America’s AI Action Plan outlines a comprehensive strategy for the country’s leadership in AI. The plan seeks, in part, to accelerate AI adoption in the federal government. However, there is a gap in that vision: agencies have been slow to adopt AI tools to better serve the public. The biggest barrier to adopting and scaling trustworthy AI isn’t policy or compute power — it’s the foundation beneath the surface. How agencies store, access and govern their records will determine whether AI succeeds or stalls. Those records aren’t just for retention purposes; they are the fuel AI models need to power operational efficiencies through streamlined workflows and uncover mission insights that enable timely, accurate decisions. Without robust digitalization and data governance, federal records cannot serve as the reliable fuel AI models need to drive innovation. Before AI adoption can take hold, agencies must do something far less glamorous but absolutely essential: modernize their records. Many still need to automate records management, beginning with opening archival boxes, assessing what is inside, and deciding what is worth keeping. This essential process transforms inaccessible, unstructured records into structured, connected datasets that AI models can actually use. Without it, agencies are not just delaying AI adoption, they’re building on a poor foundation that will collapse under the weight of daily mission demands. If you do not know the contents of the box, how confident can you be that the records aren’t crucial to automating a process with AI? In AI terms, if you enlist the help of a model like OpenAI, the results will only be as good as the digitized data behind it. The greater the knowledge base, the faster AI can be adopted and scaled to positively impact public service. Here is where agencies can start preparing their records — their knowledge base — to lay a defensible foundation for AI adoption. Step 1: Inventory and prioritize what you already have Many agencies are sitting on decades’ worth of records, housed in a mix of storage boxes, shared drives, aging databases, and under-governed digital repositories. These records often lack consistent metadata, classification tags or digital traceability, making them difficult to find, harder to govern, and nearly impossible to automate. This fragmentation is not new. According to NARA’s 2023 FEREM report, only 61% of agencies were rated as low-risk in their management of electronic records — indicating that many still face gaps in easily accessible records, digitalization and data governance. This leaves thousands of unstructured repositories vulnerable to security risks and unable to be fed into an AI model. A comprehensive inventory allows agencies to see what they have, determine what is mission-critical, and prioritize records cleanup. Not everything needs to be digitalized. But everything needs to be accounted for. This early triage is what ensures digitalization, automation and analytics are focused on the right things, maximizing return while minimizing risk. Without this step, agencies risk building powerful AI models on unreliable data, a setup that undermines outcomes and invites compliance pitfalls. Step 2: Make digitalization the bedrock of modernization One of the biggest misconceptions around modernization is that digitalization is a tactical compliance task with limited strategic value. In reality, digitalization is what turns idle content into usable data. It’s the on-ramp to AI driven automation across the agency, including one-click records management and data-driven policymaking. By focusing on high-impact records — those that intersect with mission-critical workflows, the Freedom of Information Act, cybersecurity enforcement or policy enforcement — agencies can start to build a foundation that’s not just compliant, but future-ready. These records form the connective tissue between systems, workforce, data and decisions. The Government Accountability Office estimates that up to 80% of federal IT budgets are still spent maintaining legacy systems. Resources that, if reallocated, could help fund strategic digitalization and unlock real efficiency gains. The opportunity cost of delay is increasing exponentially everyday. Step 3: Align records governance with AI strategy Modern AI adoption isn’t just about models and computation; it’s about trust, traceability, and compliance. That’s why strong information governance is essential. Agencies moving fastest on AI are pairing records management modernization with evolving governance frameworks, synchronizing classification structures, retention schedules and access controls with broader digital strategies. The Office of Management and Budget’s 2025 AI Risk Management guidance is clear: explainability, reliability and auditability must be built in from the start. When AI deployment evolves in step with a diligent records management program centered on data governance, agencies are better positioned to accelerate innovation, build public trust, and avoid costly rework. For example, labeling records with standardized metadata from the outset enables rapid, digital retrieval during audits or investigations, a need that’s only increasing as AI use expands. This alignment is critical as agencies adopt FedRAMP Moderate-certified platforms to run sensitive workloads and meet compliance requirements. These platforms raise the baseline for performance and security, but they only matter if the data moving through them is usable, well-governed and reliable. Infrastructure integrity: The hidden foundation of AI Strengthening the digital backbone is only half of the modernization equation. Agencies must also ensure the physical infrastructure supporting their systems can withstand growing operational, environmental, and cybersecurity demands. Colocation data centers play a critical role in this continuity — offering secure, federally compliant environments that safeguard sensitive data and maintain uptime for mission-critical systems. These facilities provide the stability, scalability and redundancy needed to sustain AI-driven workloads, bridging the gap between digital transformation and operational resilience. By pairing strong information governance with resilient colocation infrastructure, agencies can create a true foundation for AI, one that ensures innovation isn’t just possible, but sustainable in even the most complex mission environments. Melissa Carson is general manager for Iron Mountain Government Solutions.The post Three steps to build a data foundation for federal AI innovation first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript Terry Gerton You have spent a lot of time on the Hill lately talking to lawmakers about ways the VA could modernize access to care. Tell us both what your message is and what you’re hearing from the lawmakers. Sean O’Connor Yeah. And maybe before that, Terry, just to touch on why we think this is so important or why personally it’s so important to me. And then thank you again for having us, and [I’m] looking forward to having this conversation today. So just at the start, I’m a third-generation veteran. Both my grandfathers fought and served in World War II, one in the Pacific, one in Europe. My father and my uncles all served during the during the Vietnam era. And I’m a 9/11 vet and served during nine eleven. So since the 1940s, my family has been, you know, leaning on and relying on the VA for all kinds of support and care. So, it’s a mission and it’s an institution that’s very important to me personally and very important to the fabric of our country. So, I think it’s no surprise the VA has struggled, you know, being in the early forefront of EHR … adoption to kind of being a laggard now in kind of EHR modernization. And there’s 9 million vets that really struggle to get access to timely care for some of the services they need as the VA works to modernize. So we’ve been spending a lot of time just talking to some of the leadership on the Hill around the momentum that seems to be building to try to modernize finally and kind of make access to care easier for veterans and and trying to make sure that as community care grows and the VA and veterans have more options to seek care both inside and outside the VA, that we really move the needle on reducing time to care and improving efficiency of care delivery for veterans. So that’s where we’re trying to, you know, spend time talking to the folks in SVAC and the Hill about, and learn about some of the strategies people are trying to implement when it comes to the Dole Act and some of the other things that people are trying to advance when it comes to improving access to care for veterans and really, we’re a small technology company that focuses on healthcare access. And we’re just, you know, trying to support improving access to care for veterans wherever and whenever we can because it’s a really important institution. It’s the largest health system in our country. And it’s probably one of the most outdated when it comes to the complexity of modernizing care for scheduling and finding appointments for veterans. And there’s a lot of things that I think we can do to help the VA as they work to improve some of those services. Terry Gerton You’ve said that the VA was built for the last century and you’ve just mentioned the Electronic Health Record that the VA spent billions of dollars on and still doesn’t have an operational system. What would you recommend in terms of practice for modernizing some of those administrative functions of the VA? Sean O’Connor Yeah, it’s complicated. So I’m not suggesting this isn’t complicated. It’s, the VA has gone through four different attempts to try to modernize and it’s still not successful yet in trying to get to the end goal of improving access to care for veterans and having a global view of care. So I think the first thing we’ve been talking to folks about is, today everything works in silos. And it’s tough to leverage the size and sophistication of the VA caregivers when everything’s in silos. And there’s close to 130 different VistA instances, a growing number of Oracle instances. And one of the leaders we talked to at the VA last time we were in D.C. said that the complexity of VA care delivery is beyond human comprehension. There’s how customized each of those VistA instances are. They’re all a unique Snowflake. They don’t talk to each other, they don’t share inventory. One of the VISNs we’re talking to now about a project, there’s roughly 10,000 appointments that go unutilized every month in his hospital because these different EHR instances don’t talk to each other. So one of the first things we’re talking about is, you know, trying to break down those data cells to bring all the supply and all the demand into one queue. And this is what we do for some of the other largest health systems in the country, Kaiser and other folks, where we take this global view of inventory and then you can use, you know, AI and some of these sophisticated navigation tools that have been built in the digital age of healthcare since the pandemic, to start to look at how you load balance that network a little more efficiently, how you share resources, how you improve internal utilization, improve efficiency, and reduce care gaps across boards. So I think until the VA finds a way through either a massive conversion to a centralized EHR or finding ways to work with technology entrepreneurs and vendors that can break down some of these data silos, they’ll continue to have the problem of trying to transition to a large EMR system in Oracle and through that process still have these 130 other systems and up to 24 different scheduling solutions that have been customized across the various VISNs, none of them working together, none of them sharing information across each other. So you have the largest health system in the country, 9 million veterans and their family members that we’re supposed to provide and care for, and none of this stuff talks to each other to share capacity, to share utilization, to share best practices. It’s a very fragmented, siloed and complicated environment. So until we find ways to break down those silos and share, leverage the power of tech and data to kind of level that playing field, it’s going to be very difficult to move anything in a substantial manner, we think. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Sean O’Connor. He’s a Navy veteran and co founder and chief strategy officer at DexCare. The VA is not the only federal agency that’s bad at a big bang tech deployment. So when you talk about an agency-wide solution that breaks down silos, anybody who’s been around for a while probably rolls their eyes at us. What would intermediate sorts of technology be that could provide some solution while an agency-wide solution is underway? Sean O’Connor Yeah, we’ve been a big proponent in working with other really large healthcare systems in the country and doing, you know, scalable, strategically thought-out proof of concepts and smaller fragments first and then learning and scaling and iterating and adopting quickly. So I think one of the things the VA has for it is it does have the VISN network and the ability to kind of do proof of concepts in some of these smaller regional health systems, learn, iterate and adopt and then look to scale from there. We think that’s the best way to do this stuff. That’s how we’ve done it with Kaiser and some of these other really large healthcare systems. You do smaller proof of concepts, you learn the integration points that are important to move the needle. You begin with the end in mind and understanding the success metrics that are going to be important to drive this. And then you learn, iterate and scale quickly from there with bottom-down and top-down support is the only way to kind of move these things. And at the same time, being very conscious of the providers as well. So all of the technology companies we’ve built, we built inside of large healthcare systems. And often cases, technology is only 50% of the problem. Understanding the provider and the change management and the amount of pressure that those folks are under to provide care, and not being disruptive to their workflows and making their lives less efficient. You have to be very thoughtful about that, or none of the stuff is going to go anywhere. You can’t just have tech for tech’s sake. It has to understand the provider world and how the provider interacts. And you have to be very purposeful in how you build these things out to scale from the bottom up over time. Terry Gerton One of the big points that you’ve emphasized is real time access to care, especially for mental health services and especially in rural communities. Those are two big complicating aspects of the VA’s network. How can the VA think about addressing those kinds of issues? Is it a technology solution? Is it a culture solution? How do they get on to real time care, especially in mental health? Sean O’Connor I think it’s both. And I think the hard part is it’s probably more culture than technology. But it’s a — I don’t know of a bigger issue for us to kind of rally around as a community to try to improve access care of veterans than this. So when I transitioned from the service in 2004, the VA received roughly $21 billion to support its mission, and 17 men and women took their life every day to suicide: friends, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives. Fast forward to 2024, the VA received $121 billion to support its mission, and that number is still the same. Roughly 17 men and women, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters took their lives to suicide. We’ve lost more people to suicide in the last 20 years than we did in, you know, during the 9/11 era and supporting the 9/11 kind of ground-on combat. So it’s it’s a crisis that’s not talked about. We haven’t really moved the needle on it despite spending over $100 billion more to support the healthcare delivery mission of the VA. So it’s clearly not just a technology issue, but not having — going back to your first question, Terry — not having the ability to share resources across the network and reduce time to care and make it easier for vets to find and get into the services initially is a problem. I won’t say that’s the biggest problem, but it certainly doesn’t help. So … mental health services in the veteran community is a really complicated issue … It’s not just about having access to cares. You know, a big portion of people that need the care aren’t even enrolled in the VA, and then there’s a homeless population that’s not enrolled in the VA. And how do you how do you outreach and bring those folks in that need the help the most? So it’s a complicated issue, but not being able to have one 24/7-365 on-demand network that shares capacity across mental health services for the VA is an issue as well. And the technology issues are easier to address. We just got to have people that are willing to address them. The cultural issues and the stigmatism around, you know, raising your hand for help is a harder issue to address, but it’s just something we gotta continue to talk about because it’s a travesty that in over 20 years, that number really hasn’t moved, despite putting, you know, literally over $100 billion more at the overall global healthcare issue. Terry Gerton Well you talked about capacity there and certainly building out the community network of care is a big issue and a big initiative for VA. Are there issues on the community participant side of this so, that community care providers don’t understand the VA as much as the VA doesn’t understand community care providers? Sean O’Connor We’re going to run out of time on your podcast. Yes, so that’s to me like, you know, obviously selfishly, like, we want to help the VA as a technology company, but the importance of improving access to care for veterans is at the heart of everything that we’re trying to do here. So the beauty of the VA to me — I mention I’m a third-generation veteran, it is a unique community. So when I when I first got out of the military, I moved to Seattle, like, it was a tough transition going from the military to the corporate world. I didn’t know anybody up here. My family and I grew up in Jersey, all my family was on the East Coast. I would literally just go to the Seattle VA and hang out in the lobby and just talk to people that you know had their Vietnam hat on. It’s a community and a culture that you know, should be protected in this institution, in this country. And some of the caregivers, you know, we’re talking about the technology piece here. These are some of the most mission-driven caregivers in the world. Like, they can make more money outside the VA. They choose to work with this community and this provider network for a reason. So there is an understanding of that that I think we need to protect because there is an understanding of someone that’s come back from deployment and has been through some serious high optempo stuff that comes back, and you just get a different conversation with your primary care provider in the VA than somebody outside the VA. So I think there’s that element that we have to protect. But there’s also the element, frankly, that you know, as a veteran, I like the option to have choice to go outside the VA for services that they may not be expert in. So certainly, you know, wound care, PTSD, that stuff, I think should stay in the VA. But maybe, you know, I’m a former athlete and tore my knee up and can get into an ortho appointment outside the VA. I want to have that optionality. And some stuff like that, the history isn’t as important to the veteran for some of those conditions. So, to have the optionality to go out there and do that is important. But what we’re seeing, at least for some of the areas that we work with is the community providers, one, they don’t have a lot of excess capacity to share with the VA. Every health system is stretched to the gill. Like there’s not a ton of health systems raising hands saying, hey, we have providers sitting on their hands. It’s six to eight months to get into an ortho appointment in some of these large health systems as it is. So to have that capacity to share with the VA, one, is difficult. Some of those things I think are bigger deals than others to your point of, you know, should there be a continuum to care in the VA? I’d argue some services is, just do it in the VA and some are easily, you know, sourced out. And then there’s the whole issue of, when they’re sourced out, how do you manage the care gaps for the veteran? How do we close some of those care gaps as those services continue to rise and the disparate records continue to grow across the network?The post The VA’s size and complexity may be keeping top tech minds away, and veterans pay the price first appeared on Federal News Network.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Social Security Administration is hoping to cut visits to its field offices in half next year, a move that advocates for the agency fear signals more closures are coming. Field offices have long been community-based branches that serve as the public face of the SSA, which provide in-person help for people applying for retirement and disability benefits, getting Social Security cards and other important services. A November internal field office operating plan shared with The Associated Press outlines a proposed target of 50% fewer field office visitors in fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025, or no more than 15 million field office visits by members of the public. Agency field offices saw more than 31.6 million field office visits from SSA recipients from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025, according to the agency document. A Social Security spokesperson who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the administration’s plans for the agency said field offices will remain a front-line service to the roughly 75 million Americans who receive monthly payments. However, the spokesperson noted, more Americans are choosing to manage their benefits online or over the phone. Nextgov/FCW first reported on the agency’s plan to reduce field office foot traffic. At least 7,000 SSA workers have been laid off from the agency this year as the Trump administration has proposed a number of plans to streamline services at the SSA. In March, after outcry from lawmakers and the public, SSA leadership partially backtracked on a plan that would require all new and existing beneficiaries who are unable to use the agency’s online portal to travel to a Social Security field office to verify their identity. Jessica LaPointe, a union leader for 30,000 Social Security workers through The American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, said field offices are part of the quality of life agenda within communities, especially for “people who don’t have the resources to purchase technology to navigate the online world and they should be able to walk into an office to get help.” She said the SSA wants “to allow AI and the internet to replace a well-trained, well-vetted workforce.” Several field offices in rural areas of the U.S. have already closed this year because of a lack of staffing. The Social Security website lists several office closures as well as offices that are only able to assist by phone until further notice. Chris Delaney, a Social Security claims specialist and president of AFGE Local 3343 in Hudson, says he cannot imagine how SSA can have a goal of cutting foot traffic when his office is seeing an increase in foot traffic and a growing aging population reliant on SSA income. The Hudson office sees roughly 30 to 60 visitors per day who have questions about their benefits. “A lot of people can’t get past the ID verification on login.gov, and just because they have a cellphone doesn’t mean they’re capable of creating an online account,” Delaney said. “Having people in the office when they need it is important.” The 2026 operating plan also calls for all requested appointments to be scheduled within 30 days, instead of the current rate of 78.3% of all appointments scheduled within 30 days. Social Security is one of the nation’s largest and most popular social programs. A January poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that two-thirds of U.S. adults think the country is spending too little on Social Security. The agency has faced several lawsuits over the Trump administration’s plans to overhaul the agency. In October, Democracy Forward, a legal group challenging the Trump administration’s policies, filed a lawsuit to compel SSA to release public records about service disruptions and policy changes. “After executing the largest staffing cuts in the 90-year history of Social Security, they’re trying to deal with a problem they created without any meaningful discussion,” LaPointe said. “What they’re doing is void of public input.”The post The Social Security Administration plans to cut field office visits by 50%. What it means for you first appeared on Federal News Network.

