Page 15 - FCW, Sept/Oct 2018

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$949M is the ceiling for the Navy’s seven-year contract for secure wireless service
Civilian background checks could move to DOD
It seems increasingly likely that the Defense Department will take over background investigations for all federal employees and contractors.
Charles Phalen, director of the National Background Investigations Bureau, said in August that DOD is expected to absorb the facilities, assets, personnel and workload of the bureau, which is currently based in the Office of Personnel Management.
The move comes on the heels of a mandate in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ordering the Pentagon to take over background investigations from NBIB for DOD personnel and contractors. That amounts to 70 percent of the bureau’s 2 million annual investigations.
The Trump administration’s plan to reorganize the government, which was released in June, goes a step further by stating that integrating NBIB into DOD would be more efficient than splitting
the background investigations workload between two agencies. White House officials are reportedly preparing an executive order to finalize the plan.
Phalen said OPM has been working with DOD to separate the responsibilities per the NDAA mandate, but he nevertheless seemed confident
the organization’s functionality. “In the long run, this is a much better solution and will keep us able...to focus on the most important stuff that we’re doing,” he said.
Phalen also said NBIB and DOD are working on updating the bureau’s IT system, which will ultimately “underpin
GSA adds drone countermeasures to security schedule
Federal, state and local agencies can now buy anti-drone systems from a General Services Administration schedule, but some experts said the purchases might come with a slew of regulatory and legal considerations.
DroneShield is now offering products through GSA’s Schedule 84, a multiple- award contract for security, fire and law enforcement needs.
DroneShield targets trespassing drones with a radio jammer and allows for a forced landing of unmanned aerial vehicles up to a kilometer away. The company’s DroneSentry system uses radar, radio frequency and cameras to locate unauthorized drones.
Such drones have become a source of frustration for some agencies. Errant
drones, for instance, have interfered with federal and local aircraft fighting deadly wildfires in the western U.S. In August, the Federal Aviation Administration said such activity had forced agencies to ground critical firefighting aircraft.
Still, the FAA, which has been testing drone-detection systems at airports nationwide since 2016, cautioned that federal laws could preclude the use of some of the systems.
There are a number of federal legal obstacles to testing, evaluating or using countermeasures against [unmanned aerial systems] in the United States,” FAA spokesman Les Dorr told FCW.
Agencies might inadvertently violate federal statutes regarding wiretapping, sabotage and computer fraud if the
“The truth is that split would’ve been
debilitating, distracting and frankly pretty counterproductive.”
that the split would not actually happen. “The truth is that split would’ve been debilitating, distracting and frankly pretty counterproductive,” he said. “The good news is the administration has determined that this bifurcation
probably is not a good idea.” Ultimately, Phalen added, having
DOD take over would be better for
— CHARLES PHALEN, NBIB
the whole of government investigative and vetting processes [and house] the ‘permanent record’ that the nuns always warned me about when I was in elementary school.”
That permanent record is critical for continuous evaluation and vetting, he added.
— Lauren C. Williams
countermeasures are deployed without a clear understanding of the applicable rules and regulations.
The Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration have regulations that bar the jamming of radio frequencies, while federal aviation laws prohibit unauthorized takeover of aircraft.
“No state, local or private-sector entities have been granted legislative relief” from those prohibitions, Dorr said, but several bills now under consideration in Congress could grant exceptions to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security for specific missions, assets and activities.
— Mark Rockwell
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