Three massive government projects that could be killed by budget cuts
January 5th, 2012 | Commerce General Services Administration Justice | Posted by Andy Medici
2011 was not the best year for federal construction projects (i.e. the worst?) across the country. Accounts were slashed, budgets cut and accounts slashed – I count that one twice – in an effort to cut government spending. So what may be left by the wayside as we move into 2012?
3: Justice Department: The Los Angeles Courthouse
This $399 million, 650,000-square-foot project is supposed to house the overflow of federal justices in the Los Angeles Area. While the money for this project has already been appropriated, members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on public buildings have asked the General Services Administration to block the project.
The Civilian Property Realignment Act which is working its way through Congress – would require GSA to sell the land on which plans to build the Los Angeles courthouse.
2: Department of Commerce: Herbert Hoover Building
Remaining Tab: $453 million
When the Herbert Clark Hoover building (it was named later) was finished in 1932 it was pretty awesome. It’s an eight acre, steel-framed 1.8 million square foot structure. It has six internal courtyards for ventilation, Indiana limestone with granite accents and 24 fluted Doric columns flanking the center section. But then again things like treated bronze doors don’t provide federal employees with contemporary IT infrastructure, modern office space or increased security.
Which is pretty important, I’ve been told.
So in 2008 the General Services Administration began an eight-phase renovation (yes, eight) to renovate the interior and exterior of the building. The total cost is estimated to be about $750 million and will be finished around 2021, and GSA has allocated about $256 million so far for the project. After the recession gave GSA a bargaining boost (saving $40 million in costs) the agency is left with a hole of about $453 million to fill.
For those of you following along at home, $453 million is enough money to purchase 453 million items from your local dollar menu (not counting taxes).
Its final budget for non-courthouse renovations: $260 million. That sounds like a lot until you realize that’s for the thousands of buildings GSA owns across the country and not just the Hoover-plex.
1. The DHS headquarters consolidation at St. Elizabeths
Remaining tab: $3.6 billion (and climbing).
Originally designed as the best way to house more than 14,000 federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security, the project would encompass more than 50 buildings over more than 4 million square feet and 168 acres. It was a chance to give the Coast Guard a brand new headquarters and bring all of its headquarters operation workers into one location.
When finished, the campus would serve as the operational headquarters of the entire agency.
But now the same project will cost at least $3.96 billion and take until the end of fiscal 2021 to complete – delaying the relocation of more than 10,000 federal workers by up to five years, according to agency estimates.
And that’s if Congress fully funds the project starting in fiscal year 2013.
Agencies subpoenaed to testify on small business leadership
October 20th, 2011 | Agriculture Justice Procurement State Treasury | Posted by Sarah Chacko
House Small Business Committee Chairman Sam Graves today issued subpoenas to four federal agencies seeking answers for why they refuse to put senior leadership in charge of small business contracting activities, a committee spokesman said.
The Treasury, State, Justice and Agriculture departments have said they believe they are in compliance with the spirit of a law that requires agencies to put their Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization in direct contact with the agency’s secretary or deputy secretary.
Each agency is required to have an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) under the Small Business Act to ensure contracts are written with small business participation in mind.
The Government Accountability Office reported in June that the seven departments did not comply with the requirements. Some agencies name top level officials as OSDBU directors but have less senior administrators do day-to-day activities. Others have the OSDBU director report to officials other than the secretary or deputy secretary.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney, chairman of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce, sent letters to the noncompliant agencies in August asking them to reorganize their OSDBU offices so that the offices reported to senior leadership. The Interior Department and Social Security Administration responded by reorganizing their small business offices.
But the Treasury, State, Justice and Agriculture departments told Mulvaney they believe they are in compliance with the spirit of the law and will not change.
The subpoenas issued today require the deputy secretaries of those four unchanged agencies to explain their reasons at a full House Small Business Committee hearing on Nov. 1.
Tags: House Small Business Commmittee, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, Small Business Act, small business contracting
Justice names acting CIO
August 11th, 2011 | Justice Uncategorized | Posted by Nicole Johnson
The Justice Department has named Eric Olson its acting chief information officer, following the departure of former CIO Vance Hitch last month.
Olson, who served as the department’s deputy CIO, assumed his new role on Aug. 1. He inherits a $2.1 billion information technology budget, oversight of IT management and acquisition and integration of information resources.
Hitch left his CIO post on July 31 after serving for more than nine years.
Tags: CIO
FBI nabs $74 million cybercrime rings
June 23rd, 2011 | Justice | Posted by Nicole Johnson
Law enforcement agents across a dozen countries joined forces to bring down two international cyber crime rings suspected of causing $74 million in losses to more than 1 million victims, the FBI announced Wednesday.
