The Daily Scoop Podcast

The Trump-Vance transition team and the Biden administration signed a memorandum of understanding last week formally kicking off the process to hand over executive power — though the Trump team has decided not to accept some of the government’s available resources, including tech and information security provided by the General Services Administration. The transition team will reportedly run as a...

Telework programs in the federal government should benefit mission, operations and work-life balance at agencies, according to the Government Accountability Office. Yet some agencies are not fully aligned with key practices to ensure successful telework implementation, the watchdog found in a new report. The Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Department of Agri...

Last week during a summit with Asian military leaders and their international partners, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin unveiled a first-of-its-kind vision statement outlining the United States’ near-term plans for deepening cooperation and accelerating modernization with allies in the region. The secretary and his delegation presented their U.S. Department of Defense Vision Statement for a...

Sheena Burrell, the chief information officer of the National Archives and Records Administration, has taken a new job as chief innovation officer at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Burrell will join FDIC to lead its Office of Innovation — known also as the FDIC Tech Lab or FDiTech — on Dec. 2, an agency spokesperson confirmed to FedScoop. Her last day at NARA will be Nov. 30, a National Archi...

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ top IT official told House lawmakers on Wednesday that a larger budget and the ability to pay certain government workers more would improve the agency’s cybersecurity posture. Kurt DelBene, the VA’s assistant for information and technology and chief information officer, called during a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing for the entire federal government...

The leader of the Defense Department organization charged with investigating reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” laid out findings related to two high-profile incidents and another that he said hasn’t received as much attention from the public. The presentation by Jon Kosloski, director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), came during a congressional hearing Tuesday with m...

After serving as the head of the Technology Transformation Services at GSA for the past two years, Ann Lewis announced recently she is stepping down from the role. Lewis led the TTS organization during a time of major AI adoption across government, workforce transformation and a greater focus on spreading use of the agency’s Login.gov single sign on platform. In a final interview with FedScoop, Le...

As the White House gets ready to “pass the baton” to the incoming Trump administration, Federal CIO Clare Martorana said she is focused on cybersecurity issues and making sure her team does everything it can for their replacements to be set up for success. Over the remaining two months of the Biden administration, Martorana said in an interview with FedScoop on the sidelines of the ACT-IAC CX Summ...

As they continue to investigate and resolve a growing caseload of hundreds of reports from current and former government officials about encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), personnel in the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) are also launching new projects and resources to declassify materials, promote transparency and enhance collection capabilities. The of...

Ann Lewis, the director of Technology Transformation Services and deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, is leaving the General Services Administration after almost two years. Lewis will leave the agency on Nov. 22, according to a Tuesday press release. Mukunda Penugonde, who currently serves as deputy director of TTS, will step in as acting director and deputy commissioner. Lewis...

OpenAI is releasing an artificial intelligence infrastructure blueprint meant to highlight its vision for American AI, which the company argues will boost productivity and jumpstart advanced technology development. The release of the blueprint, which was viewed by FedScoop and was set to be presented in Washington on Wednesday, comes as the Biden administration continues to push for government sup...

Soon after Robin Carnahan was appointed and confirmed as administrator of the General Services Administration, she made it one of her top priorities to “make the damn websites work.” By that, she meant it was GSA’s role as the federal government’s digital center of excellence to ensure that agencies were following through on the imperative to deliver moden digital services and experiences to the A...

If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to reinstate an executive order that eases the president’s ability to fire federal workers, the government’s ability to recruit top talent for tech, IT, cyber and artificial intelligence positions will be harmed, according to a senior Biden administration official. The 2020 executive order concerning the creation of Schedule F in the ex...

An organization for Justice Department employees is asking leadership to step up protections for workers facing online threats, such as doxxing, especially as the U.S. election could make those issues worse. The DOJ Gender Equality Network, a gender equity and equality organization that represents nearly 2,000 employees and contractors at the department, sent a letter on Oct. 31 asking Deputy Atto...

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet is one of multiple witnesses set to testify at a congressional hearing next week about government transparency concerns and reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) that could endanger U.S. national security. Two sources familiar with the plans, who requested anonymity to discuss the hearing before it’s held, told DefenseScoop on Wednesday that it...

Days before a deadline for federal agencies to submit to the White House their updated zero-trust implementation plans, a coalition of government IT leaders released a guide intended to strengthen data security practices. The 42-page Federal Zero Trust Data Security Guide, spearheaded by the Federal Chief Data Officers and Federal Chief Information Security Officers councils, zeroes in on “securin...

Scoop News Group last week hosted its annual CyberTalks event at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., featuring the top cybersecurity officials in the public sector space. Much of the conversation throughout the day focused on the progress the Biden-Harris administration has made in cybersecurity modernization, how the White House is looking to sustain that, and what comes next. Feder...

Host Billy Mitchell continues his conversation with Andrea Fletcher, Chief Digital Services Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), discussing CMS’s approach to open-source technology and AI adoption. Fletcher highlights CMS’s pioneering open-source program office, the first of its kind in the federal government, which enhances cybersecurity and promotes collaborative, cos...

In remarks on the new AI national security memo delivered Thursday at National Defense University, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan highlighted the potential AI has for the country’s national security advantage but spoke in dire terms about taking action. Sullivan said simply: “The stakes are high” and if the nation doesn’t act more intentionally to seize advantages and to deploy AI more qu...

President Joe Biden will issue a memo and framework on the use of AI in the context of national security Thursday, with the aim of providing steps for U.S. leadership and guardrails for governance of the technology. Under the memo, agencies will be directed to access “the most powerful AI systems and put them to use,” senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the memo ahead of its r...

The Office of Management and Budget is getting close to finalizing long-awaited data guidance required by a 2019 law that mandates the machine-readability of federal information, two White House officials with direct knowledge of that work confirmed to FedScoop. According to the sources, who were granted anonymity to speak more candidly, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the Off...

Since the creation of the U.S. Digital Service in 2014, several federal agencies have chartered associated offshoots, like the VA, the DOD, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, injecting modern, digital principles into the mission work at those agencies. At CMS in particular, the digital service team plays an integral role working to transform how the federal government delivers hea...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not use any legacy IT, having either decommissioned or modernized all of its systems, according to the independent agency’s chief information officer. In an interview with FedScoop last week, NRC CIO Scott Flanders said that even though the agency has turned the page on systems defined by the Government Accountability Office as “outdated or obsolete,” there i...

Ahead of the Google Public Sector Summit on Wednesday, Oct. 16, Karen Dahut, the CEO of the organization, joined the Daily Scoop Podcast to preview this year’s event and share her thoughts on some of the top trends in the public sector technology space. Of course, artificial intelligence adoption was a key topic of our discussion, but she also detailed the remaining need for agencies to prioritize...

Login.gov, the single sign-on platform provided by the General Services Administration, will begin offering a new identity verification option to its partners. GSA’s new option will verify identity with facial recognition technology through the independently certified NIST 800-63 Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2), a standard that introduces the need for either remote or physically present identity...