Posted by
Cost Estimating NewsBrief: August 22, 2025
Human capital at work: The value of experience
(McKinsey & Company) The most important resource in any economy or organization is its human capital—that is, the collective knowledge, attributes, skills, experience, and health of the workforce. While human capital development starts in early childhood and continues through formal education, the McKinsey Global Institute and McKinsey’s People & Organizational Performance Practice have focused new research on the next stage, which spans the full working life. Human capital is much more than a macroeconomic abstraction. Each person has a unique, living, breathing set of capabilities. Those capabilities belong to the individual, who decides where to put them to work. The degree of choice is not limitless, of course. Read More
OMB restores public spending database after losing court cases
(Federal News Network) The Office of Management and Budget has restored a public website designed to track federal spending several months after it abruptly took the transparency database offline in what courts found was a violation of federal law. OMB reenabled the government’s apportionments database and began adding new funding information to it last week after the Trump administration lost an appeal in a lawsuit filed by public transparency groups. The appellate judges agreed with a lower court ruling that found OMB was required to maintain the website under federal law, and that the March decision to disable it was illegal. Read More
Bridging the gap: Why the Navy put an admiral in charge at Norfolk Naval Shipyard
(Breaking Defense) Navy leadership is hoping that the one-star admiral taking command of a key public shipyard will help alleviate maintenance backlog issues and become a model to improve workflow for the other three public shipyards across the country. The yard in question is Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) in Virginia, a key fleet concentration area and the headquarters for one of the service’s four-star operational commands, US Fleet Forces, to which NNSY’s commander, Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, will now report. Read More
Per Diem Rates to Be Unchanged for Fiscal 2026
(Fedweek) GSA has announced that there will be no changes in the per diem rates for federal employees traveling on official business in fiscal year 2026, starting October 1 2025, keeping $110 per day as the standard lodging rate for destinations without specific rates. The range of the meals and incidental expenses portion will remain between $68 and $92 per day, GSA said in an August 19 Federal Register notice. The lowest figure acts as the standard “M&IE” rate for destinations without specific lodgings rates. There will be no change in the number of destinations with their own lodgings rates, about 300, some of which further vary by season. Read More
ICEAA’s NewsBrief is a collection of articles relevant to the cost estimating and analysis community that is delivered weekly to current ICEAA members. To advertise in NewsBrief, contact iceaa@iceaaonline.org.