The Daily Scoop Podcast

The Department of Health and Human Services is working on a new strategic plan for the use of artificial intelligence across the entire breadth of its mission, the department’s top AI official said Tuesday. Micky Tripathi — HHS’s acting chief AI officer and its assistant secretary for technology policy — said at the NVIDIA AI Summit in Washington, D.C., that the AI strategic plan should arrive som...

Scoop News Group is thrilled to announce the winners of the FedScoop 50 awards for 2024! Now in their 13th year, the FedScoop 50 awards honor the most impactful leaders in the federal government who strive each day to leverage technology to transform government. Scoop News Group once again experienced record voting for the FedScoop 50 in 2024, receiving more than 1 million votes across five catego...

If you missed FedTalks last month, you missed a fantastic panel on how federal agencies are preparing for the age of quantum. Fresh off of NIST’s release of new post-quantum cryptography standards, Nick Polk, Branch Director for Federal Cybersecurity, Executive Office of the President; Ann Dunkin, CIO of the Department of Energy; and Michael Hayduk, Deputy Director, Information Directorate, Quantu...

Agencies’ reporting required on various website and digital services benchmarks required by the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act is often incomplete and inconsistent, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The congressional watchdog found that full compliance with the 2018 law — which mandates annual reports from the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agenc...

New federal guidance for acquiring artificial intelligence solutions directs U.S. agencies to take steps to manage risks, promote competition and share information within the executive branch. The White House Office of Management and Budget on Thursday publicly released its anticipated memorandum on responsible AI acquisition in government (M-24-18), charting an initial path forward for agencies t...

The General Services Administration is conducting market research through the agency’s eBuy program for the CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation II (COMET II), which is anticipated to be worth up to $1 billion. The request for quotes, which was shared in an email with FedScoop, aims to provide industry with the draft COMET II Performance Work Statement (PWS) as well as gain feedback on...

Customs and Border Protection CTO Sunil Madhugiri joins the podcast for a wide-ranging interview. During the discussion, he highlights CBP’s developing AI portfolio, how the emerging technology landscape is evolving, what else is top of mind for the agency heading into 2025, and much more. With ransomware gangs proving capable of quickly reconstituting after government takedown operations, an inte...

Pentagon leadership will accelerate high-volume production of technologies designed to detect, track and destroy enemy drones via “Replicator 2.0,” DefenseScoop has learned. This development marks the first public report of the second capability focus area under the Replicator initiative — a high-profile effort that underpins the Defense Department’s multifaceted plan to deter China. According to...

The General Services Administration has tapped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ chief information officer and chief data officer to serve as its new deputy CIO, the agency confirmed Thursday. Dovarius Peoples will join GSA on Oct. 6, an agency spokesperson told FedScoop. Peoples also has held leadership positions at the Office of Personnel Management and the National Security Agency. Also: The De...

Federal agencies across the government have posted their plans to comply with an Office of Management and Budget memo on artificial intelligence governance, providing a window into what risk management and reporting practices will look like in the executive branch. The compliance plans, which were due 180 days following the finalization of OMB’s M-24-10 memo, outline steps each covered agency plan...

Government IT contractor Carahsoft had its Reston, Va., headquarters searched by the FBI Tuesday morning, three sources familiar with the matter told FedScoop. In response to an inquiry about the raid, the FBI confirmed via email that it had “conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity” but declined to comment further. Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs is once again facing crit...

The Biden administration is coming to a close. As the president’s term nears its end, what better way to take stock of the last four years than to reflect on some of the top goals from the President’s Management Agenda and what’s been accomplished. Loren DeJonge Schulman, associate director for performance and personnel management at the Office of Management and Budget, joins the podcast to talk P...

A dozen federal agencies received an A on the most recent FITARA Scorecard, with 18 agencies improving their grades since January. In a Friday roundtable hosted by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, officials from USAID, NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the D...

The annual Congressional Hackathon is Thursday, and ahead of it, FedScoop is reporting that two of the five top recommendations from last year’s event have been implemented and others are on their way to being realized. Steve Dwyer, senior director for innovation at the House Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, told FedScoop that the two completed and now implemented projects are an intern...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the General Services Administration are partnering for an artificial intelligence maturity assessment as a foundational step in the nuclear agency’s path to finalizing a strategic plan. Over the next nine months, the NRC will welcome a GSA provided-project manager to work directly with staff to consult on what the agency needs to solidify an enterprise strateg...

From the impact of the Crowdstrike outage to IT issues with the Thrift Savings Plan’s modernized benefits and recordkeeping system, Jennifer Franks has her pulse on the federal cybersecurity space and the biggest challenges agencies face. Franks joins the Daily Scoop to discuss her journey to this role, what it’s like to work with federal agencies who may not be excited about her poking holes in t...

The White House is pursuing several new efforts meant to advance U.S. leadership on artificial intelligence, announcing Thursday the creation of a new task force on data center infrastructure and related measures following a meeting with several executives of leading AI and tech companies. The meeting centered on key aspects of the physical infrastructure required to build AI infrastructure in the...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is asking organizations to provide information about artificial intelligence technologies for use in health care outcomes and service delivery as it plans demonstration events. In a request for information announced earlier this week, CMS said it wants to gather information about AI products and services from health care companies, providers, payers,...

A new assessment standard to guide how Pentagon components evaluate and approve zero-trust cybersecurity solutions for responsible use will soon be finalized and ready for release, according to a senior official overseeing its making. During FedTalks 2024, hosted by Scoop News Group on Tuesday, Les Call — director of the DOD’s Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office — provided the latest update on...

Intelligence community officials said Friday they expect Russia, Iran and China to increase the cadence of influence operations targeting U.S. voters over the final two months of the 2024 election cycle. The assessment comes after a whirlwind month where U.S. officials accused Iran of engaging in a hack-and-leak operation targeting the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and JD Vance, and this w...

The federal government is closing in on total zero-trust implementation across agencies as the Sept. 30 deadline to do so approaches quickly. During a panel at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C., Federal CIO Clare Martorana announced that the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies are all in the “high 90% range” for implementing the basic elements of a zero-trust architectur...

The U.S. government formally accused Russia of attempting to interfere in the 2024 elections, as the Department of Justice unveiled charges Wednesday against multiple individuals and seized dozens of domains they say were part of a wide-ranging campaign to influence American voters. During a press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the operations “make clear the ends to which the Ru...

More than 140 groups, including immigrant and civil rights organizations, are raising concerns about the Department of Homeland Security’s use of artificial intelligence, arguing in a letter sent to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday that the agency is violating federal rules on the technology. The letter calls on DHS and many of its components to suspend several AI use cases, including sys...

In 2018, a secure communications app known as Anom was released and quickly gained popularity with organized criminals who saw it as a new tool to conduct operations out of the view of law enforcement. But little did they know, the very app they believed gave them a place to hide was secretly being run by the FBI. In his new book Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation,...

Pete Waterman, a former Technology Modernization Fund adviser and U.S. Digital Services engineer, has been tapped as the new FedRAMP director, the General Services Administration announced in an internal email Monday. His appointment comes after he served at GSA as a senior technical adviser for TMF until earlier this year. Waterman, who officially started Monday, will report to Lauren Bracey Sche...