Mahri Stainnak got the call the day after President Donald Trump took office: the Office of Personnel Management’s human resources office was putting them on administrative leave “effective immediately,” while the agency “investigates your radical and wasteful DEI activity.” Stainnak was surprised by the news. Before the Trump administration, they served as OPM’s deputy director of the governmentwide Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. But now they worked as the director of OPM’s talent innovation group, a human resources job focused on recruiting and retaining talent across the federal government. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not in diversity, equity and inclusion.’ I started a new role in a job that has nothing to do with diversity, equity and inclusion.’ So I felt incredibly shocked and confused,” Stainnak said. The second call came 48 hours later: Stainnak, a nonbinary person who had worked in the federal government for more than 16 years, received a reduction in force notice, as part of the Trump administration’s plan to root out DEI programs across the federal government. Stainnak is now part of a class-action lawsuit filed this week in the D.C. District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., claims the Trump administration unlawfully targeted and fired federal employees perceived to be associated with DEI work — even if their current jobs had nothing to do with it. Mary Kuntz, an attorney at the law firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C. who is representing the former employees, said the administration’s actions “clearly” violate the Civil Service Reform Act, because employees like Stainnak were fired for previous work in DEI positions. “You can’t RIF somebody from a position they’re not in,” Kuntz said. “They sought to punish Mahri [Stainnak] for previous DEI work. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.” Kuntz said the lawsuit claims that the administration’s push to “eviscerate” DEI programs also had a disproportionate impact on people of color, women, non-binary individuals, and violates Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “The DEI folks were working on behalf of people with disabilities, people who are non-native speakers of English. They were advocating for protected groups,” she said. On the campaign trail last year, President Donald Trump pledged to “eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the entire federal government,” and characterized these programs as promoting “un-American” ideology. On his first days in office, Trump signed executive orders that directed agencies to create lists of employees associated with DEI going back to Nov. 5, 2024 — the date of the presidential election.  The complaint says agencies were directed to remove those employees, “regardless of their current roles or duties.” “President Trump’s directives did not merely represent a change in presidential priorities — a normal occurrence when presidential administrations change. Rather, they were targeted actions intended to punish perceived political enemies, as well as to eliminate from the federal workforce women, people of color, and those, like plaintiffs, who advocated for or were perceived as advocating for protected racial or gender groups,” the complaint states. The complaint says agencies set competitive levels for the RIFs so narrowly that federal employees were unable to compete for retention, and that those impacted by RIFs were not considered for reassignment to other jobs. “I absolutely feel targeted on the basis of what the Trump administration believes my beliefs are, because I was not working in a diversity, equity and inclusion role in any way at the time when the new administration came in, or at the time I was placed on administrative leave,” Stainnak said. For all the Trump administration’s actions to strip DEI out of the federal workforce, Kuntz said the president’s executive orders don’t go into any detail to define DEI. “He characterizes them as illegal and discriminatory and various other things … but does doesn’t define them,” Kuntz said. “You can’t decide that somebody is a different party than the party in the White House and decide to fire them on that basis.” The lawsuit states that the total number of federal employees impacted by the DEI rollback  is unknown, but says news reports suggest it could be “potentially in the thousands.” The complaint states that at least 40 women or non-binary individuals, and more than 40 people of color received layoffs in connection with the Trump administration’s directives. Stainnak and their colleagues filed an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board in March, but Kuntz said that appeal and similar cases brought before the Office of Special Counsel and agencies’ Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) offices, have stalled. In her last role, Stainnak helped agencies recruit top talent into the federal workforce. But they said the Trump administration’s purge of DEI workers has pushed out individuals who worked on bipartisan projects. Former federal employees leading the lawsuit include a former operations manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs who “helped ensure that veterans were not inhibited from accessing earned benefits due to cultural or socioeconomic barriers,” a Department of Homeland Security Employee who led language competency efforts at the border to advance intelligence gathering and the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. “By illegally targeting people based on the Trump administration’s assumptions about our political beliefs, or by targeting us based on who we are, this administration actually is hurting the people who work and live in this country, because now these dedicated, hardworking federal servants are not in their jobs providing the critical services that they do, whether it’s responding to emergencies like hurricanes and making sure folks have drinking water and shelter, or making sure our transportation systems are safe and timely. This action is really hurting the people who live in this country,” Stainnak said.The post Federal employees who left ‘DEI’ roles still fired under Trump administration purge, lawsuit claims first appeared on Federal News Network.

var config_5732502 = {"options":{"theme":"hbidc_default"},"extensions":{"Playlist":[]},"episode":{"media":{"mp3":"https:\/\/mgln.ai\/e\/345\/rss.art19.com\/episodes\/e730e34a-aa2f-4d9d-bdfe-55f0b7c5d016.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg5Xb3JkUHJlc3MGOgZFVA%3D%3D--466d26bc6c0e932b4a48b1403433bf1814d4975e"},"coverUrl":"https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/AsktheCIO1500-150x150.jpg","title":"At VA, cyber dominance is in, cyber compliance is out","description":"[hbidcpodcast podcastid='5732502']nnThe Department of Veterans Affairs is moving toward a more operational approach to cybersecurity.nnThis means VA is applying a deeper focus on protecting the attack surfaces and closing off threat vectors that put veterans\u2019 data at risk.nnEddie Pool, the acting principal assistant secretary for information and technology and acting principal deputy chief information officer at VA, said the agency is changing its cybersecurity posture to reflect a cyber dominance approach.nn[caption id="attachment_5732442" align="alignright" width="340"]<img class="wp-image-5732442" src="https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/eddie-pool-240x300.jpg" alt="" width="340" height="425" \/> Eddie Pool is the acting principal assistant secretary for information and technology and acting principal deputy chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs.[\/caption]nn\u201cThat's a move away from the traditional and an exclusively compliance based approach to cybersecurity, where we put a lot of our time resources investments in compliance based activities,\u201d Pool said on <a href="https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/category\/radio-interviews\/ask-the-cio\/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_content=article&utm_term=recent_cat_posts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ask the CIO<\/a>. \u201cFor example, did someone check the box on a form? Did someone file something in the right place? We're really moving a lot of our focus over to the risk-based approach to security, pushing things like zero trust architecture, micro segmentation of our networks and really doing things that are more focused on the operational landscape. We are more focused on protecting those attack surfaces and closing off those threat vectors in the cyber space.\u201dnnA big part of this move to cyber dominance is applying the concepts that make up a zero trust architecture like micro segmentation and identity and access management.nnPool said as VA modernizes its underlying technology infrastructure, it will \u201cbake in\u201d these zero trust capabilities.nn\u201cOver the next several years, you're going to see that naturally evolve in terms of where we are in the maturity model path. Our approach here is not necessarily to try to map to a model. It's really to rationalize what are the highest value opportunities that those models bring, and then we prioritize on those activities first,\u201d he said. \u201cWe're not pursuing it in a linear fashion. We are taking parts and pieces and what makes the most sense for the biggest thing for our buck right now, that's where we're putting our energy and effort.\u201dnnOne of those areas that VA is focused on is rationalizing the number of tools and technologies it\u2019s using across the department. Pool said the goal is to get down to a specific set instead of having the \u201c31 flavors\u201d approach.nn\u201cWe're going to try to make it where you can have any flavor you want so long as it's chocolate. We are trying to get that standardized across the department,\u201d he said. \u201cThat gives us the opportunity from a sustainment perspective that we can focus the majority of our resources on those enterprise standardized capabilities. From a security perspective, it's a far less threat landscape to have to worry about having 100 things versus having two or three things.\u201dn<h2>The business process reengineering priority<\/h2>nPool added that redundancy remains a key factor in the security and tool rationalization effort. He said VA will continue to have a diversity of products in its IT investment portfolios.nn\u201cWhere we are at is we are looking at how do we build that future state architecture, as elegantly and simplistically as possible so that we can manage it more effectively, they can protect it more securely,\u201d he said.nnIn addition to standardizing on technology and cyber tools and technologies, Pool said VA is bringing the same approach to business processes for enterprisewide services.nnHe said over the years, VA has built up a laundry list of legacy technology all with different versions and requirements to maintain.nn\u201cWe've done a lot over the years in the Office of Information and Technology to really standardize on our technology platforms. Now it's time to leverage that, to really bring standard processes to the business,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat that does is that really does help us continue to put the veteran at the center of everything that we do, and it gives a very predictable, very repeatable process and expectation for veterans across the country, so that you don't have different experiences based on where you live or where you're getting your health care and from what part of the organization.\u201dnnPart of the standardization effort is that VA will expand its use of automation, particularly in processing of veterans claims.nnPool said the goal is to take more advantage of the agency\u2019s data and use artificial intelligence to accelerate claims processing.nn\u201cThe richness of the data and the standardization of our data that we're looking at and how we can eliminate as many steps in these processes as we can, where we have data to make decisions, or we can automate a lot of things that would completely eliminate what would be a paper process that is our focus,\u201d Pool said. \u201cWe're trying to streamline IT to the point that it's as fast and as efficient, secure and accurate as possible from a VA processing perspective, and in turn, it's going to bring a decision back to the veteran a lot faster, and a decision that's ready to go on to the next step in the process.\u201dnnMany of these updates already are having an impact on VA\u2019s business processes. The agency said that it <a href="https:\/\/news.va.gov\/press-room\/va-reduces-backlog-of-veterans-waiting-for-va-benefits-by-57\/#:~:text=VA%20processed%20an%20all%2Dtime,benefits%2C%20from%20213%2C189%20on%20Jan." target="_blank" rel="noopener">set a new record<\/a> for the number of disability and pension claims processed in a single year, more than 3 million. That beat its record set in 2024 by more than 500,000.nn\u201cWe're driving benefit outcomes. We're driving technology outcomes. From my perspective, everything that we do here, every product, service capability that the department provides the veteran community, it's all enabled through technology. So technology is the underpinning infrastructure, backbone to make all things happen, or where all things can fail,\u201d Pool said. \u201cFirst, on the internal side, it's about making sure that those infrastructure components are modernized. Everything's hardened. We have a reliable, highly available infrastructure to deliver those services. Then at the application level, at the actual point of delivery, IT is involved in every aspect of every challenge in the department, to again, bring the best technology experts to the table and look at how can we leverage the best technologies to simplify the business processes, whether that\u2019s claims automation, getting veterans their mileage reimbursement earlier or by automating processes to increase the efficacy of the outcomes that we deliver, and just simplify how the veterans consume the services of VA. That's the only reason why we exist here, is to be that enabling partner to the business to make these things happen.\u201d"}}; The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving toward a more operational approach to cybersecurity. This means VA is applying a deeper focus on protecting the attack surfaces and closing off threat vectors that put veterans’ data at risk. Eddie Pool, the acting principal assistant secretary for information and technology and acting principal deputy chief information officer at VA, said the agency is changing its cybersecurity posture to reflect a cyber dominance approach. Eddie Pool is the acting principal assistant secretary for information and technology and acting principal deputy chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “That’s a move away from the traditional and an exclusively compliance based approach to cybersecurity, where we put a lot of our time resources investments in compliance based activities,” Pool said on Ask the CIO. “For example, did someone check the box on a form? Did someone file something in the right place? We’re really moving a lot of our focus over to the risk-based approach to security, pushing things like zero trust architecture, micro segmentation of our networks and really doing things that are more focused on the operational landscape. We are more focused on protecting those attack surfaces and closing off those threat vectors in the cyber space.” A big part of this move to cyber dominance is applying the concepts that make up a zero trust architecture like micro segmentation and identity and access management. Pool said as VA modernizes its underlying technology infrastructure, it will “bake in” these zero trust capabilities. “Over the next several years, you’re going to see that naturally evolve in terms of where we are in the maturity model path. Our approach here is not necessarily to try to map to a model. It’s really to rationalize what are the highest value opportunities that those models bring, and then we prioritize on those activities first,” he said. “We’re not pursuing it in a linear fashion. We are taking parts and pieces and what makes the most sense for the biggest thing for our buck right now, that’s where we’re putting our energy and effort.” One of those areas that VA is focused on is rationalizing the number of tools and technologies it’s using across the department. Pool said the goal is to get down to a specific set instead of having the “31 flavors” approach. “We’re going to try to make it where you can have any flavor you want so long as it’s chocolate. We are trying to get that standardized across the department,” he said. “That gives us the opportunity from a sustainment perspective that we can focus the majority of our resources on those enterprise standardized capabilities. From a security perspective, it’s a far less threat landscape to have to worry about having 100 things versus having two or three things.” The business process reengineering priority Pool added that redundancy remains a key factor in the security and tool rationalization effort. He said VA will continue to have a diversity of products in its IT investment portfolios. “Where we are at is we are looking at how do we build that future state architecture, as elegantly and simplistically as possible so that we can manage it more effectively, they can protect it more securely,” he said. In addition to standardizing on technology and cyber tools and technologies, Pool said VA is bringing the same approach to business processes for enterprisewide services. He said over the years, VA has built up a laundry list of legacy technology all with different versions and requirements to maintain. “We’ve done a lot over the years in the Office of Information and Technology to really standardize on our technology platforms. Now it’s time to leverage that, to really bring standard processes to the business,” he said. “What that does is that really does help us continue to put the veteran at the center of everything that we do, and it gives a very predictable, very repeatable process and expectation for veterans across the country, so that you don’t have different experiences based on where you live or where you’re getting your health care and from what part of the organization.” Part of the standardization effort is that VA will expand its use of automation, particularly in processing of veterans claims. Pool said the goal is to take more advantage of the agency’s data and use artificial intelligence to accelerate claims processing. “The richness of the data and the standardization of our data that we’re looking at and how we can eliminate as many steps in these processes as we can, where we have data to make decisions, or we can automate a lot of things that would completely eliminate what would be a paper process that is our focus,” Pool said. “We’re trying to streamline IT to the point that it’s as fast and as efficient, secure and accurate as possible from a VA processing perspective, and in turn, it’s going to bring a decision back to the veteran a lot faster, and a decision that’s ready to go on to the next step in the process.” Many of these updates already are having an impact on VA’s business processes. The agency said that it set a new record for the number of disability and pension claims processed in a single year, more than 3 million. That beat its record set in 2024 by more than 500,000. “We’re driving benefit outcomes. We’re driving technology outcomes. From my perspective, everything that we do here, every product, service capability that the department provides the veteran community, it’s all enabled through technology. So technology is the underpinning infrastructure, backbone to make all things happen, or where all things can fail,” Pool said. “First, on the internal side, it’s about making sure that those infrastructure components are modernized. Everything’s hardened. We have a reliable, highly available infrastructure to deliver those services. Then at the application level, at the actual point of delivery, IT is involved in every aspect of every challenge in the department, to again, bring the best technology experts to the table and look at how can we leverage the best technologies to simplify the business processes, whether that’s claims automation, getting veterans their mileage reimbursement earlier or by automating processes to increase the efficacy of the outcomes that we deliver, and just simplify how the veterans consume the services of VA. That’s the only reason why we exist here, is to be that enabling partner to the business to make these things happen.”The post At VA, cyber dominance is in, cyber compliance is out first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript Terry Gerton We’re a few weeks past the longest lapse in federal appropriations and maybe looking at another one in the end of January. So I want to work with you to put October and November into context. You’ve seen many shutdowns in your time on the Hill and now at Deloitte. How would you say this one differs from previous episodes, especially when it comes to your area of expertise, tax policy? Anna Taylor Well, I do think it was different than what we’ve seen in years past. And part of that starts with just the way folks on the hill operated in it. I was really shocked that — my first sign that something was different was — I was shocked when I heard reporting that … the members and the staff that work in the Capitol building had left before we even hit midnight the night that we entered the shutdown. That’s not normal. In years past in shutdowns, you have frantic work happening behind the scenes where they’re trying to see if there’s any way to find a deal. And it was just obviously clear to all of them that they were so far away from a deal at that point that there was nothing to do. And so they left the building. And that was my first sign that this one was not normal and we were in for a longer shutdown. You know, in terms of the impact it has on tax administration and tax policy, it’s significant. You know, the fact that you had so many furloughed workers in the federal workforce and specifically at IRS and in Treasury, during that extended period definitely has an effect on customer service. It has an effect on their ability to move forward with their reg writing and guidance plans, which is in this moment, you know, where we’re just getting through a big piece of legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was signed into law back in the summer, and they’re in a very significant guidance process to go along with that bill right now. There’s a lot of work that needs to get done … I know that you know, the treasury and the IRS said much of that work went on during the shutdown. So I do think that there was some of that that didn’t stop, which is a good thing for taxpayers, but had to slow it down in some capacity. And when you think about just customer service for taxpayers and not being able to call and find somebody on the phone to talk to, certainly there were challenges there as well. So I do think there was that, you know, kind of tangible direct effect. Now, in terms of effect on tax policy, I think it’s jury still out. Obviously there wasn’t any sort of deal that ended the shutdown with additional legislation. So we didn’t have some big tax package coming out of the — sometimes you do see some sort of legislative deal come out of a — well, not often with a shutdown. Normally nobody wins in a shutdown. But when you’re reaching appropriations deals that don’t end in shutdown, sometimes you’ll see tax legislation attached to those kinds of deals. And, you know, we didn’t have that … There were not regular hearings and regular markups happening in the tax writing committees while we were in shutdown. And so there was probably a slowdown in some bills that are maybe under consideration because they weren’t being considered during the shutdown. And so I do think that probably it definitely had a direct effect on taxpayers who may have had an impact on customer service, but there’s also that effect of maybe slowing down policymaking as well. