FederalDaily.com > TRICARE Personal Data “Placed at Risk” During Processing

FederalDaily - July 24, 2007

TRICARE Personal Data “Placed at Risk” During Processing

Systems integration company SAIC announced on July 20 that the personal information of certain servicemembers, members of their families and others “was placed at risk for potential compromise” while being processed by the firm under several health care data contracts for DoD. The information, which was for work the company was doing in connection with TRICARE, was on an SAIC-owned server at a company location in Shalimar, Fla., the firm said. SAIC said the server was not behind a firewall and did not have sufficient password protection. The company said it stopped using the server when security concerns were raised. The contracts in question covered customers in the Departments of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Homeland Security, according to SAIC. The company said it is notifying about 580,000 households that include a total of about 867,000 affected individuals. One group, the Military Officers Association of America, said it was “deeply troubled to learn of yet another potential breach of personal information of the uniformed services community.” SAIC, which has launched a forensic investigation of the server and created a task force to address any impact of the security breach, said it had found no evidence so far that the information actually was compromised before the server was taken out of service. For more, go to: www.saic.com/response/.

DOL, OSC Need to Improve Tracking of USERRA Claims, Study Says

The Department of Labor (DOL) and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) need to improve the tracking of servicemembers’ claims made under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), which protects the rights of those who leave their jobs for military service, according to a government report. When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked at a special two-year demonstration project in which DOL and OSC shared responsibility for investigating the USERRA claims of servicemembers, it found data for reporting outcomes were not reliable at either agency, according a report released July 20. At DOL, the report said, inaccurate data were included in the agency’s annual report to Congress. While auditors found the closed dates in OSC’s case tracking system to be sufficiently reliable, the corrective action data element—which OSC uses to describe the outcomes of USERRA claims—was not sufficiently reliable for reporting specific outcomes, the report said. GAO recommended that DOL develop an internal review mechanism for all unresolved claims before they are closed and establish internal controls to ensure the accuracy of data entered into DOL’s database, the report said. To see more, go to: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07907.pdf

GAO Analysts to Get September Union Vote

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and a labor union have come to terms over the groundwork for a September certification vote that will allow 1,500 GAO analysts to decide whether they want union representation. Under the agreement, the GAO dropped its objections to allowing some Band IIB employees to vote because they have supervisory roles. In return, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) agreed to drop an unfair labor practice charge it filed against GAO last month, the agency and IFPTE announced in a July 18 joint statement. Voting will end on Sept. 19 and will represent the first time in the agency’s history that GAO employees have voted on union representation. “IFPTE is grateful for the diligent efforts of all the people who had a hand in bringing this agreement about,” said IFPTE President Greg Junemann, “and we look forward to continued mutual cooperation as we move forward to complete the election process.” To see more, go to: www.ifpte.org/Downloads/Archives/In%20the%20News/GAO/JtStatement_GAOandIFPTE.pdf

Report Calls for Recruiting/Retention Flexibility, Pay System Reform

Increased flexibility in the way the federal workforce is recruited and retained, as well as pay system reform, are top priorities in a federal workforce resources report by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service (PPS) and consulting firm Grant Thornton. The report is based on interviews with 55 federal human resources officials from 28 major agencies and about a dozen smaller ones. According to the report released last week, many interviewees said that although they had made substantial progress in reducing the amount of time it takes to hire employees, they believe that additional hiring flexibility is needed. Several noted that current flexibilities often come with “strings attached,” such as the need to obtain prior Office of Personnel Management approval that respondents believed requires an unnecessarily high burden of proof that the authority is needed. Another frequently noted limitation was that useful tools such as student loan repayments or retention bonuses often lack adequate funding, the report said. Also, a clear majority of those interviewed think the General Schedule (GS) pay system is no longer adequate, and more than half of the respondents agreed that a more performance- and market-sensitive pay system should be a long-term goal. To see more, go to: http://ourpublicservice.org/OPS/publications/download.php?id=119