From: FCW
By Adam Mazmanian
The White House is planning to use automated bots to handle repetitive tasks in financial management and contacting. Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, announced in an Aug. 27 memorandum that OMB is working on a plan to use robotic process automation to perform repetitive, “low-value” work required for financial analysis and contracting documentation. The plan is expected to be in place this year.
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From: Nextgov
By Aaron Boyd
Changes are coming to how agencies report on their cybersecurity posture as FISMA guidelines are updated to better reflect the administration’s focus and priorities, a top tech official said.
The reports—named for the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 that established the reporting requirement—detail the cyber incidents captured by an agency’s information security teams within a given year and categorize them using standards set by the National Institute for Standards and Technology. The frequency and breadth of the reports have changed over the years due to additional legislation but now the Trump administration is putting its mark on the process to match its priorities.
Editor’s Note: See also OIRA Watch/OIG Moving Ahead on Changes to Anti-Kickback Safe Harbor Protection for Drug Rebates to Plans, PBMs.
From: Skilled Nursing
By Alex Spanko
As the federal government increasingly emphasizes care coordination among players across the health care continuum, the industry’s top watchdog signaled that it could soon overhaul its anti-kickback regulations to help providers avoid pitfalls.
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From: Bloomberg
By Alex Ruoff
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wants to know if Medicare is giving China an advantage over U.S. biotechnology firms and hopes to direct the government to see how often Americans’ genetic data goes overseas.
Rubio convinced his colleagues in Congress to include a provision in the latest spending bill to investigate how much federal funding goes to Chinese and Russian companies that analyze the DNA of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. The Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies spending bill passed the full Senate Aug. 23
From: Natural Gas Intelligence
San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) acknowledged Monday that it has been taking corrective action following a $2.7 million fine by FERC for a 2016 lapse that left critical confidential information exposed on the internet for more than two months.
The beleaguered combination utility giant was not previously named by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when the cybersecurity blunder was first made public. At the time, U.S. intelligence sources were concerned about Russian agents trying to gain access to U.S. energy companies.
