Federal Drive with Tom Temin

The Office of Personnel Management says it sees the Department of Health and Human Services as a model agency when it comes to employee engagement. The department says employee participation is a key to success on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The 2019 results prove the theory. Participation on the survey improved a whole 15 points on the 20-19 viewpoint survey. Blair Duncan is the HHS chief human capital officer. He told Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko how HHS has approached the viewpoint survey over the past few years.

The Federal Energy Management Program in the Energy Department has thrived using a contracting approach that most other agencies are too scared to even try. FEMP uses energy savings performance contracts to help the Defense Department and others save money and use less energy through this private financing model. Daniel Simmons is the assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, while Lucian Niemeyer is the acting assistant secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment. They told Federal News Network executive editor Jason Miller about how their partnership is leading to a more efficient Navy.

Trying to improve mission delivery in a political mud bath just doesn't work. That's according to former Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. As his new book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country," details, public service can be a challenge. Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked to him about a range of matters, including the decision to scrap the decades-old VistA electronic records system; and how, after a career in medicine and hospital administration, he joined the department as undersecretary for health during the Obama administration. As VA secretary, Shulkin ran into a storm of negative publicity when his wife accompanied him on a European trip. And even though the inspector general mostly exonerated him, the damage was done. In his book, Shulkin discusses this incident only months after a flattering New York Times story about his early days in the job.

Staff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have just finished a nine-volume publication called the NIST Big Data Interoperability Framework. A collaboration involving 800 people over several years, the framework is designed to help software developers create tools that will do data analysis on everything from a tablet to a supercomputer. NIST computer scientist Wo Chang joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more details.

Many people might not think of connected medical devices as critical infrastructure but they are. And new cybersecurity holes keep opening up in medical devices. The latest ones have the attention of two agencies: The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. To explain more about this topic, Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to Dr. Suzanne Schwartz, FDA deputy director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships and Technology Innovation in the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health; and Boyden Rohner, associate director for Vulnerability Management in DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

A House bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate water levels of a group of chemicals called Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The 2020 National Defense Authorization bill also takes on the human-made chemicals. For some insight into what's going on, the Environmental Working Group's Vice President for Government Affairs Scott Faber joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin in the studio.

President Donald Trump had high praise for a tough cookie: Conan, the military Belgian Malinois that helped bring down terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Conan also has brothers and sisters and while they serve an important purpose, the Army Research Lab realized military life might be hard on dogs’ hearing. The lab set thinks it has a solution. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione talked about it with Lab Senior Scientist Stephen Lee for Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

In the final stretch of preparations for the 2020 Census the Commerce Department’s inspector general said Census Bureau systems failed to meet peak recruiting demands — a claim the bureau disputes. The IG found systems for hiring and payroll were unable to perform at the scale needed. Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more details on the 2020 operations.

With the elimination of telework at the Social Security Administration and other places, Bob Tobias is wondering why? This is especially after studies show telework improves productivity and so many private companies offer it. The professor of the Key Executive Leadership program at American University joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin in the studio to share his thoughts.

Federal employees have no shortage of awards programs. But one of the oldest and most prestigious is now open for nominations. It's the Arthur S. Flemming Award, which is administered by The George Washington University Trachtenburg School of Public Policy; the National Academy of Public Administration; and the Arthur S. Flemming Awards Commission. Commission President Peter Williams joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more information.

The F-35 is supposed to be the Pentagon's platform of the future. But with no more than 15% of the planned fleet even built yet, the armed services are having trouble sustaining them and keeping them mission ready. For the latest, Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to Diana Maurer, the director of defense capabilities and management issues at the Government Accountability Office.

Two big missions will keep the newly renamed Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency busy over the next few months. The security clearance backlog is still important. But it's no longer priority number one since the end-goal is nearly in sight. The DCSA now focuses on the ramp-up of continuous evaluation, and the eventual transition to continuous vetting. But as Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko reported, the agency is also laser-focused on a second priority that's often been overlooked. Hear more on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

It's one thing to have a military strategy. For something as big as the US military, it's something else to align forces with new strategy. In its annual report on the armed forces, the Center for Strategic and International Studies looked deep into the 2020 Defense Department budget proposal. The Senior Adviser to the CSIS International Security program, Mark Cancian, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to share what it found.

Everyone, it seems, loves bacon. But there's a big issue in the US pork industry, namely, how to keep African swine fever out of the pens and barns of the pork industry. Now the National Pork Board and the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security have teamed up to evaluate methods and materials used to disinfect the surfaces where pigs are raised. The director of DHS' Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Dr. John Neilan, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more.

Each of the military services has faced workforce challenges in their maintenance depots over the past several years. Congress has responded with new authorities that let DoD sidestep the traditional hiring system to fill those vacancies. It’s taken a while to make use of direct hiring, but military officials now say the authorities have turned out to be invaluable. Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu has details.