FederalDaily - July 26, 2005
Senators Fault TSA For Privacy Failures
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., last week criticized
the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for failing to meet Privacy
Act requirements in carrying out testing of the Secure Flight program, an airline
passenger prescreening system aimed at identifying known or suspected terrorists.
A new Government Accountability Office report said that during TSA’s
testing of the Secure Flight program, it violated passengers’ privacy
rights when it “collected and stored commercial data records even though
TSA stated in its privacy notices that it would not do so.” The Senators
wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
to express their concern about the way TSA has administered the program.
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Cutting DoD’s Pharmacy Costs
There has been long-standing interest in whether the Department of Defense
(DoD) could use the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Consolidated Mail Outpatient
Pharmacy (CMOP) system as an alternative to beneficiaries picking up outpatient
refill prescriptions at military treatment facilities (MTF). To evaluate this
possibility, DoD and VA conducted a pilot program in fiscal year 2003 in which
a CMOP provided outpatient pharmaceutical refill services to DoD beneficiaries
served through three MTFs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently
reported that DoD could achieve savings if it used CMOP. Based on the pilot,
GAO estimated that the three MTFs could have saved about $1.39 per prescription
in drug costs, or a total of about $1.5 million, if the MTFs moved all their
refill prescriptions to the CMOP. However, savings would require closing MTF
outpatient pharmacy refill operations to offset CMOP administrative expenses,
GAO said.
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Policies/Practices and Labor/Management
Senator, Union Argue
Over Weather Service
Legislation proposed by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., S. 786, which would change
how the National Weather Service functions, was criticized on Monday by the
National Weather Service Employees Organization (NWSEO). NWSEO said the bill
would prevent the National Weather Service (NWS) from providing services such
as marine, public and aviation forecasts to the public, the media, academia
or state and local emergency management officials if private sector weather
companies are providing or could provide a similar service for a fee. Santorum
said the notion that his bill would only allow the weather service to give
its data to private industry, not the public, was “advanced by an employee
union trying to protect federal jobs and is preposterous and a disingenuous
reading of the bill.”
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Policies/Practices and Pay/Benefits
Congressmen Questions DHS Human Resources Contract
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., sent a letter to Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff on July 20 questioning the agency’s
contract with Northrop Grumman Information Technology for a new human resources
system. The contract, signed a year ago, is a “blanket purchase agreement” with
a maximum possible value of $175 million that can be paid over a three-year
period. “This award appears to constitute a highly unorthodox use of
a blanket purchase agreement,” Thompson’s letter stated. Thompson
asked Chertoff to submit the following information on the contract by August
15:
- the rationale for using a blanket purchase agreement;
- what the contract has produced to date;
- what DHS expects from the contract in the next two years;
and
- the amount of money expended to date.
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