Federal Drive with Tom Temin

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy's has a goal of removing friction from federal acquisition. It's more than just a catch phrase. Agencies including the IRS, the Army and the General Services Administration are turning to robotic process automation to reduce to minutes, manual processes that usually take hours. In his weekly feature, the Reporter's Notebook, executive editor Jason Miller covers how these pilots are putting some concrete examples behind OFPP's frictionless acquisition governmentwide goal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The once chance contracting officers get to shine will, like every other event, go virtual this year. Yet the annual confab of the National Contract Management Association occurs not only during a continuing resolution, but also when lots of new and complicated rules have taken hold. Kraig Conrad is NCMA's chief executive. He talked with the Federal Drive about some of the plans for this year's Government Contracts Management Symposium. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A change in leadership for one of the key scientific leadership posts at the National Science Foundation. Sean Jones was appointed as the new director of NSF’s Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate last month. He’s been with the agency for more than ten years, starting as a program manager in 2009. He talked with the Federal Drive about what the directorate does, and the direction he hopes to take it in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are 50,000 people working in the Energy Department’s nuclear security enterprise. And for obvious reasons, most of them haven’t had the option of teleworking during the pandemic. To get a first hand look at how that workforce has been managing to continue to meet its missions, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top official has spent the last couple of months touring all eight sites. The tour wraps up this week. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty is the NNSA administrator. She joined the Federal Drive to talk about what she’s seen so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most federal chief data officers have experience with their organizations, but that doesn’t always mean they know where they stand. A recent report from the Data Foundation surveyed federal CDOs about their progress implementing requirements of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act. And there's still much progress to be made. Federal News Network's Amelia Brust joined the Federal Drive to discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The one chance contracting officers get to shine will like every other event go virtual this year. The annual conference of the National Contract Management Association occurs not just during a continuing resolution, but also when lots of new and complicated rules have taken hold. Craig Conrad is NCMA's chief executive. He told the Federal Drive about some of the plans for this year's Government Contracts Management Symposium. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preparations for mandatory telework in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic left some agencies scrambling. But the pandemic didn’t cause as much disruption on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as some of its IT leadership had expected. Remote work in fact has allowed the FDIC to pivot to electronic signatures and take major steps toward becoming a paperless workplace. For more of the agency’s modernization work under the pandemic, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman spoke with its chief information officer, Sylvia Burns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The chairs of three House committees are looking into allegations that the Defense Department misspent about $1 billion in coronavirus relief funding. They’ve requested documents from DoD, prompted by a report in the Washington Post that suggested the Pentagon misdirected portions of a $1 billion dollar appropriation that was part of the CARES Act. Some lawmakers say the funding was supposed to be used exclusively for medical supplies, but DoD spent some of the money to support what it says were vulnerable segments of the Defense industrial base. Mandy Smithberger is director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight. POGO is one of several outside groups that’s asked Congress to investigate the matter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a huge chunk of the federal workforce still working remotely, the PIV cards employees normally use to authenticate themselves on federal networks aren’t always an option. So many agencies have turned to commercial multi-factor authentication solutions as an alternative. But some of those solutions are more secure than others. To help agencies sort the good from the not-so-good, the National Security Agency has just released a guide to commercial multifactor authentication. Dr. Alan Laing is Senior Subject Matter Expert for Vulnerabilities and Mitigations at NSA, and he joined the Federal Drive to talk more about the information paper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Veterans Affairs Department is operating on several fronts to keep its services to veterans up to date. One channel for this is Veterans Health Administration program called the Innovation Ecosystem. It sponsors projects to help everything from suicide prevention to online lactation advice. Later this month VHA will showcase 18 projects in online demonstration fair. Ryan Vega is the Innovation Ecosystem executive director. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Defense Department’s new data strategy is less about reeling in what the services and defense agencies have been doing over the last five years. Rather, DoD is trying to bring some coordination, some semblance of governance to what some may call the wild west of data. Federal News Network executive editor Jason Miller joined the Federal Drive to discuss how DoD plans to ride herd over the ever growing mound of data it collects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Office of Personnel Management recently proposed some big changes to federal employee back pay. The proposal came in the form of draft regulations. They could limit the kinds of situations where federal employees are eligible for back pay. And they could exclude federal employee unions entirely from getting attorney fees. The timing of the proposal is curious. OPM hasn't changed its interpretation on back pay for federal employees in almost 40 years. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined the Federal Drive to explain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NASA has signed its newest mentor-protégé agreement. The latest arrangement is between Boeing and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Under the 18-month program, the historically black university will get new expertise on how to win federal contracts. And Boeing will get a pipeline of engineering students to help fill jobs at the nearby Michoud Assembly Facility, where it’s helping to build NASA’s new Space Launch System. For more on how the partnership will work, I talked with Samuel Washington. He’s the director of Southern University’s Office of Governmental Contracting Services. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A White House memorandum issued a month ago didn't get a lot of notice. My next guest thinks it should. The memo instructs agencies with administrative enforcement powers to give the parties they go after more due process, and to shift the burden of proof back to the government. Thompson Hine law firm partner Joan Meyer spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Chesapeake Bay has been one of the most intensely watched and debated ecological zones in the Eastern United States. For the past several months, the EPA has been developing a online decision support system to help cities and towns around the bay, and anyone concerned with this fragile ecosystem, figure out the best sites for restoration or conservation. Biologist and environmental scientist at EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program Office, Emily Trentacoste talked to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin about how it all works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices