Federal Drive with Tom Temin

It takes a veritable village to launch a space craft. When it comes to commercial space vehicles, the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation grants the licenses. During liftoffs, FAA crews keep airplanes away, give weather advisories, mapping, and many other services. For an upcoming launch of a commercial rocket called Starlink L9, for the first time the FAA will field an all women ground crew -- officially the Joint Airspace Operations Group. With their story, Air Traffic Manager Jennifer Ross and Space Operations Group member Jamie McMillon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies are making the switch from paper to digital records. That’s because after December 2022 the National Archives and Records Administration will only accept electronic permanent records. Archivists might face a jumble of file formats. To make sure NARA can still open records years from now the agency has released a Digital Preservation Framework with digital recordkeeping best practices. It covers more than 500 file formats. For more on the framework Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman spoke with NARA’s director of digital preservation Leslie Johnston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Veterans Health Administration hired a boatload of people during the pandemic. And they did it by cutting unnecessary steps and delaying some of the onboarding steps until after new hires started work. The average time-to-hire went from 94 days before the pandemic to 10-to-12 days during the health crisis. Congress is impressed and wants to see VA hire with the same agility during "normal" times. We got more from Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The House Armed Services Committee has marked up its 2021 version of the defense authorization bill. If you’re a defense contractor, don’t expect any more money from the government for coronavirus relief. Also, there’s a big battle that may already be brewing between the Senate and House on the Defense Department’s chief management officer position. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione has the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If it changed anything, the pandemic changed the way people in bureaus, agencies and departments communicate with one another. You may think you're doing a great job, but you've got a lot of boxes to check. That's according to our guest, long time staff management relations expert Bob Tobias. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In some ways, Bloomberg Government's annual report on the 200 largest federal contractors contains few surprises. But a deeper reading reveals a few trends you might not be aware of. For some insight, we turn to B-GOV director of government contracts, Dan Snyder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A month into the annual Feds Feed Families Food Drive, Federal Drive with Tom Temin decided to check back with it's national chair, Lavinia Panizo. She works on this vital program in between doing her day job at the Agriculture Department. So far, about 2,000 feds have donated more than 2 million pounds of food. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might say efforts to reopen federal buildings and offices has been, shall we say, problematic? Uneven? Uncertain? Well somebody had to organize all of the considerations and best practices for getting back to the sanitized water cooler and wiped-down communal coffee pot, the Government Accountability Office. With highlights, the managing director for strategic issues, Chris Mihm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The president signed a new executive order late last week designed to improve, you guessed it, the federal hiring process. The EO encourages agencies to prioritize a job applicant's skills over their degree. And it instructs the Office of Personnel Management to review and revise outdated job classification standards. This isn't the first time an administration has used an executive order to try to improve federal hiring. But this one might be different. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined me with more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Only a tiny portion of the more than 5,000 banks and financial institutions in the United States are owned by minorities. Only 149, to be exact. But a Mentor Protégé program launched by Treasury a couple of years back has helped keep those banks in minority hands while strengthening their finances. My guest has earned a finalist slot in the Service to America Medals program this year for his work in the program. He's the assistant commissioner for revenue collections management at the Treasury Department, Corvelli McDaniel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The firings and shufflings of inspectors general that have occurred recently in the Trump administration have worried a related community. Namely, the whistleblowers and those who advocate on their behalf. For a take on the temperature, I checked in with the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, John Kostyack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The IRS and Treasury Department rushed to get pandemic payments out to the public in the weeks after Congress passed the CARES Act. But they also sent more than a million payments to people who died. IRS officials told the Government Accountability Office the agency didn’t have the legal authority to deny payments to people who filed recent tax returns but in doing so paid out more than a billion dollars to the deceased. That’s led Congress looking at ways to get agencies sharing death data. Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman has more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The National Defense Authorization Act is the most visible thing on which Congress is making progress. But it's not the only thing. Intelligence, the budget, and several procurement issues are of big concern to contractors. Joining the Federal Drive with his list, the executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council, Alan Chvotkin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The little germ that's wrecked havoc on public health and the economy has also stuck a spear into national security. The episode of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt showed that. Joining the Federal Drive with a wider assessment is former Navy officer and Pentagon planner, now Hudson Institute senior fellow, Bryan Clark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The irony of artificial intelligence is how much human brainpower is required to build it. For three years, our next guest had been on loan from the University of Massachusetts, to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. There's she headed up several DARPA artificial intelligence projects. Now she's been awarded a high honor, the Meritorious Public Service Medal. Introducing Dr. Hava Siegelmann. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices