Jessie Bur The transparent reporting of spending data through Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) requirements will go a long way to increasing public trust in the government, according to legislators and agency officials who spoke at the DATA Summit on June 29. “Back when I was growing up, people used to trust the government,” said GSA’s Technology Transformation Service Commissioner Rob Cook, explaining that events like the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal caused a plummet in p...
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Jason Squitieri As President Donald Trump holds his first re-election fundraiser Wednesday night at the hotel he owns in Washington, one Democratic congressman is slamming the President over the move, arguing it is "just plain wrong." An invitation to the event, held at the Trump International Hotel, showed that tickets started at $35,000 per person, with a $100,000 price tag to sit on the host committee. Hours after telling reporters they would be allowed to cover the event, the White House cha...
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Jason Miller In a rocky FITARA sea of red and yellow “Fs” and “Ds,” the U.S. Agency for International Development stood out like a lighthouse. USAID became the first agency earlier this month to receive an “A” on the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While most agencies stagnated, USAID lifted its grades from a “D” to an “A+” over the last six months. The fourth scorecard, released by the committee on June 13, showed ag...
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Joe Davidson In November, fuming members of Congress demanded to know how the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would stabilize a long-term care program that shocked participants with price hikes of as much as 126 percent. Seven months later, they are still waiting for answers – but not patiently. It was at a House government operations subcommittee hearing a few days after Thanksgiving when Virginia Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, the top Democrat on the panel, pressed an agency leader on plans to ...
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Jim Zarroli In ordinary times, New York-based Vornado Realty Trust would be a natural candidate to take on a major construction project such as the long-awaited rebuilding of FBI headquarters. As with so much about the Trump era, however, the ordinary rules don't apply. A commercial real estate firm, Vornado is widely reported to be a finalist to build a new campus for the FBI somewhere in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But its financial ties to President Trump are raising concerns about confli...
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John D. McKinnon When Silicon Valley executives arrived at the White House Monday to talk about modernizing federal computer systems, there was plenty of common interest at stake. The administration wants to cut redundancies and modernize the way Americans interact with their government, and tech companies see a $90 billion-a-year business. But those companies also face a common challenge. The government’s sprawling information-technology system is flawed and balky, controlled in agency fiefdoms...
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Rachael Kalinyak, Congressmen Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and over 100 members of the House sent a letter to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., expressing their opposition to the proposed policy changes President Donald Trump has proposed in his fiscal 2018 budget request. These four changes would amount to a total loss of $149 billion from middle class federal employees and retirees to help “pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” according to the...
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Erich Wagner More than 100 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday to oppose the cuts to federal employee retirement programs as outlined in President Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal. Lawmakers, led by Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Gerry Connolly, D-Va., described Trump’s budget request as an “assault” on federal workers, retirees and their families, calling the proposed reforms to employee retirement programs “tantam...
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Reps. Rob Wittman (R-VA-01) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA-11), Co-Chairs of the Smart Contracting Caucus, have reintroduced the Federal Employee Combat Zone Tax Parity Act to provide equality by extending the tax credit currently received by military personnel to the civilian federal employees working alongside them. “America’s First District is the home of many hardworking and dedicated patriots who serve the people of this nation every day and I am very aware of the invaluable contributions federal...
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Today, Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) led more than 100 House Democrats in a letter sent to Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi opposing President Trump’s proposal to gut pensions and pay for federal workers. Raskin and Connolly cite several specific changes proposed by Trump in his FY 2018 budget request as the basis for their concerns: reducing federal employees’ pay by forcing them to contribute more to their retirement; reducing cost of living adjustmen...
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