Terry Gerton Well, as we speak, the shutdown is at least temporarily over, but it left some major disruptions in its wake and one of those programs that we want to talk about today is the National Flood Insurance Program. Can I ask you first to tell us what that program is, but then also talk about how the shutdown and the extension of the shutdown affected that program?

Nicole Upano Sure. The National Flood Insurance Program is an important program for single-family home buyers as well as multifamily owners and operators. It is a backstop to ensure that borrowers have flood insurance even in areas where there is elevated risk, and private insurance companies may be less likely to offer coverage in that area without having some sort of elevated cost because of their risk. So it’s a very important program for many Americans.

Terry Gerton  And it really provides a a stability in markets that are flood prone, right?

Nicole Upano That’s exactly right, Terry. It is an important program for many Americans. It provides stability in the market if there is a national disaster to ensure that money flows back into that community for rehabilitation and repair.

Terry Gerton And during the shutdown, NFIP’s borrowing authority dropped dramatically. What does that mean in terms of practical terms?

Nicole Upano That means that, as I had mentioned previously, this program is an important — or, flood insurance is an important part of home sales and multifamily sales. And without that borrowing authority, those purchases could not move forward since it is a contingency to home buying. And there also is that greater risk that if a natural disaster could occur, that there wouldn’t be an ability to fill those claims and push financing back into those communities.

Terry Gerton So the way that works then is in a disaster FEMA actually uses that borrowing authority to pay out the claims that it may receive. Is that correct? That’s right. So then how did the lapse in the NFIP operations affect home buyers who rely on that flood insurance to maybe close on a mortgage?

Nicole Upano We have certainly seen this across the federal government for many HUD-assisted or agency-assisted programs, that it put a pause in those home sales until the government is back up and running and doing the people’s business.

Terry Gerton So we’re in a continuing resolution now. Did the CR provide additional borrowing authority for FEMA through the National Flood Insurance Program?

Nicole Upano Yes, it sure did. It reauthorized it since September 30. And there is a piece of bipartisan legislation that was also offered that would reauthorize the program until 2026 to provide even greater certainty for homebuyers and and renters across the country.

Terry Gerton Does that mean that folks who were kind of in limbo for the last 40+ days of the shutdown can renew their policies or maybe submit their claims? Does that open the window back up? Yes, it certainly does.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Nicole Upano. She’s the AVP for housing policy and regulatory affairs for the National Apartment Association. So, Nicole, let’s go back to this, the program itself, even with existing policies still active, there were some limits. What do policy holders need to know about their coverage, their claims, and their change in funding if we should find ourselves in another funding lapse, perhaps?

Nicole Upano Sure. So if someone had a valid policy during the shutdown, those remained valid throughout the shutdown. But if in terms of a new policy or a renewal, that’s where the rub would be, as well as potentially processing any claims, there would be limitations on that.

Terry Gerton Did you see any misconceptions or misunderstandings on the part of policy owners about what services and coverage would be available to them during the shutdown?

Nicole Upano NAA represents professionally-owned and managed housing across the country. And so they kept the shutdown and any implications very much top of mind and continue to use NAA as a resource to get the most up to date information.

Terry Gerton And so you’re dealing with apartment owners, condo owners, those kinds of things. What are some of their biggest questions when it comes to the NFIT program?

Nicole Upano Well, for our members, they are looking across the federal government at all the implications. For example, HUD and FHA, they provide financing and backing not just for affordable housing but for market rate housing as well. So there was an issue with those closings. And while Section 8 and USDA rural housing — you know, rural housing benefits for renters and their families in rural areas — while those benefits did benefit from an advanced appropriation, there was that similar issue, similar to the NFIP, that renewals and new applications could not be processed and there would have been payment uncertainty for those renters and their families. And so having government back up and running and doing the people’s business is important to both housing providers and renters to ensure the stability of those properties and that renters in those communities remain stable.

Terry Gerton NAA is obviously very sensitive to the real estate market, especially in flood prone or disaster prone areas. Beyond NFIP itself, what does this moment really reveal about the fragility of our disaster response programs and how people can get relief if they’re affected?

Nicole Upano Sure, that’s a great question. Many of the federal government’s housing programs are not mandatory appropriations. And we’ve seen that with other industries, that they are seeking now opportunities to have a backstop if and when this happens again to ensure that agencies can access reserves or that they can expand their budget authority in these times, knowing that eventually the government will be back up and running. And folks will be repaid

Terry Gerton How should policymakers then or legislators be thinking about long-term resilience and continuity for programs like NFIP, especially as climate risks grow and shutdowns maybe remain a threat?

Nicole Upano We would certainly encourage policymakers to reevaluate whether some of these programs should have a mandatory appropriation so there won’t be disruptions. We never know what’s going to happen, certainly with climate risks and change across the country, and so having that certainty is critical.

Terry Gerton So what is NAA’s message then to housing providers and renters on navigating these kinds of disruptions? What do they do to stay informed? How do they make sure that they’re current? What’s your advice?

Nicole Upano Yeah, so NAA continued to release live updates on our website to our members. We continue to encourage our members to work with their residents as their business allows and provided them with resources and how to navigate those conversations. We were pleased to see that the the CR does include a reversal of the rifts that happened during the shutdown. And especially for folks in the DMV, this is extremely helpful to ensure there’s certainty for those residents and that housing providers can know they have a stop gap at the end of the day.

Terry Gerton And what are you hearing from lawmakers? Are they inclined to support those kinds of proposals?

Nicole Upano Yeah, as you can see from the bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the program in 2026, this program has long had bipartisan support. We just want to use this time to encourage policymakers to take that next step.

The post The federal flood insurance program is key to stable housing markets, the shutdown revealed its fragility first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton John, I wanna start with you. You’ve been with the shared services concept for a long time. You’ve seen Trump 1 and Trump 2. Tell us how their approach differs across the different administrations.

John Marshall Well, thanks, Terry. It’s a great question. We’re not really sure what the approach is for the current administration yet because they haven’t released a president’s management agenda, but we can get some signs from what we’ve seen out there and kind of reading the tea leaves a bit. But the first Trump administration had a very clear plan. It was announced in OMB Management Memorandum M-19-16 and included an innovative approach to creating a marketplace of shared services providers through four quality service management offices, or QSMOs, that were set up to manage financial management, human resources, cybersecurity, and grants marketplaces. Those were allowed to continue through the Biden administration. They weren’t really expanded or empowered very strongly or resourced, but they still have existed. But we haven’t seen the Trump administration, the second Trump administration, endorse or expand them. They seem to be continuing the financial management and grants. We’re not sure about cybersecurity and HR. So, a lot is yet to be seen. What we have seen from the new, the second Trump administration is a strong focus on centralization and consolidation of common services. They don’t seem to include some of the key features of shared services that we’d like to see, but they’re heading in a positive direction and we like most of what we’ve seen so far.

Terry Gerton Well Steve, let me turn that to you then because in addition to what John’s talking about the centralization approach, the Trump 2 administration has issued executive orders around acquisition, HR and financial management. Are you seeing that approach get traction in any particular way?

Steve Goodrich They are a little bit. As you know, GSA is also revamping the FAR and actually to include shared services within Section 8 of the new FAR when it’s issued. GSA is focused on procurement, OPM is focused on HR, Treasury is focused on finance. They all are starting to make traction in a centralization model, and they’re at at different levels or different stages right now. But they’re certainly getting there. OPM has their RFP out to try to develop a centralized approach for government-wide HR support services. GSA is pulling procurement into GSA more and more. And Treasury is at its beginning stages working with its QSMO actually to develop and make sure they have the systems and the foundation before they can start operations down the road.

Terry Gerton So John, in Trump 1 you made the point that there was a lot of it space for initiative and choice in the marketplace. Centralization seems to be pulling that back. Are you seeing agencies respond in a positive way?

John Marshall I don’t think we have really a lot of great feedback coming from the agencies yet. They haven’t been very communicative about their adoption or their plans for centralization to shared services. So a lot has yet to be seen. We’re kind of reading between the tea leaves right now and trying to determine how things are gonna sort out and what the agency responses will be.

Terry Gerton In market theory, markets will be more efficient than a centralization model. What do what do you have as an expectation here?

John Marshall Well, we have a lot of reasons to prefer a market-based approach because of competition, and particularly a marketplace would allow industry service providers to participate and compete with government service providers. We’re a little uncomfortable with the idea of just consolidating everything in centralized, government-delivered, government-operated functions because they tend to — over time they become monopolies and pretty bureaucratic. And so we like the idea of having a more open marketplace where competition can drive continuous innovation and customer choice and let the marketplace then sort out the winners and losers.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with John Marshall. He’s the founder and CEO of the Shared Services Leadership Coalition. And Steve Goodrich, [who] chairs the SSLC board. So Steve, let me come back to you then. Shared Services Leadership Coalition has proposed a more competitive standard-based model. Tell us about that and how your proposal differs from what you’re seeing the administration currently implement.

Steve Goodrich Well, the administration is trying to move fairly quickly right now and with technology solutions, frankly, before they get processing governance and policy and data reform in place. So they’re moving out fast. The centralization model, as John says, may not be the optimal model to get there. What we’re proposing is a strong mandate for shared services. Because as you know, it’s come and gone from over the last forty years from administration to administration. And to get there, we need Congress really to mandate it so we can consolidate the common services across government to get there. Two, we need a strong governance structure to be able to operate, lead this across agencies and get the right mandates and security and systems and so forth and so on. Within that, we then need to do the right analysis and design of the right approach to make sure we’re consolidating appropriately, that we’re getting the duplication of systems and processes down and we can actually measure the outcomes that we’re getting to make it happen and then have an effective transition process.

Terry Gerton Tell me about your governance model. Who would be in charge of oversight there?

Steve Goodrich Well, our proposed model we have the OMB DDM as the policy director, if you will, for this and the authority. We have GSA leading the operations through a management center. And then there’s roles for the PMC, there is roles for the agencies advisory going through this as well. And you have the operating centers to make sure this is done and done right.

Terry Gerton Are you hearing from any of those agencies that they’re interested in taking on that governance role?

Steve Goodrich There’s — GSA would have interest in getting there. As you know, OSP, which has been drawn back over the years, was the original design, as the M-19-16 says, is the coordinating element. But our proposed legislation would actually give it the authority it needs, led by a commissioner within GSA for government operations with which to get there.

Terry Gerton So John, let me come back to you because you mentioned something in your last response that I think ties in with this governance piece. When you get a government centralized service function, it tends to become a monopoly, but it’s also really hard to invest in technology modernization. How would you see this centralization model staying current and actually addressing the service concerns of the federal agency constituents?

John Marshall That is a great question. And I think that the flip side of that question sets up the response that we would like to see, which is the marketplace, because if you had a marketplace with industry and government service providers, you would have continuous competition across the service providers and customer choice, which would — which should provide the incentives to drive innovation in the marketplace by all those providers. So it’s a really important feature that we think ought to be incorporated. And we’re concerned that government centralized services haven’t had access to appropriations or technology modernization funds for modernization. So we’re concerned that they would follow the example that we’ve seen too often of centralized service providers not modernizing, not keeping up and becoming non-responsive and antiquated over time.

Terry Gerton Steve, you want to follow up?

Steve Goodrich Yeah, I would. You can look at good models like Canada, Texas has done a pretty good job of developing partnerships with industry. And so that moves away from the traditional FAR firm-fixed price contract approach, where as technology advances, as process or new policies advance, the companies involved, the partnership involved are responsible for the implementation and bringing those two new technologies to the forefront without contract change orders and things like that, it’s built into the process.

Terry Gerton So Steve, as you look forward, what sorts of policy or legislative change is SSLC recommending?

Steve Goodrich So, it really tees off what I was saying before, putting a piece of legislation in place that mandates shared services, that sets up the governance structure, that ensures that there is metrics, both performance and outcome metrics that are measured and reported back to Congress and the President that involves the PMC in this process and builds the strong demonstrated consolidation of common services across government to save money, to improve data, to reduce duplication, to get us there finally with a modernized system of policy, process and data.

Terry Gerton So John, I wanna wrap up with you. Legislative change is sometimes an interesting windmill to tilt at, but in the absence of that change, if the administration continues with its policy of centralization, what should agencies and industry partners be doing to prepare for that?

John Marshall Watching and seeing what comes out from the administration and and following suit. But we we’d like to see more interest in Congress and it’s hard to get legislation passed in this area. We’ve been trying at this for 10 years. We’ve seen the history of legislation, the CFO Act, GPRA and so many other landmark pieces of management legislation. They take a long time and the incubation period is a long time. So we’d like to see industry working with us and agencies showing support for a more fundamental transformational approach like we’re offering. And don’t forget, Terry, what we’re proposing is a mainstream business model that’s used by 80 or 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies for managing common services. And the potential savings are tremendous. We’ve estimated $75 to $100 billion dollars in potential savings. So that’s really what’s on the table for the value, not just improved services for employees and for customers of the government and taxpayers. This is a great opportunity that the government shouldn’t miss.

Terry Gerton Steve, let me give you the last word.

Steve Goodrich Yeah, John and I like to joke sometimes that — and it’s true, it’s not a joke — for over 40 years we’ve been sitting in meetings around shared services with OMB and oversight agencies, and it ebbs and flows from administration to administration, or they just dance around the edges. A bill passed and signed by the president will finally give it the energy and resources it needs to move it forward.

The post Centralization is back in vogue, but is it the right model for government shared services? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Terry Gerton This might be a big week on the Hill. The House is planning to bring the National Defense Authorization Act to the floor for a vote. It’s obviously a topic we talk a lot about, but last week there were a lot of let’s just say, conversations about what might be in it and how it might go. So tell us about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Loren Duggan Well, this bill is a must pass piece of legislation. They’ve been doing it for decades and they always want to get it done by the end of the year. And this year there aren’t a lot of other end-of-year vehicles, so it’s kind of become an attractive venue for discussions about a number of issues. So that’s kind of what’s been going on. It’s probably less about the core part of the NDAA and more about some of the ancillary things or related things that people want to get in there or keep out of there as the case may be. We saw a particularly big dust up you might be referring to between Elise Stefanik, who’s a member of leadership, but was mad at her own leader, Speaker Mike Johnson, about trying to keep something out. And in the end they worked something out and that was getting resolved toward the end of the week. But that was just one of the flashpoints that leaders were dealing with trying to assemble this very important bill.

Terry Gerton It is normally a bipartisan bill. Is there a chance that, you know, that that’s not going to be true this time, even with the slim majority in the House?

Loren Duggan It may still be bipartisan because they do try to work things out. And, you know, sometimes the initial versions that come out of the House are particularly partisan because of riders or language that the minority party might not like. But they were reaching for consensus here. They were trying to get the four corners to agree on things before they went in. That’s the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate committees, not just the defense committees in this case, but sometimes the other committees that had legislation that was in the mix. So they’re trying to get a bipartisan package that can get through because you might lose people on either side, but maybe you have the consensus you need to get something through. So we’ll be watching that vote counting very closely as they move toward the vote.

Terry Gerton Is there any aspect of the move forward on the NDAA that is also impacted by the hearings on the Hill last week about the counter drug operations in the Caribbean?

Loren Duggan Those two things seem to be on different tracks. I mean, obviously they’re related. It’s about the Defense Department and the defense secretary and what people might think there. But the legislation and setting policy is sort of moving in one direction, but some of the same players are also very much involved in reviewing what had happened with the ordering of these strikes and the chain of command and all the issues. We had the members watching the video over on the Senate side and reacting to that last week. I think that will continue. It may be brought up in the context of the debate or larger questions, but I think the bill will move regardless of that. And Congress can — because they do this every year — revisit it in next year’s NDAA or perhaps in other legislation because we’ve already seen members talking again about maybe war powers or other things they might tap into there.

Terry Gerton Well we’ll see how that comes about. But speaking of votes, there is also supposed to be a vote in the Senate this week on the health care premium subsidy extensions. What’s the prognosis there?

Loren Duggan Well, this was part of the agreement to reopen the government was that there would be a vote by I think December 12th was it, so Friday, on some sort of vote around the ACA extensions that are expiring at the end of the year. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said he’d aim for a three-year extension, which would take us obviously beyond the next election. That’s a different proposal and one of many proposals that are floating around. We’ll be watching to see, does the GOP answer with their own proposal, and what does this mean for the House, if anything? So, going toward the end of last week, there was still no consensus on how this would be fixed. It will have to be bipartisan, obviously, to get over the line and we may not be there by the end of the week. But maybe we’ll have some discussion and votes ahead of that.

Terry Gerton And Mike Johnson’s trying to put a package together on the House side as well, right?

Loren Duggan Right. And there’s more than just the ACA being talked about here. There’s health savings accounts ideas or other things that members might want to pursue. You kind of got this short term issue of, what do you do with the subsidies for next year, but then there are a lot of people who are trying to bring in, what does this mean overall about the Affordable Care Act, the nature of the markets, does there need to be a broader sweep of changes? … There’s not really consensus on anything broader than this. And we’ll have to see if there can even be consensus on the smaller question of what to do with the subsidies.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Loren Duggan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. Well, Loren, at this time of year, every time we talk, we talk about the status of the rest of the appropriations. Shutdown, or [the] continuing resolution expires at the end of January. What are you seeing in terms of the move forward on the other bills?

Loren Duggan I’m sort of seeing a kind of a whimper on that going into the end of the year. To be honest with you, January 30 is a long time away. There’s been a lot of talk about what would be in a next minibus package that the Senate might consider, but that hasn’t been moving forward. Votes haven’t been scheduled. And without that sort of end-of-the year deadline or mid-December deadline that often drives that activity, they have more time, and usually work expands to the time allotted. And I think we might see that here. So, not clear that we’ll get more votes by the end of the year on that. There are a lot of issues they’re trying to work through. But that will be, if they don’t do it now, obviously top of mind when they return in early January, ’cause the clock will be ticking.

Terry Gerton Loudly at that point. A different topic, and we don’t cover the court very often, but there’s a very important case on the Supreme Court docket for today dealing with the president’s effort to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Tell us what your team is watching there.

Loren Duggan Well, part of our organization is Bloomberg Law and they cover many court developments around the country and certainly at the Supreme Court. They’re watching this very closely because it has huge implication for independent regulators. As you mentioned, Kelly Slaughter, who was a FTC commissioner, was fired by the president and has had a court battle that’s now reached all the way up there. And it goes back to a precedent called, I think it’s Humphrey’s Executor — which there are many people in this building who are far more versed than I in that. But it’s gonna be closely watched because what is the nature of an independent regulator? What is their power vis-a-vis the rest of the executive branch? Big questions there that have effects on a lot of different institutions, and therefore a lot of different regulated entities by those institutions. So we’ll be watching the arguments and then the decision whenever that comes will be very closely watched.

Terry Gerton So what else are you watching for the coming week?

Loren Duggan Well, we’re watching the Senate try to move forward on another batch of nominees. I think it’s 90 or so. They tried to do it last week, but there was a procedural hiccup, so they’re starting over. But that would be, if they could get that done, another 90 Trump appointees on the job by the end of the year, which Republicans would like. And we’re also watching hearings. There’s a lot of other nominees going through and there’d be a flash of celebrity. Gene Simmons of KISS is actually scheduled to be up on the Hill. So we’d be watching to see what he brings. Always interesting when you have kind of that celebrity star power trying to shine light on an issue.

Terry Gerton That’s a hearing near and dear to the heart of radio broadcasters everywhere. So we’ll be watching it as well.

Loren Duggan Excellent.

The post House drama over the defense bill sets the stage for a high-stakes December on Capitol Hill first appeared on Federal News Network.

A three-judge panel ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s firings without cause of Cathy Harris and Gwynne Wilcox, Democratic members on the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board, were lawful.

The split 2-to-1 panel decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has no immediate effect, since both Harris and Wilcox’s firings were finalized in May. But Friday’s ruling comes as the Supreme Court is expected to soon hear arguments on whether to overturn a 90-year-old ruling known as Humphrey’s Executor — a decision that could expand Trump’s power to shape independent agencies.

In the 1935 Supreme Court ruling on Humprey’s Executor, the justices unanimously found that commissioners can be removed only for misconduct or neglect of duty, effectively limiting when presidents can fire board members.

But when Judges Gregory Katsas and Justin Walker ruled Friday in favor of Trump’s firings of Harris and Wilcox, they argued that MSPB and NLRB fall outside the limitations stemming from Humphrey’s Executor, and that the president can still “remove principal officers who wield substantial executive power.”

“The NLRB and MSPB wield substantial powers that are both executive in nature and different from the powers that Humphrey’s Executor deemed to be merely quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial,” the judges wrote. “So, Congress cannot restrict the President’s ability to remove NLRB or MSPB members.”

Judge Florence Pan, the dissenting panel member and a Biden appointee, argued that the two agencies do fall under the scope of Humphrey’s Executor, and that maintaining the independence of MSPB and NLRB is critical. She wrote that the Trump administration’s “extreme view of executive power sharply departs from precedent.”

“We may soon be living in a world in which every hiring decision and action by any government agency will be influenced by politics, with little regard for subject-matter expertise, the public good, and merit-based decision-making,” she wrote.

The MSPB is an independent agency responsible for adjudicating appeals from federal employees who allege prohibited personnel practices by their agencies. The NLRB investigates unfair labor practices in the private sector and oversees union elections. Both boards are typically composed of members of both political parties.

Trump fired both Wilcox and Harris within his first few weeks in office, but did not point to a specific reason for the terminations. Wilcox and Harris, both of whom were Democratic board members, sued the president over their removals, arguing that they are protected by a federal law meant to ensure MSPB and NLRB’s independence from political considerations — and that the president can only remove them “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Though a federal judge initially ruled the two terminations were unlawful, the Supreme Court reversed that decision in May, effectively green-lighting the finalization of the board members’ firings earlier this year.

