The Daily Scoop Podcast

Jennifer Hill, a former banking executive, will lead a government contracting operation worth more than $125 billion as the new commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, the General Services Administration announced last week. Hill has been a GSA advisor since February, where she has helped to “improve government operations through procurement consolidation, streamlined processes, and more...

A bipartisan bill to resurrect Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment and rebuild it as the Congressional Office of Technology was introduced last week, with just about two months left on the congressional calendar to pass the legislation. This new bill is the latest attempt to restore the OTA, which provided bipartisan tech-based information for Congress from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s bef...

Two top congressional leaders are pressing for answers on President Donald Trump’s use of AI chatbots, potentially to make decisions about U.S. military operations. Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia requested a closed-door briefing with a White House representative to discuss document retention policies with AI, cybersecurity safeguards and data access controls, among other things. T...

Newly obtained FOIA records reveal details about the level of White House and DOGE involvement in terminating grants last year at the National Science Foundation. The FOIA documents were obtained by Democracy Forward, which has frequently gone toe to toe with the Trump administration in federal court, and show NSF communications involving DOGE affiliate Zachary Terrell from April and May 2025. The...

The Pentagon issued new guidance last week focused on implementing the Trump administration’s so-called “truth-seeking” and “ideological neutrality” principles in AI procurements. A memo dated Oct. 20 from John Tenaglia, the Pentagon’s head of acquisition, noted that the initiative is “in direct support” of a previous executive order from President Donald Trump on “Preventing Woke AI in the Federa...

A U.S. district judge in New York found that the Office of Personnel Management violated federal privacy law and flouted cybersecurity practices when it shared federal employee records with members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. In a Tuesday ruling, Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that OPM granted DOGE agen...

The Department of Homeland Security is banning the use of Chinese AI model DeepSeek and its affiliates by civilian federal agencies. The notice, published Tuesday in the Federal Register, cites the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Act and a review by the Federal Acquisition Security Council to bar federal agencies from buying all information technology products and services from parent company Han...

The Pentagon recently established a new task force that’s charged with rapidly iterating and advancing weaponized drones and small uncrewed ground vehicles across the U.S. military. Col. Michael Penn, the Army official who is commanding the team — dubbed Task Force Easy — shed new light on its origin and Defense Department leaders’ overarching vision for it during the annual AUSA conference on Tue...

Federal civilian agencies have long faced a fragmented cybersecurity landscape – each operating its own tools, budgets, and detection logic, leaving gaps in whole-of-government visibility. In December 2025, there was a landmark shift in how the U.S. government can now defend itself: CISA launched its shared, cloud-hosted Security Information and Event Management -as-a-Service (SIEMaaS) offering to...

Former Department of Homeland Security CIO Antoine McCord has returned to defense technology company Anduril, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. McCord helmed DHS’s multibillion-dollar IT portfolio from March 2025 to August 2026. The official wore a number of other hats, including acting CISO and head of the Office of Biometric and Identity Management. Under his leadership, DH...

David Shive is one of the longest-tenured CIOs in all of the federal government. Also vice chair of the Federal CIO Council, Shive has a wealth of knowledge on what it means to be a CIO at the federal level and how the role has evolved over the last decade-plus. Shive, a nominee for the 2026 FedScoop 50 Awards, recently joined the Daily Scoop Podcast to share how he thinks about his role as GSA CI...

The General Services Administration has issued its artificial intelligence acquisition clause as a class deviation from its regulations, according to a regulation overhaul memo updated Monday, making it a policy that can be used immediately. GSA previously proposed a rule to amend federal regulations for AI acquisitions and took two rounds of public comment on drafts. Since then, the agency decide...

Carter Farmer, the Environmental Protection Agency’s chief information officer, is said to be the White House’s pick for the new federal CIO, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Farmer replaces Greg Barbaccia as the federal government’s top IT official. Barbaccia left government and returned to Palantir at the end of August. Barbaccia told FedScoop: “I’ve always enjoyed working...

The Trump administration unveiled an artificial intelligence chatbot Tuesday that it views as a new front door for services from the federal government. America.gov, which launched Tuesday morning, opens with a search bar inviting users to ask anything — from booking a campsite at a national park, to getting a passport for their child, to replacing their Social Security card. “Whatever you need fr...

For the U.S. federal government in the age of AI, data policy is critical to building better outcomes for the American people. That’s the chartering mission of the Federation of American Scientists’ new Data Policy Institute, which is led by former U.S. Chief Data Scientist Denice Ross. Ross sits down with FedScoop Senior Reporter Madison Alder to discuss her time supporting the federal government...

Login-dot-gov now widely accepts mobile driver’s licenses for identity verification, partially in an effort to combat artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, according to a General Services Administration press release Tuesday. The agency previewed this capability in December 2025, though GSA aimed to make it available by this summer. However, Login is currently only supporting mobile driver’...

The secret to the State Department’s AI success by The Daily Scoop Podcast

Sam Berry, the Department of Agriculture’s chief information officer, is stepping down from his role but staying with the agency, USDA confirmed Monday. Berry, a former associate of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, replaced longtime CIO Gary Washington last year. While it is unclear what Berry’s exact role will be, he will be focusing on implementing the “One Farmer, One File” mo...

OpenAI has made a new OneGov deal with the General Services Administration to supply artificial intelligence to all government employees, kicking in after the current $1 per-agency deal ends at the end of the month, the agency announced Thursday. ChatGPT models will be available to the federal government through discounted, consumption-based pricing, the release said, and will last until Dec. 31,...

The Army awarded Palantir and Anduril a combined $192 million in delivery orders for the service’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) program, officials announced Tuesday, pushing the targeting platform into a production phase. Having been in development for several years, officials have touted TITAN as a “game changing” mobile ground station capable of using artificial intelligen...

The Office of Management and Budget has officially released a memo directing agencies to expand the use of Login-dot-gov for user identity verification in a push to make it the universal sign-on for public services. In a six-page document dated Monday, OMB Director Russell Vought told agencies the absence of a clear strategy has led to agencies deploying various sign-on solutions and taking differ...

In an effort to spark more artificial intelligence use in federal hiring, the Office of Personnel Management is advising agencies that several common HR use cases generally aren’t considered “high impact” for the purposes of a federal policy governing the technology. The Thursday memo to department heads from OPM Director Scott Kupor argues that failure to adopt AI in federal hiring may be comprom...

The Department of Homeland Security is preparing to welcome Kyle Schutt to its ranks as chief information officer. The news comes after FedScoop reported Wednesday that DHS CIO Antoine McCord was planning his exit. Similar to his predecessor, Schutt has little digital footprint of his own making. He even deleted his LinkedIn profile more than a year ago. Before moving to the federal government, Sc...

The Office of Management and Budget is circulating a new draft policy that would enforce the use of Login-dot-gov, the federal government’s single sign-on service, “for most public facing services,” including websites and digital platforms that require authentication. According to a draft version of a memo sent Monday to agencies for review, agencies would have 60 days to provide OMB with an inven...

The General Services Administration is seeking to combat identity fraud by adding more device fingerprinting to Login-dot-gov, the government’s unified account manager, according to contracting documents posted Tuesday. The “sophistication and volume” of fraud attempts have grown as the service’s user base and agency adoption have expanded, the request for information said. While Login-dot-gov alr...