defense companies coronavirus relief claims could cost upwards of $10 billion. Lauren C. Williams reports.

Lawmakers want answers on Juniper backdoors

Members of Congress are pressing Juniper's CEO for details of an internal probe into how modified code for a compromised NSA encryption algorithm wound up in the company's firewall products. Derek B. Johnson has more.

Fired State Department IG cites 'bullying' from senior officials

Steve Linick told lawmakers that he didn't know why he was dismissed from his post, but many Democrats say investigations of Secretary Mike Pompeo played a role. Lia Russell takes a look.

DOD's $7.6B cloud email buy heads for redo

Less than a week before a final protest ruling was due, the Defense Information Systems Agency and the General Services Administration are taking another corrective action in their big business software buy for DOD. Nick Wakeman of Washington Technology examines what happened and what might be next.

Quick Hits

*** Agriculture Department Chief Data Officer Ted Kaouk will serve as chair of the Chief Data Officers Council, the Office of Management and Budget announced June 10. The CDO Council is charged with tapping technology to support data collection and use as well as serving to coordinate policy across the CDO community.

*** A Senate panel voted to approve the nomination of Russell T. Vought as the permanent director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought currently holds the job on an acting basis and was previously confirmed by the Senate as deputy director. The Republican-controlled Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted 7-4 to report favorably on the nomination. Vought's bid also requires approval from the Senate Budget Committee, which will vote June 11.

*** The Information Security Risk Management Unit in the FBI CIO's Enterprise Information Security Section issued a solicitation in early June for a Governance, Risk and Compliance tool that will help the agency with its data security reporting to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice and the Office of Management and Budget. The FBI said its ability to report to ODNI and the DOJ has been hobbled by the current tool installed in 2010 that requires painstaking manual data entry. The FBI said the current GRC tool has presented "persistent challenges and issues" for its FISMA reporting.