In retirement, some will decide to relocate to a different location or residence.  Maybe you want to live in a warmer climate or move closer to family.  Herb will discuss the main considerations and resources available in making this decision.

And if you plan to relocate, it’s important to manage the possessions you have collected over the years.  How do you determine what to keep?   Understanding the reasons why it may be necessary to downsize possessions and the steps necessary in the process will be discussed.

For questions or comments, email us in advance at ForYourBenefit@nitpinc.com

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency is expanding its footprint in the cloud. And they are doing it in a bit of a usual way.

FEMA is partnering with the Agriculture Department and developing a charge-back model to its mission areas.

Jim Rodd, FEMA’s cloud portfolio manager, said as part of modernizing the National Flood Insurance Program, the agency and USDA are using the Google Cloud platform.

“They’re actually doing it in conjunction with USDA. NFIP is bringing it up in a methodology that will allow us to absorb it into the FEMA enterprise cloud with no issue. It’s all our standards and everything,” Rodd said at the recent ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference.

Rodd said the reason FEMA looked to partner with USDA is two-fold. First, the two agencies partner to help citizens impacted by floods. But secondly, and maybe most important to the discussion around cloud, is Rodd found USDA among the most mature organizations in applying the charge-back model for enterprise cloud services.

“When I first took the position over, I wanted to speak to some other cloud brokers that were in the federal government, and three that popped up was two at DHS, which were U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and the Customs and Border Protection directorates. I’ve talked to them, but neither one of them have a multi cloud solution with a chargeback methodology. So we wanted to make sure we were speaking to somebody in that realm as well. And USDA was pretty much the big dog on the block,” Rodd said. “They had a very mature cloud doing chargeback and it was multi cloud, so it only made sense to go and talk to them.”

Buying cloud services in a new way

This idea of a chargeback model for enterprise services hasn’t been easy for agencies over the last 50-plus years. Federal shared services for financial management and human resources have been out in front of this effort, but the agencies providing these services have struggled to make their case to large agencies for the most part.

The General Services Administration’s Cloud Information Center highlights several acquisition challenges, including advanced metering services from vendors and governance focused on who holds the responsibility of assessing cloud utilization reports for chargeback incentive purposes.

The Office of Management and Budget and the Federal CIO Council have been pushing agencies to implement the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework to measure the cost and value of IT services, not necessarily just cloud services. Agencies had to fully implement TBM cost towers as part of their 2023 budget requests that went to OMB earlier this year. But challenges around data quality and quantity have slowed down this effort over the last five years.

But understanding the costs in a multi-cloud environment is why FEMA is pushing forward with the chargeback model.

Rodd said with FEMA already is using Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure cloud instances and now adding the Google Cloud, it wanted to ensure it knew where and how much it was spending on these services. Former FEMA CIO Lytwaive Hutchinson said earlier this year that the agency’s goal to have at least 50% of all of their systems and services that are cloud ready moved into the cloud by the end of 2022.

“The thing with the chargeback model is being able to offset cost. That’s the name of the game,” he said. “All sudden our current cloud footprint is probably about $2 million-to-$3 million a year. If we can offset some of that, rather than what is happening right now where we’re carrying all of it, as we ingest more clients and more services, we should start to see an offset in costs.”

Big savings over time

Rodd said FEMA mission areas who have turned off on-premise or legacy technology are seeing costs reductions of 30% to 40%.

“It’s giving our internal and external OCIO clients, the opportunity to really be able to plan efficiently by having all of that in one place,” he said. “There’s obviously a massive cultural shift with moving to the cloud and FEMA is just as aware of that need for a culture shift as anybody else. We try to sell it on the scalability and flexibility, the ability to convert our redundant possibilities East Coast, West Coast, north, south, across this CSP, that CSP. We try to show all that, but they don’t really see it because that’s the back end. One of the things we like to do when we are briefing to a prospective client who has no knowledge of the cloud, I don’t make any promises on price because here’s the reality in any government agency for that first year or two, you’re running hybrid. You have to maintain that physical environment, especially for somebody with a mission like ours, where we have to be up no matter what. During that time, obviously, you’re costs are going to be substantially higher. So I actually stay away from that, or I brutally tell them look, this first year or two, it’s actually going to be more expensive. But as soon as we can start turning off your stuff in the physical environment, and shutting that stuff down and killing those contracts, that’s when you’re going to start to see your costs go down.”

Rodd added in a perfect world, he would like his cloud broker office to break even in terms of costs of providing the enterprise services and receiving funding from mission users.

“I don’t really ever think we’re going to get there, but even if we got to 50%, that’d be outstanding,” he said. “We developed a cost model. What we wanted is a one-stop shop so if a client comes to us and tells us their need, or we help them to develop a solution, we didn’t want them to then have to talk to the sustainment folks and get a price and then talk to the license folks and get a price. We tried to make our cost model as inclusive as possible. It covers everything from your basic compute needs, your migration, your authority to operate and your licensing. We’re actually adding cyber to it right now.”

Rodd said FEMA wanted to get a third-party expert to confirm its chargeback model would work, and received solid reviews from Gartner. He called it “elegant.”

• exercise your freedom and pick your spot to watch the fireworks over our nation’s capital on the evening of the Fourth of July.

The Baltimore Ravens football team may be better known for its winning ways on the field and its rabid fans in the stands.

But the Social Security Administration turned to the NFL team because of its prowess in using data to drive customer experience decisions. It also didn’t hurt that SSA headquarters is located in Baltimore County, Maryland, and many of the staff are big fans of the team.

Patrick Newbold, the assistant deputy commissioner and deputy chief information officer at SSA, said the Ravens are known for providing a great customer experience for their fans so it just made sense that the agency would reach out.

“One of the questions we asked the Baltimore Ravens was how business intelligence analytics changed their service delivery model?” Newbold said on Ask the CIO. “The Ravens shared an excellent use case with us on how data was able to challenge one of their assumptions on fan demographics. Early on, when they started to aggregate that data, that data disproved assumptions they had about their season ticket holders. Their fans were a lot younger than the marketing assumed. So that led them to change the music they played, the food and drinks they served and how they engaged those fans. The data provided the Ravens with some insights to fan demographics that they weren’t necessarily tracking and allow them to market to a growing demographic fan base be exposed.”

The Ravens brought their chief data officer or equivalent position to the table to meet with executives from SSA’s CIO, CDO and mission offices.

Like the way Ravens use data to drive decisions about how they serve their fans, SSA is looking to apply the same concepts to how they deliver their services.

“We want to use data to monitor and improve the way we do business and services, and deliver our services to our citizens,” Newbold said. “We also shared several challenges. One was the importance of data collection. The Baltimore Ravens leverage NFL-wide data as well as their Baltimore Ravens-specific data. They use that data to inform decisions. We, at SSA, want to create a primary source of SSA-wide data that is beyond assumptions and that supports that ad hoc, cross-cutting capability to do some data analytics. While we are completely different organizations, we have the same goals and mission desire when it comes to how we can use data to really inform the way we want to move forward.”

SSA’s scores better than average

The Ravens, Newbold said, have a mature data and business intelligence practice so gleaming lessons learned can only help SSA, which scored a 64 on the 2021 American Customer Service Index ratings. The federal government’s overall score was 63.4, while the Interior Department received the highest score under the ACSI with a 77.

SSA’s data for 2020 based on its surveys found 93% of the almost 1,700 respondents rated their field office experience as “satisfactory,” but only 47% called it “excellent.”

Newbold said among the biggest lessons learned from the conversation with the Ravens were about the importance of data governance, because the business intelligence platforms and tools are only as good as the data being put into those capabilities.

“Key points that we learned from Baltimore Ravens and throughout the discussions is really having that strong governance, but also they highlighted how they use data as a tool, not as the final answer,” he said. “That resonates with us because as we invest more beyond technologies as an agency, we also must recognize that other factors inform decisions, so data is critical and important, but not the only factor.”

The Ravens are just one of several public and private sector organizations SSA is meeting with to learn more about how they serve their customers.

Newbold said SSA also has met with JP MorganChase, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, Fannie Mae and the Target Corp.

“We also met with a couple of thought leaders since June, the former General Motors CIO Ralph Szygenda and the former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti,” he said. “We take these conversations and we’ve highlighted about three important lessons learned from these conversations, and we are baking those into our strategy. They are around governance, data and culture.”

New strategy coming

Newbold said SSA is updating its digital transformation strategy to include the customer experience lessons learned from all of these conversations.

SSA is partnering with the U.S. Digital Service on their modernization strategy and effort.

Newbold said his office and the mission areas are working with USDS to further expand their understanding of their customers and their journey to use SSA services.

“A key objective and expansion of our digital service offerings is a redesign of our website to enhance the user experience. To improve the customer service, we plan to deepen our understanding of our customers, including what drives their evolving service. We will learn about our customers’ journeys from various service channels and touch points, and one of those is a voice of the customer feedback. We want to capture real-time customer feedback, not only to use that feedback to assess what we have in place that is working, but to identify customer pain points to help us design those future digital services.”

To better understand those customer journeys, SSA and USDS held about 65 different sessions with multiple groups of people. This led to SSA using human-centered design techniques for the new beta version of their website that launched in April.

“For many of our services, and especially on mobile devices, we really want to ensure that we offer more digital capabilities that can be leveraged on mobile devices and from any location in it. We released an application that allows customers to express a protective intent to file for Social Security supplemental security income benefits online,” he said. “We have also prioritized within our plan the design and the mobile accessible online process that will upload forms and other documentation.”

Newbold added SSA has received positive feedback so far from the upgrades and plans to expand its interactions and testing with customers.

Reducing the burden on customers

Going forward, Newbold said SSA plans to continue to meet with the Ravens and other private sector organizations on a regular basis.

He said all the different public and private sector organizations help the agency learn more about how they can drive better customer experience. SSA also has begun to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to further its efforts.