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Anna Taylor. She’s managing principal of the Tax Policy Group at Deloitte. Well, let’s talk about the specific impact on taxpayers. I mean, filing season is going to open in just a few weeks. Is there a reasonable expectation that the IRS and all of the companies that support tax filing will have written in the rules for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act provisions and anything else that might come up before the year end? Are tax filers going to have the systems ready to go? Anna Taylor Well, I think that the Treasury and IRS have done a — they’ve made a real effort to try to get to the things from that bill first that were going to need to be implemented for taxpayers at the beginning of 2026. So I think in most cases, you have … already seen guidance come out on those things that are affecting individual taxpayers, like … the tipped income deduction and overtime pay, things like that. So they have already put out quite a bit of guidance in those spaces that will have a direct effect on individual taxpayers. There’s still a lot to go though. And, you know, you have business taxpayers who maybe aren’t filing on the same timeline as individuals. Some of that important guidance is still yet to come. But I do think that because of the thinking about the kind of end year for individuals, the administration has tried to prioritize those things that are going to need to be known on day one of the new year. Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. You also mentioned the congressional tax writing committees and certainly as Congress has come back, the committees have quite a backlog. Can you give us any insight as to what they may be talking about in those committees? Anna Taylor Well, they do have a full agenda. I mean, I think the first thing that you’re hearing a lot about if you turn on any news outlet right now is of course the thing that landed them in the shutdown to begin with, finding some sort of path forward on those Affordable Care Act premium tax credit — the enhancements for those credits. They didn’t reach any deal before they came out of the shutdown, but they did agree to keep working on it. So there was an agreement as part of coming out of that shutdown where Majority Leader Thune in the Senate said he will hold another round of votes on those credit extensions by the middle of December. So I do think that there’s conversations happening, both bipartisan and partisan, to see if there’s a path forward on figuring out a way to deal with health care costs and insurance premium costs. So that’s taking up a lot of time right now. In addition to that, there is interest from the committees to try to move some things that they’ve been working on for a while on a bipartisan basis. These are things that have been in works for years, honestly, and have pretty broad consensus support. Things like, you know, there’s a tax treaty with Taiwan that has moved through regular order in both the House and the Senate that I think people would like to see get over the finish line. There is, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee have worked on — they haven’t actually processed legislation, but they’ve put out a joint white paper on tax administration. So just some changes to make the system work better for taxpayers. I think that’s something they’re interested in trying to see if there’s opportunities to move together. And then there are a few expiring tax provisions on the business side of the ledger that haven’t been dealt with this year. You know, a lot of the expiring provisions on the individual side were included in that one big beautiful bill act back in the summer. But there are a couple of provisions like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. That’s an important one that does have an effect on people’s ability to get a job and on business’s ability to hire. And so that’s one that is set to expire at the end of this year that I do think there’s probably bipartisan interest in extending. So those are all things I think on the near-term agenda, if they’re in an environment to be able to move some bipartisan legislation. And we all know right now that’s a big no. Terry Gerton Well, speaking of that environment, 2026 is an election year for many members of Congress. Do you think in that environment they really will be able to move some of these big pieces of tax legislation or will they maybe just nibble around the edges? Anna Taylor It’s a really good question. And … when I look in my crystal ball, it’s cloudy, you know. I think that, even in the most political of times, you can sometimes get smaller packages of bipartisan consensus product through. So, you know, I’m still hopeful that they can — they’re going to have to do something on appropriations again when they get to the end of January. That’s when that next government funding deadline will be reached. And so there is potentially a bipartisan vehicle that will be heading our way come late January, assuming we’re not headed towards another shutdown at that point. And so I really do think there’s a possibility that if they reach some sort of funding deal, you know, as they’re working through it in December and into January, that there’s the potential that you could see some tax legislation move along with it, possibly. The later — and I think this goes without saying — the later you get into an election year, the harder it is to do bipartisan things. So when we get into, you know, maybe late summer, early fall, I’ll stop being as optimistic. But until then, I think that there’s still a chance they could move some of the smaller consensus items.The post What can individuals and businesses expect when the tax filing window opens in just a few weeks? first appeared on Federal News Network.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday outlined a strategy to expand its use of artificial intelligence, building on the Trump administration’s enthusiastic embrace of the rapidly advancing technology while raising questions about how health information would be protected. HHS billed the plan as a “first step” focused largely on making its work more efficient and coordinating AI adoption across divisions. But the 20-page document also teased some grander plans to promote AI innovation, including in the analysis of patient health data and in drug development. “For too long, our Department has been bogged down by bureaucracy and busy-work,” Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill wrote in an introduction to the strategy. “It is time to tear down these barriers to progress and unite in our use of technology to Make America Healthy Again.” The new strategy signals how leaders across the Trump administration have embraced AI innovation, encouraging employees across the federal workforce to use chatbots and AI assistants for their daily tasks. As generative AI technology made significant leaps under President Joe Biden’s administration, he issued an executive order to establish guardrails for their use. But when President Donald Trump came into office, he repealed that order and his administration has sought to remove barriers to the use of AI across the federal government. Experts said the administration’s willingness to modernize government operations presents both opportunities and risks. Some said that AI innovation within HHS demanded rigorous standards because it was dealing with sensitive data and questioned whether those would be met under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Some in Kennedy’s own “Make America Health Again” movement have also voiced concerns about tech companies having access to people’s personal information. Strategy encourages AI use across the department HHS’s new plan calls for embracing a “try-first” culture to help staff become more productive and capable through the use of AI. Earlier this year, HHS made the popular AI model ChatGPT available to every employee in the department. The document identifies five key pillars for its AI strategy moving forward, including creating a governance structure that manages risk, designing a suite of AI resources for use across the department, empowering employees to use AI tools, funding programs to set standards for the use of AI in research and development and incorporating AI in public health and patient care. It says HHS divisions are already working on promoting the use of AI “to deliver personalized, context-aware health guidance to patients by securely accessing and interpreting their medical records in real time.” Some in Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement have expressed concerns about the use of AI tools to analyze health data and say they aren’t comfortable with the U.S. health department working with big tech companies to access people’s personal information. HHS previously faced criticism for pushing legal boundaries in its sharing of sensitive data when it handed over Medicaid recipients’ personal health data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Experts question how the department will ensure sensitive medical data is protected Oren Etzioni, an artificial intelligence expert who founded a nonprofit to fight political deepfakes, said HHS’s enthusiasm for using AI in health care was worth celebrating but warned that speed shouldn’t come at the expense of safety. “The HHS strategy lays out ambitious goals — centralized data infrastructure, rapid deployment of AI tools, and an AI-enabled workforce — but ambition brings risk when dealing with the most sensitive data Americans have: their health information,” he said. Etzioni said the strategy’s call for “gold standard science,” risk assessments and transparency in AI development appear to be positive signs. But he said he doubted whether HHS could meet those standards under the leadership of Kennedy, who he said has often flouted rigor and scientific principles. Darrell West, senior fellow in the Brooking Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, noted the document promises to strengthen risk management but doesn’t include detailed information about how that will be done. “There are a lot of unanswered questions about how sensitive medical information will be handled and the way data will be shared,” he said. “There are clear safeguards in place for individual records, but not as many protections for aggregated information being analyzed by AI tools. I would like to understand how officials plan to balance the use of medical information to improve operations with privacy protections that safeguard people’s personal information.” Still, West, said, if done carefully, “this could become a transformative example of a modernized agency that performs at a much higher level than before.” The strategy says HHS had 271 active or planned AI implementations in the 2024 financial year, a number it projects will increase by 70% in 2025.The post US health department unveils strategy to expand its adoption of AI technology first appeared on Federal News Network.

This column was originally published on Roger Waldron’s blog at The Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement and was republished here with permission from the author. On Nov. 3, Jeff Koses, the General Services Administration’s senior procurement executive, posted an article on LinkedIn announcing that the “RFO is in play.” The article highlighted that GSA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security had issued all the deviations with Nov. 3 as the effective date for the changes. A new era begins for the Federal Acquisition Regulation as agencies and departments continue to work towards implementing the RFO deviations and updating their supplemental acquisition regulations. The procurement policy teams responsible for drafting the deviations, the Practitioner’s Albums, and the FAR Companion deserve praise for the thoughtful, integrated, and comprehensive effort. The streamlined RFO is an improvement on the FAR, providing a clear, concise, and coherent acquisition framework for government and industry. As we know, the next phase of the process, the public rulemaking, is critical to the long-term success of the RFO. The rule making process provides the public, including key stakeholders across the procurement community, with the formal opportunity, consistent with law, to comment on the deviations in the form of proposed or interim rules. A robust, transparent process will ensure that the deviations become final rules, cementing the RFO. The Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement’s members look forward to the start of the public rule making phase and the opportunity to formally comment on the revised FAR. The RFO is central to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement system. The FAR establishes the ground rules for government and industry transacting business in support of agency missions. The RFO streamlines and clarifies the ground rules thereby increasing competition and access to the commercial market. Leveraging the RFO to deliver best value mission support for customer agencies and the American people centers on three critical elements: (1) requirements development (2) the acquisition workforce; and (3) operational commercial best practices.  1. Developing Sound Requirements Clear, concise, and well communicated requirements are foundational to successful procurement outcomes that deliver best value mission support. Program offices must play a central role in developing requirements. In this regard, coordination between senior program managers and contracting officers drives effective requirements development for complex requirements. Part and parcel of requirements development is market research. Understanding the capabilities and technologies in the commercial market will inform sound requirements. Too often, government requirements reflect a “Hail Mary” approach that seeks a capability well beyond what is currently commercially available rather acquiring the 80 percent commercial solution that can meet mission needs. As with most “Hail Marys” these requirements often end unfulfilled and undelivered. Finally, today’s outcome-based contracts are yesterday’s performance-based contracts. The administration rightly has identified outcome-based requirements as a strategy that can increase competition, improve performance and achieve greater savings. The long-standing challenge of outcome-based contracting is the articulation and implementation of clear outcomes and associated measures to support contractor performance and government contract administration. It all starts with the statement of objectives. Management focus on and investment in outcome-based requirements development is a commercial best practice. The government should look to emulate this commercial best practice to unlock the positive potential of outcome-based contracting. Perhaps leveraging technology (e.g. artificial intelligence) for data analysis and analytics can support the government’s requirements development process. 2. Embracing The Acquisition Workforce The RFO vests greater discretion to the contracting officer. Some of the commentary around the RFO has raised the potential of increased inconsistency in contracting operations due to greater discretion. The Practitioner’s Albums, FAR Companion, and Category Management Buying Guides are the starting point for the acquisition workforce. As the implementation of the RFO moves forward, translating real life experience with the revised ground rules into a set of operational best practices will be important in fostering consistency. Further, consistent, strategic investments in acquisition training and professional development will enhance sound decision making. Finally, management support and corresponding lines of authority in contracting operations will foster consistency and accountability in the process. 3. Adopting Commercial Best Practices in Procurement Operations   The hallmark of the RFO is its leveraging of the commercial market. The RFO reduces the number of clauses applicable to commercial contracts, strengthens the preference for commercial products and services, and streamlines the overall procurement process. As a policy statement, the RFO recognizes that access to, and competition from the commercial market drives innovation, efficiency, and increases value for the government mission. Adopting commercial best practices in procurement operations is the third key element in leveraging the RFO to deliver best value mission support for the American people. For example, as mentioned above, it is a commercial best practice to invest significant time and resources in requirements development. Sound outcome-based requirements are the blueprint for success. Vigorous competition for sound requirements is the single most effective way to drive value for the taxpayer. Avoiding government-unique, noncommercial practices is the other side of the coin. Operational practices that overregulate or reregulate the procurement process will limit competition, reduce access to the commercial market, and undermine mission support. It will be incumbent at the operational level to embrace commercial best practices while avoiding/eliminating noncommercial practices that undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement process.The post Leveraging the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript Terry Gerton You’ve got an interesting story about a protest this morning from a company who actually won the bid. Tell us about that. Zach Prince Sure. So this involved a Department of Homeland Security procurement from ICE for detention services for folks detained for immigration law violations. So the protester here is a company, Active Deployment Systems. They’re a Texas-based company that markets itself as specializing in rapidly deploying and operating temporary facilities — so, exactly what ICE is looking for for this procurement. So ICE said that they were going to be issuing five or more IDIQ contracts, and then task orders would be competed for particular tasks. Each of the offerers would bid on only those types of tasks that they want to be considered for going forward. ADS, Active Deployment Systems — they received an award, but they were one of 42 offerers that received the award. And you get the sense reading the protest that they don’t like the fact they’re competing now with fewer, slightly fewer than they were competing with for the IDIQ award, but not many. So it’s still gonna be big, big competitions going forward. Maybe they’re trying to level or eliminate some of those competitors. Terry Gerton So this was an IDIQ contract, right? Does this what does this tell us about the structure of these? Was ADS’s expectation reasonable in terms of the number of winners that they would have? Zach Prince No, and in fact this is happening pretty commonly where agencies have these very large IDIQ awards that they might issue 50, 100+ individual IDIQs that, it does narrow the playing field a little bit going forward, but what it really does for the agency is speed along the competition for that next stage when they actually have the identifiable requirements that they’re going to have bids on. Terry Gerton And you can kind of understand ADS’s perspective. I guess the fewer the competitors on — or the fewer the awardees — on the actual contract, the more likelihood they have of winning those orders and the higher their revenue might be. So their projections might have been off a little. Zach Prince Yeah, that’s right. And you know, I think the better arguments that they had here, and maybe their real concern was about the price structure of this IDIQ. But the problem was that they raised these challenges while also submitting a bid for a contract they received, right. So to tell you a little bit more about that, for each of the objectives that you could bid on for this IDIQ, there was a set pricing volume that contained the government’s independent government estimate for what prices should be to be fair and reasonable. Among those estimates was a hard cap, essentially a hard cap on prices per bed per detainee. ADS argue that this harms them if they’re stuck with this because it might put them in a losing position going forward for the actual task orders. Terry Gerton So the court kind of said that, well, the time to challenge that is not after you’ve won, but before you’ve won, right? Zach Prince Yeah, that’s right. And they did try, to give ADS credit. They challenged this at the agency level and an agency level protest. But agency level protests don’t actually stop anything. They just tell the agency, hey, we think this is unworkable. You’re hoping the agency looks at it and says, Oh, yeah, you’re right. But here they didn’t. So, you know, ADS took a contract based on this price structure that they think isn’t proper. And as the court noted, they don’t have to bid on any task orders. So if they really think that this is a losing proposition for them, first of all, they shouldn’t have bid on the contract. And the same thing is true for the 50 something other offerors. But now they don’t have to take losing contracts. They can do the analysis on a task order basis and say, we don’t want to be part of this. Whether it’s good business for the agency, well, maybe not, but I think the agency was moving quickly and just wants to get this thing done for urgent needs to be fulfilled. