Federal Drive with Tom Temin

At least one program of the EPA has had consistent support regardless of the administration or the makeup of Congress. It's called WaterSense and it's aimed at plugging household leaks thought to result in billions and billions of wasted gallons. For more, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Beth Livingston, WaterSense Lead Environmental Specialist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Office of Personnel Management still has a lot of rebuilding to do. Federal Drive host Tom Temin's guest in this interview, points out that OPM went eight years without a confirmed director. The Trump administration tried to roll its functions into the White House and GSA. American University professor Bob Tobias puts the recent OPM testimony into context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since January, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has been running a highly classified version of a very popular consumer platform. DISA completed functional testing of what it calls DOD-365-Sec, a secure version of Microsoft Office 365, a cloud-hosted suite of common products. With a progress report on user testing, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with the program manager for DISA's Defense Enterprise Office Solution, Carissa Landymore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Environmental Protection Agency is asking Congress for a significant boost in funding for next year, in part to try to rectify the challenge of a shrinking workforce paired with a rapidly growing workload. The White House proposed a $12 billion budget for EPA for fiscal 2024. If enacted, the funding would be a 19% increase over the agency’s budget for fiscal 2023, and the largest budget ever for the agency. Among efforts to tackle climate change, protect public health and improve infrastructure, a top priority of the EPA budget request is rebuilding its workforce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the Space Force continues to build its capabilities, it has to figure out how to train the growing number of guardians coming into its ranks. For now the solution remains a cobbled-together system of using its own training command and supplementing that with resources from the Air Force and the private sector. The technology-heavy new service relies on skilled operators to run and maintain its arsenal of satellites and sensors that make up U.S. presence in space. While the Space Force maintains Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) as its central training command for guardians, it must farm out a variety of skills training to other sources in order to quickly train its recruits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The future look and feel of your office space isn’t just going to be filled with movable furniture or whiz-bang technology. It likely will include federal employees from other agencies. The latest trend the General Services Administration is hearing from agencies is the desire to share buildings, conference space and training rooms as a part of reducing costs and improving the employee experience. Nina Albert, the commissioner of the Public Building Service at GSA, said federal office space will continue to evolve over the next few years, as more agencies get a better handle on their short- and long-term needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode of The Federal Drive with Tom Temin: Lots of new developments on the whistleblower front thanks to this year's budget bill. Cloud computing is great, until you can't connect. Then what? A veterans advocacy group updates its guidance for the Pact Act. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act -- the Pact Act -- became law a few months ago. It brought an expansion of services available to veterans and drew more veterans into eligibility. For a review, Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked to a director at the National Veterans Legal Services Program, Richard Spataro. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The omnibus appropriations bill enacted last year, contains something called the Anti-Money Laundering Whistleblower Improvement Act. Federal Drive host Tom Temin's guest on this podcast, calls it the most important transnational anti-corruption whistleblower law since the Dodd-Frank law in 2010. In fact, Stephen Kohn, a partner at the law firm Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto, helped get it passed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Agencies got more details from the Office of Personnel Management on how to get started with an inter-agency program aiming to boost retention of federal cybersecurity professionals. The guidance from OPM came after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law last June, which established a federal rotational cyber workforce program. The program lets agencies offer up rotation assignments for federal employees currently working in IT, cyber or cyber-related positions. Eligible employees can apply for, and work at, a different federal agency for a limited time period, between six months and one year, before returning to their home agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode of The Federal Drive with Tom Temin: In the post-pandemic era, the government is still perfecting its bio-responses. Inside the Defense Department's latest run at modernizing its business systems. This head of an obscure agency improves health care for millions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He runs a program most people never heard of, but it has got a $5 billion budget. He is the head of the Bureau of Primary Health Care, nested in the Health Resources and Services Administration, itself a component of the Health and Human Services Department. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked with this senior executive and recent recipient of a Presidential Rank Award, James Macrae. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Given everything that happened in the pandemic of 2020, one would think the government would have learned a thing or two about bio responses. It has learned a lot, actually. But there is more work to do, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). For more, Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked with Chris Currie, GAO's Director of Homeland Security and Justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Department of Homeland Security is moving out on a department-wide customer experience initiative across multiple fronts, with DHS bringing in a former U.S. Digital Service official to lead a new CX office. DHS is establishing a permanent “CX Directorate” at headquarters this year. During a March 16 meeting of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, DHS Chief Information Officer Eric Hysen said the permanent office is already attracting “key talent” to the department’s CX work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Commerce Department’s Commerce Acquisition for Transformational Technology Services (CATTS) multiple award contract is the perfect microcosm of all that’s wrong with federal procurement and small business. Despite the fact there are thousands of contracts that agencies award every day going off without a hitch — at least that’s the important reminder from former federal executive David Drabkin and many others over the years — the Commerce effort to create a high-dollar, long-term relationship with small businesses flies in the face of the government’s long-held goal to increase and support the small business industrial base. In fact, it’s easy to argue that CATTS, and really many other similar acquisitions efforts, are detrimental to that goal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices