Federal Drive with Tom Temin

Wait times for receipt of needed federal services are the bane of so many agencies and the citizens they serve. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, vets applying for mental health-related benefits can have their claims processed in a minute, instead of two months. That's thanks to the work of Paul Shute, who is chief of operational innovation at VA. He, along with veterans service representative Christopher Aragao and management analyst David Enright, are finalists in this year's Service to America Medals Program. Shute joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Electrical power is a big ticket item for the Army. The service is always looking for ways to make power sources more efficient and transportable, so soldiers have more capabilities with less to carry. The Army Research Office is pairing with academia to use artificial intelligence to make fuel cells last longer. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione talked with Purush Iyer, division chief of network sciences at the Army Research Office, starting with the future of hydrogen cells. Hear the details on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

How many people have tried to convince you they know what the future holds? When it comes to technology, Dan Gerstein looks back at what he calls the story of technology to take a stab at where it will take us next. He is the former under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, and is now with the RAND Corporation. He joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin in studio.

The Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general is out with its latest compendium of unimplemented recommendations at HHS. As in past years, the volume boils the issues down to 25 recommendations the OIG thinks would have big impacts on program effectiveness or cost savings. Andrew VanLandingham is senior counsel at the HHS OIG. He talked with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu about some of the top concerns – and in particular, what the department can do to shore up the integrity of the Medicaid program. Hear more on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Some people have had a quiet summer but not so for federal employee unions and the courts. The unions continue to battle the Trump administration over the president's workforce executive orders, and now the American Federation of Government Employees has sued a rather unlikely defendant. The Office of Special Counsel is the target of a new suit over Hatch Act guidance the agency released late last year. Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for the latest.

The government may have won over a few new young recruits to federal service. All it took was a 10-week paid internship at one of six federal agencies this summer. The Civic Digital Fellowship is an internship program designed to give college students a taste of public service. It's geared toward students or recent graduates with less experience than required for a President Innovation Fellowship or the US Digital Service. The 2019 cohort of civic digital fellows is the biggest one yet. As Federal News Network's Nicole Ogrysko reported on Federal Drive with Tom Temin, agencies may have reason to be optimistic they can attract young tech talent.

Agencies implementing artificial intelligence need to strike a balance between regulation and innovation. That’s the theme of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s latest guidance on AI. The report does more then state the obvious. It has detailed advice for how to do it. Elham Tabassi is the acting chief of staff for NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory. She told Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman what challenges lie ahead for wider federal AI adoption. Hear more on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

The stem cells in bone marrow, so important to fighting disease, are themselves vulnerable to infections that can deplete them over time. Those findings, along with research into new ways to protect stem cells, are part of the work at the Baylor College of Medicine, where Dr. Katherine King is an associate professor of pediatrics. Her research garnered one of this year’s Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. King talked about her work with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Maintaining security clearance is a career must for hundreds of thousands of government and contractor employees. A small but persistent number of people unfairly lose their clearance each year. Sean Bigley is Managing Partner at the law firm Bigley Ranish LLP, and he argues that one agency's practices should be the model for the whole government. Hear more on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

In a five-year period, the federal government had 443 data breaches. That's according to Comparitech, a British cybersecurity testing company. The breaches weren't all committed by online hackers — some got information the old fashioned way. For more details, Federal News Radio's Eric White spoke to Comparitech's Paul Bischoff on Federal Drive with Tom Temin, starting with how they put together the breach database.

The Air Force online portal gets three-quarters of a million airmen visits a month. The cloud that hosts it, and more than 100 other apps, is a little less susceptible to cyber attacks thanks to some white-hat hackers. The Air Force, along with the Defense Digital Service and cybersecurity company Bugcrowd recently concluded a bug bounty program. The challenge exposed 54 vulnerabilities in the Cloud One host and paid out more than $130,000 to the hackers who found them. Federal News Network’s Scott Maucione spoke with Casey Ellis, founder of Bugcrowd, and James Thomas of the Defense Digital Service about the contract and the challenge itself.

There's good news and bad news for two public-facing federal agencies. The Postal Service sees more warning signs for its business model amid continuing net losses. And the Census Bureau has already identified the majority of addresses it'll need to verify for the 2020 decennial count as it works to train its enumerators and canvassers. Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman had more information on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

To make sure its nursing homes are up to snuff, the Department of Veterans Affairs uses contracted inspectors. But it doesn't always keep tabs on the contractors, and the nursing home information on its website leaves out a few things. For more details, Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to Sharon Silas, acting director for Health Care Issues at the Government Accountability Office.

You work, you retire, you collect Social Security. Simple, right? If only — actually it takes a lot of thinking about the optimal time to collect Social Security. Federal retirement expert Tammy Flanagan joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss some of the considerations employees should make before leaving.

When it comes to full digitization, much less productive use of artificial intelligence, the government has a ways to go yet. Longtime software entrepreneur Tom Siebel has some ideas on these topics. He shared them on Federal Drive with Tom Temin in the studio. He said digital transformation has four vectors: elastic cloud computing, big data, internet of things and AI.