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Zach Prince. He’s a partner at Haynes Boone. So we talked a little bit about ICE’s strategy and you’re seeing this more often in these IDIQs, where agencies will bring on a lot of winners and then use this as a means to simplify later competition. Zach Prince Yeah, we are seeing quite a lot of this. And I think there are a couple reasons for it. One is perhaps strategically, from a protest perspective, that this — if you just issue contracts essentially to everyone who submitted a reasonably responsive offer, then you’re limiting the IDIQ level protests, which generally can be heard at various forums, Court of Federal Claims, GAO. Maybe then you could have protests of the task order competitions, but those are limited only to GAO and only when they’re above certain dollar values. So the protest possibility becomes much more limited. You also can only have protests for whoever bid on the initial IDIQ or from whoever bid on the initial IDIQ. So it might be a management of protest strategy. It might just be because if you can get a framework in place from the agency that has the pricing mechanisms and the ordering mechanisms, it makes it a lot faster to buy what you need later on. Terry Gerton So do you take any lessons from this particular protest resolution on how the court views these kind of arguments? Zach Prince Yeah, I think in general, even if you haven’t waived an argument because you didn’t bring it up before, which it usually is the case. That is, if you submit a proposal and you have arguments that the solicitation was ambiguous or otherwise flawed, you can’t then complain later. That’s not always the case if you’ve launched agency level protests like ADS did here or there’s some other exception. But you really can’t have your cake and eat it too in this regard. And contractors are in a tough position, because you don’t want to be kicked out of competition for choosing not to bid. You don’t want to annoy the customer by protesting, perhaps unnecessarily, in advance. But if you don’t have clarity on terms or you’re gonna have to accept terms you don’t like, the protest mechanism is what’s there for you. Terry Gerton Then should contractors change the way they approach these large IDIQs? Is there a different competition strategy that they should be employing to be more competitive going forward? Zach Prince I don’t think there really is, unfortunately. I think — I have this conversation with clients all the time where there is a very ambiguous RFP, RFQ. I don’t know what it means. The agency won’t respond to questions and it makes a significant difference for the business on how they put their proposal together. But if they don’t bid, then they’re totally out of the game. If they bid making assumptions that prove to be unwarranted because the agency thinks it means something else, they might take a loss. So they could protest and annoy the customer and potentially delay the procurement. They can’t always protest because the protest rights are not so sweeping. And it also costs a lot of money. Or they just proceed and hope for the best. Terry Gerton Or as the court told ADS, don’t take an order. Zach Prince Yeah, that’s right. And I think ADS is likely going to take orders. I mean that was what they told the court. They want to keep this contract. Terry Gerton This is an interesting case, Zach. Thanks for sharing it with us today. Zach Prince Sure. Thanks for having me, Terry.The post A protest from a winner? A recent case shows why timing matters when challenging solicitation terms first appeared on Federal News Network.

  More moves to reorganize the Army take effect today. The new Army Western Hemisphere Command will officially come into being with its headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The new organization combines the existing U.S. Army North, U.S. Army South and Army Forces Command under one umbrella before those organizations are formally disestablished next October. The new command will also absorb the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, Air Traffic Services Command and the 1st Army. (More moves to reorganize the Army take effect today - U.S. Army)Workforce reductions have become a top challenge at the Office of Personnel Management, according to an agency watchdog. OPM’s inspector general said the agency’s rapid staffing losses this year have created gaps in its ability to operate effectively. According to OPM, the reductions are meant to enhance efficiency. But a new IG report warns that the staffing losses could lead to significant challenges and disruptions in the agency’s work. OPM is on track to lose more than one-third of its entire workforce by the end of the year.(Top management challenges for fiscal year 2026 - Office of Personnel Management, Office of Inspector General)Close to two-thirds of Americans believe management of the federal government has been heading in the wrong direction. A majority also says the government is operating worse now than it was a year ago. The new findings from the Partnership for Public Service indicate that much of the public is pessimistic about the impacts of the Trump administration’s federal workforce cuts. In a recent survey from the Partnership, one-quarter of respondents said they believe the government is moving in the right direction.(Survey of Americans on management of federal government - Partnership for Public Service)Professional services contractors get ready: OASIS+ Phase 2 is here. The General Services Administration is adding five new domains to the existing multiple award contract and opening all new and existing functional areas for bids from new companies in January. GSA said the five new domains under OASIS+ Phase 2 will include business administration, financial services, human capital, marketing and public relations, and social services. Vendors should be on the look out for a pre-amendment notice on SAM.gov around December 16, which will detail the draft scorecards for all domains.(OASIS+ phase 2 is here - General Services Administration)The Department of Health and Human Services is setting new restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities. A new HHS-wide reasonable accommodation policy says all requests for telework, remote work or reassignment must be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official. Frontline supervisors no longer have the authority to make those decisions. A memo from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says all telework related to reasonable accommodations will be repealed. (CDC tells staff telework reasonable accommodations ‘will be repealed,’ as HHS sets stricter rules - Federal News Network)Unions are asking a federal court to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed so far. An amendment to an ongoing lawsuit asks a federal judge in San Francisco to reverse more reductions in force under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown. The continuing resolution states agencies can’t use federal funds to carry out RIFs between mid-November and the end of January. But agencies have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between October 1 and November 12. The amended lawsuit seeks to force the departments of State, Education and Defense, as well as the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration to rescind more RIFs. (Unions file emergency request with court to block State Dept layoffs, reverse RIFs at other agencies - Federal News Network)The Pentagon inspector general’s long-awaited report on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal app to discuss operational details concluded that Hegseth “sent sensitive, nonpublic, operational information” from his personal cell phone, which violates Defense Department rules that prohibit the use of personal devices and nonapproved apps for official business. The IG also determined that Hegseth’s use of a personal device for official work “risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.” The Pentagon only provided a partial copy of messages from Hegseth’s personal cell phone. The IG relied on the transcript of the public chat posted by The Atlantic for this investigation. The IG said Hegseth declined to be interviewed for this evaluation. Meanwhile, the Pentagon said the report is a “total exoneration” of Hegseth and that “the case is closed.”(Hegseth's use of Signal violated information sharing rules, risked troops' safety, DoD IG finds - Department of Defense)The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is urging agencies and industry to take action against a new cyber threat from China. At least eight organizations, including federal agencies, IT companies and critical infrastructure providers, have fallen victim to a new and sophisticated malware attack. CISA is telling all organizations to take action to protect their systems from BRICKSTORM. Nick Andersen, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said the malware could enable long term access, disruption and potential sabotage. "BRICKSTORM is a sophisticated malware," he said. "It has advanced functionality to conceal communications, move laterally and tunnel into victim networks. It can also automatically reinstall or restart the malware if disrupted." CISA issued a new analysis and recommendations yesterday for how organizations can protect themselves from BRICKSTORM.(Agencies, IT companies impacted by latest malware from China - Federal News Network)The post More moves to reorganize Army take effect today first appeared on Federal News Network.

Amazon might be most known for how it has mastered the logistics of moving millions of items on the ground. But it’s also active in space, in a race to build out the next generation of enterprise communications capabilities. Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, has already put some 150 satellites into low earth orbit (LEO), according to its principal business development lead, Rich Pang. Leo’s goal, Pang said, is to “enable connecting folks who don’t have connectivity or who have poor connectivity.” Operating at a height of about 600 kilometers, the satellites’ RF links “are easily done with small terminals and, because of that closeness to earth, [with] high throughput and low latency,” he said. That includes enterprises, including the Defense Department and federal national security agencies. “We know that the defense and national security apparatus is not a fixed force, it’s a mobile force,” Pang said. “It requires multi domain connectivity to ensure that airplanes, ships, trucks, command vehicles are always connected, not only in receiving information, but getting commands out to the field as well.” He said Leo augments communications capabilities the military and national security components already have with “more resilient and secure connectivity to ensure they have that ability to connect all those operations regardless of which domain they operate in.” Remote regions of the oceans where the Navy operates come to mind, but land areas also have connectivity gaps, or ground-based comms get knocked out. “You can’t have guaranteed fiber connectivity or usual connectivity that you’re used to having back at home station,” Pang said. “It’s important to have very flexible types of comms that can respond rapidly to wherever they need to deploy forces.” “I often think about our first responders, or disaster response customers that have multiple systems at any given time to ensure they have connectivity,” he added. They already have their radios, microwave and cellular connections. Now, Pang said, “in the event any of those are taken down, they have to have satellite as a backup.” Resilient, redundant                                  The addition of LEO satellites, with their low latency relative to geosynchronous satellites, contribute to what Pang called next generation connectivity. It’s marked by resiliency because of the alternate pathways for data movement the satellites bring. Optical links among the satellites themselves contribute to the resiliency, Pang said. Inter-satellite pathways “remove congestion from certain ground points [and] allow us to have multiple paths to move information … not only on the ground but in space as well.” Rather than operate as a separate entity, the satellite comms integrate with terrestrial capabilities and, for that matter, to commercial computing clouds, Pang said. To ensure compliance with customers’ security requirements, Pang said, Leo operates within “this private connectivity directly into the cloud services … for our customers who are seeking secure solutions.” He noted that some industries have security needs at least as rigorous as the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) requirement of the government. As a managed service, Pang said, Leo constantly optimizes itself to maintain maximum use of its available bandwidth. “It’s got varying geometries. It’s got varying frequencies,” he said. “And so inherently, these types of capabilities also make it more secure in that it helps reduce interference, whether meaningful or unintended.” Beyond that, the Leo satellites fit in with a general trend of internet protocol (IP) as the basis for all communications, whether voice or data. That is, the multiprotocol label switching gives way to IP and software-defined wide area networks. “I think this opens up the aperture to incorporate a lot of different capabilities throughout the many domains [the DoD] operates and also shorten the timeline in which they get that information from sensors to processing centers to engagement vehicles,” Pang said. Grand orchestration Therein lies the importance of redundancy and resiliency, especially in austere or contested environments. Pang described those qualities as “not being locked into a single architecture, but rather having many choices, having alternative to getting your information where it needs to go.” “Resiliency, in my mind, is creating a dynamic system that allows you to choose the best path to take when you’re moving information around,” he added. Pang said the government has been working continuously on how to integrate disparate networks and applications at the terminal level, where they operate single apertures that work on multiple networks.” This requires “an orchestration of all those capabilities to build that resiliency into the broader architecture that the Defense Department is trying to deploy now.” Signal interruption, for instance by weather or intentionally interfered with by adversaries, occur regularly in Defense and national security situations. “The system is designed to always sense for interference, whether it’s intentional or not,” Pang said. “It’s sensing for weather interference. It’s sensing for intentional interference, so it always knows that it needs an alternate path.” Sensing and rerouting happen automatically, he said. The system “always knows that if I have interference in a particular path, it knows to look for the alternative or the tertiary path. The system is designed to constantly be optimizing itself very rapidly to ensure that that interference is dealt with.” Pang said the LEO satellites of Amazon strengthen an important link in the information-to-decision chain. Once data from various sources arrived where it’s needed, “there are a lot of fusion engines, whether they sit on premises, in the cloud or even at the tactical edge.” Leo is concerned with the movement of the data to those fusion sites. “Our play is getting information to where it needs to be, whether it’s at the tactical edge or back to a data center to be fused, processed and then redistributed,” Pang said. “As the transport layer, not only can we get all that information back, we can help redistribute that information very quickly to the tactical user, so that commanders can make decisions in a much shortened timeline.”The post Space-routed internet moves to the mainstream first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Justice Department recently resolved several investigations into federal contractors’ cybersecurity requirements as part of the federal government’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative. The initiative, first announced in 2021, ushered in the DOJ’s efforts to pursue cybersecurity-related fraud by government contractors and grant recipients pursuant to the False Claims Act. Since then, the DOJ has publicly announced approximately 15 settlements against federal contractors, with the DOJ undoubtedly conducting even more investigations outside of the public’s view. As an initial matter, these latest settlements signal that the new administration has every intention of continuing to prioritize government contractors’ cybersecurity practices and combating new and emerging cyber threats to the security of sensitive government information and critical systems. These settlements also coincide with the lead up to the Nov. 10 effective date of the Defense Department’s final rule amending the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, which incorporates the standards of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. Key DOJ cyber-fraud decisions The first of these four recent DOJ settlements was announced in July 2025, and resulted in Hill Associates agreeing to pay the United States a minimum of $14.75 million. In this case, Hill Associates provided certain IT services to the General Services Administration. According to the DOJ’s allegations, Hill Associates had not passed the technical evaluations required by GSA for a contractor to offer certain highly adaptive cybersecurity services to government customers. Nevertheless, the contractor submitted claims charging the government for such cybersecurity services, which the DOJ alleged violated the FCA. The second settlement, United States ex. rel. Lenore v. Illumina Inc., was announced later in July 2025, and resulted in Illumina agreeing to pay $9.8 million — albeit with Illumina denying the DOJ’s allegations. According to the DOJ, Illumina violated the FCA by selling federal agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Agriculture, certain genomic sequencing systems that contained cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Specifically, the DOJ alleged that with respect to the cybersecurity of its product, Illumina: (1) falsely represented that its software and systems adhered to cybersecurity standards, including standards of the International Organization for Standardization and National Institute of Standards and Technology; (2) knowingly failed to incorporate product cybersecurity in its software design, development, installation and on-market monitoring; (3) failed to properly support and resource personnel, systems and processes tasked with product security; and (4) failed to adequately correct design features that introduced cybersecurity vulnerabilities. That same day, the DOJ announced its third settlement, which was with Aero Turbine Inc., and Gallant Capital Partners, LLC (collectively, “Aero”), and resulted in a $1.75 million settlement. This settlement resolved the DOJ’s allegations that Aero violated the FCA by knowingly failing to comply with the cybersecurity requirements of its contract with the Department of the Air Force. Pursuant to the contract, Aero was required to implement the security requirements outlined by NIST Special Publication 800-171, “Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Information Systems and Organizations,” but failed to fully do so. This included failing to control the flow of and limit unauthorized access to sensitive defense information when it provided an unauthorized Egypt-based software company and its personnel with files containing sensitive Defense information. The fourth and latest DOJ settlement was announced in Sept. 2025, and resolved the DOJ’s FCA lawsuit against the Georgia Tech Research Corporation. As part of the settlement, GRTC agreed to pay $875,000 to resolve allegations resulting from a whistleblower complaint that it failed to meet the cybersecurity requirements in its DoD contracts. Specifically, the DOJ alleged that until December 2021, the contractor failed to install, update or run anti-virus or anti-malware tools on desktops, laptops, servers and networks while conducting sensitive cyber-defense research for the DoD. The DOJ further alleged that the contractor did not have a system security plan setting out cybersecurity controls, as required by the government contract. Lastly, the DOJ alleged that the contractor submitted a false summary level cybersecurity assessment score of 98 to the DoD, with the score being premised on a “fictitious” environment, and did not apply to any system being used to process, store or transmit sensitive Defense information. Takeaways for federal contractors These recent enforcement actions provide valuable guidance for federal contractors. DOJ has explicitly stated that cyber fraud can exist regardless of whether a federal contractor experienced a cyber breach. DOJ is focused on several practices to support allegations of cyber fraud, including a federal contractor’s cybersecurity practices during product development and deployment, as well as contractors’ statements regarding assessment scores and underlying representations. DOJ takes whistleblower complaints seriously, with several of these actions stemming from complaints by federal contractors’ former employees. To mitigate these risks, federal contractors should ensure that they understand and operationalize their contractual obligations, particularly with respect to the new DFARS obligations. Federal contractors would be well advised to: (1) review and understand their cybersecurity contractional obligations; (2) develop processes to work with the appropriate internal teams (information security, information technology, etc.) to ensure that contractual obligations have been appropriately implemented; and (3) develop processes to monitor compliance with the contractual obligations on an ongoing basis. Joshua Mullen, Luke Cass, Christopher Lockwood and Tyler Bridegan are partners at Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP. The post Cybersecurity in focus: DOJ aggressively investigating contractors’ cybersecurity practices first appeared on Federal News Network.

