FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. The Project Manager’s Advantage: lean times. Contributor Jillian Hamilton covers Project Management Institute’s 13-pager, “The High Cost of Low Performance” and smartly identifies essential points for the Project Manager-advantage competing for contracts or hunting for jobs: “PMI maintains that organizations can do a few things to minimize the risk of project failure: focus on talent development, standardize project management, and align projects with overall organizational strategy. . . . when faced with leaner times, the organizational ability to routinely complete projects on time, in budget, and in scope is truly an asset. References from former projects can be a key player in winning the next project.”
2. The Private Security Contractor’s Advantage: 2014. Jillian Hamilton provides some fresh perspective on the contractors everybody loves to hate to love: “An additional benefit of private security contractors is their adaptability to meet the changing threats. The security contractor industry has expanded and diversified to meet the changing needs.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. A story they stick by: Pakistan controls Taliban. BBC reports, “Fighting in Afghanistan could be stopped ‘in weeks’ if Pakistan told the Taliban to end the insurgency, the head of the Afghan army has told the BBC. Gen Sher Mohammad Karimi said Pakistan controlled and gave shelter to Taliban leaders, deliberately unleashing fighters on Afghanistan.” See also, “Pakistan could soon end Afghan war.”
2. Girding up for the Cyber War: meta-partnerships. Imagine a project manager capable of synchronizing military, government agency, industry, and allies – now you’ve got something. Cheryl Pellerin, Armed Forces Press Service, covers Maj. Gen. John A. Davis’s remarks at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International Cyber Symposium in Baltimore. Davis, the Senior Military Advisor for Cyber to the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy), said, “DOD is looking at ways to fundamentally change the way it recruits, trains, educates, advances and retains both military and civilians within the cyberspace workforce,” he said. “The vision is to build a system that sustains the cyberspace operations’ viability over time, increases the depth of military cyberspace operations experience, develops capable leaders to guide these professional experts … and ensures that we build real cyberspace operational capability from within our human resources into the future.”
3. Drone strikes in Pakistan kill 17. Should have worn their Stealth Wear. Reuters’ Jibran Ahmad reports from Peshawar: “A U.S. drone strike killed at least 17 people in Pakistan’s restive border region early on Wednesday, Pakistani security officials said, in the biggest such attack this year, and the second since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office.” See also LongWarJournal.Com’s report by Bill Roggio: “The US targeted the Haqqani Network, a Taliban subgroup that is closely tied to al Qaeda, in the first strike in Pakistan in more than three weeks. The CIA-operated, remotely piloted Predators or the more deadly Reapers fired four missiles at a compound in the village of Danday Darpa Khel near Miramshah in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan . . . . four Haqqani Network members were killed and two more were wounded. . . . Danday Darpa Khel is a known hub of the Haqqani Network. Two of the group’s top leaders have been killed in US drone strikes in the village over the past several years.”
4. Prosecution rests on Manning. Defense up next. Reuter’s Ian Simpson reports from Fort Meade, Maryland, that “Court-martial prosecutors wrapped up their case on Tuesday against the soldier charged with providing a trove of secret material to WikiLeaks in the biggest leak of classified files in U.S. history. . . . Manning, 25, faces 21 charges, including espionage, computer fraud and, most seriously, aiding the enemy. Manning could face life in prison without parole if convicted.” Coombs’ defense is, well, laughable, and Coombs has forgotten who is on the jury: “Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, has said the soldier from Crescent, Oklahoma, believed the leaked material would not harm U.S. interests since it lacked operational value.” Hope Snowden’s watching.
5. Price is Right in Egypt. Mursi said, “’The price . . . is my life.’” Reporting from Cairo, Reuter’s Yasmine Saleh and Alastair McDonald cover the crisis: “Egypt’s army commander and Islamist President Mohamed Mursi each pledged his life to defy the other as a deadline approached on Wednesday that will trigger a military takeover backed by protesters. The military chiefs, wanting to restore order in a country racked by protests over Mursi’s Islamist policies, issued a call to battle in a statement headlined ‘The Final Hours.’ They said they were willing to shed blood against ‘terrorists and fools’ after Mursi refused to give up his elected office.” See also WaPo’s “Egypt’s Morsi defiant under pressure as deadline looms” and Aljazeera’s “Egypt’s president refuses to step down.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Contractor access law taking shape. DefenseNews.Com reports, “US Intel Panel in Early Stages of Crafting Contractor-Access Bill”: Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the panel’s ranking member, told Defense News last Thursday the legislation is still taking shape. Depending on the nature of the restrictions, the bill could affect security firms’ business models if it severely limits the kinds of data non-government employees can access. But Chambliss indicated an actual bill remains weeks or months away.” Contractor lobbyists had better get on the ball.