Two individuals from the northern European country Lativa were arrested Tuesday and indicted on charges filed in Minnesota, where the two allegedly created a phony advertising agency. Peteris Sahurovs, 22, and Marina Maslobojeva, 23 claimed they represented a hotel chain that wanted to purchase online advertising space on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s news website, according to details about the indictment in a news release.
Dubbed “Operation Trident Tribunal,” the coordinated effort included officers from the United States, France, Canada, Germany and other countries and zeroed in on the scareware scams, where malicious software is sold as legitimate computer software.
Investigators seized more than 40 computers, servers and bank accounts throughout the United States and several European countries, following scareware scams investigated by FBI offices in Seattle and Minneapolis.
Here are some FBI tips on how to spot scareware:
- Scareware pop-ups may look like actual warnings from your system, but some elements aren’t fully functional. For instance, you may see a list of reputable icons—like software companies or security publications—but you can’t click through to go to those actual sites.
- Scareware pop-ups are hard to close, even after clicking on the “Close” or “X” button.
- Fake antivirus products are designed to appear legitimate, with names such as Virus Shield, Antivirus, or VirusRemover.
Tags: cybercrime, FBI
AG Holder pulls rank, demands more ‘Wire’
June 2nd, 2011 | Justice | Posted by Stephen Losey
Attorney General Eric Holder delivered an unusual request earlier this week during a panel discussion at Justice Department headquarters: He wants more episodes of The Wire.
For once, this isn’t an Onion story. Holder took part in a panel discussion Tuesday on the ways children are exploited by the drug trade, along with three actors from the HBO show. That’s when he issued his marching orders to the show’s main writers, Reuters said:
“I want to speak to Mr. [Ed] Burns and Mr. [David] Simon: Do another season of The Wire, ” Holder said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience. “That’s actually at a minimum. … If you don’t do a season, do a movie. We’ve done HBO movies, this is a series that deserves a movie. I want another season or I want a movie.”
Holder ended his command rather ominously: “I have a lot of power, Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon.” Actor Wendell “Bunk” Pierce responded with a “Hear, hear.”
Holder’s request is presumably backed by his boss and Omar fanatic, President Obama. So: get to work, guys. The feds want you back on the case.
Tags: Eric Holder, fun, The Wire
Survey: Many agencies still sluggish on FOIA changes despite White House push
March 13th, 2011 | Commerce Defense Education Energy HHS Justice | Posted by Sean Reilly
Two years after President Obama pledged a new dawning of governmental sunshine, barely half of 90 federal agencies say they’ve made concrete changes in their handling of Freedom of Information Act requests, according to survey findings released Sunday.
While 49 agencies reported changes to their FOIA processes, the remainder either said they had no information or did not respond to the Knight Open Government Survey.
In a similar round-up last year, only 13 agencies reported changes, so this year’s numbers reflect a large uptick. Still, “at this rate, the president’s first term in office will be over by the time federal agencies do what he asked them to do on his first day in office,” said Eric Newton, a senior adviser at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which paid for the study.
The results were released by the National Security Archive, a private research organization based at George Washington University that helped carry out the survey. The findings could offer grist for a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on FOIA scheduled for this Thursday.
For the survey, researchers filed FOIA requests asking agencies for copies of changes in their FOIA regulations, manuals, training materials or processing guidance resulting from a 2009 memo from Obama favoring disclosure or from follow-up instructions issued last year.
While several large agencies—including the Defense, Interior and Health and Human Services departments—reported changes, other heavyweights did not. Among them were the Commerce, Energy, State and Education departments. And, oh yes, the Justice Department, the lead agency for carrying out FOIA policy.
Tags: Eric Newton, Freedom of Information Act, George Washington University, Knight Open Government Survey, National Security Archive
Justice offical leaving for Washington-state based firm
January 13th, 2011 | Justice | Posted by Nicole Johnson
Justice Department
The Justice Department announced Thursday that assistant attorney general for national security David Kris is leaving his post March 4.
As head of the National Security Division, Kris helped lead responses for various threats, including the failed bombing attempts in Times Square in May 2010 and on board an airliner Dec. 25, 2009.
“David has greatly strengthened NSD, helping it develop into a mature organization,” a Justice official said.” NSD has developed some of the strongest relationships ever for a DOJ entity with the FBI, the Intelligence Community, and the Defense Department — relationships that have made the government more effective.”
Justice has not annouced an acting assistant attorney general for the Senate-confirmed position.
Kris is heading to Washington-state based Intellectual Ventures to serve as general counsel. The patent firm made news last year after filing three patent infringement suits against nine technology firms, including McAfee and Symantec Corp.
Tags: David Kris, Intellectual Ventures
New FOIA policy; old FOIA practice?