Federal employee unions are asking a court to block the State Department’s imminent plans to finalize layoffs for hundreds of employees, as well as reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown. The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association are leading an emergency request for a temporary restraining order that would prevent the State Department from officially separating hundreds of employees from the agency. The emergency request, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asks the court to bar the “imminent and unlawful execution” of hundreds of reduction in force notices the State Department sent this summer. “The severe threats to the public presented by the imminent State Department actions necessitate a temporary pause to protect the status quo for plaintiffs and the employees they represent who are adversely impacted by these imminent separations,” the emergency request states. The emergency request for a temporary restraining order is before Judge Susan Illston, who blocked the Trump administration from carrying out widespread reductions in force during the 43-day government shutdown. The unions are asking Illston to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the State Department’s removals no later than 9 a.m. Eastern this Friday. The emergency request is part of an ongoing lawsuit that unions filed on the eve of the government shutdown, which blocked the Trump administration from conducting widespread layoffs during a lapse in congressional funds. The amended lawsuit states that several agencies, including the State Department, aren’t fully adhering to a provision in the shutdown-ending spending bill that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs. The nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is also part of the lawsuit, said the amended lawsuit seeks to reverse “other unlawful RIF actions” at the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, as well as the departments of Education and Defense. “Those RIFs would violate the federal legislation that ended the federal government shutdown, which prohibits implementation of any RIFs through January 30,” the amended complaint states. The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.” It also states that between N0v. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.” Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12. The amended lawsuit states that interpretation of the continuing resolution “is significantly under-inclusive.” Agencies recently told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees. The State Department sent RIF notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July. Most of those employees were officially separated from the agency in September. But this Friday, Dec. 5, the department plans to officially remove nearly 250 Foreign Service employees and several civil service employees whose separation dates were postponed, because they recently gave birth or faced medical issues. The State Department claims that the continuing resolution’s layoff protections only apply to RIF notices that went out after Oct. 1. “Defendants are wrong,” the amended complaint states. “The plain language of the continuing resolution prohibits any actions implementing any RIFs of any employees at any agency between November 12, 2025 and January 30, 2026, and requires recission of any previously issued RIF notices (regardless of when they were issued) if the RIFs were implemented during the shutdown.” The amended lawsuit also takes issue with how the State Department modified the official separation date for impacted employees. Foreign Service employees were originally told they would be separated from the agency on Nov. 10,  when the agency was still affected by the government shutdown. But on that date, employees received a notice from the department’s human resources offices that said they would remain on administrative leave so the agency could correct “administrative errors.” On Monday evening, employees received a notice that said they will be officially separated from the State Department this Friday. “The RIF notices were not reissued, and employees received nothing further from the State Department regarding the now-expired RIF notices until December 1, 2025,” the amended lawsuit states. The State Department’s notice to employees cites “formal written guidance” from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding RIFs that had been issued prior to the shutdown, but further implemented during or after the shutdown. The unions leading the lawsuit say that formal written guidance hasn’t been made publicly available. “During the shutdown, the State Department continued to implement the stages of these RIFs in preparation for final separation of the employees, including by processing personnel paperwork in advance of the planned separations,” the amended complaint states. The unions claim that without a temporary restraining order, State Department employees and their families will suffer “irreparable harm,” including a loss of income and health insurance benefits. “For many of these employees, the imminent loss of employment means a sustained loss of income and benefits in a job market already flooded with unemployed former State Department and USAID employees,” the amended complaint states. AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that “Congress clearly stated that no federal employees should lose their jobs due to a reduction-in-force for the duration of the continuing resolution.” “This means that no RIF should be issued or acted upon, and any RIF terminations that occurred during the shutdown must be reversed,” Kelley said. AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a statement that these “unlawful separations reveal a callous indifference to the rule of law and the people who carry out America’s diplomatic mission every day.”The post Unions file emergency request with court to block State Dept layoffs, reverse RIFs at other agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript Terry Gerton CFPB recently issued a new rule regarding the Fair Credit Reporting Act and it’s pretty important. Can you walk us through the core of that rule and why you at the Consumer Data Industry Association think it’s important? Dan Smith Sure, happy to. So the Fair Credit Reporting Act has been in existence since 1970. The leading privacy legislation in the country has specific requirements that lay out how credit reporting should take place, the protections for consumers, and a clear process. And one of the core functions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act is to have a national standard and clearly discusses preemption. Throughout the years, it’s been amended several times. But in the end, Congress is the one who makes decisions on the law. They write the law, and it’s up to judges to interpret the law. In 2022, the CFPB, under the previous administration, put out a document called the Interpretive Rule on Preemption, where they decided what the statute meant. So the first problem was that CFPB actually doesn’t have the authority to do that. They’re not the judge. They implement regulations. They don’t interpret law. That’s up to the courts to decide. They clearly decided to go against the congressional intent of the FCRA. And the current administration believes that that is not their role; that is up to Congress to decide the law. And they were attempting to state that fact, right? So they basically went back to what was common knowledge of the interpretation on preemption to what it was prior to 2022. And they acknowledge in their current interpretive rule that this is not binding, just like the 2022 rule was not binding. It was an interpretation, right? It didn’t go through the APA process, right? We couldn’t sue in 2022 because they didn’t write an actual rule. They just said, this is what we believe. So the current administration is saying you don’t have the right to say, this is what we believe. That is up to Congress. You probably remember the Loper Bright case, which basically said Congress writes the laws, right? If they’re ambiguous, the the regulators actually don’t have the flexibility to interpret it. It’s up to Congress. So I believe the current administration is trying to get the market back to where Congress intended years ago. Terry Gerton What does this all mean for both consumers and lenders who have to use this kind of data? Dan Smith The credit reporting ecosystem is critical to every consumer in this country. It provides access to credit. It provides the lender with the ability to mitigate their risks, to analyze the consumer and their ability to repay the loan. It helps facilitate the buying of a car. You could walk into an auto dealer and walk out with a $50,000 car today. And a good reason is because of the credit reporting system. It allows the lender to evaluate the consumer with data. They’re not making judgments. They’re not looking at the person. They are making a decision based on data that talks about their ability to repay the loan. So every day consumers benefit from a robust, complete, accurate credit report. The good, the bad and the not so good. And if you have a system that doesn’t intake the completeness of a consumer’s credit, then you’re going to have decisions that are not accurate. And a lender has two basic choices at that point. They can cut back on their lending, lend to less, or they can charge people more because they’re taking on more risk. Those are their two levers. So the more complete and more accurate a credit report is, the better the lender’s going to be able to manage their risk and lend to more people. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Dan Smith. He’s the CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association. So in the interim between the previous administration’s interpretive rule and this one, some states tried to create their own standards on credit reporting. Were there any particular state actions that raised a red flag for you at CDIA? Dan Smith Yes. The reason CDIA is so current concerned about the state action is that Congress is the decider of what can and can’t be on a credit report. And it is critical that we have a national standard, that the same data, same types of data appear across the country, so that there is a system that a lender can rely upon if they’re lending in California or they’re lending in Nevada or they’re lending in New Jersey. The credit score that’s based off that information is consistent across the country. If you had data in California that’s different than data in New Jersey, that means the score would act differently. A 750 in California that doesn’t have medical debt would perform different than a 750 in New Jersey that does have medical debt. And I don’t know how a lender can manage a network of 50 different credit reports, 50 different credit scores — and there aren’t just two credit scores, FICO and Vantage score. There’s 50 or 60 different forms of credit scores based on the lender. It’s a complex weave and it’s important to have a national standard so a lender can evaluate the consumer on a level playing field. And if you allow someone other than Congress to determine what can or can’t be on a credit report, you’re bringing politics into the decision making, not sound underwriting decisions. So today’s medical debt, tomorrow’s student loans. Next week is homes damaged by a natural disaster. And before you know it, that credit report is less valuable to the lender and they stop buying the credit report and using it as a tool to lend more. Terry Gerton You mentioned medical debt along with some of the others. There was a recent decision in the Eastern District of Texas having to do with medical debt that vacated a C F P B rule. Was that in line with the new rule or was that related to the old rule? Dan Smith So we actually filed that case, CDIA along with Cornerstone Credit Union League out of the Texas area. So you had you have two things. You have the current interpretive rule, which they talked about preemption and what a state can and can’t do. That’s what happened last week. Back in January of 25, the previous administration, as they were leaving, finalized the prohibition on medical debt from being included in credit reports, right? We and others sued saying you don’t have the legal authority to determine that, only Congress does. So back in … 1996, Congress actually prohibited medical debt from being on credit reports, right? People don’t realize, in ’96, they said no medical debt. We don’t think that’s correct. In 2003, they came back and said, oops, that was a mistake. When somebody has $50,000 in any kind of debt, a lender needs to know that so they can make the right choice and not put that consumer in a position that they’ll fail. You don’t want to give people more credit than they can actually afford. So Congress in 2003 passed a law saying both medical debt can be included as long as you can de-identify the medical institution. So if you are a patient at Sloan Kettering, this was an actual example by Congress. You’re a patient at Sloan Kettering and your credit report says. Medical debt, $5,000 Sloan Kettering, the assumption can be made very easily that you have a medical cancer. They don’t think that was fair. And they made the decision that you could put the medical debt, but you have to quote code it or block the identity of that company, the Sloan Kettering. But it says you can definitely put the information on there. So they completely reversed their opinion and said it’s important. So what happened was in ’25 in January, the administration and the CFPB said, we don’t agree with Congress. We’re going to take it off. And they used some data and some analysis and a lot of hyperbole and said, this isn’t fair to the consumer, so we’re gonna take it off. Well, they don’t have the authority to actually do that. So the lawsuit in Texas was to say the authority the Bureau has is to implement regulations, not make law. And the court agreed with us completely.The post A new CFPB rule strengthens credit data standards, helping lenders and borrowers first appeared on Federal News Network.