“By reducing the burden on the public, we want to eliminate requirements to conduct business in person, present hard copies of original documents, remove requirements for signatures on a document or provide electronic signing options. These objectives will require SSA to reimagine business processes, program policies and enabling technologies,” Newbold said. “We also want to modernize our enterprise IT systems. For example, our system that administers benefits have been cited by GAO as one of the 10 IT systems across the executive branch in most need of modernization. We have begun to modernize the claims intake and adjudication software. But we want [to] continue to finish that work and retire the legacy systems and modernize our benefits system remains a focus to us.”

If the governmentwide “Trusted Workforce 2.0” initiative is a once-in-a-generation chance to modernize and streamline the personnel vetting process, then the Intelligence and National Security Alliance isn’t sitting on the sidelines.

Personnel vetting reform is one of the White House’s top performance initiatives, with published strategies and action plans. And agencies have already made strides in adopting continuous vetting and speeding up the background investigations process in recent years.

But INSA is continuing to offer new ideas and poke holes in current policies and processes, most recently with new white papers on security clearance mobility and clearing personnel with foreign ties, respectively.

Larry Hanauer, vice president for policy at INSA, said the group is staying engaged with Congress and the intelligence community on major clearance initiatives, like continuous vetting and the development of the National Background Investigative Services.

“We also look at ways just to make the clearance and adjudication process more efficient for both government staff and contractors,” Hanauer said in an interview for Inside the IC.

The mobility paper, for instance, dives into inconsistent policies and processes that make it challenging to move personnel who need Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance from one agency to another.

The issue is most acute for contractors who often move personnel across multiple contracts and agencies. But it can affect recruiting for both agencies and industry.

For instance, some intelligence agencies allow personnel who already have TS/SCI clearance to begin work while they wait for their polygraph test, while others make those employees wait until the polygraph is complete. Depending on the type of polygraph needed, that can mean a delay of anywhere from 30 days to 18 months.

Greg Torres, the director of personnel security at Booz Allen Hamilton, said the net result is a small pool of personnel who are qualified to start work under contracts immediately.

“This means we’re just shuffling the deck chairs, moving someone from one government mission to another, making a hole somewhere else,” Torres said. “And we usually need to pay a premium for that employee to leave their current job.”

INSA’s white paper recommends intelligence agencies consider the counter-intelligence polygraph sufficient for personnel to begin work until a full-scope polygraph can be scheduled.

“We think this is a risk management approach, which we think is the right approach given the myriad tools that these agencies now have to mitigate any perceived risk,” Torres said. “If you think about it years ago, they didn’t have tools like continuous evaluation or user activity monitoring and a host of other tools. But they do now.”

The white paper also recommends the Defense Department eliminate component-specific requirements for granting SCI access and name a senior official in charge of developing department-wide policies for such access.

INSA estimates additional and disparate processes across the 43 DoD components can result in delays of two to five weeks beyond the few days it takes for a component to initially accept an individual’s clearance. And it recommends clearing Top Secret applicants at the SCI level, as well, so additional processes don’t delay that individual if they require SCI access in the future.

DoD and the IC should also put an official or team in charge of uniting policies that affect personnel mobility, from clearance reciprocity to polygraphs to contract language and industry coordination, according to INSA’s paper.

“Since the 9/11 attacks, the government has made really a concerted effort to make sure that intelligence is shared, so you can work at agency X, and you’re accessing intelligence information that comes from agencies Y and Z,” Hanauer said. “Why, if you’re going to go support agency Y or Z, should those agencies have to re-adjudicate your clearance or ask the different investigative steps be done all over again? … It’s these really duplicative processes that don’t add anything to security.”

Re-examining foreign ties

Clearance and mobility processes can also present barriers to the intelligence community’s goal of increasing diversity in the national security workforce. Contractors often compete for the same people who are already cleared at the highest levels, and new applicants can be dissuaded from going through a lengthy, often confusing process.

“If you keep moving the same people around from place to place, you’re not going to be as successful as you as you could be,” Torres said on diversity.

INSA’s new white paper on “recruiting and clearing personnel with foreign ties” also dives headlong into diversity issues, positing that the security clearance process “does not lend itself” to hiring individuals with different backgrounds and experiences who may have key language and cultural skills.

The paper said the intelligence community needs to “re-examine historical assumptions about the risks posed to national security by foreign-born persons or those with close foreign ties.”

Adjudicative guidelines for granting or revoking a clearance requires agencies to examine factors like allegiance to the United States, foreign influence, and foreign preference.

But INSA suggests investigators could look at those aspects from a risk mitigation approach, as opposed to eliminating all risk.

“Investigators are never going to be able to learn everything they want to know about a candidate’s uncle in rural China somewhere, but they can assess whether such a family tie really affects a candidate’s loyalties or creates security risks that can’t be mitigated,” Hanauer said.

The paper also recommends mission-focused teams, such as analysts, work more closely with their counterparts in security and human resources, respectively, to ensure candidates with critical skills don’t get easily dropped from the clearance process because of foreign ties.

“We just feel like better communication between the human resources people, the mission-focused teams that want to hire a candidate, and the security folks will help ensure that people with those critical skills don’t just hit that brick wall,” Hanauer said. “The mission-focused teams might be able to provide the the security team, with additional insights into the reasons why this candidate is facing obstacles.”

The white paper also recommends bias awareness training for all officials responsible for recruitment, hiring, investigations and adjudications. Meanwhile, new policies and procedures could consider a more granular consideration of foreign ties, INSA’s paper suggests, such as reasons behind why a candidate wants to hang onto a dual citizenship.

Hanauer said that INSA is now working on a white paper comparing how commercial companies screen their job candidates and contrasting it with the government’s clearance approach.

“Commercial companies … manage to protect their sensitive information pretty well without subjecting their job candidates to a months-long vetting process,” he said. “We’re in the process of doing a comparison of public sector and private sector personnel screening to see if maybe the government can adopt some more efficient best practices from industry.”

July 4, 2022 on ForYourBenefit, host Bob Leins, CPA® welcomes Tammy Flanagan, Senior Benefits Director, NITP.

This topic has become more complicated for employees retiring under the three-tiered FERS retirement system that includes Social Security, the FERS Basic Benefit (government pension) and the Thrift Savings Plan.

Today’s program will focus on the “best dates” to separate from Federal service under CSRS and FERS, and will also address the questions that are on many employee’s minds:

• Teleworking over the past two years has caused many to consider retirement, especially if being ordered to return to the office.
• Learn how to prepare for delays in retirement processing that have occurred throughout the retirement planning process.
• There are clues to know when it’s “time” for retirement.
• The best retirement date may not be the same as your coworkers.
• There are important retirement planning steps everyone should take during the months leading up to your retirement date.

The discussion may also include the following related topics:

• There are mental, financial, and tax preparations that need to be done before selecting your date.
  • It is important to have an idea of how you will spend your time in your life after retirement.
  • Retirement can last a long time.  Some Federal retirees receive benefits for more years than they worked for the government.  How to prepare for longevity risk.
  • Retirement is a taxable event!  Learn how your benefits will be taxed in retirement.
  • Gross vs. Net:  Understand the withholdings and reductions that will impact your net income during retirement.
• Selecting the best date to retire under FERS and CSRS:
• The last day of the month for FERS, CSRS and CSRS Offset optional retirements
• The first three days of the month for CSRS and CSRS Offset
• Any day might be a great day for your retirement
• The rules are a little different for disability, early retirements and deferred retirements
• The end of the leave year remains a popular date for many Feds
• Be sure to include your leave balance in the retirement planning process
• Thrift Savings Plan drawdown:
  • You can use your TSP to supplement your monthly FERS and Social Security benefits.
  • Be sure that you have a plan for managing your TSP post-retirement.
  • Applying for withdrawals from the TSP will get easier this summer!
• Know when to “turn on” your Social Security retirement:
  • How would you answer the following questions?
  • What if you are working past your full retirement age?
    • Do you plan to work after you retire?
    • Are you retiring under age 62?
    • Are you married, widowed or divorced?
    • Did you start a family later in life?
    • Do you have a history of longevity in your family?
    • Will you receive a CSRS retirement benefit?  Consider the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset.

For questions or comments, email us in advance at ForYourBenefit@nitpinc.com

The Defense Department has been talking about the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) standards for more than three years.

And while the final version 2.0 standards aren’t going to be ready until next summer, the impact of just talking about improving cybersecurity among contractors is real.

Stacy Bostjanick, the chief of implementation and policy and deputy CIO for cybersecurity for the Defense Department, said contractors are definitely more accepting of the need to protect their data. But, she quickly admitted, they may not have fully embraced CMMC.

“The 7012 [Defense acquisition regulations] clause started that in earnest in 2013. We got a ton of pushback and finally got it into a rule in 2017. And then after that, we had a few incidents like SolarWinds, the Colonial pipeline, and now people are like, ‘Oh, yeah, maybe people are coming after me. Oh, maybe it is an issue,’” Bostjanick said at the recent AFCEA NOVA Small Business IT Day.

Dr. Kelly Fletcher, the principal deputy chief information officer for the Defense Department, said the current approach, based on self-attestation, creates a potentially unleveled playing field for contractors who choose to take the right steps to secure their data and those that just say they do.

“We know we have totally divergent compliance. If you’re complying now with what is in your contract, you’re competing against folks that aren’t, and I think CMMC is trying to get after that,” Fletcher said. “I don’t think CMMC is perfect. I think any solution we come up with isn’t going to be perfect. But it is our first attempt to get after that.”

25% of DIB met cyber requirements

While the problem may not be new, the data collected by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) shows just how troubling it is.

John Ellis, the technical directorate’s software division director at DCMA, said out of 300 assessments the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Assessment Center (DIBCAC) did over the last few years, only 25% of the companies were compliant with the 110 requirements in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-171.

