Monthly Archives: September 2024

Federal Air Marshals are overworked and leaving the agency at an alarming rate, a representative for the workforce told Congress on Tuesday, and they are seeking a new agency to house them. 

The marshals are always on call and often have to work in 20-hour shifts, John Casaretti, president of the Air Marshal Association told a panel of the House Homeland Security Committee, leading to low morale throughout the workforce. Exacerbating the issue, he said, are the lack of details employees are given on why they are sent on flights and the general feeling the law enforcement personnel serve no purpose on them. 

The marshals are pushing the Transportation Security Administration, their parent agency, to use more data and intelligence for determining when to place them on flights. Casaretti cautioned, however, TSA’s mission does not align with that of the Federal Air Marshals Service. Passenger screening is more regulatory than law enforcement in nature, he argued, and therefore not well suited to oversee the marshals. 

“I think we need to be out of the bureaucratic agency we find ourselves in to just be an arm of that, and we need to be released to do the law enforcement work we all signed up to do,” Casaretti said. 

Asked to where FAMS should be relocated, he said Congress would have the best judgment to make that determination but floated the Transportation Department or elsewhere within the Homeland Security Department as possibilities. 

Tina Won Sherman, the Government Accountability Office’s director for homeland security and justice, noted that while TSA has addressed many of the issues GAO has raised in recent years, it still does not have a firm grasp of the efficacy of its efforts.

“It’s been challenging and difficult to understand FAMS’ and air marshals’ ability to be effective as an aviation security countermeasure,” Sherman said. 

The issues are starting to take a toll. FAMs expect a “demanding job,” Casaretti said, but do not sign up to be “on call without compensation” or to “work punishing schedules.” The compounding issues have brought some Air Marshals to a breaking point, as he noted many of his colleagues have taken their own lives or seen their families fall apart. 

“You’re working on constant sleep deprivation and your circadian rhythm is knocked out of whack,” he said. 

Members of the Transportation and Maritime Security Subcommittee that hosted Tuesday’s hearing sympathized with the issues the witnesses presented and expressed concern about the impact on employee retention. 

“This panel especially knows the nature of the job includes frequent travel and long hours, and we know that it can take a toll on the morale and mental health of our Federal Air Marshals,” said Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y. 

Casaretti noted that most of the marshals that joined the agency when TSA was stood up following the September 11th attacks have now retired. 

“We suffered an incredible brain drain,” he said, while cautioning that new hires are receiving inadequate training.

The FBI raided the Reston, Va., headquarters of IT, software and cybersecurity services provider Carahsoft Technology Corp. on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The raid was conducted sometime Tuesday morning, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified due to the matter’s sensitivity.

“We can confirm that the FBI conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity on Sunset Hills Road this morning. We decline to comment further,” an FBI spokesperson said in a statement.

Carahsoft is a privately held provider of IT services and software to the public sector. It has secured billions of dollars in contracts with agencies like the Social Security Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Treasury, according to GovTribe, a federal market intelligence platform owned by Nextgov/FCW parent company GovExec.

Carahsoft President Craig Abod and a company spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment.

Carahsoft employees were told the agents were there “as part of an investigation into a company with which Carahsoft has done business in the past” and that the company is fully cooperating and “operating business as usual,” according to an email sent by Abod and obtained by Nextgov /FCW.

Several notes and images of what appeared to be the raid were posted in a Reddit channel purportedly used by company employees. Nextgov/FCW could not immediately verify the contents of the images, though one appeared to show a group of FBI agents dressed in uniform walking through the office. Another image obtained separately by Nextgov/FCW showed a trio of FBI agents dressed in uniform walking into a building entrance.

This story is breaking and may be updated.

Editor’s note: Carahsoft is an advertising client of GovExec360.

The Office of Personnel Management on Monday extended and modified an authority that makes it easier for federal agencies to hire STEM, acquisitions and cybersecurity personnel. 

Direct hire authority is granted when there is a shortage of job candidates or significant hiring needs and speeds up the appointment process by eliminating procedures that rate and rank applicants. 

OPM renewed the authority for these positions through Dec. 31, 2028. The agency first issued this direct hire flexibility in 2018 and extended it in 2023. 

The authority also was amended to include criminal investigators, specifically ones with cybersecurity and IT expertise. 

This direct hire flexibility covers positions in general schedule classification and pay grade levels 11 through 15, which includes senior personnel. 

OPM in 2023 began permitting agencies to appoint individuals for up to 10 years in certain STEM-related positions in order to staff long-term projects that aren’t likely to become permanent. 

And the Biden administration earlier this year started to modify job requirements for most of the federal government’s IT and cyber workforce to focus on skills capabilities instead of educational attainment. 

Agencies also have used direct hire authority to bring on many employees focused on artificial intelligence.

Federal agencies received the highest grades ever awarded on the latest version of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scorecard that was released on Friday, with more than half of the reviewed entities given an A for their IT modernization and acquisition efforts. 

The 18th iteration of the scorecard was unveiled by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., during a roundtable event with representatives from the Government Accountability Office, NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Departments of Energy and Veterans Affairs.

The biannual scorecard first began in 2015 and serves as an oversight mechanism for 24 reviewed agencies. The subcommittee works with the Government Accountability Office to release the scorecard, in which the federal entities are graded on their adherence to federal guidance regarding their management of IT systems. 

Connolly — one of the original sponsors of FITARA and the ranking member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation — noted that the most recent review includes “the highest number of A’s by far ever recorded on a single scorecard,” with 13 agencies receiving the top grade. 

An additional 10 agencies received B grades, while only one entity — the Department of Energy — received a C. Every agency either saw its grade increase or stay the same since the last scorecard was issued on Feb. 1.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of State showed the greatest improvement since the release of the 17th scorecard, with both agencies improving their grades from D’s to A’s. 

GAO Information Technology and Cybersecurity Director Carol Harris — who estimated FITARA’s total cost savings at approximately $31.4 billion — said the overall improved grades are “mostly due to very marked improvement in two categories, which is a [chief information officer] investment evaluation category and the cloud category.”

The cloud computing category was a new addition to the previous version of the scorecard and resulted in a number of the reviewed agencies’ overall scores dropping. Harris noted that only one agency received an A in this specific category during the last review, but that the number rose to eight A’s in the most recent scorecard. 

Connolly said the scorecard “has been one of constant evolution as we receive feedback on how better to use the scorecard and improve it.” 

He added that lawmakers are looking at adding additional categories to future FITARA scorecards, including one reviewing Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program — or FedRAMP — compliance and another beginning to explore agencies’ early adoption of artificial intelligence tools. 

“I think the first concern maybe that Congress might want to monitor — and that may be reflected in the scorecard — is, ‘Okay, what about AI workforce recruitment, training, retention?” Connolly posited. “Where do we get the workforce at the federal level to make sure we’re managing AI and we understand how to regulate and everything else? And I think that may be a good place for us to start.”

As with the previous two versions of the FITARA scorecard, the latest rankings were unveiled during a roundtable discussion rather than as part of a congressional hearing. Connolly claimed that Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. — the chair of the subcommittee — “has turned her back on the FITARA scorecard” and pledged that, if Democrats regain control of the House in the upcoming November elections, “we will return for a hearing scheduled on the scorecard.”

A representative for Mace did not respond to a request for comment, but the congresswoman’s office told Nextgov/FCW in February that she had held numerous hearings related to federal IT management and acquisition issues.