In its May decision, the Supreme Court indicated that it was likely “that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power,” which it said would make restrictions on the president’s ability to fire them unconstitutional. Friday’s panel ruling aligns with the Supreme Court’s initial arguments.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments Monday on Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission — a case that may further influence the outcome of both Harris and Wilcox’s terminations.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

The post Appeals court backs Trump’s firings of MSPB, NLRB members first appeared on Federal News Network.

America’s AI Action Plan outlines a comprehensive strategy for the country’s leadership in AI. The plan seeks, in part, to accelerate AI adoption in the federal government. However, there is a gap in that vision: agencies have been slow to adopt AI tools to better serve the public. The biggest barrier to adopting and scaling trustworthy AI isn’t policy or compute power — it’s the foundation beneath the surface. How agencies store, access and govern their records will determine whether AI succeeds or stalls. Those records aren’t just for retention purposes; they are the fuel AI models need to power operational efficiencies through streamlined workflows and uncover mission insights that enable timely, accurate decisions. Without robust digitalization and data governance, federal records cannot serve as the reliable fuel AI models need to drive innovation.

Before AI adoption can take hold, agencies must do something far less glamorous but absolutely essential: modernize their records. Many still need to automate records management, beginning with opening archival boxes, assessing what is inside, and deciding what is worth keeping. This essential process transforms inaccessible, unstructured records into structured, connected datasets that AI models can actually use. Without it, agencies are not just delaying AI adoption, they’re building on a poor foundation that will collapse under the weight of daily mission demands.

If you do not know the contents of the box, how confident can you be that the records aren’t crucial to automating a process with AI? In AI terms, if you enlist the help of a model like OpenAI, the results will only be as good as the digitized data behind it. The greater the knowledge base, the faster AI can be adopted and scaled to positively impact public service. Here is where agencies can start preparing their records — their knowledge base — to lay a defensible foundation for AI adoption.

Step 1: Inventory and prioritize what you already have

Many agencies are sitting on decades’ worth of records, housed in a mix of storage boxes, shared drives, aging databases, and under-governed digital repositories. These records often lack consistent metadata, classification tags or digital traceability, making them difficult to find, harder to govern, and nearly impossible to automate.

This fragmentation is not new. According to NARA’s 2023 FEREM report, only 61% of agencies were rated as low-risk in their management of electronic records — indicating that many still face gaps in easily accessible records, digitalization and data governance. This leaves thousands of unstructured repositories vulnerable to security risks and unable to be fed into an AI model. A comprehensive inventory allows agencies to see what they have, determine what is mission-critical, and prioritize records cleanup. Not everything needs to be digitalized. But everything needs to be accounted for. This early triage is what ensures digitalization, automation and analytics are focused on the right things, maximizing return while minimizing risk.

Without this step, agencies risk building powerful AI models on unreliable data, a setup that undermines outcomes and invites compliance pitfalls.

Step 2: Make digitalization the bedrock of modernization

One of the biggest misconceptions around modernization is that digitalization is a tactical compliance task with limited strategic value. In reality, digitalization is what turns idle content into usable data. It’s the on-ramp to AI driven automation across the agency, including one-click records management and data-driven policymaking.

By focusing on high-impact records — those that intersect with mission-critical workflows, the Freedom of Information Act, cybersecurity enforcement or policy enforcement — agencies can start to build a foundation that’s not just compliant, but future-ready. These records form the connective tissue between systems, workforce, data and decisions.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that up to 80% of federal IT budgets are still spent maintaining legacy systems. Resources that, if reallocated, could help fund strategic digitalization and unlock real efficiency gains. The opportunity cost of delay is increasing exponentially everyday.

Step 3: Align records governance with AI strategy

Modern AI adoption isn’t just about models and computation; it’s about trust, traceability, and compliance. That’s why strong information governance is essential.

Agencies moving fastest on AI are pairing records management modernization with evolving governance frameworks, synchronizing classification structures, retention schedules and access controls with broader digital strategies. The Office of Management and Budget’s 2025 AI Risk Management guidance is clear: explainability, reliability and auditability must be built in from the start.

When AI deployment evolves in step with a diligent records management program centered on data governance, agencies are better positioned to accelerate innovation, build public trust, and avoid costly rework. For example, labeling records with standardized metadata from the outset enables rapid, digital retrieval during audits or investigations, a need that’s only increasing as AI use expands. This alignment is critical as agencies adopt FedRAMP Moderate-certified platforms to run sensitive workloads and meet compliance requirements. These platforms raise the baseline for performance and security, but they only matter if the data moving through them is usable, well-governed and reliable.

Infrastructure integrity: The hidden foundation of AI

Strengthening the digital backbone is only half of the modernization equation. Agencies must also ensure the physical infrastructure supporting their systems can withstand growing operational, environmental, and cybersecurity demands.

Colocation data centers play a critical role in this continuity — offering secure, federally compliant environments that safeguard sensitive data and maintain uptime for mission-critical systems. These facilities provide the stability, scalability and redundancy needed to sustain AI-driven workloads, bridging the gap between digital transformation and operational resilience.

By pairing strong information governance with resilient colocation infrastructure, agencies can create a true foundation for AI, one that ensures innovation isn’t just possible, but sustainable in even the most complex mission environments.

Melissa Carson is general manager for Iron Mountain Government Solutions.

The post Three steps to build a data foundation for federal AI innovation first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton You have spent a lot of time on the Hill lately talking to lawmakers about ways the VA could modernize access to care. Tell us both what your message is and what you’re hearing from the lawmakers.

Sean O’Connor Yeah. And maybe before that, Terry, just to touch on why we think this is so important or why personally it’s so important to me. And then thank you again for having us, and [I’m] looking forward to having this conversation today. So just at the start, I’m a third-generation veteran. Both my grandfathers fought and served in World War II, one in the Pacific, one in Europe. My father and my uncles all served during the during the Vietnam era. And I’m a 9/11 vet and served during nine eleven. So since the 1940s, my family has been, you know, leaning on and relying on the VA for all kinds of support and care. So, it’s a mission and it’s an institution that’s very important to me personally and very important to the fabric of our country. So, I think it’s no surprise the VA has struggled, you know, being in the early forefront of EHR … adoption to kind of being a laggard now in kind of EHR modernization. And there’s 9 million vets that really struggle to get access to timely care for some of the services they need as the VA works to modernize. So we’ve been spending a lot of time just talking to some of the leadership on the Hill around the momentum that seems to be building to try to modernize finally and kind of make access to care easier for veterans and and trying to make sure that as community care grows and the VA and veterans have more options to seek care both inside and outside the VA, that we really move the needle on reducing time to care and improving efficiency of care delivery for veterans. So that’s where we’re trying to, you know, spend time talking to the folks in SVAC and the Hill about, and learn about some of the strategies people are trying to implement when it comes to the Dole Act and some of the other things that people are trying to advance when it comes to improving access to care for veterans and really, we’re a small technology company that focuses on healthcare access. And we’re just, you know, trying to support improving access to care for veterans wherever and whenever we can because it’s a really important institution. It’s the largest health system in our country. And it’s probably one of the most outdated when it comes to the complexity of modernizing care for scheduling and finding appointments for veterans. And there’s a lot of things that I think we can do to help the VA as they work to improve some of those services.

Terry Gerton You’ve said that the VA was built for the last century and you’ve just mentioned the Electronic Health Record that the VA spent billions of dollars on and still doesn’t have an operational system. What would you recommend in terms of practice for modernizing some of those administrative functions of the VA?

Sean O’Connor Yeah, it’s complicated. So I’m not suggesting this isn’t complicated. It’s, the VA has gone through four different attempts to try to modernize and it’s still not successful yet in trying to get to the end goal of improving access to care for veterans and having a global view of care. So I think the first thing we’ve been talking to folks about is, today everything works in silos. And it’s tough to leverage the size and sophistication of the VA caregivers when everything’s in silos. And there’s close to 130 different VistA instances, a growing number of Oracle instances. And one of the leaders we talked to at the VA last time we were in D.C. said that the complexity of VA care delivery is beyond human comprehension. There’s how customized each of those VistA instances are. They’re all a unique Snowflake. They don’t talk to each other, they don’t share inventory. One of the VISNs we’re talking to now about a project, there’s roughly 10,000 appointments that go unutilized every month in his hospital because these different EHR instances don’t talk to each other. So one of the first things we’re talking about is, you know, trying to break down those data cells to bring all the supply and all the demand into one queue. And this is what we do for some of the other largest health systems in the country, Kaiser and other folks, where we take this global view of inventory and then you can use, you know, AI and some of these sophisticated navigation tools that have been built in the digital age of healthcare since the pandemic, to start to look at how you load balance that network a little more efficiently, how you share resources, how you improve internal utilization, improve efficiency, and reduce care gaps across boards. So I think until the VA finds a way through either a massive conversion to a centralized EHR or finding ways to work with technology entrepreneurs and vendors that can break down some of these data silos, they’ll continue to have the problem of trying to transition to a large EMR system in Oracle and through that process still have these 130 other systems and up to 24 different scheduling solutions that have been customized across the various VISNs, none of them working together, none of them sharing information across each other. So you have the largest health system in the country, 9 million veterans and their family members that we’re supposed to provide and care for, and none of this stuff talks to each other to share capacity, to share utilization, to share best practices. It’s a very fragmented, siloed and complicated environment. So until we find ways to break down those silos and share, leverage the power of tech and data to kind of level that playing field, it’s going to be very difficult to move anything in a substantial manner, we think.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Sean O’Connor. He’s a Navy veteran and co founder and chief strategy officer at DexCare. The VA is not the only federal agency that’s bad at a big bang tech deployment. So when you talk about an agency-wide solution that breaks down silos, anybody who’s been around for a while probably rolls their eyes at us. What would intermediate sorts of technology be that could provide some solution while an agency-wide solution is underway?

Sean O’Connor Yeah, we’ve been a big proponent in working with other really large healthcare systems in the country and doing, you know, scalable, strategically thought-out proof of concepts and smaller fragments first and then learning and scaling and iterating and adopting quickly. So I think one of the things the VA has for it is it does have the VISN network and the ability to kind of do proof of concepts in some of these smaller regional health systems, learn, iterate and adopt and then look to scale from there. We think that’s the best way to do this stuff. That’s how we’ve done it with Kaiser and some of these other really large healthcare systems. You do smaller proof of concepts, you learn the integration points that are important to move the needle. You begin with the end in mind and understanding the success metrics that are going to be important to drive this. And then you learn, iterate and scale quickly from there with bottom-down and top-down support is the only way to kind of move these things. And at the same time, being very conscious of the providers as well. So all of the technology companies we’ve built, we built inside of large healthcare systems. And often cases, technology is only 50% of the problem. Understanding the provider and the change management and the amount of pressure that those folks are under to provide care, and not being disruptive to their workflows and making their lives less efficient. You have to be very thoughtful about that, or none of the stuff is going to go anywhere. You can’t just have tech for tech’s sake. It has to understand the provider world and how the provider interacts. And you have to be very purposeful in how you build these things out to scale from the bottom up over time.

Terry Gerton One of the big points that you’ve emphasized is real time access to care, especially for mental health services and especially in rural communities. Those are two big complicating aspects of the VA’s network. How can the VA think about addressing those kinds of issues? Is it a technology solution? Is it a culture solution? How do they get on to real time care, especially in mental health?