“If roughly 25% of companies were fully compliant when we assess them, now, if you extrapolate that across the DIB, that’s why we’re informing some of the decisions. So if what CMMC is going to do for us in the future that we can’t do today is what we do today is largely a post-assessment activity. There are holes in those mechanisms, things are not fully implemented,” Ellis said at the Coalition for Government Procurement spring conference in Falls Church, Virginia. “CMMC is going to let us address some of that stuff that does lead to stronger prevention of ransomware attacks because it’s going to require companies to become far more fully compliant. If 75% of your companies can’t meet the requirements and they’re required to meet all of those before they can be awarded a contract, what does that mean, in terms of who can compete for contracts? It doesn’t bode well.”

Ellis said the DIB’s shortcoming based on their assessments and the need to bring more companies up to par faster is why DCMA is launching the early adopter program for CMMC. This is for defense companies to work with certified third-party assessment organizations (C3PAOs) before the CMMC 2.0 is finalized. Ellis said DCMA auditors would look over the C3PAO’s shoulder and offer feedback and insights, but not an official DIBCAC review.

“We started the planning for the early adopter program a couple of months ago, but we haven’t started the assessments yet. I expect us to start them later this summer,” Ellis said. “The assessments are on site, but also include a lot of coordination ahead of time with the company, the C3PAO and our folks. It’s a 45-60 day process that happens at the company’s site.”

Ellis said the C3PAO and the DCMA auditors will conduct a medium or high confidence assessment, which is more like a document review, where they, with the company, to through the system security plan to ensure that they’ve documented their requirements in a way that that articulates that they understand the requirements.

Benefits for DoD, vendors alike

The early adopter program is part of several ongoing initiatives DoD is pursuing to get a head start on CMMC. Bostjanick said earlier this year that DoD will do a series of tabletop exercises to test out the cyber standards.

Bostjanick said the early adopter program benefits the C3PAOs, DCMA and the DIB because all will get experience with CMMC standards.

“You will be given a DIBCAC high assessment in supplier performance risk system (SPRS), and our intent, which means our hope because lawyers told me we can’t promise anything because rulemaking is that, when CMMC becomes a thing, either as an interim thing next May or a final thing the following May, that companies certifications will still be good for an additional three years,” she said. “One of the things that you’re going to see in CMMC 2.0 is each company has a requirement to do an annual affirmation. Which states ‘Yep, I’m still good. I’m still in compliance. Nothing has changed. Nothing has caused me to go out of compliance. I affirm I still meet the requirements.’”

Ellis said there are about 20,000 companies in SPRS today and if, based on the DCMA review of about 300 companies, approximately 75% are not in compliance with the 110 controls detailed in NIST 800-171 today, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.

“The data is in SPRS says the opposite. We see an awful lot of scores that are very, very, very high, and we’re a little concerned about that for a couple of reasons,” Ellis said. “One, we’re concerned about companies not really doing the things that they said they were going to do. And two, it gives a false sense of security both to the companies and to the government in the procuring activities that are relying upon that information.”

DoD is facing similar questions about its own systems’ compliance. A recent Government Accountability Office highlighted in late May the Pentagon’s struggles in meeting the same NIST 800-171 standards for internal systems.

Ellis said DCMA started reviewing about 300 contractors’ compliance to the NIST standards in 2019 and the hope is that those companies that were among the first, would be part of the early adopter program.

He said the NIST reviews alone have improved vendor cybersecurity.

“We had one company that was in the negative 200 range and now they are in the mid-two digit range, meaning they have improved remarkable over the last few years,” he said. “It’s really important that folks understand, this is not meant as a threat. We’re looking at it to derive knowledge and insight. We’re going to anonymize the results, unless we were to stumble into something that’s fraudulent and then that’s a whole another can of worms, by the way. But what we will do is share that information of what we learned with the companies that we’ve assessed so that people can see the goodness of the information that’s actually in the system. It should inform both government folks and quite honestly, it should inform the DIB. You don’t ever want to be in a position where you think you’re much better than you are, and then either the DIBCAC shows up or a C3PAO assessment is conducted, and you find that you’ve missed the mark, significantly. That’s not good for you as a company. And it’s certainly not good for us to rely upon somebody that doesn’t have that understanding.”

To prepare for the influx of work coming from CMMC, the DIBCAC is staffing up. DCMA plans to grow its staff in the DIBCAC to about 150 employees from 50 a few years ago.

Dan Greenberg, deputy general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, described seizures and forfeitures, how to protect your assets, and how difficult it is for consumers to retrieve their property once it is seized.

Date: 

Description:

The Federal Executive Forum explores emerging challenges of being a chief technology officer with the technology executives that are making innovation happen.

During this webinar, you will gain the unique perspective of the chief technology officers from the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, U.S. Marshals Office, NAVWAR and industry leaders. Learn what it takes to ensure that technology in government continues to evolve.

The following chief technology officers will expand on the aspects of emerging technologies and innovation in government:

• David Larrimore, Chief Technology Officer, Department of Homeland Security
• Carly Jackson, Chief Technology Officer, NAVWAR
• Sanjay Koyani, Chief Technology Officer, Department of Labor
• Christine Finnelle, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Marshals Service
• Jonathan Alboum, Federal Chief Technology Officer, ServiceNow
• Paul Moxon, Senior Vice President of Data Architecture & Chief Evangelist, Denodo
• Kaladhar Voruganti, Senior Fellow, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, Equinix
• Moderator: Luke McCormack, Host of the Federal Executive Forum

              

Registration is complimentary. Please register using the form on this page or call (202) 895-5023.

