FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. The capricious contracting cycle. Contributor John Holt’s tale of life in an uncertain economy full of sequestration, shutdowns, and self-preservation: “There’s really no easy way to cut half of an office, or to cut anyone. Today’s contracting environment has certainly given more offices, and more managers, the opportunity to test new scenarios. An off-site is fairly common – a ‘neutral’ location in case things don’t go so well. At the end of the day any surprise job transition is probably best served with a big helping of honesty, and a short wait.”
2. Translating titles and interpreting experience. Also from John Holt, thoughts on what they want and what you have: “As the saying goes, the first step to solving a problem is to admit one exists in the first place. The problem: one name applied to all these different jobs complicates things, for job-seeker and employers. The challenge to all the space operators is to ‘know thyself.’ Once a job core, a specific skill or experience is figured out, the story of a person’s career can be told more coherently. With clarity the job will eventually come.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Egypt’s way ahead starts today: a vote to watch. AP’s Maggie Michael reports, “Egyptians were voting Tuesday on a draft constitution that represents a key milestone in a military-backed roadmap put in place after the nation’s Islamist president was overthrown in a popularly backed coup last July. The two-day balloting also deals a heavy blow to the Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign for the reinstatement of ousted President Mohammed Morsi and paves the way for a likely presidential run by the nation’s top general, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.” Aljazeera.Com’s report on the same: “Campaigns promoting the charter have drowned out voices criticising it, mostly from anti-coup protesters deeming the text to strengthen state institutions that defied Morsi: the military, the police and the judiciary. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood has rejected the proposed constitution and vowed to boycott the referendum.” Take a look at the proposed Egyptian constitution.
2. Afghan elections 2014 – an insider’s view. Khaama.Com reports, “The forthcoming elections if flawed on major scale could severely damage the legitimacy of the next government; meanwhile it would terribly undermine the attempts of its allies and US to foster democracy in this critical phase of transition. This perhaps could unleash a new wave of lethal and non-lethal support to different factions inside the country from neighbor countries, which could result in wide scale interference in the country in negative way like in the past. In such case consequences could be terrible, where the neighbor countries will pour in money and arms to use their proxies for influencing the country.” Also on Afghanistan, Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy’s view: “How inept is Afghanistan’s government?”
3. Russia and U.S. together on Syria: target date January 22. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Moscow and Washington have made a joint call for Syria’s regime and rebels to agree to ceasefires in parts of their battle-scarred country ahead of peace talks this month. During Monday’s meeting in Paris, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that President Bashar Al-Assad was willing to open aid access to devastated areas. The United States and Russia called for the ceasefires to start ahead of the so-called Geneva II talks due to begin in Montreux on January 22. . . . Political analyst Kamel Wazne told Al Jazeera that Iran and Saudi Arabia had to sit down at the same table if the conflict was going to end.” See also, “Militants Threaten Fragile Step to Syrian Peace” and “Syria’s Deadly ‘Barrel Bombs’: Assad Regime Uses Devastating, Makeshift Weapon.”
4. For Navy, good offense is best defense. AviationWeek.Com’s Michael Fabey reports, “The U.S. Navy surface fleet must steer away from depending on defensive missiles and must move toward becoming more offensively lethal, says the admiral in charge of those ships. ‘The surface force must greatly improve its offensive lethality,’ says Vice Adm. Thomas Copeman, commander of the Naval Surface Force and U.S. Pacific Naval Surface Force. ‘We must move beyond the missile as a defensive system,’ he says in his ‘Vision for the 2026 Surface Fleet’ report . . . . ‘The cost per engagement ratio vs. adversary weapons limits the capacity our nation can afford and missiles take up a lot of space, limiting the number of weapons that can be carried by ships . . . . Our weapons development and purchasing trajectory must rebalance in favor of energy-based weapons for defense that will affordably deliver the capability and capacity required to conduct prompt and sustained combat operations through the coming decades’.” Read Vision for the 2026 Surface Fleet.
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Contractor diamonds in the rough. FederalTimes.Com’s Jennifer Sakole explains, “Here’s an approach that I use in my own research to find the less mainstream opportunities that also offers you a way to compete in 2014. . . . If you need to shake the routine up a bit and try new techniques to uncover opportunities that weren’t on your radar, try a new source: tasks set to expire on one or more General Services Administration schedules or government-wide acquisition contracts. . . . Our analysts who have been reviewing the task order award data were floored by something they found: the number of tasks awarded that were identified as only having one bid submitted.”