Sean O’Connor I think it’s both. And I think the hard part is it’s probably more culture than technology. But it’s a — I don’t know of a bigger issue for us to kind of rally around as a community to try to improve access care of veterans than this. So when I transitioned from the service in 2004, the VA received roughly $21 billion to support its mission, and 17 men and women took their life every day to suicide: friends, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives. Fast forward to 2024, the VA received $121 billion to support its mission, and that number is still the same. Roughly 17 men and women, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters took their lives to suicide. We’ve lost more people to suicide in the last 20 years than we did in, you know, during the 9/11 era and supporting the 9/11 kind of ground-on combat. So it’s it’s a crisis that’s not talked about. We haven’t really moved the needle on it despite spending over $100 billion more to support the healthcare delivery mission of the VA. So it’s clearly not just a technology issue, but not having — going back to your first question, Terry — not having the ability to share resources across the network and reduce time to care and make it easier for vets to find and get into the services initially is a problem. I won’t say that’s the biggest problem, but it certainly doesn’t help. So … mental health services in the veteran community is a really complicated issue … It’s not just about having access to cares. You know, a big portion of people that need the care aren’t even enrolled in the VA, and then there’s a homeless population that’s not enrolled in the VA. And how do you how do you outreach and bring those folks in that need the help the most? So it’s a complicated issue, but not being able to have one 24/7-365 on-demand network that shares capacity across mental health services for the VA is an issue as well. And the technology issues are easier to address. We just got to have people that are willing to address them. The cultural issues and the stigmatism around, you know, raising your hand for help is a harder issue to address, but it’s just something we gotta continue to talk about because it’s a travesty that in over 20 years, that number really hasn’t moved, despite putting, you know, literally over $100 billion more at the overall global healthcare issue.

Terry Gerton Well you talked about capacity there and certainly building out the community network of care is a big issue and a big initiative for VA. Are there issues on the community participant side of this so, that community care providers don’t understand the VA as much as the VA doesn’t understand community care providers?

Sean O’Connor We’re going to run out of time on your podcast. Yes, so that’s to me like, you know, obviously selfishly, like, we want to help the VA as a technology company, but the importance of improving access to care for veterans is at the heart of everything that we’re trying to do here. So the beauty of the VA to me — I mention I’m a third-generation veteran, it is a unique community. So when I when I first got out of the military, I moved to Seattle, like, it was a tough transition going from the military to the corporate world. I didn’t know anybody up here. My family and I grew up in Jersey, all my family was on the East Coast. I would literally just go to the Seattle VA and hang out in the lobby and just talk to people that you know had their Vietnam hat on. It’s a community and a culture that you know, should be protected in this institution, in this country. And some of the caregivers, you know, we’re talking about the technology piece here. These are some of the most mission-driven caregivers in the world. Like, they can make more money outside the VA. They choose to work with this community and this provider network for a reason. So there is an understanding of that that I think we need to protect because there is an understanding of someone that’s come back from deployment and has been through some serious high optempo stuff that comes back, and you just get a different conversation with your primary care provider in the VA than somebody outside the VA. So I think there’s that element that we have to protect. But there’s also the element, frankly, that you know, as a veteran, I like the option to have choice to go outside the VA for services that they may not be expert in. So certainly, you know, wound care, PTSD, that stuff, I think should stay in the VA. But maybe, you know, I’m a former athlete and tore my knee up and can get into an ortho appointment outside the VA. I want to have that optionality. And some stuff like that, the history isn’t as important to the veteran for some of those conditions. So, to have the optionality to go out there and do that is important. But what we’re seeing, at least for some of the areas that we work with is the community providers, one, they don’t have a lot of excess capacity to share with the VA. Every health system is stretched to the gill. Like there’s not a ton of health systems raising hands saying, hey, we have providers sitting on their hands. It’s six to eight months to get into an ortho appointment in some of these large health systems as it is. So to have that capacity to share with the VA, one, is difficult. Some of those things I think are bigger deals than others to your point of, you know, should there be a continuum to care in the VA? I’d argue some services is, just do it in the VA and some are easily, you know, sourced out. And then there’s the whole issue of, when they’re sourced out, how do you manage the care gaps for the veteran? How do we close some of those care gaps as those services continue to rise and the disparate records continue to grow across the network?

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Mahri Stainnak got the call the day after President Donald Trump took office: the Office of Personnel Management’s human resources office was putting them on administrative leave “effective immediately,” while the agency “investigates your radical and wasteful DEI activity.”

Stainnak was surprised by the news. Before the Trump administration, they served as OPM’s deputy director of the governmentwide Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. But now they worked as the director of OPM’s talent innovation group, a human resources job focused on recruiting and retaining talent across the federal government.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not in diversity, equity and inclusion.’ I started a new role in a job that has nothing to do with diversity, equity and inclusion.’ So I felt incredibly shocked and confused,” Stainnak said.

The second call came 48 hours later: Stainnak, a nonbinary person who had worked in the federal government for more than 16 years, received a reduction in force notice, as part of the Trump administration’s plan to root out DEI programs across the federal government.

Stainnak is now part of a class-action lawsuit filed this week in the D.C. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., claims the Trump administration unlawfully targeted and fired federal employees perceived to be associated with DEI work — even if their current jobs had nothing to do with it.

Mary Kuntz, an attorney at the law firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C. who is representing the former employees, said the administration’s actions “clearly” violate the Civil Service Reform Act, because employees like Stainnak were fired for previous work in DEI positions.

“You can’t RIF somebody from a position they’re not in,” Kuntz said. “They sought to punish Mahri [Stainnak] for previous DEI work. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.”

Kuntz said the lawsuit claims that the administration’s push to “eviscerate” DEI programs also had a disproportionate impact on people of color, women, non-binary individuals, and violates Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“The DEI folks were working on behalf of people with disabilities, people who are non-native speakers of English. They were advocating for protected groups,” she said.

On the campaign trail last year, President Donald Trump pledged to “eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the entire federal government,” and characterized these programs as promoting “un-American” ideology.

On his first days in office, Trump signed executive orders that directed agencies to create lists of employees associated with DEI going back to Nov. 5, 2024 — the date of the presidential election.  The complaint says agencies were directed to remove those employees, “regardless of their current roles or duties.”

“President Trump’s directives did not merely represent a change in presidential priorities — a normal occurrence when presidential administrations change. Rather, they were targeted actions intended to punish perceived political enemies, as well as to eliminate from the federal workforce women, people of color, and those, like plaintiffs, who advocated for or were perceived as advocating for protected racial or gender groups,” the complaint states.

The complaint says agencies set competitive levels for the RIFs so narrowly that federal employees were unable to compete for retention, and that those impacted by RIFs were not considered for reassignment to other jobs.

“I absolutely feel targeted on the basis of what the Trump administration believes my beliefs are, because I was not working in a diversity, equity and inclusion role in any way at the time when the new administration came in, or at the time I was placed on administrative leave,” Stainnak said.

For all the Trump administration’s actions to strip DEI out of the federal workforce, Kuntz said the president’s executive orders don’t go into any detail to define DEI.

“He characterizes them as illegal and discriminatory and various other things … but doesn’t define them,” Kuntz said. “You can’t decide that somebody is a different party than the party in the White House and decide to fire them on that basis.”

The lawsuit states that the total number of federal employees impacted by the DEI rollback fis unknown, but says news reports suggest it could be “potentially in the thousands.”

The complaint states that at least 40 women or non-binary individuals, and more than 40 people of color received layoffs in connection with the Trump administration’s directives.

Stainnak and their colleagues filed an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board in March, but Kuntz said that appeal and similar cases brought before the Office of Special Counsel and agencies’ Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) offices, have stalled.

In their last role, Stainnak helped agencies recruit top talent into the federal workforce. But they said the Trump administration’s purge of DEI workers has pushed out individuals who worked on bipartisan projects.

Former federal employees leading the lawsuit include a former operations manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs who “helped ensure that veterans were not inhibited from accessing earned benefits due to cultural or socioeconomic barriers,” a Department of Homeland Security Employee who led language competency efforts at the border to advance intelligence gathering and the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“By illegally targeting people based on the Trump administration’s assumptions about our political beliefs, or by targeting us based on who we are, this administration actually is hurting the people who work and live in this country, because now these dedicated, hardworking federal servants are not in their jobs providing the critical services that they do, whether it’s responding to emergencies like hurricanes and making sure folks have drinking water and shelter, or making sure our transportation systems are safe and timely. This action is really hurting the people who live in this country,” Stainnak said.

The post Federal employees who left ‘DEI’ roles still fired under Trump administration purge, lawsuit claims first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving toward a more operational approach to cybersecurity.

This means VA is applying a deeper focus on protecting the attack surfaces and closing off threat vectors that put veterans’ data at risk.

Eddie Pool, the acting principal assistant secretary for information and technology and acting principal deputy chief information officer at VA, said the agency is changing its cybersecurity posture to reflect a cyber dominance approach.

“That’s a move away from the traditional and an exclusively compliance based approach to cybersecurity, where we put a lot of our time resources investments in compliance based activities,” Pool said on Ask the CIO. “For example, did someone check the box on a form? Did someone file something in the right place? We’re really moving a lot of our focus over to the risk-based approach to security, pushing things like zero trust architecture, micro segmentation of our networks and really doing things that are more focused on the operational landscape. We are more focused on protecting those attack surfaces and closing off those threat vectors in the cyber space.”

A big part of this move to cyber dominance is applying the concepts that make up a zero trust architecture like micro segmentation and identity and access management.

Pool said as VA modernizes its underlying technology infrastructure, it will “bake in” these zero trust capabilities.

“Over the next several years, you’re going to see that naturally evolve in terms of where we are in the maturity model path. Our approach here is not necessarily to try to map to a model. It’s really to rationalize what are the highest value opportunities that those models bring, and then we prioritize on those activities first,” he said. “We’re not pursuing it in a linear fashion. We are taking parts and pieces and what makes the most sense for the biggest thing for our buck right now, that’s where we’re putting our energy and effort.”

One of those areas that VA is focused on is rationalizing the number of tools and technologies it’s using across the department. Pool said the goal is to get down to a specific set instead of having the “31 flavors” approach.

“We’re going to try to make it where you can have any flavor you want so long as it’s chocolate. We are trying to get that standardized across the department,” he said. “That gives us the opportunity from a sustainment perspective that we can focus the majority of our resources on those enterprise standardized capabilities. From a security perspective, it’s a far less threat landscape to have to worry about having 100 things versus having two or three things.”

The business process reengineering priority

Pool added that redundancy remains a key factor in the security and tool rationalization effort. He said VA will continue to have a diversity of products in its IT investment portfolios.

“Where we are at is we are looking at how do we build that future state architecture, as elegantly and simplistically as possible so that we can manage it more effectively, they can protect it more securely,” he said.

In addition to standardizing on technology and cyber tools and technologies, Pool said VA is bringing the same approach to business processes for enterprisewide services.

He said over the years, VA has built up a laundry list of legacy technology all with different versions and requirements to maintain.