The Navy is taking several steps to shorten the time it takes to get its vessels in and out of maintenance at its shipyards, including with a huge, multiyear and multibillion dollar program to modernize the yards’ outdated infrastructure.

But as officials dug into the problem of maintenance delays and broader logistics issues, they found at least one other massive contributor that’s arguably easier to fix: getting the parts the Navy’s tradesmen need to do their work at the jobsite at the time the projects begin. Fixing that problem alone could go a long way toward making sure ships’ maintenance availabilities are finished on time.

That’s one of the more potent discoveries the Navy has made as part of a much broader project called Naval Sustainment System-Supply (NSS-S), led by Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP), and in the case of the shipyards, supported by Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).

Rear Adm. Peter Stamatopoulos, NAVSUP’s commander, said the project’s data analytics showed that, on average, only about 30% of the parts needed to complete a submarine or surface ship’s planned maintenance were available when the vessel entered the yard. And those late-arriving supplies, in turn, are responsible for about 30% of the total delays in ships’ scheduled maintenance periods.

“What happens is that the rest of the material requirements are discovered as that availability is moving along. Some of it is never identified upfront in the planning process, and some of it occurs when they open and inspect a planned job, but what we’ve found is that oftentimes, in that growth work, we should have the parts on hand and ready to go before the work is actually started,” he said during a wide-ranging interview about NSS-S for Federal News Network’s On DoD. “It’s part of the dysfunction that has developed over the course of time — we haven’t been able to be as predictive as we need to be in our requirements determination to support those jobs. But we’re getting after that.”

In the year-and-a-half NAVSUP has been working on NSS-S, the parts availability rate has improved noticeably, to 37%. The objective by the end of the five-year project is 100%, though Stamatopolous acknowledged that’s a stretch goal.

Another discovery Navy officials made as part of NSS-S: the low availability rates have flown under the radar until recently, in part, because local supply departments at each Navy shipyard have tried to solve the missing parts problems by themselves, ordering what they need on their own.

“So requirements were finding their way around the supply system, and not going through a central point,” Stamatopolous said. “And when we don’t go through a central point, we don’t have the demand visibility we need so that we can be more predictive with the material that we should have on hand, either in the shipyard ready to go, or in our wholesale supply system in NAVSUP and the Defense Logistics Agency.”

Going forward, the idea is to minimize the number of instances in which the Navy’s four public shipyards need to order items from vendors separately. NAVSUP is trying to centralize more of those orders through its own supply system to take advantage of the broader Navy’s buying power, apply category management principles, and give its vendors more predictability so that each of its shipyards aren’t, in effect, competing against each other with urgent requests for the same items that could, ideally, have been bought ahead of time and stocked in Navy or DLA warehouses.

Although the shipyard element has been a major focus of the NSS-S initiative, it’s only one of many. Stamatopolous said the bigger project — which ranges from improving NAVSUP’s industry relationships to getting a better handle on cash management in its working capital fund — has achieved about $600 million in verified savings thus far.

And many of the “pillars” of the project are interrelated.

For example, if the Navy can do a better job of forecasting the parts it’ll need for maintenance availability and minimize the amount of local purchasing, NAVSUP is likely to do a much better job of forecasting its demand to vendors.

“One of the things that I continuously hear from them is they would like to have a more stable demand signal,” Stamatopolous said. “We also need to make sure that we have the right mix of organic repair and commercial repair, because we have to preserve and protect both [capabilities], and the best way that we can do that for the commercial base is to give them a solid, stable demand. We have to be sensitive to their needs for cash.”

Meanwhile, the Navy is also starting pilot programs that try not only to minimize the number of cases in which local elements of the Navy’s sustainment system is competing for the same parts, but also the number of instances in which the acquisition portions of the Navy bureaucracy are competing against the sustainment portions for the exact same items.

“What we’re doing in NSS-Supply is bringing both of those disciplines into the room,” Stamatopolous said. “We’re creating RFPs for not only the new procurement of parts, but also the sustainment, and bringing it together. That’s the first time that that’s happened in at least 20 years, and what it allows us to do is bring the full buying power of both the acquisition community and NAVSUP into the same room. We’re negotiating upfront sustainment before we talk about how many numbers of airplanes or components that we’re going to be purchasing. It’s a whole different approach to how we do contracting and acquisition. And it’s exciting.”

Carolyn Parent, president and CEO of Conveyer, joins Aileen Black on this week’s Leaders and Legends to discuss leadership in the technology sector.

Conveyor is a provider of an AI-driven document virtualization platform that transforms instructions into friendly, easy-to-follow, mobile-first applications that customers can retrieve with QR codes and view on any device.

Prior to joining Conveyor, Parent led companies at the forefront of SaaS technology innovation in real-time digital communications, mobile, AI, data and security analytics. She founded companies, managed new growth-oriented software technology business units, and helped navigate organizations through six profitable evolutions or exits (IPO, M&A, privatization and large-scale divisional spin-offs).