November 17th, 2010 | Justice Uncategorized | Posted by Sean Reilly
Remember Attorney General Eric Holder’s memo last year stating that agencies should administer the Freedom of Information Act with a presumption in favor of disclosure?
One private research organization is wondering whether some of Holder’s subordinates got the message, based on their attempt to thwart full release of a report detailing Nazi-hunting efforts in the United States.
“Here you’ve got the Justice Department flouting the direct guidance of the attorney general,” Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University, said Wednesday in a phone interview. “Holder should be outraged.”
The report is a history of the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department unit created in 1979 to find and deport one-time Nazi persecutors living in the United States. But it doesn’t shy away from less inspiring chapters in that story, such as the fact that some alleged persecutors were “knowingly granted entry” into the country by U.S. officials.
When the archive requested the 607-page report under FOIA last fall, the Justice Department initially refused, saying the report was a draft and that disclosure “could harm the integrity of the agency decision-making process,” according to a response posted on the archive’s web site.
Justice officials backed off that stance after the organization sued, but this year released a version that had more than 1,000 redactions based on exemptions for protection of personal privacy and “pre-decisional” memoranda, Blanton said.
Via e-mail, Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the department is committed to transparency and that attorneys with FOIA expertise make redaction decisions based on considerations under the law.
But the scope of the department’s editing became clear Saturday when The New York Times linked to a leaked copy of the unredacted report on its web site.
In one instance, department officials cited privacy grounds in whiting out most of a footnote that referenced newspaper and wire service articles from 30 years ago. In another, they deleted part of a federal appellate court ruling that raised ethics accusations against Justice Department officials for their handling of another case, according to the Times.
In a statement, the archive’s attorney, David Sobel, accused the department of “withholding information without legal justification.” This week, leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center a Jewish human rights organization, urged President Obama to order official release of the full report, saying “victims of the Holocaust are owed no less.”
The flap is the latest to raise questions about how much effect the Obama administration’s proclaimed tilt in favor of more FOIA disclosure is actually having in practice. “The awareness of administration FOIA policies has yet to translate into a major shift in the FOIA culture across the federal government,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, concluded in a recent review.
For example, the Commerce Department’s inspector general this month reported that Patent and Trademark Office employees for years have been shredding certain data “to minimize requests for such information” under FOIA and by the Patent Office Professional Association. That practice appears to violate the Federal Records Act, the IG said, and will be investigated further.
Tags: Commerce Department, David Sobel, Eric Holder, Freedom of Information Act, Holocaust, Justice Department, National Security Archive, Patent and Trademark Office, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Tom Blanton
Collins: Cheating scandal casts shadow on FBI
October 11th, 2010 | Justice | Posted by Stephen Losey
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is keeping pressure on the FBI to reform in the wake of a cheating scandal. Collins sent FBI Director Bob Mueller a letter Oct. 7 that said he should immediately punish those who cheated on an important exam on domestic investigations rules and privacy, and force any cheater who wasn’t fired to retake the exam.
Collins also wants the FBI to conduct a department-wide review to find out if there were any other cheaters that weren’t identified by an inspector general investigation. Mueller last month said disciplinary actions are being taken against cheaters and promised to follow up on any other allegations of misconduct
Justice IG Glenn Fine released a report Sept. 27 that found dozens to hundreds of FBI agents and other employees — including the former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office and two of his special agents in charge — cheated on the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) exam. Some allegedly improperly collaborated on the test, others allegedly shared answer sheets, and others may have hacked into the FBI’s computers to obtain answers.
Collins said the scandal indicates the FBI doesn’t take the DIOG seriously:
Tags: cheating, FBI, scandal, Sen. Susan Collins
DEA looking for Ebonics speakers?
August 23rd, 2010 | Justice | Posted by Stephen Losey
"You got any idea what he's saying?" "Hell no, do you?"
Now here’s what I call strategic workforce planning. The Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to hire up to nine contract linguists who are fluent in Ebonics, according to a request for proposal posted on the Smoking Gun this morning.
The RFP, which was originally released in May, said it needs people in Atlanta to “listen to oral intercepts in English and foreign languages and provide a verbal summary, immediately followed by a typed summary” and then transcribe pertinent calls.
Ebonics is just one of more than 100 languages requested in the RFP. It’s not surprising that the DEA is looking for people who can translate Spanish, Farsi, Korean, and other standard languages — the entire government has struggled to beef up those capabilities in recent years. (They’re also looking for people who can understand the Jamaican patois.) But it seems kind of odd that the DEA feels it has to hire contractors to help it understand what is essentially very heavy black slang.
It sounds like the DEA’s got a bunch of frustrated agents sitting around listening to slang-filled wiretaps and struggling to figure out what the drug dealers are saying — pretty much like every episode of The Wire. Omar comin’.
Tags: contractors, Drug Enforcement Administration, foreign languages, The Wire