- Fri. Aug 29, 2008
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Bush Reverses Course on Commission
The White House has announced its nominees to a commission investigating contract spending in Iraq and Afghanistan—an about-face from its earlier opposition to the panel that Congress created this year.
In late June, President Bush named Dov Zakheim, who served as the Defense Department’s chief financial officer, and Grant Green, former undersecretary of State for management, as his nominees to the Commission on Wartime Contracting.
The commission is the brainchild of Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who got the provision inserted into the Defense authorization bill. In January, shortly after signing the measure, Bush issued a signing statement that said he did not have to abide by four provisions, including the one creating the commission. Webb’s office said that the White House seems to have dropped its objections.
Congressional leaders named the other members: Linda Gustitus, former chief of staff to Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Charles Tiefer, former deputy general counsel for the House; Dean Popps, acting assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics, and technology; Michael Thibault, former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency; and Clark Kent Ervin, the first inspector general for the Homeland Security Department.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has yet to announce his pick, who will serve, with Thibault, as a co-chairman. —Robert Brodsky/Government Executive
VA Secretary Eyes Legacy: Cooperation
Before his turn as Veterans Affairs secretary is over, James Peake has one major vision he hopes to realize—improve the working relationship between his department and the Defense Department.
In the past, too many veterans have had trouble accessing their benefits or knowing what they’re entitled to, Peake told a group of reporters last week. Now, with thousands of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, plus struggling with family and financial problems, Peake especially wants to make it easier for them to get the help they need before they get into trouble. “No veteran should be homeless because of loss of money,” Peake said.
In particular, Peake said, his department must perfect its telephone-outreach program if it hopes to carry out the recommendations of last year’s Dole-Shalala Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors. The panel called for sharing information between the two departments, restructuring the disability system, and establishing a joint Defense/VA website. —Eugene Mulero/National Journal
NOAA’s Ark Will Preserve Petabytes
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signed a contract last week to help manage an archive of environmental data that by 2020 will store more information than all the material printed in the world since Johannes Gutenberg.
The $2.8 million contract, awarded to Diversified Global Partners Joint Venture, will help NOAA handle torrents of data from weather satellite systems, said Christopher Fox, director of NOAA’s Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo. NOAA’s electronic library of environmental information (known as the Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System) stores 1 petabyte, or 1 quadrillion bytes of information, dating back to 1974. Fox estimated that the library will grow to 160 petabytes by 2020.
“The future of earth sciences will focus less on how we collect data and more on what we do with it to provide products that improve lives,” said NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher.
The system will store data on a combination of high-capacity hard drives and tape drives at redundant data centers in Boulder and Asheville, N.C., said project manager Rick Vizbulis.
Fox likened the challenge in providing users easy access to the data to the one that Google faced in developing a Web search engine. Agency briefing documents indicate that NOAA plans to spend $7.4 million a year on the system during the next 10 years. —Bob Brewin/Government Executive