  The Office of Personnel Management is requiring all federal supervisors to enroll in a new training program on performance management. A new memo said the mandatory training will cover how to both reward and discipline employees, as well as how to create effective performance plans. All supervisors are required to complete OPM's new training by Feb. 9, 2026.(New governmentwide supervisory training - Office of Personnel Management)The Missile Defense Agency has tapped more than 1,000 companies to support the Golden Dome initiative. The first round of awards under the agency’s Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, or SHIELD, contracting vehicle went to 1,014 “qualifying offerors.” Vendors that receive task orders will draw funds from a pool worth up to $151 billion. Officials say those order competitions won’t begin until all companies in the competitive range get the chance to "engage in meaningful discussions” with the agency.(MDA selects over 1,000 companies for Golden Dome SHIELD contract - SAM.gov)The top Democrat on the Senate Subcommittee on Aviation, Space and Innovation is pressing Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to give a majority of the FAA workers a bonus. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said it was unfair to limit who received the $10,000 bonus when all 20,000 air traffic controllers and technicians worked during the 43-day shutdown. The FAA is giving a $10,000 award to approximately 2.4% of the air traffic controller workforce and to roughly 6% of the technician workforce. Duckworth said this creates a "perverse and dangerous incentive" that threatens to weaken national airspace system safety during future shutdowns.(Senator presses FAA to give more workers shutdown bonuses - Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.))Senate Democrats are ringing the alarm bells about the new deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and five other members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are calling for the White House to reverse its appointment of Paul Ingrassia to be the GSA deputy general counsel. The lawmakers say Ingrassia is unqualified for the position because of his very limited legal experience and because of his lengthy and public record of offensive statements. The Trump administration withdrew Ingrassia's nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel after statements he made became public about him having a "Nazi streak from time to time" and on other questionable topics. The Senators want a briefing from GSA and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel by Dec. 9. (Democrat Senators ring alarm bells over GSA deputy counsel - Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee)The Pentagon inspector general said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the messaging app Signal to discuss operational details of airstrikes in Yemen created a risk of exposing U.S. tactics and endangering service members. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell pushed back on the finding, and pointed to the “flawless execution and success” of Operation Rough Rider. Parnell also noted that the inspector general determined that no classified information was shared. “Case closed,” he said on social media platform X. CNN first reported the watchdog’s findings. (Pentagon IG says Hegseth’s use of Signal risked troops safety, DoD pushes back on the findings - Social media platform X)Former EPA employees are challenging the Trump administration, saying they were fired illegally. After being fired for signing a letter criticizing the Trump administration, six former EPA employees argue the agency’s actions violated the First Amendment. The employees were some of the 140 workers who signed the “declaration of dissent,” which resulted in around 20 employees being fired, and dozens more facing two-week suspensions. The fired feds are appealing their case to the Merit Systems Protection Board.(Fired EPA employees challenge agency, alleging free speech violations - Federal News Network)A recent survey shows most Americans agree agencies should make secure data-handling a top priority for the services they provide. But only 41% of those surveyed say they trust the government’s handling of their personal data. In a survey of more than 1,500 people conducted by Gartner, more than half say more transparency in how their data is used would improve their level of trust with the federal government’s online services. (Survey shows 61% of U.S. citizens rate secure data handling as extremely important for government digital services - Gartner)The State Department’s diplomatic workforce is feeling overburdened, under-resourced and more likely to leave in the next few years. In a survey of more than 2,100 active-duty Foreign Service employees, the American Foreign Service Association found 98% of respondents reported reduced morale this year. About 86% of respondents said workplace changes since January have affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities. Before the Trump administration, about 17,000 active-duty Foreign Service officers worked for the State Department. AFSA estimates that nearly a quarter of them left this year when counting layoffs, retirements and those who accepted deferred resignation offers.('A workplace crisis:' Nearly all Foreign Service employees report lower morale in union-led survey - Federal News Network)The post There’s a new performance management training program for federal supervisors first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript Terry Gerton Timely payments, rescinding stop work orders, and monitoring long-term impacts are top priorities as agencies restart operations. We’ll also look at key takeaways from PSC’s Vision Conference with CEO Jim Carroll. Jim, thanks for joining me. Jim Carroll Terry, thank you so much for having me on. Terry Gerton You are coming off two days of the PSC Vision Conference. Let’s start there. What were the biggest insights that you heard over those two days of discussions? Jim Carroll Well, I’ll say three insights. One was it was a brutal way to start the Monday after Thanksgiving holiday … But, we had to accommodate the really great speakers on — including really some wonderful keynote speakers. Next year it will not be the Monday after Thanksgiving. So for all of our members, you know, for this event, we’re thankfully able to get a better date. But more importantly, as I mentioned, really was hearing from some of the leadership in the administration about, what is their projections for 2026 and how the money, as being appropriated by Congress, as the budget request and where they expect it to go. And so, one was just the amount of money, which is something worth talking about. The other thing and is really the use of AI and how the embrace of AI by the federal government is rapid, but it’s also a bit unknown. We’re moving forward in this space of the government using AI without everyone necessarily understanding all the implications. So I think so far those are the two big takeaways that we’ve been able to summarize. And, it’s a great event for our members and a few guests. Terry Gerton What did you hear about this administration’s take on industry partnerships? Jim Carroll You know, I think we have to sort of look back at DoD. I think DoD with Secretary Hegseth is a good example of that. As you recall, in November, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met with our members and the folks that do defense contracting and said that they really do want to do a radical revolutionary overhaul of the FAR, and especially, in the sense of producing deliverables and measuring outcomes based on performance and getting this done right and how the military, how the branches within DoD have been tasked with coming up with orders … by mid-January, 60 days, in terms of how they think we can best streamline the process. And our hope is that this proposal really has legs. And we think it does. There’s support in Capitol Hill. There’s support in the administration. And of course, we — the leading trade association for companies that do business with the federal government — we’re completely supportive of most of these changes. There are things that we’ve been asking for for years that would really expedite the awards. Hopefully, with the grace of God, cut down on the number of appeals following an award, which seems to be a bit of an epidemic of companies now just expect there to be an appeal. And so we’re really very hopeful that this will stick and we’re optimistic that it will. And so that’s one of the major things, and then of course, as I mentioned, the amount of money in government services. And there was discussion about that … this week from the assistant secretary of war, that you know, there really is going to be an extraordinary amount of money, $850 billion at DOD with at least $180 billion toward services. And that’s what our very, and I’m proud to say, patriotic, companies that want to do the right thing for the war fighter and the taxpayer are eager to jump on board. Terry Gerton Speaking with Jim Carroll, CEO of the Professional Services Council. Jim, tell us more about what you heard about the deployment of AI from the government agencies and within the contractor community. Jim Carroll Yeah, so within the government we had speakers from across the government. As I said, Assistant Secretary of War, Michael Cadenazzi, who handles the industrial base policy, talked about an initial $180 billion, $200 billion in services, and how the use of AI and services can change and how there needs to be flexibility because of AI, that when some of these contracts call for a hundred seats to be filled, that there is enough flexibility that contractors can come back to the government and say, hey, we’re gonna use some, you know, AI, some other advanced technology. We can reduce the number of personnel from a hundred to eighty people. And in the past there’s been some resistance. Both the Department of War and some of the other departments, you know, really stressed that they want flexibility because of AI. I’ll say one thing that was interesting, and we’ve seen and heard this from members, is that there are a fair number of new companies who have never put in bids for government work that are using AI to not only write their proposals, but as I mentioned, also the use of AI to appeal. I mean, it just seems like it’s a press of the AI button, if you will, and an appeal is generated. And we need to get away from that, you know, for valid, justifiable awards, let’s move forward and deliver good results. And so we’re very optimistic. The recognition that AI has some limitations to it, but that it can deliver fast results is something that will be very interesting to see in 2026. Terry Gerton Jim, one of the things that you and I have talked about, we’ve talked about it with a lot of contracting folks on the show is the uncertainty about the federal government workload for contractors. I’m wondering what you heard from your members over the course of this conference, especially as we’re sitting right now just post-shutdown and possibly pre-shutdown in January. What what are you hearing and what is PSC’s advice? Jim Carroll Terry, don’t jinx us. No more government shutdowns. No, we’re tracking January 30th very closely. We had very senior meetings in the White House in the West Wing with a couple different meetings because of the shutdown to talk about the impact that it is having on results and the impact it is having on protecting the homeland. And so, what we told them in addition to the impacts is when the government gets up and running, because shutdowns end. This was a record-breaking one, but shutdowns do end. And as soon as they end, you know, it’s to tell the individuals in the departments, immediately start processing these invoices, get these payments out the door. You know, there are a fair number of companies, especially in the small to mid-size, that really did not have stable cash flow. They really were hurting. We saw some layoffs or at least, you know, sidelining of key employees, and it really presented a huge financial strain on the companies, which flows down to the employees, which flows down to the communities. And so that’s what we asked for. We asked, in addition, that the momentum on getting contracts, new contracts out the door, be, you know, jump-started as fast as possible. Historically, it takes quite a while after a shutdown for things to resume sort of a normalcy. And, we don’t have time for that. In addition to the financial impact, truly the impact on national security. The world is facing new and dangerous threats that seem to be magnifying every day. And our contractors are able to deliver world-class results and protection. And unless they get up and running immediately, you know, those threats are very real. Terry Gerton Are you seeing that kind of activity coming out of the government agencies now a couple of weeks on from shutdown? Jim Carroll You know, we’re actually pleasantly surprised. And I hate to say that word surprised, but in the past, it does seem to be a bit of a lag. Our message seems to be delivered. We’re getting payments out quickly. Maybe not all and not every department, but it seems to be beating historic records in in terms of getting payments out. Obviously, some companies are still hurting, you know, waiting to get paid for work that they performed. But we’re happy so far. But Terry, I can’t believe you brought up January 30th of next year. You know, is this a lull between shutdowns? I hope not. I hope that they’re able to resolve, you know, some of the significant issues, healthcare, things like that. But as we’ve talked about, there’s not a lot of workdays up on Capitol Hill, and we just cannot have another shutdown.The post PSC’s vision conference proved that forecasting government contractor workload for 2026 is no easy task first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript Terry Gerton The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has recently written to the SEC asking to modernize its communication and record keeping rules. Help us understand what the big issue is here. Robert Cruz Well, I think the fundamental issue that SIFMA is calling out is a mismatch between the technology that firms use today and the rules, which were written a long time ago — and in some cases, you know, the Securities and Exchange Act from 1940. So essentially we’re all struggling trying to find a way to fit the way that we interact today into rules that are very old, written when we were doing things with typewriters and, you know, over written communication. So it’s trying to minimize the gap between those two things, between the technology and what the rule requires firms to do. Terry Gerton So instead of all of those hard copy letters that we get from investment firms and those sorts of things, we also get emails, text messages. That’s where the disconnect is happening? Robert Cruz Yes. It’s the fact that individuals can collaborate and communicate with their customers over a variety of mechanisms. And some of these may be casual. They may be not related to business. And that’s the fundamental problem is that SIFMA is looking for the rules to be clarified so it pertains only to the things that matter to the firm, that create value or risk to their business or to the investor. Terry Gerton And what would those kinds of communications look like? Robert Cruz I think what they’ll look like is external communication. So, right now the rule doesn’t distinguish between internal — you and I as colleagues talking versus things that pertain to, you know, communications with the public or with a potential investor. So it’s trying to carve out those things that really do relate to the business’s products or services and exclude some of the things that may be more just conversational, as you and I might pass each other in the hallway, we can chat on a chat board someplace. It’s trying to remove those kind of just transitory communications from the record keeping obligations. Terry Gerton Right. The letter even mentions things like emojis and messages like “I’m running late.” Robert Cruz Exactly. And you know, it’s a fundamental problem that firms have is the fact that if you say you’re going to be able to use a tool, even if it’s as simple as email, that means that our firm has an obligation to capture it. And when it captures it, it captures everything, everything that is delivered through that communication channel. So that creates some of that problem of like, somebody left their lunch in the refrigerator. We need to clean it up. it’s trying to remove all of that noise from the things that really do matter to the business. Terry Gerton Not only does that kind of record keeping impose a cost on the organization, the reporting organization, but it also would create quite a burden on the regulators trying to sort out the meaningful communication in that electronic file cabinet, so to speak. Robert Cruz Absolutely. Well, the firm clearly has the obligation to sift through all of this data to find the things that matter. If you have a regulatory inquiry, you’ve got to find everything that relates to it. Even if it’s, you know, I talked to an investor and there was an emoji in that conversation. I still need to account for that. So the burden is both on the firm as well as on the regulator to try to parse through these very large sets of data that are very, you know, heterogeneous with a lot of different activities that are captured in today’s tools. Terry Gerton Relative to the question about the tools, you’ve said that SEC rules should be agnostic to technology. Unpack that for me. What exactly does that mean? Robert Cruz Sure. This kind of goes back a few years where there was a revision to the rule 17A-4 from the SEC, which is the fundamental record keeping obligation. It says you need to have complete and accurate records. What they tried to do at that time was remove references to old technologies and spinning disks and things we used to do long ago. And so the objective was to be more independent of technology. Your obligation is your obligation. If it matters to the business, that’s the principle that should govern, not the particular tool that you use. So technology being agnostic — or rules being agnostic; technology means it doesn’t matter whether it’s delivered via email, via text, via emojis, carrier pigeons or anything else. If it matters to the business, it matters to the business. Terry Gerton How do today’s variety of technologies complicate a business’ compliance requirements? Robert Cruz The challenge is very complex, period. It’s always going to be with us because there’s always going to be a new way that your your client wants to engage. There may be a new tool that you’re not familiar with that they want to interact on. Or you may get pull from your employees internally because they’re familiar with tools from their personal lives. So that encroachment of new tools, it doesn’t go away. It’s always been with us. And so it’s things that we have to anticipate. Again, be agnostic because there’s going to be something that comes right along behind it that potentially makes you know an explicit regulation irrelevant from the outset. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Robert Cruz. He’s the Vice President for Regulatory and Information Governance at SMARSH. All right, let’s follow along with that because you’ve got a proposal that includes a compliance safe harbor. So along with these compliance questions, what would that change for firms and how does it address the challenges of enforcement? Robert Cruz Well, it’s an interesting concept because the rules today are meant to be principles-based. They’re not prescriptive. In other words, they don’t tell you, you must do the following. And that’s one of the challenges the industry has is that, what is good enough? What is the SEC specifically looking for? So this is like trying to give people a safe spot to which then you can say, well, SEC, if you really care about, you know, particular areas of these communications, they can tune their programs to do that. So it feels like it’s just giving some latitude so that we can define best practices. We can get a clearer sense of what the regulators are looking for. It’ll guide our governance processes by just having a clearer picture of where enforcement’s going to be focused. Terry Gerton The regulatory process that would apply here is notoriously slow and complicated. What’s at stake for firms and investors if we don’t get this modernized? Robert Cruz Well, I think you’re going to continue to see just a lot of individual practices that will vary. Some firms will interpret things differently and we’ll need to wait for enforcement to determine which is the best way. So, case in point, generative AI — if you’re using these technologies inside of the tools that you currently support, are these going to be considered issues for the SEC or not? We we have to wait until we get some interpretation from the regulators to say, yes, we need to have stronger controls around this, or yes, we need to block these tools. You know, you need to make that adjustment based upon the way that the SEC responds to it. Terry Gerton And what is your sense of how the SEC might respond to this? Robert Cruz My gut tells me that just given where we are right now, you know, the SEC has a reduction in headcount it’s dealing with. It’s stating its mission very clearly and its focus is on crypto, is on capital formation, is on reducing regulatory burden. I just don’t know if this makes the list. So it clearly is being abdicated strongly from SIFMA, but, whether this makes page one of the SEC priorities list with the 20% reduction in headcount, it really seems like an outside chance that it gets onto their agenda. Terry Gerton Could it inform some of the other regulation issues that they’re addressing, such as crypto and and capital formation? Robert Cruz Absolutely. And that’s a great comment — the notion of using an unapproved communication tool, it didn’t go away. We may not see the big fines anymore, but I think the regulators are going to be saying if there’s an issue related to crypto, related to investor harm or what have you, if you’re using a tool that is not approved for use, you don’t have the artifact, you don’t have the historical record. They’re not going to view that you know favorably if you’re not able to defend your business. And so it’ll come up in context of other examinations that they’re carrying out. So maybe not a means to an end as it’s been for the last two years, but it will impact their ability to do their jobs ultimately.The post Outdated SEC communications rules are putting compliance and competitiveness at risk first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Pentagon is taking a major step forward in modernizing how it addresses cybersecurity risks. Defense Department officials have emphasized the need to move beyond “legacy shortcomings” to deliver technology to warfighters more rapidly. In September, DoD announced a new cybersecurity risk management construct to address those challenges. “The previous Risk Management Framework was overly reliant on static checklists and manual processes that failed to account for operational needs and cyber survivability requirements,” DoD wrote at the time. “These limitations left defense systems vulnerable to sophisticated adversaries and slowed the delivery of secure capabilities to the field.” Weeding through legacy manual processes The legacy of manual processes has built up over decades. Jason Venner, a solutions sales director at Diligent, said agencies have traditionally relied on people and paperwork to ensure compliance. “It’s no one’s fault,” Venner said during Federal News Network’s Risk & Compliance Exchange 2025. “It just sort of evolved that way, and now it’s time to stop and reassess where we’re at. I think the administration is doing a pretty good job in looking at all the different regs that they’re promulgating and revising them.” Venner said IT leaders are interested in ways to help streamline the governance, risk and compliance process while ensuring security. “Software should help make my life easier,” he said. “If I’m a CIO or a CISO, it should help my make my life easier, and not just for doing security scans or vulnerability scans, but actually doing IT governance, risk and compliance.” Katie Arrington, who is performing the duties of the DoD chief information officer, has talked about the need to “blow up” the current RMF. The department moved to the framework in 2018 when it transitioned away from the DoD Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP). “I remember when we were going from DIACAP to RMF, I wanted to pull my hair out,” Arrington said earlier this year. “It’s still paper. Who reads it? What we do is a program protection plan. We write it, we put it inside the program. We say, ‘This is what we’ll be looking to protect the program.’ We put it in a file, and we don’t look at it for three years. We have to get away from paperwork. We have to get away from the way we’ve done business to the way we need to do business, and it’s going to be painful, and there are going to be a lot of things that we do, and mistakes will be made. I really hope that industry doesn’t do what industry tends to do, [which] is want to sue the federal government instead of working with us to fix the problems. I would really love that.” Arrington launched the Software Fast Track initiative to once again tackle the challenge of quickly adopting secure software. Evolving risk management through better automation, analytics DoD’s new risk management construct includes a five-phase lifecycle and then core principles, including automation, continuous monitoring and DevSecOps. Arrington talked about the future vision for cyber risk management within DoD earlier this year. “I’m going to ask you, if you’re a software provider, to provide me your software bill of materials in both your sandbox and production, along with a third-party SBOM. You’re going to populate those artifacts into our Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service,” she said. “I will have AI tools on the back end to review the data instead of waiting for a human and if all of it passes the right requirements, provisional authority to operate.” Venner said the use of automation and AI rest on a foundation of data analytics. He argued the successful use of AI for risk management will require purpose-built models. “Can you identify, suggest, benchmark things for me and then identify controls to mitigate these risks, and then let me know what data I need to monitor to ensure those controls are working. That’s where AI can really accelerate the conversation,” Venner said. Discover more articles and videos now on our Risk & Compliance Exchange 2025 event page.The post Risk and Compliance 2025 Exchange: Diligent’s Jason Venner on moving beyond manual cyber compliance first appeared on Federal News Network.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s watchdog found that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at risk when he used the Signal messaging app to convey sensitive information about a military strike against Yemen’s Houthi militants, two people familiar with the findings said Wednesday. Hegseth, however, has the ability to declassify material and the report did not find he did so improperly, according to one of the people familiar with the findings who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the information. That person also said the report concluded that Hegseth violated Pentagon policy by using his personal device for official business and it recommended better training for all Pentagon officials. Hegseth declined to sit for an interview with the Pentagon’s inspector general but provided a written statement, that person said. The defense secretary asserted that he was permitted to declassify information as he saw fit and only communicated details he thought would not endanger the mission. The initial findings, which were first reported by CNN, ramp up the pressure on the former Fox News Channel host after lawmakers called for the independent inquiry into his use of the commercially available app. Lawmakers also just opened investigations into a news report that a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea in September killed survivors after Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody.” Hegseth defended the strike as emerging in the “fog of war,” saying he didn’t see any survivors but also “didn’t stick around” for the rest of the mission and that the admiral in charge “made the right call” in ordering the second strike. He also did not admit fault following the Signal revelations, asserting that the information was unclassified. “The Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along — no classified information was shared,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman said in a statement. “This matter is resolved, and the case is closed.” President Donald Trump “stands by” Hegseth, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that the probe affirms that “no classified information was leaked, and operational security was not compromised.” Journalist was added to a chat where sensitive plans were shared In at least two separate Signal chats, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop — before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne. Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by then-national security adviser Mike Waltz. It included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis. Hegseth had created another Signal chat with 13 people that included his wife and brother where he shared similar details of the same strike, The Associated Press reported. Signal is encrypted but is not authorized for carrying classified information and is not part of the Pentagon’s secure communications network. Hegseth previously has said none of the information shared in the chats was classified. Multiple current and former military officials have told the AP there was no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been OK to share on an unsecured device. The review was delivered to lawmakers, who were able to review the report in a classified facility at the Capitol. A partially redacted version of the report was expected to be released publicly later this week. Hegseth said he viewed the investigation as a partisan exercise and did not trust the inspector general, according to one of the people familiar with the report’s findings. The review had to rely on screenshots of the Signal chat published by the Atlantic because Hegseth could not provide more than a small handful of his Signal messages, the person said. When asked about the investigation in August, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters that “we believe that this is a witch hunt and a total sham and being conducted in bad faith.” Lawmakers had called for inspector general to investigate The revelations sparked intense scrutiny, with Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans saying Hegseth posting the information to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets potentially put those pilots’ lives at risk. They said lower-ranking members of the military would have been fired for such a lapse. Some Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees suggested Wednesday that Hegseth’s actions would be a fireable offense for anyone else. “This was not an isolated lapse. It reflects a broader pattern of recklessness and poor judgment from a secretary who has repeatedly shown he is in over his head,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement. The inspector general had opened its investigation into Hegseth at the request of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. It all ties back to the campaign against Yemen’s Houthis The Houthi rebels had started launching missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in late 2023 in what their leadership had described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Their campaign greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually. The U.S.-led campaign against the Houthis in 2024 turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy had faced since World War II. A ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war had begun in January before falling apart in March. The U.S. then launched a broad assault against the Houthis that ended weeks later when Trump said they pledged to stop attacking ships. The latest Gaza ceasefire began in October. Following the disclosure of Hegseth’s Signal chat that included the Atlantic’s editor, the magazine released the entire thread in late March. Hegseth had posted multiple details about an impending strike, using military language and laying out when a “strike window” starts, where a “target terrorist” was located, the time elements around the attack and when various weapons and aircraft would be used in the strike. He mentioned that the U.S. was “currently clean” on operational security. Hegseth told Fox News Channel in April that what he shared over Signal was “informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things.” ___ Associated Press writer Stephen Groves, Konstantin Toropin, Michelle L. Price and David Klepper contributed to this report.The post Pentagon watchdog finds Hegseth’s use of Signal posed risk to US personnel, AP sources say first appeared on Federal News Network.