“We’ve done a lot over the years in the Office of Information and Technology to really standardize on our technology platforms. Now it’s time to leverage that, to really bring standard processes to the business,” he said. “What that does is that really does help us continue to put the veteran at the center of everything that we do, and it gives a very predictable, very repeatable process and expectation for veterans across the country, so that you don’t have different experiences based on where you live or where you’re getting your health care and from what part of the organization.”

Part of the standardization effort is that VA will expand its use of automation, particularly in processing of veterans claims.

Pool said the goal is to take more advantage of the agency’s data and use artificial intelligence to accelerate claims processing.

“The richness of the data and the standardization of our data that we’re looking at and how we can eliminate as many steps in these processes as we can, where we have data to make decisions, or we can automate a lot of things that would completely eliminate what would be a paper process that is our focus,” Pool said. “We’re trying to streamline IT to the point that it’s as fast and as efficient, secure and accurate as possible from a VA processing perspective, and in turn, it’s going to bring a decision back to the veteran a lot faster, and a decision that’s ready to go on to the next step in the process.”

Many of these updates already are having an impact on VA’s business processes. The agency said that it set a new record for the number of disability and pension claims processed in a single year, more than 3 million. That beat its record set in 2024 by more than 500,000.

“We’re driving benefit outcomes. We’re driving technology outcomes. From my perspective, everything that we do here, every product, service capability that the department provides the veteran community, it’s all enabled through technology. So technology is the underpinning infrastructure, backbone to make all things happen, or where all things can fail,” Pool said. “First, on the internal side, it’s about making sure that those infrastructure components are modernized. Everything’s hardened. We have a reliable, highly available infrastructure to deliver those services. Then at the application level, at the actual point of delivery, IT is involved in every aspect of every challenge in the department, to again, bring the best technology experts to the table and look at how can we leverage the best technologies to simplify the business processes, whether that’s claims automation, getting veterans their mileage reimbursement earlier or by automating processes to increase the efficacy of the outcomes that we deliver, and just simplify how the veterans consume the services of VA. That’s the only reason why we exist here, is to be that enabling partner to the business to make these things happen.”

The post At VA, cyber dominance is in, cyber compliance is out first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re a few weeks past the longest lapse in federal appropriations and maybe looking at another one in the end of January. So I want to work with you to put October and November into context. You’ve seen many shutdowns in your time on the Hill and now at Deloitte. How would you say this one differs from previous episodes, especially when it comes to your area of expertise, tax policy?

Anna Taylor Well, I do think it was different than what we’ve seen in years past. And part of that starts with just the way folks on the hill operated in it. I was really shocked that — my first sign that something was different was — I was shocked when I heard reporting that … the members and the staff that work in the Capitol building had left before we even hit midnight the night that we entered the shutdown. That’s not normal. In years past in shutdowns, you have frantic work happening behind the scenes where they’re trying to see if there’s any way to find a deal. And it was just obviously clear to all of them that they were so far away from a deal at that point that there was nothing to do. And so they left the building. And that was my first sign that this one was not normal and we were in for a longer shutdown. You know, in terms of the impact it has on tax administration and tax policy, it’s significant. You know, the fact that you had so many furloughed workers in the federal workforce and specifically at IRS and in Treasury, during that extended period definitely has an effect on customer service. It has an effect on their ability to move forward with their reg writing and guidance plans, which is in this moment, you know, where we’re just getting through a big piece of legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was signed into law back in the summer, and they’re in a very significant guidance process to go along with that bill right now. There’s a lot of work that needs to get done … I know that you know, the treasury and the IRS said much of that work went on during the shutdown. So I do think that there was some of that that didn’t stop, which is a good thing for taxpayers, but had to slow it down in some capacity. And when you think about just customer service for taxpayers and not being able to call and find somebody on the phone to talk to, certainly there were challenges there as well. So I do think there was that, you know, kind of tangible direct effect. Now, in terms of effect on tax policy, I think it’s jury still out. Obviously there wasn’t any sort of deal that ended the shutdown with additional legislation. So we didn’t have some big tax package coming out of the — sometimes you do see some sort of legislative deal come out of a — well, not often with a shutdown. Normally nobody wins in a shutdown. But when you’re reaching appropriations deals that don’t end in shutdown, sometimes you’ll see tax legislation attached to those kinds of deals. And, you know, we didn’t have that … There were not regular hearings and regular markups happening in the tax writing committees while we were in shutdown. And so there was probably a slowdown in some bills that are maybe under consideration because they weren’t being considered during the shutdown. And so I do think that probably it definitely had a direct effect on taxpayers who may have had an impact on customer service, but there’s also that effect of maybe slowing down policymaking as well.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Anna Taylor. She’s managing principal of the Tax Policy Group at Deloitte. Well, let’s talk about the specific impact on taxpayers. I mean, filing season is going to open in just a few weeks. Is there a reasonable expectation that the IRS and all of the companies that support tax filing will have written in the rules for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act provisions and anything else that might come up before the year end? Are tax filers going to have the systems ready to go?

Anna Taylor Well, I think that the Treasury and IRS have done a — they’ve made a real effort to try to get to the things from that bill first that were going to need to be implemented for taxpayers at the beginning of 2026. So I think in most cases, you have … already seen guidance come out on those things that are affecting individual taxpayers, like … the tipped income deduction and overtime pay, things like that. So they have already put out quite a bit of guidance in those spaces that will have a direct effect on individual taxpayers. There’s still a lot to go though. And, you know, you have business taxpayers who maybe aren’t filing on the same timeline as individuals. Some of that important guidance is still yet to come. But I do think that because of the thinking about the kind of end year for individuals, the administration has tried to prioritize those things that are going to need to be known on day one of the new year.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. You also mentioned the congressional tax writing committees and certainly as Congress has come back, the committees have quite a backlog. Can you give us any insight as to what they may be talking about in those committees?

Anna Taylor Well, they do have a full agenda. I mean, I think the first thing that you’re hearing a lot about if you turn on any news outlet right now is of course the thing that landed them in the shutdown to begin with, finding some sort of path forward on those Affordable Care Act premium tax credit — the enhancements for those credits. They didn’t reach any deal before they came out of the shutdown, but they did agree to keep working on it. So there was an agreement as part of coming out of that shutdown where Majority Leader Thune in the Senate said he will hold another round of votes on those credit extensions by the middle of December. So I do think that there’s conversations happening, both bipartisan and partisan, to see if there’s a path forward on figuring out a way to deal with health care costs and insurance premium costs. So that’s taking up a lot of time right now. In addition to that, there is interest from the committees to try to move some things that they’ve been working on for a while on a bipartisan basis. These are things that have been in works for years, honestly, and have pretty broad consensus support. Things like, you know, there’s a tax treaty with Taiwan that has moved through regular order in both the House and the Senate that I think people would like to see get over the finish line. There is, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee have worked on — they haven’t actually processed legislation, but they’ve put out a joint white paper on tax administration. So just some changes to make the system work better for taxpayers. I think that’s something they’re interested in trying to see if there’s opportunities to move together. And then there are a few expiring tax provisions on the business side of the ledger that haven’t been dealt with this year. You know, a lot of the expiring provisions on the individual side were included in that one big beautiful bill act back in the summer. But there are a couple of provisions like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. That’s an important one that does have an effect on people’s ability to get a job and on business’s ability to hire. And so that’s one that is set to expire at the end of this year that I do think there’s probably bipartisan interest in extending. So those are all things I think on the near-term agenda, if they’re in an environment to be able to move some bipartisan legislation. And we all know right now that’s a big no.

Terry Gerton Well, speaking of that environment, 2026 is an election year for many members of Congress. Do you think in that environment they really will be able to move some of these big pieces of tax legislation or will they maybe just nibble around the edges?

Anna Taylor It’s a really good question. And … when I look in my crystal ball, it’s cloudy, you know. I think that, even in the most political of times, you can sometimes get smaller packages of bipartisan consensus product through. So, you know, I’m still hopeful that they can — they’re going to have to do something on appropriations again when they get to the end of January. That’s when that next government funding deadline will be reached. And so there is potentially a bipartisan vehicle that will be heading our way come late January, assuming we’re not headed towards another shutdown at that point. And so I really do think there’s a possibility that if they reach some sort of funding deal, you know, as they’re working through it in December and into January, that there’s the potential that you could see some tax legislation move along with it, possibly. The later — and I think this goes without saying — the later you get into an election year, the harder it is to do bipartisan things. So when we get into, you know, maybe late summer, early fall, I’ll stop being as optimistic. But until then, I think that there’s still a chance they could move some of the smaller consensus items.

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This column was originally published on Roger Waldron’s blog at The Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement and was republished here with permission from the author.

On Nov. 3, Jeff Koses, the General Services Administration’s senior procurement executive, posted an article on LinkedIn announcing that the “[Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO)] is in play.” The article highlighted that GSA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security had issued all the deviations with Nov. 3 as the effective date for the changes. A new era begins for the Federal Acquisition Regulation as agencies and departments continue to work towards implementing the RFO deviations and updating their supplemental acquisition regulations. The procurement policy teams responsible for drafting the deviations, the Practitioner’s Albums, and the FAR Companion deserve praise for the thoughtful, integrated, and comprehensive effort. The streamlined RFO is an improvement on the FAR, providing a clear, concise, and coherent acquisition framework for government and industry.

As we know, the next phase of the process, the public rulemaking, is critical to the long-term success of the RFO. The rule making process provides the public, including key stakeholders across the procurement community, with the formal opportunity, consistent with law, to comment on the deviations in the form of proposed or interim rules. A robust, transparent process will ensure that the deviations become final rules, cementing the RFO. The Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement’s members look forward to the start of the public rule making phase and the opportunity to formally comment on the revised FAR.

The RFO is central to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement system. The FAR establishes the ground rules for government and industry transacting business in support of agency missions. The RFO streamlines and clarifies the ground rules thereby increasing competition and access to the commercial market.

Leveraging the RFO to deliver best value mission support for customer agencies and the American people centers on three critical elements: (1) requirements development (2) the acquisition workforce; and (3) operational commercial best practices. 

1. Developing Sound Requirements

Clear, concise, and well communicated requirements are foundational to successful procurement outcomes that deliver best value mission support. Program offices must play a central role in developing requirements. In this regard, coordination between senior program managers and contracting officers drives effective requirements development for complex requirements. Part and parcel of requirements development is market research. Understanding the capabilities and technologies in the commercial market will inform sound requirements. Too often, government requirements reflect a “Hail Mary” approach that seeks a capability well beyond what is currently commercially available rather acquiring the 80 percent commercial solution that can meet mission needs. As with most “Hail Marys” these requirements often end unfulfilled and undelivered.

Finally, today’s outcome-based contracts are yesterday’s performance-based contracts. The administration rightly has identified outcome-based requirements as a strategy that can increase competition, improve performance and achieve greater savings. The long-standing challenge of outcome-based contracting is the articulation and implementation of clear outcomes and associated measures to support contractor performance and government contract administration. It all starts with the statement of objectives. Management focus on and investment in outcome-based requirements development is a commercial best practice. The government should look to emulate this commercial best practice to unlock the positive potential of outcome-based contracting. Perhaps leveraging technology (e.g. artificial intelligence) for data analysis and analytics can support the government’s requirements development process.

