The Wrap: Big VA Tech Payday; TMF Funding Claw Back; SBA Fraud Ruckus

Welcome to The Wrap for Friday, July 14!

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From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:

Big Payday at VA

Long-awaited pay raises for tech and cybersecurity employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs are coming through on July 16, the agency told us. The Special Salary Rate (SSR) increase in basic bay for those positions has been in the works for months, but the timing has been hanging in limbo for a while. Are they in the cards for other agencies??Hard to tell, as the VA increases stem from authorities granted in the PACT Act approved by Congress to expand VA health care and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances. “We did a survey in cooperation with OPM [Office of Personnel Management] to see what the salaries look like for what are called Series 2210 employees, or IT employees in the VA, versus the industry. And it was pretty significant and stark, that gap between industry salaries and our own,” VA CIO Kurt DelBene told MeriTalk in an exclusive interview last month. “What the SSR will do is just for that 2210 Series [is] bring everybody up to much more competitive with the industry,” he said.

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TMF Funding Claw Back

The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a spending bill that would claw back from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) $290 million of the $1 billion that was approved by Congress for TMF in prior years. The committee, within the FY2024 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill, said it supports the TMF’s aims, but also made noise about how TMF investments in Federal agency IT modernization projects should be fully repayable by the agencies. News flash: TMF eased those repayment requirements a couple of years ago during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. One close observer of the TMF debate dropped in our ear that Federal agencies are much less likely to want TMF money if it has a 100 percent payback requirement, and that boosting the current rate to full-pay would be a good way to push TMF to the far sidelines. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., a cosponsor of the MGT Act that created TMF and the prime mover in Congress for getting the $1 billion infusion in 2021, expressed outrage with the Senate Appropriations Committee’s vote. “For a government that spends more than $100 billion a year on information technology (IT), 80 percent of which is on operations and maintenance of existing IT, including legacy systems, it is inconceivable that we would move to strip the very program that meaningfully modernizes Federal IT,” he said.

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SBA Fraud Ruckus

Small Business Administration (SBA) Inspector General (IG) Mike Ware is sticking with his estimates of $200 billion of potentially fraudulent COVID-19 pandemic assistance loan programs, versus SBA’s own estimate of just $36 billion of potentially fraudulent pandemic loans. Ware backed up his estimate during a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday during which he expressed surprise at SBA’s substantially lower estimate. “The SBA is mistaken, and I think they know that,” Ware said. “There’s two main reasons for that. One, we are the independent watchdog – we have demonstrated that throughout the pandemic and long before that as one of the original 12 offices of Inspector General. Secondly, we have access to data sets that they didn’t have access to.”

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House Squeaks Through NDAA

The House today approved its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2024 but not by much - a margin of just 219-210 – in contrast to what in prior years has been a more feel-good process not only allowing lawmakers to show support of the military, but also attach their own amendments that otherwise would have less chance of becoming law. The process is a big one – 1,500 amendments to the bill were filed, and 370 of them eventually got through. The bill is adorned with tech and cyber nuggets including provisions for a National Digital Reserve Corps, and cyber units for state National Guard organizations. There’s still a long way to go: Once the Senate passes its?own version?of the defense bill, the House and Senate will negotiate over differences in their respective bills through a conference committee to arrive at a unified version of the legislation. The House and Senate will then have to each vote on the unified version of the bill before sending it to President Biden’s desk for approval.

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CBP IT Strategy

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is out with its new?Information Technology (IT) Strategy?for fiscal years (FY) 2023 – 2027, which focuses on refreshing the “alignment and execution” of the agency’s mission. The strategy lines up $1.8 billion in funding to elevate the agency’s cybersecurity abilities and defenses to safeguard the American people. “Each year, our responsibility and role as CBP OIT continues to expand. The objective of this strategy is to refresh our alignment and execution in support of our vision and mission,” stated Sanjeev Bhagowalia, CBP’s CIO and assistant commissioner at the Office of Information Technology (OIT).

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Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more on Monday. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy.

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And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected].

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