Veterans Affairs has announced that it plans to offer one-year of free credit monitoring to individuals whose personal data may have been compromised by the May 3 theft of VA data. The news comes two days after introduction in the Senate of legislation to make the VA do that very thing. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) introduced the amendment (S. Admt. 4314) to the 2007 defense authorization bill, now on the Senate floor. Allen praised VA Secretary James Nicholson “for agreeing with us and taking the reasonable action.”
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.

