Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Emily Murphy no longer has dashboard envy. No she didn't buy a Porsche, so far as we know. The administrator of the General Services Administration is more than just a little excited about her acquisition dashboard showing the status of contract competitions and giving her other important decision making information. Murphy tells executive editor Jason Miller about how the dashboard is helping GSA measure its acquisition success and how it has led to a record setting year for the Federal Acquisition Service. TAG: Emily Murphy is the administrator of the General Services Administration. She spoke to executive editor Jason Miller at the 2019 ACT-IAC Imagine Nation ELC conference in Philly.

The Department of Homeland Security is fielding more Freedom of Information Act requests than ever. DHS and its subcomponents handle nearly half of all FOIA requests in government. The department is finally starting to find some success in whittling down the FOIA backlog and in improving processing times. But members of Congress are concerned DHS still has too many disparate FOIA processing and tracking systems. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko has the details.

Advancing technology in ocean-based sensors has become crucial to weather forecasting and understanding the environment. But those things generating all the data need electrical power. Now a prize competition by the Energy Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration seeks new ways to power ocean observing platforms. Alejandro Moreno is director of water powered technologies at DOE. He talked with the show about the sorts of technologies the agencies are looking for, and why a prize challenge seemed like a good fit.

The Technology Modernization Fund Board loaned out another $12 million to two agencies to accelerate IT projects. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received $4 million to modernize its case management system. The Agriculture Department received its third TMF award -- $8 million - to help move the Agricultural Marketing Service’s Specialty Crops Program off an approach that relies on triplicate carbon paper. Speaking on Federal Drive with Tom Temin, Suzette Kent is the Federal Chief Information Officer told Federal News Network Executive Editor Jason Miller how USDA rose to the top awhile other TMF projects are failing

The Defense Department is out with its first department-wide intellectual property strategy. The instruction, released last week, leaves a lot of details still to be addressed. But among other things, it aims to build intellectual property expertise throughout the acquisition workforce, mandates that every acquisition program start its life with an intellectual property strategy, and builds a centralized “cadre” of experts to help program managers with IP issues. Alan Chvotkin is executive vice president at the Professional Services Council. He talked with the show about the new IP strategy and how it will impact contractors.

It's no surprise that one of the agencies with some of the largest troves of sensitive data is the justice Department with the act of gathering evidence more and more relying on new technologies. That usually means more data. The more there is, the more important it is to secure it at the executive office for the U S attorneys. Its chief information security officer, Greg Hall, is currently working to keep that data safe. He spoke Federal News Network's Tom Temin about some of the major challenges facing his office and how it is tackling them.

For big departments like Veterans Affairs, there's no lack of work for the office of the inspector general. But sometimes even a big OIG can benefit from a partner. To deepen its ability to root out health care fraud, the VA OIG has teamed up with its counterpart at the Justice Department. VA's inspector general Michael Missal joined the show to discuss the details.

The continuing resolution that’s funding the government at the moment expires exactly one month from now. To head off a government shutdown, Congress and the White House need to reach agreement on either a set of full appropriations bills, or another CR. But talks are hung up over the exact issue that prompted the last shutdown – money for the president’s border wall. David Hawkings is editor-in-chief at The Fulcrum. He joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk about what looks to be another impasse.

The CIA is anything but centralized when it comes to computing. In fact, the agency is pursuing a multi-cloud approach as it pursues a new services contract that could be worth billions. For a closer look at what's going on, Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to Bloomberg Government Senior Analyst Robert Levinson.

The Defense Department has pinned its hopes on someday putting artificial intelligence tools in the hands of warfighters to help them make data-driven decisions on the battlefield. But Ranjeev Mittu, the head of the Naval Research Lab’s information management and decision architectures branch, says the AI algorithms of today are starved for reliable training data to make informed decisions in the real world. He tells Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman what he sees as the most promising use cases of AI the lab is working on.

The Defense Department is trying to make itself more agile in terms of intellectual property so it can take better advantage of technologies in the private sector. DoD released its new IP strategy last week, but there’s much more about to come out of the Pentagon’s acquisition office. DoD is finishing up a new software acquisition policy and it’s almost set to release the next draft of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to break it all down.

Enactment of laws establishing veteran-owned businesses as a distinct class is done a lot to help veterans. Bill Elmore was the first associate administrator for Veterans Business Development at the Small Business Administration. He's out of government now but still on the veterans business trail. He joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more details.

The Army is changing its process for how it will pair soldiers with assignments. The hope is to fit soldiers in spots where they will excel and be happier. In order to do that though, the service needs one thing: data. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain this part of the Army’s newest personnel overhaul.

Members of Congress, federal employee unions and good government groups are all remembering Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) who died yesterday morning. He leaves behind a legacy of standing up for federal employees, their pay benefits and rights. And he's remembered for several bipartisan bills that he introduced and passed as ranking member and chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko and Jory Heckman joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to look back on his legacy.

Sometimes appropriations and student fees don't cover the ambitions of federal universities. For example, the National Defense University, a prestigious institution at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., is where the NDU Foundation comes in with funding and programmatic support. Its new CEO James Schmeling joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin in studio with what the foundation is all about.