FCW Insider: October 1, 2021
The latest news and analysis from FCW's reporters and editors.
Congress passes funding bill through Dec. 3, avoiding shutdown
With just hours to go in fiscal year 2021, Congress passed a stopgap funding bill to avert a partial government shutdown.
7 new TMF awards include one classified project
The awards focus on zero trust and include a major investment in the Login.gov federal digital identity solution.
Comment: Cyber EO compliance is a full-time job
Unified security controls, supply chain security, zero trust and smart procurement decisions are all pieces of the puzzle.
ICYMI: CDC, NASA seek apps to monitor employee vaccinations
CDC is looking for a vaccine passport-type service to authenticate COVID-19 vaccine data on its employees and to supply proof of recent tests for traveling agency employees, while NASA is looking for a smartphone app to its 18,000 employees to display their vaccination status when entering an agency facility.
Quick Hits
*** Sixty-four percent of the workforce at the Department of Homeland Security is vaccinated against COVID-19, said Chief Human Capital Officer Angela Bailey during a Thursday hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee. There's a Nov. 22 deadline for feds to get vaccinated. The agency's strategy to bring that number up is making vaccines available, educating the workforce and providing a reasonable accommodations process for anyone with exemptions. Agencies can discipline feds for noncompliance, but Bailey said "we're not in the business of removing our employees... It's a national security issue for us to make sure that we have every DHS employee that we can on board."
*** Rohit Chopra was confirmed on Thursday by the Senate on a vote of 50-48 to serve as director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Chopra previously served as a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission.
*** The Department of Labor has finalized its award of a block of five task orders to Verizon with a combined $887 million ceiling for modernization work on that agency's communications and IT environment. Washington Technology has more on this story.