Tens of thousands of blue-collar Defense Department workers are slated to receive their long-delayed 2024 pay raises. The raises were stalled for nearly a year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purge of advisory committees halted the DoD Wage Committee’s ability to authorize new wage schedules. The DoD Wage Committee met last week for the first time this year to approve publication of 2024 updates to about 1,600 wage schedules covering 250 wage areas.  These raises will match the General Schedule locality increases, and they will be applied retroactively according to when they should have taken effect last year. DoD workers could see the pay bump reflected in their next paychecks. “It will probably be in the next paycheck, or possibly a separate check. It will depend on which payroll processor is being used,” Jacqueline Simon, American Federation of Government Employees’ director of public policy, told Federal News Network.  “There might be some other agencies, like the Bureau of Prisons, Social Security, even the Department of Veterans Affairs that might be more delayed. But I’m told the Defense Finance and Accounting Service says it will be the next paycheck,” she said.  For blue-collar federal employees under the Federal Wage System, the process of getting a pay raise is more complex than for most General Schedule employees. While the GS base pay schedule is adjusted annually each January with an across-the-board pay increase set by the president or Congress, FWS adjustments are based partly on that overarching raise and partly on wage surveys conducted by the DoD Wage Committee, which then votes to implement new schedules region by region throughout the year. But in March, Hegseth launched a review of all advisory committees, requiring them to justify their existence. He instructed the committees to explain how their advice “benefited the DoD, the federal government, and the United States,” and how it aligned with President Donald Trump’s goals and the department’s priority of “restoring the warrior ethos.” Hegseth dismissed all members of the advisory committees in April. The DoD Wage Committee — made up of three agency officials and two union leaders, and whose sole function is to approve wage schedules for FWS employees — has been unable to meet since then. “We don’t provide advice per se. We look through all the data, at the way the calculations were done, make sure everything was done right, and then you vote that yes, this is okay. And sometimes it’s not okay. Sometimes there are errors and they’re found. But that’s what the DoD wage committee is,” Simon said. “The surveys happened, the calculation and the new wage scales and wage rates were determined, but none of them could be actually implemented or paid because of the pause on the advisory committees. Everything was ready to go. So people who were due their raise in March and April and May, in June, July, August, September, none of them got their raises when they were supposed to,” she added. Simon said the Office of the Secretary of Defense never offered any explanation of why the committee could not be exempted. “They just wouldn’t do it. They were not permitted to meet with us,” she said. It appears that pressure from lawmakers eventually pushed the department to reverse its course. “We certainly talked to a lot of lawmakers, and we talked to as many people in the administration as we possibly could and tried to put some political pressure on the secretary, and I guess he finally relented,” Simon said.  The delay, Simon said, has been deeply frustrating for workers. “Across the board, people were absolutely furious. There’s no way to overstate how angry and resentful people were that this was happening. And, of course, there was a hardship, of course there was the shutdown, and then this on top of it, and it was a terrible outrage.” AFGE estimates that more than 118,000 DoD employees are paid through the Federal Wage System. If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.The post Thousands of DoD blue-collar employees are set to receive long-delayed pay raise first appeared on Federal News Network.

Former Environmental Protection Agency employees who were fired after signing a letter criticizing the Trump administration are now appealing their dismissals before the Merit Systems Protection Board. The six former EPA employees, who were among roughly 140 workers who signed a “declaration of dissent” in June, argued their firings were not only an illegal response to exercising their First Amendment rights, but also a form of retaliation for “perceived political affiliation,” and executed without cause. The former employees are represented by attorneys at several law firms in the MSPB case, including the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). “Federal employees have the right to speak out on matters of public concern in their personal capacities, even when they do so in dissent,” Joanna Citron Day, general counsel for PEER, said Wednesday. “EPA is not only undermining the First Amendment’s free speech protections by trying to silence its own workforce, it is also placing U.S. citizens in peril by removing experienced employees who are tasked with carrying out EPA’s critical mission.” An EPA spokesperson declined to comment, stating that the agency has a longstanding practice of not commenting on pending litigation. The June dissent letter from EPA employees warned that the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin were “recklessly undermining” the agency’s mission, and criticized the administration’s policies on public health and the environment. The letter led EPA to launch an investigation into employees who signed the letter, resulting in at least eight probationary employees and nine tenured career employees receiving termination notices. Dozens more who signed the declaration were suspended without pay for two weeks, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. Justin Chen, president of AFGE Council 238, which represents EPA employees, said the firings of these employees added to a “brain drain” at EPA, on top of other workforce losses stemming from the deferred resignation program (DRP) and other actions from the Trump administration this year. “These were subject matter experts — extremely talented people who were working on behalf of the American public to protect them,” Chen said in an interview. “The loss of these people will be felt for quite some time. And honestly, the intent of this action is to put a chilling effect on the rest of the civil service.” A termination notice delivered to one of the EPA employees shows that in response to concerns of free speech and whistleblower protection violations, the agency’s general counsel office stated that it believed the issues raised “do not outweigh the seriousness of your offense.” “The Agency is not required to tolerate actions from its employees that undermine the Agency’s decisions, interfere with the Agency’s operations and mission, and the efficient fulfillment of the Agency’s responsibilities to the public,” the termination letter reads. “You hold a trust-sensitive position that requires sound judgement and alignment with the Agency’s communication strategies.” Despite the employee having a high performance rating and a lack of disciplinary history, the termination letter stated that “the serious nature of your misconduct outweighs all mitigating factors.” “I also considered that you took no responsibility for your conduct, which reflects a lack of acknowledgment of the seriousness of your actions and raises concerns about your ability to exercise sound judgment and undermines your potential for rehabilitation,” the letter reads. In August, EPA leadership also canceled all its collective bargaining agreements and told its unions it would no longer recognize them. The decision came after an appeals court allowed agencies to move forward with implementing President Donald Trump’s March executive order to terminate union contracts at a majority of federal agencies. “If we still had our collective bargaining rights, none of this would have happened in the first place. We would have immediately filed grievances,” Chen said. “[With the MSPB appeal] our hope is that these employees get everything back — that they will have full reinstatement and full back pay.”The post Fired EPA employees challenge agency, alleging free speech violations first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript:  Terry Gerton Virginia Tech has just launched a generative AI training program. Tell us about what the program is and why you decided to start it now. Jamie Cogbill Okay, great. Well, this partnership between Virginia Tech and Amazon Web Services is really about preparing the next generation of national security leaders for an AI-driven world. As one of our nation’s six senior military colleges, Virginia Tech has had the chance to pilot AWS’s new generative AI training, which is the first of its kind, before it’s rolled out to nationwide, or at least to the other senior military colleges. It directly supports the recent White House call to make senior military colleges hubs of AI research and talent development. And our cadets are already finding it incredibly valuable training as they prepare to lead in a defense environment that’s rapidly being transformed by artificial intelligence. Terry Gerton There’s a lot of AI courses out there. What sets this collaboration apart? What’s unique in terms of content or focus or tools? Jamie Cogbill Okay. Well, this is the first generative AI training program of its kind offered specifically at senior military colleges. And it directly supports the recent White House AI Action Plan, which was released last July, which calls on senior military colleges to become hubs of AI talent and innovation. And our cadets are getting hands-on experience with the same AI tools and problem solving approaches that are being used in real defense and intelligence missions. Terry Gerton You mentioned cadets a couple of times here. For folks who may not know that Virginia Tech has a Corps of Cadets, tell us a little bit about that and how many cadets are actually taking the course. Jamie Cogbill Okay. So yes, Virginia Tech is, as I mentioned, is one of six senior military colleges, which means that they have a Corps of Cadets, just like Virginia Military Institute or the Citadel, or our closest comparison is Texas A&M. There’s currently close to 1,400 cadets in the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech. But for this first pilot, it was offered to a total of about 75 students, and the intent was that at least half of them be cadets. And in this case, it was. We had about 38 total cadets that participated in the program. Terry Gerton And who filled the other seats? Jamie Cogbill The other seats were mostly people who are affiliated with Virginia Tech’s National Security Institute, which is a hub for defense-related research, but also for preparing future national security leaders here at Virginia Tech. And so the advertisement went out to both cadets and to the students who are affiliated with the Virginia Tech’s National Security Institute. Terry Gerton It sounds like you didn’t have any trouble filling the seats. What does that tell you about the interest in this topic from future military and civilian defense leaders? Jamie Cogbill There’s definitely a huge interest and our cadets who I talked to after the training just found it to be very valuable for them with just learning about AI in general, because they know it’s going to be an important part of their future careers, but also learning how to use it more effectively through effective prompt engineering and other methods that they learned throughout the training. Terry Gerton Talk to us about some of the specific defense AI applications that you’re covering in this course. We all think about Chat GPT and Copilot, but how are those topics specifically coming across in defense-related issues? Jamie Cogbill That’s a great question. And I don’t know the exact answer to that, but I can say that it’s teaching the core Amazon Gen AI services, which is something they call Amazon Bedrock, which Department of Defense has partnered with Amazon Web Services in a lot of ways, so it’s likely already using some of these AWS services. And so some of the people who are participating in the training will likely go into defense- or national security-related careers and already be expected to use or quickly learn how to use AWS software and AI tools. But I think the big takeaway is just learning AI in general, which is clearly going to be part of their future in national security and defense. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Jamie Cogbill. He’s the deputy director of the Defense Civilian Training Corps at Virginia Tech’s National Security Institute. Well, we talk a lot about AI on this program and all of its different applications. One thing we do know about it is it’s powerful but it’s also risky. So in this kind of training, how are you preparing students not just to use the tools, but to really lead responsibly with AI when the risks could be pretty high? Jamie Cogbill I don’t have specifics about how this training addressed those kind of risks. I haven’t taken the course myself. It was Amazon Web Services who provided it. Talking to my cadets, I think it was a pretty intense curriculum. They did have two different instructor-led sessions, both four hour sessions, and each session was about three hours of content and an hour lab. And then they had a final competitive kind of gamified lab at the end. It was another four hour session where they practiced with real world challenges and in using AI. So I would assume that some of the training in the instructor-led portions was related to the risks of using AI, how to avoid hallucinations that AI can provide. And but also, in the Department of Defense, a key thing is ensuring the use of responsible AI, or RAI as they call it. And so I imagine that was also covered in the curriculum. Terry Gerton This is cohort one this fall, first time you’ve rolled out the course. What do you think happens next? Where does it go from here? Jamie Cogbill So we’re hoping that, and this is partially up to Amazon Web Services, but AWS is actively exploring how to scale the program for our spring semester here at Virginia Tech, potentially bringing it back in the spring, but also for 2026 in general. AWS originally intended to expand this training to all six senior military colleges across the country. And I think the success here at Virginia Tech with the pilot proved that our cadets and probably other cadets across the nation are eager to learn and ready to lead in the AI space. And we’re hoping that it set the standard for what other programs could look like. Terry Gerton Well, always in a pilot there are lots of lessons learned in the process. What do you at Virginia Tech and Amazon take away in terms of needing to improve or broaden the program as you tried it out? Jamie Cogbill Well, I think as you mentioned earlier, I think the demand is there. So if we can scale it up even here at Virginia Tech and and offer it to more than just 75 cadets and students. But I think that the big takeaway is really that partnerships like this are essential. And AI is changing the nature of national security. And we need to ensure our future military and civilian leaders can lead confidently in that environment. And I think this program shows how academia, industry and government can come together to make that happen. Terry Gerton AI is such a fast changing space. How do you imagine that the curriculum might have to adjust even from one semester to the next just to stay current? Jamie Cogbill Absolutely. And I’m sure the folks at AWS are right there on the cusp of all that change. And so my guess is that they are constantly updating their curriculum to keep pace with that. Terry Gerton Are you hearing from senior leaders in the Department of Defense about how they view the program and what their hopes for it are? Jamie Cogbill So far, no, not directly. My guess is at the senior levels at AWS, they are talking to senior leaders in the Department of Defense and potentially at the most senior levels of our government, since it was a key goal of the White House AI Action Plan to offer this type of training.The post Virginia Tech and Amazon Web Services are teaming up to train the next generation of national security leaders in generative AI first appeared on Federal News Network.