Throughout  her career, Parent has built high performance teams and led organizations to their highest levels of success. She did that by leading with “optimism and enthusiasm,” and keeping the lines of communication open so that all stakeholders from the individual contributors to the board of directors have the information they need meet their objectives.

According to Parent, she tries to ensure that there are “no surprises” during the decision making process. That way everyone knows where they stand and what to do.

She says “The more informed people are the better they can do their job.”

Parent believes that leaders of any organization must empower and support their teams then stand aside to let them find their own paths to success. She tries to lead by being what she calls a “velvet hammer” — strong but not abrasive. It’s a lesson she learned from a former mentor.

Parent said strong effective leaders must be able to “work with people and get to know them so they can see your point of view. Coming on too strong without understanding where or how that person may perceive it could cause issues. ”

She said leaders must always be able to adapt to change because “nothing lasts forever,” and she recommends networking with other leaders and executives as you make your way up the corporate ladder.

Networking comes naturally to Parent because she loves people and learns from everyone she meets. She added that networking has paid off over the years and has fueled her success. In fact, she said networking is the key to having a successful career.

Parent is passionate about helping the next generation of women leaders and she has some advice for them.

“Don’t let someone else pick your path,” she said. “Every company is a tech company these days. You don’t need to code to be in tech. You don’t need to be an engineer to work at STEM companies. They need sales, marketing and customer service people too. Remember if you can see it, you can be it. With hard work you can make anything possible.”

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This week Moshe Schwartz, president of Etherton and Associates, joins host Roger Waldron on this week’s Off the Shelf  to discuss The Slow Destruction of the Defense Industrial Base, a report Schwartz co-authored with Michelle Johnson from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

The report was prepared for the NPS and was presented at the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research Symposium.

It outlines the significant shrinking of the defense industrial base and the negative ramifications for the Department of Defense’s ability to access to innovation and cutting edge technologies from the private sector. The defense industrial base has shrunk over the last decade in contrast to the overall growth in the U.S. economy over the same period.

Schwartz highlights the key policy, regulatory, workforce and business practices that have driven industry away from working with DoD and the government in general, and the  government’s approach to the allocation of intellectual rights as a disincentive for commercial firms doing business with DoD.

Notably, the report coins a new term, the National Security Innovation and Industrial Base (NSIB), emphasizing the critical importance the commercial market plays in driving innovation in defending our nation.

June 27, 2022 on ForYourBenefit, host Tammy Flanagan, Senior Benefits Director NITP, welcomes Mary Beth Franklin, Certified Financial Planner®, Contributing Editor for InvestmentNews, President of RetirePro, and foremost Social Security expert.  Tammy and Mary Beth will explore the following important topics:

1. What are the claiming strategies for Social Security that will maximize your retirement security?
2. When does it make sense to claim Social Security at 62?
3. When does it make sense to delay claiming Social Security?
4. Can you still do-over your Social Security election or can you suspend your benefit payments?
5. What is the difference between payroll taxes and the income taxes you may have to pay on your benefits?
6. What are the “Social Security Trust Funds?”
7. How is Social Security financed?
8. Is Social Security going broke?
9. What does the 2022 Social Security Trustees report mean when it states: The fund’s reserves will become depleted and continuing tax income will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits?
10. What are the likely changes that lawmakers will make to reduce or eliminate the long-term financing shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare?
11. What is the purpose of the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment?
12. Inflation is at near record highs; will the COLA keep up with inflation?
13. If I delay Social Security past age 62, will I miss out on the COLAs?

For questions or comments, email us in advance at ForYourBenefit@nitpinc.com

Robert Gibbs, associate administrator for the Mission Support Directorate at NASA, joins Aileen Black on this week’s Leaders and Legends to discuss his career and his approach to leadership.

Gibbs joined NASA as the assistant administrator for the Office of Human Capital Management and NASA’s chief human capital officer in 2017. In this role, Gibbs had stewardship responsibility for  NASA’s workforce, carrying out responsibilities in accordance with the Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002. His responsibilities included setting the agency’s workforce development strategy, assessing workforce characteristics and future needs based on the agency’s mission and strategic plan, and aligning the agency’s human resources policies and programs with organizational mission.

Gibbs describes his leadership style as one that has “to be adaptable to every circumstance and every situation.”

“I focus on what  we are going to do as leaders,” he said. “How are we going to solve problems? How are we going to accomplish the mission and take care of our folks? I think we should focus on leadership principles.”

According to Gibbs, the most effective leaders make decisions after listening to employees throughout their organizations. That’s because, he said, the best ideas don’t always come from your executive teams.

“When you’re looking for opportunities to try and find a way to leverage a certain circumstance or respond to a threat, you have to be willing to say, okay, folks, what is the best idea, and I will tell you my experience at NASA, sometimes that doesn’t come from executive suite,” he said. “It comes from the deck plates on a lot of the things that we’ve done. We have to be willing to put our egos aside and listen for the best idea.”

Gibbs said communication is the key and good leaders need to find ways to motivate and support their employees so they can go out and solve the most pressing problems in their organizations.