2. Embracing The Acquisition Workforce

The RFO vests greater discretion to the contracting officer. Some of the commentary around the RFO has raised the potential of increased inconsistency in contracting operations due to greater discretion. The Practitioner’s Albums, FAR Companion, and Category Management Buying Guides are the starting point for the acquisition workforce. As the implementation of the RFO moves forward, translating real life experience with the revised ground rules into a set of operational best practices will be important in fostering consistency. Further, consistent, strategic investments in acquisition training and professional development will enhance sound decision making. Finally, management support and corresponding lines of authority in contracting operations will foster consistency and accountability in the process.

3. Adopting Commercial Best Practices in Procurement Operations  

The hallmark of the RFO is its leveraging of the commercial market. The RFO reduces the number of clauses applicable to commercial contracts, strengthens the preference for commercial products and services, and streamlines the overall procurement process. As a policy statement, the RFO recognizes that access to, and competition from the commercial market drives innovation, efficiency, and increases value for the government mission.

Adopting commercial best practices in procurement operations is the third key element in leveraging the RFO to deliver best value mission support for the American people. For example, as mentioned above, it is a commercial best practice to invest significant time and resources in requirements development. Sound outcome-based requirements are the blueprint for success. Vigorous competition for sound requirements is the single most effective way to drive value for the taxpayer. Avoiding government-unique, noncommercial practices is the other side of the coin. Operational practices that overregulate or reregulate the procurement process will limit competition, reduce access to the commercial market, and undermine mission support. It will be incumbent at the operational level to embrace commercial best practices while avoiding/eliminating noncommercial practices that undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement process.

The post Leveraging the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative isn’t just a tech upgrade — it’s a full-stack transformation of how the force fights, communicates and makes decisions.

Our new Special Bulletin Review dives into how the Army Futures Command, PEO C3N and the 4th Infantry Division are collaborating with industry to build a scalable, data-centric ecosystem. It must support artificial intelligence, enable rapid decision-making and withstand contested environments.

What Army leaders told us:

• “The first time soldiers are seeing it is immediately upon contract award.” — Col. Chris Anderson, NGC2 program manager, Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications and Network
• “We’re doing this every day. … You have to fail a little bit.” — Lt. Col. Nate Platz, deputy chief of staff for NGC2 for the 4th Infantry Division
• “Success looks like data free flowing across the battlefield.” — Anthony Nigara, vice president of business development, sales and strategy, L3Harris Technologies
• “This is the most significant transformation of command and control in the service’s history.” — Brig. Gen. Mike Kaloostian, director of the C2 Cross-Functional Team, Transformation and Training Command

Get insights into Ivy Sting exercises, multivendor contracting strategies, how the Army is preparing for AI-enabled warfare and more.

Download the e-book now!

The post Special Bulletin Review: How the Army is rewiring command and control for the future fight first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton You’ve got an interesting story about a protest this morning from a company who actually won the bid. Tell us about that.

Zach Prince Sure. So this involved a Department of Homeland Security procurement from ICE for detention services for folks detained for immigration law violations. So the protester here is a company, Active Deployment Systems. They’re a Texas-based company that markets itself as specializing in rapidly deploying and operating temporary facilities — so, exactly what ICE is looking for for this procurement. So ICE said that they were going to be issuing five or more IDIQ contracts, and then task orders would be competed for particular tasks. Each of the offerers would bid on only those types of tasks that they want to be considered for going forward. ADS, Active Deployment Systems — they received an award, but they were one of 42 offerers that received the award. And you get the sense reading the protest that they don’t like the fact they’re competing now with fewer, slightly fewer than they were competing with for the IDIQ award, but not many. So it’s still gonna be big, big competitions going forward. Maybe they’re trying to level or eliminate some of those competitors.

Terry Gerton So this was an IDIQ contract, right? Does this what does this tell us about the structure of these? Was ADS’s expectation reasonable in terms of the number of winners that they would have?

Zach Prince No, and in fact this is happening pretty commonly where agencies have these very large IDIQ awards that they might issue 50, 100+ individual IDIQs that, it does narrow the playing field a little bit going forward, but what it really does for the agency is speed along the competition for that next stage when they actually have the identifiable requirements that they’re going to have bids on.

Terry Gerton And you can kind of understand ADS’s perspective. I guess the fewer the competitors on — or the fewer the awardees — on the actual contract, the more likelihood they have of winning those orders and the higher their revenue might be. So their projections might have been off a little.

Zach Prince Yeah, that’s right. And you know, I think the better arguments that they had here, and maybe their real concern was about the price structure of this IDIQ. But the problem was that they raised these challenges while also submitting a bid for a contract they received, right. So to tell you a little bit more about that, for each of the objectives that you could bid on for this IDIQ, there was a set pricing volume that contained the government’s independent government estimate for what prices should be to be fair and reasonable. Among those estimates was a hard cap, essentially a hard cap on prices per bed per detainee. ADS argue that this harms them if they’re stuck with this because it might put them in a losing position going forward for the actual task orders.

Terry Gerton So the court kind of said that, well, the time to challenge that is not after you’ve won, but before you’ve won, right?

Zach Prince Yeah, that’s right. And they did try, to give ADS credit. They challenged this at the agency level and an agency level protest. But agency level protests don’t actually stop anything. They just tell the agency, hey, we think this is unworkable. You’re hoping the agency looks at it and says, Oh, yeah, you’re right. But here they didn’t. So, you know, ADS took a contract based on this price structure that they think isn’t proper. And as the court noted, they don’t have to bid on any task orders. So if they really think that this is a losing proposition for them, first of all, they shouldn’t have bid on the contract. And the same thing is true for the 50 something other offerors. But now they don’t have to take losing contracts. They can do the analysis on a task order basis and say, we don’t want to be part of this. Whether it’s good business for the agency, well, maybe not, but I think the agency was moving quickly and just wants to get this thing done for urgent needs to be fulfilled.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Zach Prince. He’s a partner at Haynes Boone. So we talked a little bit about ICE’s strategy and you’re seeing this more often in these IDIQs, where agencies will bring on a lot of winners and then use this as a means to simplify later competition.

Zach Prince Yeah, we are seeing quite a lot of this. And I think there are a couple reasons for it. One is perhaps strategically, from a protest perspective, that this — if you just issue contracts essentially to everyone who submitted a reasonably responsive offer, then you’re limiting the IDIQ level protests, which generally can be heard at various forums, Court of Federal Claims, GAO. Maybe then you could have protests of the task order competitions, but those are limited only to GAO and only when they’re above certain dollar values. So the protest possibility becomes much more limited. You also can only have protests for whoever bid on the initial IDIQ or from whoever bid on the initial IDIQ. So it might be a management of protest strategy. It might just be because if you can get a framework in place from the agency that has the pricing mechanisms and the ordering mechanisms, it makes it a lot faster to buy what you need later on.

Terry Gerton So do you take any lessons from this particular protest resolution on how the court views these kind of arguments?

Zach Prince Yeah, I think in general, even if you haven’t waived an argument because you didn’t bring it up before, which it usually is the case. That is, if you submit a proposal and you have arguments that the solicitation was ambiguous or otherwise flawed, you can’t then complain later. That’s not always the case if you’ve launched agency level protests like ADS did here or there’s some other exception. But you really can’t have your cake and eat it too in this regard. And contractors are in a tough position, because you don’t want to be kicked out of competition for choosing not to bid. You don’t want to annoy the customer by protesting, perhaps unnecessarily, in advance. But if you don’t have clarity on terms or you’re gonna have to accept terms you don’t like, the protest mechanism is what’s there for you.

Terry Gerton Then should contractors change the way they approach these large IDIQs? Is there a different competition strategy that they should be employing to be more competitive going forward?

Zach Prince I don’t think there really is, unfortunately. I think — I have this conversation with clients all the time where there is a very ambiguous RFP, RFQ. I don’t know what it means. The agency won’t respond to questions and it makes a significant difference for the business on how they put their proposal together. But if they don’t bid, then they’re totally out of the game. If they bid making assumptions that prove to be unwarranted because the agency thinks it means something else, they might take a loss. So they could protest and annoy the customer and potentially delay the procurement. They can’t always protest because the protest rights are not so sweeping. And it also costs a lot of money. Or they just proceed and hope for the best.

Terry Gerton Or as the court told ADS, don’t take an order.

Zach Prince Yeah, that’s right. And I think ADS is likely going to take orders. I mean that was what they told the court. They want to keep this contract.

Terry Gerton This is an interesting case, Zach. Thanks for sharing it with us today.

Zach Prince Sure. Thanks for having me, Terry.

The post A protest from a winner? A recent case shows why timing matters when challenging solicitation terms first appeared on Federal News Network.

• More moves to reorganize the Army take effect today. The new Army Western Hemisphere Command will officially come into being with its headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The new organization combines the existing U.S. Army North, U.S. Army South and Army Forces Command under one umbrella before those organizations are formally disestablished next October. The new command will also absorb the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, Air Traffic Services Command and the 1st Army.
  (More moves to reorganize the Army take effect today - U.S. Army)
• Workforce reductions have become a top challenge at the Office of Personnel Management, according to an agency watchdog. OPM’s inspector general said the agency’s rapid staffing losses this year have created gaps in its ability to operate effectively. According to OPM, the reductions are meant to enhance efficiency. But a new IG report warns that the staffing losses could lead to significant challenges and disruptions in the agency’s work. OPM is on track to lose more than one-third of its entire workforce by the end of the year.
  (Top management challenges for fiscal year 2026 - Office of Personnel Management, Office of Inspector General)
• Close to two-thirds of Americans believe management of the federal government has been heading in the wrong direction. A majority also says the government is operating worse now than it was a year ago. The new findings from the Partnership for Public Service indicate that much of the public is pessimistic about the impacts of the Trump administration’s federal workforce cuts. In a recent survey from the Partnership, one-quarter of respondents said they believe the government is moving in the right direction.
  (Survey of Americans on management of federal government - Partnership for Public Service)
• Professional services contractors get ready: OASIS+ Phase 2 is here. The General Services Administration is adding five new domains to the existing multiple award contract and opening all new and existing functional areas for bids from new companies in January. GSA said the five new domains under OASIS+ Phase 2 will include business administration, financial services, human capital, marketing and public relations, and social services. Vendors should be on the look out for a pre-amendment notice on SAM.gov around December 16, which will detail the draft scorecards for all domains.
  (OASIS+ phase 2 is here - General Services Administration)
• The Department of Health and Human Services is setting new restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities. A new HHS-wide reasonable accommodation policy says all requests for telework, remote work or reassignment must be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official. Frontline supervisors no longer have the authority to make those decisions. A memo from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says all telework related to reasonable accommodations will be repealed.
  (CDC tells staff telework reasonable accommodations ‘will be repealed,’ as HHS sets stricter rules - Federal News Network)
• Unions are asking a federal court to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed so far. An amendment to an ongoing lawsuit asks a federal judge in San Francisco to reverse more reductions in force under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown. The continuing resolution states agencies can’t use federal funds to carry out RIFs between mid-November and the end of January. But agencies have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between October 1 and November 12. The amended lawsuit seeks to force the departments of State, Education and Defense, as well as the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration to rescind more RIFs.
  (Unions file emergency request with court to block State Dept layoffs, reverse RIFs at other agencies - Federal News Network)
• The Pentagon inspector general’s long-awaited report on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal app to discuss operational details concluded that Hegseth “sent sensitive, nonpublic, operational information” from his personal cell phone, which violates Defense Department rules that prohibit the use of personal devices and nonapproved apps for official business. The IG also determined that Hegseth’s use of a personal device for official work “risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.” The Pentagon only provided a partial copy of messages from Hegseth’s personal cell phone. The IG relied on the transcript of the public chat posted by The Atlantic for this investigation. The IG said Hegseth declined to be interviewed for this evaluation. Meanwhile, the Pentagon said the report is a “total exoneration” of Hegseth and that “the case is closed.”
  (Hegseth's use of Signal violated information sharing rules, risked troops' safety, DoD IG finds - Department of Defense)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is urging agencies and industry to take action against a new cyber threat from China. At least eight organizations, including federal agencies, IT companies and critical infrastructure providers, have fallen victim to a new and sophisticated malware attack. CISA is telling all organizations to take action to protect their systems from BRICKSTORM. Nick Andersen, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said the malware could enable long term access, disruption and potential sabotage. "BRICKSTORM is a sophisticated malware," he said. "It has advanced functionality to conceal communications, move laterally and tunnel into victim networks. It can also automatically reinstall or restart the malware if disrupted." CISA issued a new analysis and recommendations yesterday for how organizations can protect themselves from BRICKSTORM.
  (Agencies, IT companies impacted by latest malware from China - Federal News Network)

