FederalDaily - July 17, 2006
Senate Passes Bill to Grow Border Patrol
The Senate passed an amendment that will provide $44 million
to place 236 additional Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents
on vulnerable parts of the long border with Canada. Over the past
year, the federal government has funded more than 2,000 additional
CBP officers for border duty, but none of the newly funded agents
appeared headed for duty on the northern frontier until the present
bill’s passage. Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., the bill’s
sponsor, said the amendment to the homeland security appropriations
bill “will increase the number of northern border patrol
agents across the northern country by 24 percent, while taking
nothing from our southern border.” While the bill promises
relief to overworked local authorities and CBP agents currently
on duty on the northern border, the Senate failed to fund a $2
billion proposal that passed in May to build a 370-mile wall along
parts of the U.S. border with Mexico.
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Security Clearance Reform Group Offers
Improvement Plan
The chairman of an information technology industry group advised
a House subcommittee July 13 on how to stop the “widespread
delays” and other flaws in the nation’s security clearance
process. Doug Wagoner, who heads the Intelligence Reform Subcommittee
impaneled by the Information Technology Association of America
(ITAA), said the federal government must develop a grading system
for agency performance in investigating and clearing applicants
so there is greater incentive for improvement. Decrying extensive
delays in investigations of foreign applicants, along with unnecessarily
high rejection rates of them, Wagoner suggested a pilot program
should be devised to speed matters and to reduce the rejection
rate. "Of course applicants with foreign connections must
be vetted thoroughly, but today they routinely wait months for
a decision and often appear to be rejected out of hand,"
he said. For more, go to: www.itaa.org/newsroom/release.cfm?ID=2342.
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OMB Releases Government-wide Guidance
on IT Solutions
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) July 13 released an
online catalog of best practices and policies for implementing
information technology (IT) solutions. The catalog—or Federal
Transition Framework (FTF)—is intended to provide one-stop
shopping for advice to managers, employees and contractors government-wide.
It focuses especially on guidance for cross-agency projects such
as Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 (HSPD-12), E-Gov,
Line of Business (LoB) and Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6).
“The FTF addresses OMB’s goal of delivering results,
said Karen Evans, who is OMB’s electronic government and
information technology administrator. Evans said the new FTF should
help increase speed and effectiveness in the development of cross-agency
IT initiatives. The FTF is available in its entirety at www.egov.gov.
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