2. Slight progress meeting contracting goals, or not. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports: “’As a result of a government wide focus on increasing small business contracting opportunities, during the first term of the Obama administration, $376.2 billion in contracting dollars went to small businesses,’ SBA Associate Administrator for Government Contracting and Business Development John Shoraka wrote in a blog post. ‘This is a $48.1 billion increase over the four preceding years even as we have reduced contracting spending overall.’ . . . critic, the Petaluma, Calif.,-based American Small Business League, accused SBA of using ‘fabricated and fraudulent data’ and releasing it near a holiday to ‘avoid media scrutiny.’ The league said that many of the contracts agencies claim are going to small businesses are actually going to large companies. The group also said the agency understates the federal acquisition budget by more than half. ‘In reality, the nation’s 28 million legitimate small businesses are receiving no more than 5 percent of all federal contracts or at least $200 billion a year less than required by law,’ the league said.”
3. Don’t do it. Don’t fill civilian jobs with military personnel. Also by Charles S. Clark, “During furlough days set to begin July 8, Defense Department managers may not ‘borrow military manpower” nor step up assignments to contractors to make up for idled civilian employees, a Pentagon official directed on Friday.’”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Pre-emptive strike against U.S. drones. TheDailyBeast.Com’s Miranda Green reports, “Since Congress passed the bill that opens airspace to drones by 2015, 42 states have proposed legislation preemptively limiting their use”: “Some lawmakers and industry representatives say using drones on heartland farms will create jobs, while others say that’s just a prelude to increased domestic surveillance. . . . A study released by AUVSI in March found that the unmanned aircraft industry could produce up to 100,000 new jobs and add $82 billion in economic activity between 2015 and 2025. The majority of the increased activity would be in agriculture, and Kansas stands to be the seventh-largest benefactor of the technology, according to the study.”
2. Live from WWVB for 50 years. Wired.Com’s Joe Hanson toasts “The Most Important Radio Station You’ve Never Heard”: Every night, while millions of Americans are fast asleep, clocks and wristwatches across the country wake up and lock on to a radio signal beamed from the base of the Rocky Mountains. The signal contains a message that keeps the devices on time, helping to make sure their owners keep to their schedules and aren’t late for work the next day. The broadcast comes from WWVB, a station run by the National Institute for Standards and Technology. WWVB marks half a century as the nation’s official time broadcaster on July 5. Together with its sister station, WWV, which is about to hit 90 years in service, NIST radio has been an invisible piece of American infrastructure that has advanced industries from entertainment to telecommunications.”
3. And, make sure you wear clean underwear. The Guardian publishes Snowden’s father’s heartfelt note to his son, through a lawyer. “Irrespective of life’s vicissitudes, we will be unflagging in efforts to educate the American people about the impending ruination of the Constitution and the rule of law unless they abandon their complacency or indifference. Your actions are making our challenge easier. We encourage you to engage us in regular exchanges of ideas or thoughts about approaches to curing or mitigating the hugely suboptimal political culture of the United States. Nothing less is required to pay homage to Valley Forge, Cemetery Ridge, Omaha Beach, and other places of great sacrifice.” Sniff.
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Lack of foresight. Start two wars. Don’t increase manpower in supporting agencies. FoxNews.Com reports, “In March, the agency had 600,000, roughly 70 percent, of its claims pending longer than 125 days. The problem in large part has been a roughly 2,000 percent increase in Veterans Affairs claims over the past four years while the agency races to streamline efforts by moving to a paperless online system. The agency has made some headway toward its goal of eliminating backlog claims, defined as 125 days or older, by 2015. Officials said a few weeks ago that they cut the number of claims by 15 percent in recent weeks.”
2. Foolish pleasure. Charles Abbott, Reuters, reports, “The U.S. government approved a horse slaughter plant in Iowa on Tuesday, its second such move in four days, but it also renewed its appeal to Congress to ban the business and was hit by a lawsuit from animal welfare groups.” I like my horse medium rare.
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Lamest duck of them all, says Conrad Black: “The profusion of scandals bedeviling the Obama administration has evoked many comparisons with other presidencies – particularly Richard M. Nixon. There is no evidence, however, of serious skulduggery by White House officials or members of the re-election campaign, as in the Nixon administration. More important, America’s over-excited and enticed puritanical conscience has not been mobilized to impute what Kafka called ‘nameless crimes’ to the president as there was with Nixon. . . .”
2. Snowden defeating himself, writes Dana Milbank: “The 30-year-old computer whiz seems all too concerned about what happens to him and entirely unconcerned about what harm he does his country in securing his safety.” Yeah . . . selfless service was never really a Snowden value, though.
THE FUNNIES
1. Asylum.
Visit Ed at http://blog.edledford.com