The post More moves to reorganize Army take effect today first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Pentagon’s plan to fix its decades-old material weaknesses — its inability to reliably track government property in the possession of contractors — is failing, a new inspector general evaluation finds.

The Pentagon IG concluded that the department’s corrective action plan — which calls on DoD components to use a software application called the Government Furnished Property Module within the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment — has stalled due to a lack of enforcement from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and slow adoption by the military services.

Auditors warn that if DoD components don’t implement the GFP module, the department risks missing its goal of achieving a clean audit opinion by 2028.

“The implementation of that GFP module is the key to getting this to work,” Mark Thomas, DoD IG’s supervisory auditor, told Federal News Network.

One of the technical challenges, Thomas said, is that each military service uses its own accountable property system of record, or APSR, to track government assets in the hands of contractors. The office of the secretary of defense, however, wants the services to connect their systems to the GFP module.  

“That is something that the components have not been able to do yet. They’re still working to implement that. Each of the components has corrective action dates for that that are still into the future,” Thomas said. 

“The goal would be to complete everything by 2028, preferably before 2028 so that the auditors, as they come in to do the work, that control environment has been established and been working before the auditors come in and start to do some of the work. That would be the best way to do it,” he added.

But some of the timelines to remediate this weakness stretch beyond the 2028 deadline. 

“Unless there’s a change in those dates, then they’ll be at risk for missing the deadline,” Thomas said. 

Each military service has its own reasons for lagging in implementing the department-wide solution, but most of those reasons center around the same issue — every component is grappling with its own longstanding material weakness in accounting for government property in the possession of contractors. 

“They have their own systems which differ from component to component. So they have their own technical challenges and how their particular system in the Air Force functions and how it accounts for property versus how the Navy does it. Each group is kind of working on their own technical challenges and how they’re going to report this into their own APSR — they are busy doing that and they’re actively trying to clean that up so that they can all get opinions on their financial statements,” Thomas said. 

But the IG found that this component-level focus has come at the expense of the broader, department-wide effort. 

Thomas said the services have been receptive to adapting the department-wide solution, but each faces a number of technical challenges connecting their systems to the GFP module. 

“They understand the importance of it, and they understand what this really would give us if there is a functioning GFP module across the department. This would really give the department a larger bird’s eye view of all of the property that they have in the possession of contractors. And it would provide that enterprise level look and ability to tell we have so much property at contractor x,” Thomas said. 

Meanwhile, DoD leaders have not mandated the use of the GFP module, which is stalling the department’s efforts to remediate this material weakness. The audit found that the OSD could be “more forceful” in recommending and implementing the department-wide solution.

“They need to be more direct in saying that we will use this module, all the components will use this module. That was one of the areas that we thought was weak, that the department could improve their messaging, and they could improve to be more direct and require the use of this module,” Thomas said.

The post DoD’s plan to track contractor-held property is failing, putting 2028 audit goal at risk first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Health and Human Services is setting new restrictions on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.

A new, departmentwide reasonable accommodation policy shared with employees this week states that all requests for telework, remote work, or reassignment must be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official — a decision that is likely to slow the approval process.

The new policy, as Federal News Network reported on Monday, generally restricts employees from using telework as an “interim accommodation,” while the agency processes their reasonable accommodation request.

“Telework is not appropriate for an interim accommodation, unless approved at the assistant secretary level or above,” the new policy states.

The updated reasonable accommodation policy, signed on Sept. 15 by HHS Chief Human Capital Officer and Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas Nagy, Jr., replaces a more than decade-old policy, and applies to all HHS component agencies.

“This policy is effective immediately and must be followed by HHS component in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and departmental policy,” the policy states.

It’s not clear how long it will take HHS to review each individual reasonable accommodation request. But HHS, which now handles all reasonable accommodation requests from its component agencies, faces a backlog of more than 3,000 cases — which it expects will take six to eight months to complete.

The new policy allows frontline supervisors to grant “simple, obvious requests” without consulting with an HHS reasonable accommodation coordinator, but prohibits them from granting telework or remote work.

“Telework and reassignment are not simple, obvious requests,” the policy states.

The policy also directs HHS to collect data on the “number of requests that involve telework or remote work, in whole or in part.”

A memo from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that “all telework related to RAs will be repealed,” and that CDC leadership will no longer be allowed to approve telework as an interim accommodation.

“Staff currently on an agreement will need to report back to the worksite,” the memo states.

The CDC memo states employees can still request telework as a reasonable accommodation, but “until they are reviewed and approved by HHS they must report to the worksite.”

It also states that employees can request what was previously known as “medical telework,” which can be approved by the CDC chief operating officer for around six months in length.

According to the memo, CDC can temporarily grant medical telework to employees who are dealing with recovering from chemotherapy, hip replacement surgery or pregnancy complications.

If HHS rejects a reasonable accommodation, the CDC memo states an employee can challenge the decision before an appeal board. The CDC, however, expects that appeal will “also take months to process,” and that employees must continue to work from the office while the appeal is pending.

“We know this is going to be tough, especially on front-line supervisors,” the CDC memo states.

HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement that the new reasonable accommodation policy “establishes department-wide procedures to ensure consistency with federal law.”

“Interim accommodations may be provided while cases move through the reasonable-accommodation process toward a final determination. The department remains committed to processing these requests as quickly as possible,” Hilliard said.

Jodi Hershey, a former FEMA reasonable accommodation specialist and the founder of EASE, LLC, a firm that helps employers and employees navigate workplace accessibility issues, said the new policy suggests HHS is “playing fast and loose with the Rehabilitation Act, and what’s required of them” under the legislation.

“This is the most inefficient way to handle reasonable accommodations possible. By centralizing reasonable accommodation-deciding officials, you’re removing the decision from the person who knows the most about the job. The immediate supervisor or manager knows what the job is, how the job is normally performed. They know the employee. When you remove that level of familiarity from the process, and you move it up the chain … that person has no idea what the job even is. They don’t know the person that they’re dealing with. They don’t know the office. They don’t know the particulars at all,” Hershey said.

In a message obtained by Federal News Network, Cheryl Prigodich, principal deputy director for the CDC’s Office of Safety, Security and Asset Management, told an HHS employee that because their one-year reasonable accommodation had expired, they needed to submit a new request for approval.

“The timeframe for approval on your request is not known at this time. In the interim, however, we are not allowed to approve telework as an interim accommodation for a reasonable accommodation,” Prigodich said.

Prigodich told the employee that, according to HHS, employees must either use annual leave, 80 hours of annual ad hoc telework available to each HHS employee, take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act or report to the workplace “with the possibility of another acceptable accommodation (work tour, physical modifications to the workplace, etc).”

Prigodich directed the employee to submit their request to renew their reasonable accommodation request to the HHS assistant secretary for administration, but recommended that they “efficiently summarize your concern and request (with appropriate documentation) into no greater than a single-page memo.”

“The ASA will not want to comb through previous emails or too many attachments,” Prigodich said.

The one-page request, she added, should include “why no other alternative accommodation will work,” documentation of the disability, and records showing the previously approved reasonable accommodation.

“I know this is frustrating. We are certainly frustrated too — and this represents a significant policy change for a great number of people who rely on this type of accommodation for their personal health and needs,” Prigodich said.

The post CDC tells staff telework reasonable accommodations ‘will be repealed,’ as HHS sets stricter rules first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Office of Personnel Management is trying to address what it says are concerns from some managers and supervisors who worry they may be held personally liable for disciplining federal employees deemed poor performers.

In response to those concerns, a Nov. 21 memo from OPM clarified that managers and supervisors are generally acting on behalf of an agency when they “manage employees’ job performance and address unacceptable performance.” There is an “extremely limited scope” where managers or supervisors would be held individually responsible for those actions, OPM said.

When a manager puts an employee on a performance improvement plan, demotes an employee or removes an employee from their job for poor performance, that’s technically considered the action of the agency, OPM said, and not the individual manager’s responsibility. If an employee challenges one of those actions, OPM said that the agency, not the manager, would be responsible for responding.

“In the unusual event that a manager or supervisor is sued personally for actions within the scope of their employment, the Department of Justice (DOJ) typically provides representation,” the memo reads.

But if a supervisor or manager misuses their authority — for example through discrimination, harassment or whistleblower-related prohibited personnel practices — OPM said the individual can then be held personally accountable for their actions.

In its memo, OPM also reminded supervisors and managers of the availability of professional liability insurance, which may help protect them in the rare cases where they may be held liable. Supervisors and managers are usually eligible for a government reimbursement amounting to up to half the cost of the insurance.

“But even in these situations Congress did not give employees the right to hold their managers or supervisors personally liable for any performance or conduct-related adverse action,” OPM said.

OPM’s clarification comes after the Trump administration earlier this year set new expectations for measuring federal employees’ job performance. In June, OPM told agencies they don’t have to use “progressive discipline” and that they should not substitute a suspension when a full removal of an employee from their job “would be appropriate.”

The administration’s new performance management standards also attempt to more strictly delineate between different levels of employee performance and encourage agencies to rate fewer employees as high performers.

OPM Director Scott Kupor has repeatedly argued that the government has inflated performance ratings, and has targeted the rating system as a key area for OPM to update.