“I think some of the most critical parts of leadership, and this may sound kind of silly, but I think it’s listening,” he said. “Really understanding the problems that you’re facing, really understanding what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Gibbs said authenticity is another important leadership quality. It’s important to “be yourself,” because employees will know when you aren’t being straight with them.

“You really have to be who you are. Your folks will know,” Gibbs said. “They’re going to see someone who lacks authenticity from a mile away. You have to be willing to accept and understand you don’t have the answers. But you’re putting service first, and you’re willing to listen, and understand and pursue the bigger goal.”

Gibbs also offered some advice to the next generation of leaders saying they need to work hard and be willing to take on the hardest jobs to help their organizations meet their missions.

He added that he has been inspired by some of the younger workers that he has met in recent years.

“They think differently,” he said. “And I think they look at problems differently, and they assimilate information differently. And honestly, I think all of those are good things. I’m super excited for what the future holds.”

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency is adding more data categories to its “continuous vetting” program, while more than three dozen non-defense agencies are using DCSA’s services as it moves ahead with security clearance reform efforts.

DCSA is now monitoring 50,000 cleared individuals from 38 non-defense agencies under its continuous vetting program, according to Heather Green, assistant director of vetting risk operations at DCSA. That’s on top of the 3.6 million Defense Department service members, civilians and contractors who were enrolled in continuous vetting by last October.

“We do anticipate this continuing to grow through this fiscal year and beyond as we add those additional CV services,” Green said on Inside the IC. “So as more services and capability comes online, we’re going to continue to grow our service to our federal agencies, as well as our DoD customers.”

DCSA is one of the lead agencies implementing the government-wide “Trusted Workforce 2.0” initiative. The effort aims to streamline the government’s personnel vetting process through automated record checks, simplified security standards and more information sharing across agencies.

Earlier this year, a White House official called 2022 the “most significant, most consequential” year for security clearance reform yet.

DCSA’s continuous vetting system is one of the centerpieces of the initiative, giving investigators the ability to receive automated alerts when a security clearance holder faces an issue that could put their clearance at risk.

DCSA’s continuous vetting system hit the “1.25” milestone last fall when the DoD cleared population was fully enrolled. But the system at that time was limited to three data categories: criminal activities, terrorism, and eligibility.

The agency is now adding alerts about suspicious financial activity, foreign travel, credit history and “public record information” to the continuous vetting system on the way to the “Trusted Workforce 1.5” milestone this fall, according to Green. Already, 2 million DoD clearance holders are  enrolled in that expanded system of alerts.

The continuous vetting system is replacing periodic reinvestigations, where investigators would do a background check on a clearance holder every five or 10 years. Instead of learning about potentially suspicious activity years after it took place, the system is intended to provide security offices with alerts about such activity. Investigators can then decide whether to follow up.

But Green says continuous vetting is not a “gotcha” program. Instead, she says it’s intended to improve security while also giving cleared personnel the chance to self-report and mitigate any potential issues.

“In the grand scheme of things, very few individuals actually receive an alert or require the additional investigative action to take place,” Green said. “But CV isn’t just about generating those alerts. It really is about self-reporting. There are self-reporting requirements for clearance holders, and it’s really supporting the goal of helping us identify potential issues before they fester into a larger insider threat concern.”

Security clearance reciprocity timelines down

DCSA has also made major strides in the time it takes for it to process and adjudicate a security clearance granted by another agency, a process referred to as “reciprocity.” The process affects personnel transferring from one agency to another, as well as contractors working on different projects for different agencies.

DCSA now takes an average of just one day to make a reciprocity decision, down from a peak of 65 days in mid-2020, according to Green.

She credited “business process engineering” leading to more efficient decision-making on reciprocity requests, as well as the merger of several organizations under DCSA, including the former National Background Investigations Bureau and the DoD Consolidated Adjudications Facility.

Last year, DCSA also completed the shift from using multiple personnel security databases to the Defense Information Security System (DISS).

“Having the ability to control the end-to-end process was certainly a part of that success,” Green said of reciprocity.

While other agencies, most notably in the intelligence community, take much longer to make reciprocity decisions, Green thinks the “transfer of trust” process, as it’s called under Trusted Workforce 2.0, will continue to improve with time.

Initial vetting hurdles

One of the next major hurdles for security clearance reform will be speeding up the time it takes to get an initial applicant, with no prior government background investigation, through the vetting process. The initial background investigations process often takes months and even years in some cases, making it harder for the federal government to hire new employees.

A quarterly update issued by the Security, Suitability, and Credentialing Performance Accountability Council earlier this year shows DCSA is expected to begin offering initial vetting products, using more automated processes and the new National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) IT system, starting next June.

“We are committed to being what I would call the ‘personal security provider of choice,'” Green said. “We’re working very hard to provide new and enhanced products and services to support that full TW 2.0 implementation to include initial vetting products. The actual implementation of the new standards will take some time and will be fully phased in as those products and services are available. But we are leaning forward, looking at how we can continue to evolve all our vetting products and services.”