2. Merging contract services: IT and C4ISR. GovConWire.Com reports, “The U.S. Army plans to create a new contract vehicle that merges the services of two existing programs as part of the branch’s strategic consolidation effort . . . . Ashley Bergander, research manager at market analyst Deltek, writes the streamlined version will be open to contractors looking to provide government agencies with support for information technology systems and C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. The Internet-of-Everything Future. Time’s Tim Bajarin explains, “The Internet of Everything has become a catch-all phrase to describe adding connectivity and intelligence to just about every device in order to give them special functions. At the show, for instance, there was an Internet-connected crock pot. You could control when it comes on and adjust its settings from the other side of the world. There were also various car vendors who introduced the next generation of connected automobiles. All of them referred to their cars as being part of IOE. Smart cars, smart appliances, smartwatches and more all end up with the ‘smart’ moniker in front of them when they become tied to the Internet and interconnect to ecosystems of devices, software and services.” But remember, the insecurity of the Internet of Everything: “more devices, more vulnerability, viruses spreading faster on the Internet, and less technical expertise on both the vendor and the user sides. Plus vulnerabilities that are impossible to patch.”
2. Friday: Changing how the NSA does business. AP’s Stephen Braun reports on NSA business, “President Barack Obama is expected to announce Friday what changes he is willing to make to satisfy privacy, legal and civil liberties concerns over the NSA’s surveillance practices. One of the most important questions is whether the government will continue to collect millions of Americans’ phone records every day so that the government can identify anyone it believes might be communicating with known terrorists.”
3. Dawn of the next era: repack your bags, Major Tom. Christian Science Monitor contributor Leonard David writes, “Bags packed. Ticket in hand. Reserved seating and your rocket ship waits. The longed-for dawn of private manned space travel appears near at hand. Virgin Galactic’s suborbital SpaceShipTwo, for example, aced its third supersonic test flight on Friday (Jan. 10), and company officials say they remain on track to begin commercial service later this year. . . . ‘For Galactic, 2014 is the year that we plan to go to space, and start operating commercially,’ said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides. ‘We believe this moment will represent a major shift in humanity’s relationship with space — the moment when the space environment becomes significantly more accessible to new people, new uses and new science . . . .’”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. A scary picture and the budget deal: “The sales job is on for a bipartisan $1.1 trillion spending bill that would pay for the operations of government through October and finally put to rest the bitter budget battles of last year. The massive measure contains a dozens of trade-offs between Democrats and Republicans as it fleshes out the details of the budget deal that Congress passed last month. That pact gave relatively modest but much-sought relief to the Pentagon and domestic agencies after deep budget cuts last year. The GOP-led House is slated to pass the 1,582-page bill Wednesday, though many tea party conservatives are sure to oppose it. Democrats pleased with new money to educate preschoolers and build high-priority highway projects are likely to make up the difference even as Republican social conservatives fret about losing familiar battles over abortion policy.”
2. Super Supreme Court and recess appointments: “The Supreme Court raised concerns Monday over the constitutionality of President Obama’s use of his authority to make appointments when Congress is away on break. The case, an offshoot of a bitter partisan dispute on Capitol Hill, has broad implications regarding when and how presidents can use a constitutional provision to bypass Congress and directly appoint candidates to high-level posts. . . . The high court also must decide two other questions: whether a president’s recess-appointment power extends to any vacancy that exists or only those vacancies that occur during the recess; and whether brief, ‘pro forma sessions of the Senate — held every few days to break up a longer Senate hiatus– can prevent the president from making recess appointments. The administration must win on all three accounts to settle its debate with Capitol Hill Republicans.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Interview – NPR’s Steve Inskeep with SecDef Gates: “And so there was this feeling — and because of various public comments made by senior military officials, by the chairman, by General Petraeus later, by General McChrystal and others, the feeling that they were trying publicly to put the president in a position where he had no alternative but to approve what they wanted. And as I write in the book, looking back I always tried at the time to persuade the president that this was no plot, that the military didn’t have a plan, if you will, to try and box him in. And, frankly, I don’t think I was ever able to persuade him that that was not the case, again primarily when it came to Afghanistan.”
2. “Lessons in Gates memoir on civilian-military ties.” Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board argues, “Despite a long history of civilian rule over the military, the United States still grapples with maintaining trust between elected leaders and the top brass – and resolving the values that each brings to their respective roles in safeguarding the country.”
3. Constitution in Context: “Armed institutions in Egyptian constitutions.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Omar Ashour explains, “The story of constitutions and armed institutions in Egypt is a thorny and controversial one. It started in 1952 with a process of constitutionalising the dominant role of the military in politics. Six decades later, Egypt faces the same thorny issue, but in a much bloodier fashion.”
4. “Don’t fear the Internet of Things.” Reuters contributor Jack Shafer argues, “The IoT revolution provides a mental pause that we should use to rethink what we want from the Internet. If we expect privacy and security from the IoT, surely we should expect the same from the regular Internet, which means renegotiating our email, storage, and navigation accounts to put a premium on privacy and security. Privacy and security can’t be free. In real life and on the Internet, you get what you pay for.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Prison break.
2. Gun control.
3. Guernica.
