After nearly three years of serving as Deputy Director for Management (DDM) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Margaret Weichert has announced her return to the private sector. During her tenure, Weichert served concurrently as Acting Office of Personnel Management Director for nearly a year. Weichert led many administration priorities, including the reorganization of OPM.

The Census Bureau is working both internally and with its partners to guarantee local governments are aware of how to ensure hard-to-count populations are included in the 2020 census once enumeration begins on April 1. Kyla Fullenwider, who was the first Chief Innovation Officer for the U.S. Census Bureau, recently worked with Georgetown University’s Beeck Center to create a Digital Preparedness Playbook which guides local government through what to expect.

The White House has released the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget request complete with sweeping agency cuts and some new reorganization proposals. While the budget request rarely translates into law due to compromises in Congress, it does signal the president’s priorities for the year.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has released a memo to agencies with guidance on how to assist employees in responding to any concerns about exposure to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. The virus is a confirmed public health emergency of international concern according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The memo outlines leave options for employees and work schedule flexibilities available.

In the Merit Systems Protection Board’s (MSPB) 2019 Annual Report, the General Council reviews the board’s year with emphasis on how the lack of quorum, and a lack of board members entirely since March 2019, has crippled the board’s abilities. According to the report, at the end of FY2019 the board had a backlog of 2,378 pending cases at headquarters.

As the Census Listers work their way through Alaska, the largest barrier to an accurate count is linguistic differences between rural and native populations. To ensure a complete and accurate count, the Census Bureau has worked for several months with local organizers to create public service announcements and translate census guides into four Alaskan Native languages. Still, many Native Alaskan villages speak one of 20 different native languages.

The Pentagon issued the final contractor standards under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) last week and explained long-term plans for implementation. The new framework is built from five levels of security standards known as Version 1.0 of the plan. The initial phase will be rolled out through requests for information this summer.