Federal Drive with Tom Temin

The Veterans Readiness and Employment (VR&E) program has been struggling with a number of challenges for years. Two plans to create an updated case management system have failed since 2015, with a total cost of $26 million, and the contract for the third attempt isn’t expected until March. VR&E counselors are understaffed and undertrained. The program lacks data on outcomes for veterans, especially those who leave the program unfinished. Too few veterans are being educated on the benefits available to them, and some of those benefits are too difficult to qualify for. That’s why some members of Congress and Veterans Support Organizations think a fourth administration within the Department of Veterans Affairs is necessary to add focus on transition, employment and education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federal Chief Information Officer Clare Martorana’s time before the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations on September 16 lacked many of the trite lines of questioning that have usually come with federal IT hearings. There were no complaints about the definition of a data center. Lawmakers did a nice job of keeping big “P” politics to a minimum. And concerns about specific constituent issues were mostly left out during questioning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contractors working in buildings controlled by the General Services Administration, might get buttonholed by a union organizer. That's allowed now under a rule the GSA just finalized. What do contractor executives think about that? Federal Drive host Tom Temin talk about that with Stephanie Kostro, the executive vice president for policy at the Professional Services Council. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Congress has hundreds of members, thousands of employees, and a collection of monumental buildings. Now it has an application programming interface, or API. For more about APIs and how this one will help spread information about the legislative branch, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with product owner Andrew Weber and the director of IT design and development, Jim Karamanis, both from the Library of Congress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You have heard their interviews for months here on the Federal Drive. This evening -- September 20, 2022 -- this year's Service to America Medals recipients will be honored in D.C. at the Kennedy Center. Federal Drive host Tom Temin, who interviewed 20 Sammies finalists, had one more interview in him: This one with Max Stier, the President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Air Force is setting up a new management structure to ride herd over its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), the Air Force’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) project. Officials say ABMS has demonstrated progress in some key technical areas, but those advancements haven’t always been coordinated with one another. At the top of the new management structure for what Air Force officials have previously termed the “internet of military things” will be a brand new program executive office: The Air Force calls it the PEO for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management, or PEO-C3BM. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The fifth and final memo from the Office of Management and Budget to meet the goals outlined in the May 2021 cybersecurity executive order maybe its most daring. OMB is initiating a change to how agencies buy and vendors develop commercial software that may set the tone for decades to come. Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer in OMB, said this memo is more than just another cyber mandate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Continuing Resolution that Congress is debating, is sort of like COVID. You know it's coming, but how bad will it be. CRs can go for days or they can go for months. Last year's went nearly halfway through the fiscal year. To find out how this one is shaping up, Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked with Loren Duggan, Bloomberg Government deputy news director. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many people who contract the COVID virus, the illness comes and goes. Others develop what's known as long covid. Symptoms last weeks or months. The Veterans Affairs Department has developed what it calls a whole health approach to long covid. With how VA practitioners are dealing with long covid, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Dr.Elizabeth Brill, the deputy assistant undersecretary for health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Army might be the nation's primary ground combat force, but it has lots of assets that fly, like missiles and helicopters. For an update on what is ahead for these platforms, Federal Drive host Tom Temin travelled to the Deep South to speak with Dr. James Kirsch, the acting director of the Aviation and Missile Center, within the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command in Huntsville, Alabama. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a lot of would-be defense contractors, the world of classified contracts is a bit of a Catch-22. You can’t get classified work without a security clearance, and you can’t get a security clearance without a contract that demands classified work. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking to solve that problem with a new initiative it calls “BRIDGES.” The basic idea is to give small firms a chance to show they’ve got the technical acumen or creativity to solve the sorts of problems DARPA’s working on in the classified arena. If it looks like the answer is yes, the agency itself will sponsor them for a security clearance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Office of Management and Budget released its final version of the first-ever governmentwide learning agenda, to help implement the Biden administration’s broad management goals.The learning agenda, which OMB finalized on Sept. 15, created research questions to help advance the priorities specifically outlined in the President’s Management Agenda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lots of federal scientists are connected to ongoing research on the atmosphere, energy, and the question of climate change. Federal Drive host Tom Temin recently got a sort of survey of these topics with an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a delegate to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Dr. Claudia Tibaldi. First question addressed weather versus climate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maybe you've seen the lawyer ads on TV. For a period of some 35 years, a million people were potentially exposed to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, the Marines' base camp in North Carolina. Since 2017, veterans from that era are presumed to have service-related illnesses from drinking that water. Now the Veterans Affairs Department inspector general has found, the Veterans Benefits Administration hasn't done a great job processing the claims. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked about this with deputy IG for audits and inspections, Brent Arronte. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Government managers are supposed to use data-driven approaches in decision-making. That's what the Army is doing in trying to recruit more candidates to ROTC and to boost a flagging effort at regular soldier enlistment. Federal Drive host talked about this with Brigadier General Alex Fink, chief of Army Enterprise Marketing, a relatively new unit the Army placed in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices