The Department of Homeland Security will issue about $6.9 billion in grant funding to state and local governments in 2004, according to the market research firm Input.

The report identifies three major homeland security grant programs that accounted for more than half of the funds distributed to states and localities.

The renamed Homeland Security Grant Program will consolidate several grant projects and have a total of $2.2 billion.

The Assistance to Firefighters Program is valued at nearly $750 million this year. The Urban Areas Security Initiative will distribute $725 million.

“Grant programs are being consolidated and a concerted effort is being placed on pushing money to localities through the states,” said Meredith Luttner, manager of public sector operations at Input.

The Federal Acquisition Council and OMB published a list of best practices to help agency officials manage their competitive sourcing efforts.

Since the Bush administration began its push on competitive sourcing in August 2001, many civilian agencies have complained that they had little experience or expertise in conducting the competitions, the General Accounting Office found.

To read the guide, go to www.results.gov and click for “competitive Sourcing Best Practices.”

For the third time, a federal judge in Washington has ordered the Interior Department to disconnect many of its computers from the Internet because of security concerns.

Judge Royce Lamberth is overseeing a long-running lawsuit against the department by Indians who claim Interior has mismanaged trust funds that collect royalties on their land. In 2001 he found that Interior’s computer security was lax and that hackers could easily access the trust fund accounts. Some computer systems were reconnected after security fixes, but on March 15 the judge ordered nine of them cut off again:

*Bureau of Indian Affairs
*Bureau of Land Management
*Bureau of Reclamation
*Fish and Wildlife Service
*Minerals Management Service
*National Business Center
*Office of the Inspector General
*Office of the Special Trustee
*Office of Surface Mining.

Systems are exempt from the order if they are essential to the protection of life or property. Computers at the Geological Survey, National Park Service Budget Office can stay online.

The Interior Department has asked an appeals court to remove Lamberth from the case because of alleged bias.

A Nebraska businessman withdrew from consideration to be the White House’s “manufacturing czar” after Democrats complained that his company had opened a factory in China, Cox News Service reported.

The Commerce Department had scheduled an announcement March 11 that Anthony Raimondo, CEO of Behlen Manufacturing Co. in Columbus, NE, would be nominated for the new position of assistant secretary for manufacturing. The announcement was postponed less than 24 hours in advance.

Administration officials said Raimondo’s company had opened a plant in China to make it easier to sell its products there, not to replace production in the United States.

Responding to the loss of more than 2 million manufacturing jobs, President Bush promised on Labor Day to appoint a “czar” to develop a plan to strengthen U.S. manufacturing. The position has not yet been filled.