  Interview transcript:   Terry Gerton We’re sitting here after weeks of uncertainty and missed paychecks during the government shutdown and a lot of people are probably feeling kind of anxious about their finances. How does that stress from just day-to-day situations spill over into how people make decisions about investments? Art Stein Well, stress and emotion make a big difference in how people make their investments. And with the TSP, it makes a big difference in how much people are putting in the stock funds, which are the C and the S and the I funds, and then how much they’re putting in, well, especially the G fund, which is a short-term bond fund, really, it’s more of a cash account. And you know, what I’ve seen time and again for 30 years is that when the stock market crashes, federal employees and retirees tend to get disgusted and move money into the G fund. And the problem with that is, there’s never a good time to take it out of the G fund and reinvest. Usually they’ve made that move after the market has declined and frequently don’t get back in until it’s gone back a lot. So really what we caution our clients to do is to set an investment plan. And part of the investment plan is to know what you’re going to do when the stock market does crash. Because inevitably it’s going to. We don’t know when. Stock market crashes average about one every four years or one every seven years, depending upon the time period, or somewhere in between. But they are a regular part of the market cycle. And what we mean by a stock market crash is that a particular stock market like the S&P 500, which is the basis for the C fund, goes down 20% or more from a previous high. And that’s also called a bear market. A bull market is when, let’s say, the S&P 500 increases more than 20% from a previous high. And people really avoid investing in stocks or putting too much money in stocks because they fear the bear markets, they fear the crashes, they don’t like the volatility. But we’re always having volatility in any market except a bank account or the G fund. Volatility is just a fluctuation in value. Now stocks are more volatile than bonds, that’s clear. But what investors should do is trying to determine appropriate allocation between stock investments and bond investments and bank accounts. And the TSP, that means what percentage of your investments do you want in the G and the F funds, which are bonds and cash accounts, and what percentage do you want in stocks, which are C, S and I? And once you choose that percent, stick with it unless there’s a good reason to change. And the stock market crash is not really a good reason to change. And if the stock market crashes, especially for employees, that’s an opportunity. They’re investing money every two weeks. And of course they’d rather buy shares in the C and the S and the I funds when those are down and cheap than when they’re high and expensive. So just being able to stick to it really makes a difference. Terry Gerton It’s really hard to imagine that the market is going to crash anytime soon. It’s been on such a steady upward climb for so many months. And yet you talk about when that correction, which is impossible to predict exactly, but pretty possible to predict generally happens, people do the opposite of standard recommendation. They sell low and then try to buy again high instead of buying low and selling high. Talk to us again about what kind of planning can help people avoid the emotional response to that sort of occurrence. Art Stein Well, I think it’s very important to one, know and admit to yourself and take into account that the market’s going to crash. I mean, it’s going to happen. And it’s not unusual. It’s typical. And two, especially for employees, don’t change your investment allocation if the stock markets crash, unless you’re increasing your percentage allocation of your biweekly investments into the TSP fund. If you’re increasing the percentage going into the stock funds, that would make sense. And, you know Terry, when we speak to TSP millionaires, one consistent theme is that they had most of their investments going to the stock funds. And they did not change that when the stock markets crashed. They just kept investing. They accepted that. It was a long-term investment. And they just stuck with it. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with certified financial planner Art Stein of Arthur Stein Financial. Art, we’re talking about a disciplined, non-emotional approach to investment here, but we’ve just come out of the longest government shutdown in history. And the current continuing resolution only goes through the 30th of January, about two and a half months from now. So how should feds think not just about their investments, about building up or building back their emergency savings if they had to dip into it during the shutdown? Art Stein Well, this shutdown was horrible, as we know. People were living on credit card debt in many cases. It shows how important it is to have an emergency fund, three to six months of expenses in a bank account, or maybe the G fund. And what we sometimes have to recommend to people, we don’t like doing it, is to reduce your contributions to the TSP to 5%. Because in many cases, Terry, we’re speaking to people who are maxing out their contributions. But no, if you don’t have an emergency fund, that’s a mistake. Reduce it to 5%. Don’t go below that because you want to get the full 5% match from the federal government. Take that extra money that you were investing and use it to build up a bank account, three to six months of expenses. And especially, you know, this is so crazy. We’ve gone through this long shutdown, and then they had this big victory. But when you look at the victory, it only funded the government for two and a half months. I mean, how short term is that? So now is a good time. Just get on the TSP website and reduce your contributions to 5% and build up some cash. I mean, I’m praying and hoping that they won’t do another shutdown on you know, January 30th, but as we all know, things are not good with these negotiations.The post An objective, unemotional investment strategy for your TSP, easy to say but hard to do in uncertain times first appeared on Federal News Network.

  Interview transcript:   Terry Gerton I know you have studied how workers of different skill levels choose to use generative AI and the concept of AI exposure. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you’re finding there? Are there certain roles more likely to embrace AI, or certain roles that are more likely to be replaced? Ramayya Krishnan AI exposure, to understand that, I think we have to think about how occupations are structured. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics has something, a taxonomy called O*NET. And O*NET describes all the occupations in the U.S. economy, there are 873 or so. And each of those occupations is viewed as consisting of tasks and tasks requiring certain sets of skills. AI exposure is a measure of how many of those tasks are potentially doable by AI. And thereby that becomes, then, a measure of ways in which AI could have an impact on people who are in that particular occupation. So, however, AI exposure should not be assumed to mean that that’s tantamount to AI substitution, because I think we should be thinking about how AI is deployed. And so there are capabilities that AI has. For instance, this conversation that we’re having could be automatically transcribed by AI. This this conversation we are having could be automatically translated from English to Spanish by AI, for instance. Those are capabilities, right? So when you take capabilities and actually deploy them in organizational contexts, the question of how it’s deployed will determine whether AI is going to augment the human worker, or is it going to automate and replace a particular task that a human worker does? Remember, this happens at the task level, not at the occupation level. So some tasks within an occupation may get modified or adapted. So if you look at how software developers today use co-pilots to build software, that’s augmentation, where it’s been demonstrated that software developers with lower skills usually get between 20% to 25% productivity improvement. Call center employees, again, a similar type of augmentation is happening. In other cases, you could imagine, for instance, if you were my physician and I was speaking to you, today we have things called ambient AIs that will automatically transcribe the conversation that I’m having with you, the physician. That’s an example of an AI that could potentially substitute for a human transcriber. So I gave you two examples: software developer and customer service where you’re seeing augmentation; the transcription task, I’m giving you an example of substitution. So depending on how AI is deployed, you might have some tasks being augmented, some being substituted. When you take a step back, you have to take AI exposure as a measure of capability and then ask the question, how does that then get deployed? Which then has impact on how workers are going to actually have to think about, what does this then mean for them? And if it’s complementing, how do they become fluent in AI and be able to use AI well? And if there’s a particular task where it’s being used in a substitutive manner, what does that then mean longer term for them, in terms of having to acquire new skills to maybe transition to other occupations where there might be even more demand? So I think it’s we have to unpack what AI exposure then means for workers by thinking about augmentation versus automation. Terry Gerton There’s a lot of nuance in that. And your writings also make the point that Gen AI adoption narrows when the cost of failure is high. So how do organizations think both about augmentation versus replacement and the risk of failure as they deploy AI? Ramayya Krishnan If you take the example of using AI in an automated fashion, its error rate has to be so low because you don’t have human oversight. And therefore, if the error rates are not sufficiently appropriate, then you need to pair the human with the AI. In some cases you might say the AI is just not ready. So we’re not going to use the AI at all. We’ll just keep human as is. In other cases, if AI can be used with the human, where there is benefits to productivity but the error rates are such you still need the human to ensure and sign off, either because the error rates are high or from an ethical standpoint or from a governance standpoint, you need the human in the loop to sign off, you’re going to see complementing the human with the AI. And then there are going to be tasks for which the AI quality is so high, that its error rates are so low, that you could actually deploy it. So when we talk about the cost of failure, you want to think about consequential tasks where failure is not an option. And so either the error rates have to be really low, and therefore I can deploy the AI in an automated fashion, or you have to ensure there is a human in the loop. And this is why I think AI measurement and evaluation prior to deployment is so essential because things like error rates, costs, all of these have to be measured and inform the decisions to deploy AI and deploy AI in what fashion? Is it in augmentation fashion or not, or is it going to be used independently? Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Dr. Ramayya Krishnan. He’s the director of the Center for AI Measurement Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. So we’re talking there about how AI gets deployed in different organizations. How do you see this applying in the public sector? Are there certain kinds of government work where AI is more suitable for augmentation versus automation and that error rate then becomes a really important consideration? Ramayya Krishnan I think there are going to be a number of opportunities for AI to be deployed. So you remember we talked about call centers and customer service types of centers. I mean, public sector, one aspect of what they do is they engage with citizens in a variety of ways, where they have to deliver and provide good information. Some of those are time sensitive and very consequential, like 911 emergency calls. Now, there you absolutely want the human in the loop because we want to make sure that those are dealt with in a way that we believe we need humans in the loop, which could be augmented by AI, but you know, you want humans in the loop. On the other hand, you could imagine questions about, you know, what kind of permit or what kind of form, you know, administrative kinds of questions, where there’s triage, if you will, of having better response time to those kinds of questions. The alternative to calling and speaking to somebody might be just like you could go to a website and look it up. Imagine a question-answering system that actually allows for you to ask and get these questions answered. I expect that, and in fact you’re already seeing this in local government and in state government, the deployment of these kinds of administrative kinds of question-answering systems. I’d say that’s one example. Within the organizations, there is the use of AI, not customer-facing or citizen-facing, but within the organizations, the use of these kinds of co-pilots that are being used within the organization to try and improve productivity. I think as AI gets more robust and more reliable, I expect that you will see greater use of AI in both trying to improve efficiency and effectiveness, but to do so in a responsible way, in such a way that you take into account the importance of providing service to citizens of all different abilities. One of the important things with the public sector is … maybe there’s multilingual support that is needed, you might need to help citizens who are disabled. How might we support different kinds of citizens with different ability levels? I think these are things where AI could potentially play an important role. Terry Gerton AI is certainly already having a disruptive impact on the American workforce, particularly. What recommendations do you have for policymakers and employers to mitigate the disruption and think long-term about upskilling and reskilling so that folks can be successful in this new space? Ramayya Krishnan I think this is actually one of the most important questions that we need to address. And you know, I served on the National AI Advisory Committee to the President and the White House Office of AI Initiatives, and this was very much a key question that was addressed by colleagues. And I think a recent op-ed that we have written with Patrick Harker at the University of Pennsylvania and Mark Hagerott at the University of South Dakota, really we make the case that this is an inflection point which requires a response pretty much on the scale of what President Lincoln did in 1862 with the Morrill Act in establishing land grant universities. Much like land grant universities were designed to democratize access to agricultural technology, really it enabled Americans from everywhere in the nation to harness this technology for economic prosperity both for themselves and for the nation. I think if you’re going to see AI be deployed and not have the kind of inequality that might arise from people having access to the technology and not having access to the technology, we need something like this. And we call this the Digital Land Grant Initiative that would connect our universities, the community colleges, with various ways of providing citizens, both in rural areas and urban areas, everywhere in the country, access to AI education and skilling appropriate to their context. So if I’m a farmer, how can I do precision agriculture? If I’m a mine worker, or if I’m somebody who wants to work in in banking — from the whole range of occupations and professions, you could imagine AI having a transformative effect on these different occupations. And there may be new occupations that are going to emerge that you and I are not thinking about right now. So, how do we best position our citizens so that they can equip themselves with the right sets of skills that are going to be required and demanded? I think that’s the big public policy question with regard to workforce upskilling and reskilling.The post Gen AI adoption is reshaping roles and raising tough questions about workforce strategy first appeared on Federal News Network.

The State Department’s diplomatic workforce is feeling overburdened, under-resourced and more likely to leave in the next few years, given sweeping changes happening under the Trump administration, according to a survey conducted by their union. In a survey of more than 2,100 active-duty Foreign Service employees, the American Foreign Service Association found that 98% of respondents reported reduced morale this year. About 86% of respondents said workplace changes since January have affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities. Before the Trump administration, about 17,000 active-duty Foreign Service officers worked for the State Department. AFSA estimates that nearly 25% of its workforce left this year — when counting layoffs, retirements and those who accepted deferred resignation offers. About one in three survey respondents say they are considering leaving the Foreign Service.  More than 80% of respondents said they entered the Service intending to serve 20 years or more — but now about 22% of them say they plan to leave the State Department within the next year or two. AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a call Wednesday that survey results demonstrate a “workplace crisis” at the State Department that will take “years, if not decades, to repair.” “When we undermine the Foreign Service, we undermine America’s ability to prevent conflict, support our allies, and protect our citizens abroad. In short, we weaken our global leadership,” Dinkelman said. The State Department sent layoff notices to nearly 1,350 of its employees this summer. Those reductions in force will be finalized, once nearly 250 Foreign Service officers officially separate from the agency this Friday. The State Department carried out a massive agency reorganization this year, consolidating and eliminating hundreds of offices. After sending the mass layoff notices in July, the department began hiring new Foreign Service officers this fall. Some candidates in the hiring pipeline had to retake a new version of the Foreign Service Officer Test that had been vetted by the Trump administration. The State Department has also made “fidelity” to the administration’s policy goals part of the new criteria to determine if Foreign Service officers are eligible for promotions. Dinkelman said that the expertise of the Foreign Service “is not easily rebuilt,” and that the State Department will have less experienced diplomats filling its depleted ranks. “While we certainly will be able to find individuals to enter the service and begin again, those individuals who come in in 2026, ‘27 and ‘28 will not have the expertise that will have been lost in these previous years for decades to come,” Dinkelman said. AFSA conducted the survey to gather feedback that its members have not been able to share with agency leadership. Federal News Network first reported that the Trump administration will not conduct the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey this year, a government scorecard that tracks employee satisfaction. “We knew that AFSA had a responsibility to step into this breach,” Dinkelman said. “This report offers the first independent snapshot of the Foreign Service during a period of sustained institutional stress.” The last FEVS report showed 60% of State Department employees reported favorable satisfaction scores. About 78% of respondents said they are operating under reduced budgets this year, while 64% said key projects and initiatives are being delayed or suspended. “I’ve served in hardship posts and multiple unaccompanied tours, but I never expected by my own government to openly disparage public service or the work of public servants,” an anonymous Foreign Service officer told AFSA. Rohit Nepal, AFSA’s vice president for the State Department, said active-duty Foreign Service officers are being asked to take on more work from offices that have been eliminated, following a massive agency reorganization this summer. More than 60% of survey respondents agreed they are managing “significantly higher workloads due to staffing losses.” “We’re talking about offices working on some of our highest priorities That could be the war in Gaza, Ukraine, our strategic competition with China. In other words, these folks are being asked to do more without the necessary resources to actually accomplish the job. It’s taking a toll on them,” Nepal said. Nepal, who is an active-duty Foreign Service officer, said the hiring freeze led to key positions going unfilled during his last post in Amman, Jordan. “We found ourselves unable to hire even while we were dealing with an exchange of regular Iranian missile exchanges over Jordanian skies during the Israel-Iran war,” Nepal said. Nepal said Foreign Service officers are “reading the political tea leaves,” and avoiding certain types of jobs. Nepal said a junior public diplomacy officer told him that they weren’t going to bid on jobs in public diplomacy, because “clearly we don’t care about PD anymore.” Nepal said another Foreign Service officer with years of experience on refugee and human rights issues told him that “there’s no place for people like her in the department right now.” “Let’s be clear: American diplomacy is weaker because of this politicization. Talented diplomats aren’t being selected for jobs or are not stepping forward because they believe they can’t get a fair shake in this environment,” Nepal said. The report calls on Congress to intervene with sweeping changes happening to the agency, and that lawmakers “should make clear that career professionals cannot be punished, reassigned, or dismissed for political reasons.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), co-founder of the Senate Foreign Service Caucus, said in a statement that the report shows “a year of relentless attacks by the administration against these dedicated public servants has left our diplomatic corps in crisis — a vulnerability that our adversaries are all too happy to exploit.” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, former Director General of the Foreign Service and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement that “AFSA’s data confirms we’re asking our diplomats to do more with less precisely when robust engagement is needed most.”The post ‘A workplace crisis:’ Nearly all Foreign Service employees report lower morale in union-led survey first appeared on Federal News Network.