“In the real world we are not all equally successful and differences in performance from one person to the next are in fact real,” Kupor wrote in a Sept. 15 blog post. “We simply can’t all get A’s because not everyone’s contributions to the success of the organization are the same. Some people simply perform better than others — whether by luck or skill.”

More recently, OPM also announced a new mandatory training program for all federal supervisors, intended to educate supervisors on how to better manage performance of federal employees. The one-hour online course will cover topics including recognition, awards, hiring, firing and discipline of federal employees, according to a memo OPM sent to agencies Wednesday.

“At the end of the training, supervisors will be ready to set clear expectations, deliver quality feedback, document fairly, reward excellence, and take timely action when needed—all while building an engaged, high-performing team through transparency, accountability, and collaboration,” the memo stated.

Federal supervisors are required to complete the training by Feb. 9, 2026, OPM said.

The required supervisor training comes shortly after OPM also launched two optional training programs, designed to educate senior executives in the federal workforce, while incorporating common themes from the Trump administration on “accountability,” performance management and adherence to the president’s priorities.

The post OPM attempts to ease manager concerns in addressing federal employees’ performance first appeared on Federal News Network.

Hackers sponsored by China are targeting federal agencies, technology companies and critical infrastructure sector organizations with a new type of malware affecting Linux, VMWare kernel and Windows environments that may be difficult to detect and eradicate.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security are strongly advising organizations take steps to scan systems for BRICKSTORM using detection signatures and rules; inventory all network edge devices; monitor edge devices for suspicious network connectivity and ensure proper network segmentation. The organizations released a malware analysis report to help organizations combat the threat.

“BRICKSTORM underscores the grave threats that are posed by the People’s Republic of China to our nation’s critical infrastructure. State sponsored actors are not just infiltrating networks, they are embedding themselves to enable long term access, disruption and potential sabotage. That’s why we’re urging every organization to treat this threat with the seriousness that it demands,” said Nick Andersen, CISA’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, during a call with reporters today. “The advisory we issued today provides indicators of compromise (IOCs) and detection signatures to assist critical infrastructure owners and operators in determining whether they have been compromised. It also gives recommended mitigation actions to protect against what is truly pervasive PRC activity.”

CISA says BRICKSTORM features advanced functionality to conceal communications, move laterally and tunnel into victim networks and automatically reinstall or restart the malware if disrupted. Andersen said CISA became aware of the threat in mid-August and it’s part of a “persistent, long-term campaigns of nation state threat actors, in particular those that are sponsored by the People’s Republic of China, to hold at risk our nation’s critical infrastructure through cyber means.”

The malware has impacted at least eight organizations, including one where CISA provided incident response services to. Andersen wouldn’t say how many of those eight were federal agencies or which ones have been impacted.

“This is a terribly sophisticated piece of malware that’s being used, and that’s why we’re encouraging all organizations to take action to protect themselves, and if they do become victims of it or other malicious activity, to report it to CISA, so we can have a better understanding of the full picture of not just where this malware is being employed, but the more robust picture of the wider cyber threat landscape,” Andersen said.

New way to interact with industry

Since January, CISA has issued 20 joint cybersecurity advisories and threat intelligence guidance documents with U.S. allies, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as with our other international partners.

“Together, we’ve exposed nation-state sponsored intrusions, AI enabled ransomware operations and the ever evolving threats to critical infrastructure,” Andersen said.

Along with the warnings and analysis about BRICKSTORM, CISA also launched a new Industry Engagement Platform (IEP). CISA says it’s designed to let the agency and companies share information and develop innovative and security technologies.

“The IEP enables CISA to better understand emerging solutions across the technology ecosystem while giving industry a clear, transparent pathway to engage with the agency,” CISA said in a release. “The IEP allows organizations – including industry, non-profits, academia, government partners … and the research community – with a structured process to request conversations with CISA subject matter experts to describe new technologies and capabilities. These engagements give innovators the opportunity to present solutions that may strengthen our nation’s cyber and infrastructure security.”

CISA says while participation in the IEP does not provide preferential consideration for future federal contracts, it serves as a channel for the government to gain insight into new capabilities and market trends.

Current areas of interest include:

• Information technology and security controls

• Data, analytics, storage, and data management

• Communications technologies

• Any emerging technologies that advance CISA’s mission, including post-quantum cryptography and other next-generation capabilities

Andersen said while the IEP and related work is separate from the BRICKSTORM analysis, it’s all part of how CISA is trying to ensure all organizations protect themselves from the ever-changing cyber threat.

“The threat here is not theoretical, and BRICKSTORM underscores the grave threats that are posed by the People’s Republic of China to our nation’s critical infrastructure,” he said  “We know that state sponsored actors are not just infiltrating networks. They’re embedding themselves to enable the long term access disruption and potential sabotage that enables their strategic objectives, and that’s why we continue to urge every organization to treat this threat with serious demands.”

The post Agencies, IT companies impacted by latest malware from China first appeared on Federal News Network.

Amazon might be most known for how it has mastered the logistics of moving millions of items on the ground. But it’s also active in space, in a race to build out the next generation of enterprise communications capabilities.

Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, has already put some 150 satellites into low earth orbit (LEO), according to its principal business development lead, Rich Pang. Leo’s goal, Pang said, is to “enable connecting folks who don’t have connectivity or who have poor connectivity.”

Operating at a height of about 600 kilometers, the satellites’ RF links “are easily done with small terminals and, because of that closeness to earth, [with] high throughput and low latency,” he said.

That includes enterprises, including the Defense Department and federal national security agencies.

“We know that the defense and national security apparatus is not a fixed force, it’s a mobile force,” Pang said. “It requires multi domain connectivity to ensure that airplanes, ships, trucks, command vehicles are always connected, not only in receiving information, but getting commands out to the field as well.”

He said Leo augments communications capabilities the military and national security components already have with “more resilient and secure connectivity to ensure they have that ability to connect all those operations regardless of which domain they operate in.”

Remote regions of the oceans where the Navy operates come to mind, but land areas also have connectivity gaps, or ground-based comms get knocked out.

“You can’t have guaranteed fiber connectivity or usual connectivity that you’re used to having back at home station,” Pang said. “It’s important to have very flexible types of comms that can respond rapidly to wherever they need to deploy forces.”

“I often think about our first responders, or disaster response customers that have multiple systems at any given time to ensure they have connectivity,” he added.

They already have their radios, microwave and cellular connections. Now, Pang said, “in the event any of those are taken down, they have to have satellite as a backup.”

Resilient, redundant                                 

The addition of LEO satellites, with their low latency relative to geosynchronous satellites, contribute to what Pang called next generation connectivity. It’s marked by resiliency because of the alternate pathways for data movement the satellites bring.

Optical links among the satellites themselves contribute to the resiliency, Pang said. Inter-satellite pathways “remove congestion from certain ground points [and] allow us to have multiple paths to move information … not only on the ground but in space as well.”

Rather than operate as a separate entity, the satellite comms integrate with terrestrial capabilities and, for that matter, to commercial computing clouds, Pang said.

To ensure compliance with customers’ security requirements, Pang said, Leo operates within “this private connectivity directly into the cloud services … for our customers who are seeking secure solutions.” He noted that some industries have security needs at least as rigorous as the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) requirement of the government.

As a managed service, Pang said, Leo constantly optimizes itself to maintain maximum use of its available bandwidth.

“It’s got varying geometries. It’s got varying frequencies,” he said. “And so inherently, these types of capabilities also make it more secure in that it helps reduce interference, whether meaningful or unintended.”

Beyond that, the Leo satellites fit in with a general trend of internet protocol (IP) as the basis for all communications, whether voice or data. That is, the multiprotocol label switching gives way to IP and software-defined wide area networks.

“I think this opens up the aperture to incorporate a lot of different capabilities throughout the many domains [the DoD] operates and also shorten the timeline in which they get that information from sensors to processing centers to engagement vehicles,” Pang said.

Grand orchestration

Therein lies the importance of redundancy and resiliency, especially in austere or contested environments. Pang described those qualities as “not being locked into a single architecture, but rather having many choices, having alternative to getting your information where it needs to go.”

“Resiliency, in my mind, is creating a dynamic system that allows you to choose the best path to take when you’re moving information around,” he added.

Pang said the government has been working continuously on how to integrate disparate networks and applications at the terminal level, where they operate single apertures that work on multiple networks.” This requires “an orchestration of all those capabilities to build that resiliency into the broader architecture that the Defense Department is trying to deploy now.”

Signal interruption, for instance by weather or intentionally interfered with by adversaries, occur regularly in Defense and national security situations.

“The system is designed to always sense for interference, whether it’s intentional or not,” Pang said. “It’s sensing for weather interference. It’s sensing for intentional interference, so it always knows that it needs an alternate path.”

Sensing and rerouting happen automatically, he said. The system “always knows that if I have interference in a particular path, it knows to look for the alternative or the tertiary path. The system is designed to constantly be optimizing itself very rapidly to ensure that that interference is dealt with.”

Pang said the LEO satellites of Amazon strengthen an important link in the information-to-decision chain. Once data from various sources arrived where it’s needed, “there are a lot of fusion engines, whether they sit on premises, in the cloud or even at the tactical edge.”

Leo is concerned with the movement of the data to those fusion sites.

“Our play is getting information to where it needs to be, whether it’s at the tactical edge or back to a data center to be fused, processed and then redistributed,” Pang said. “As the transport layer, not only can we get all that information back, we can help redistribute that information very quickly to the tactical user, so that commanders can make decisions in a much shortened timeline.”

The post Space-routed internet moves to the mainstream first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Justice Department recently resolved several investigations into federal contractors’ cybersecurity requirements as part of the federal government’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative. The initiative, first announced in 2021, ushered in the DOJ’s efforts to pursue cybersecurity-related fraud by government contractors and grant recipients pursuant to the False Claims Act. Since then, the DOJ has publicly announced approximately 15 settlements against federal contractors, with the DOJ undoubtedly conducting even more investigations outside of the public’s view.

As an initial matter, these latest settlements signal that the new administration has every intention of continuing to prioritize government contractors’ cybersecurity practices and combating new and emerging cyber threats to the security of sensitive government information and critical systems. These settlements also coincide with the lead up to the Nov. 10 effective date of the Defense Department’s final rule amending the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, which incorporates the standards of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

Key DOJ cyber-fraud decisions

The first of these four recent DOJ settlements was announced in July 2025, and resulted in Hill Associates agreeing to pay the United States a minimum of $14.75 million. In this case, Hill Associates provided certain IT services to the General Services Administration. According to the DOJ’s allegations, Hill Associates had not passed the technical evaluations required by GSA for a contractor to offer certain highly adaptive cybersecurity services to government customers. Nevertheless, the contractor submitted claims charging the government for such cybersecurity services, which the DOJ alleged violated the FCA.

The second settlement, United States ex. rel. Lenore v. Illumina Inc., was announced later in July 2025, and resulted in Illumina agreeing to pay $9.8 million — albeit with Illumina denying the DOJ’s allegations. According to the DOJ, Illumina violated the FCA by selling federal agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Agriculture, certain genomic sequencing systems that contained cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Specifically, the DOJ alleged that with respect to the cybersecurity of its product, Illumina: (1) falsely represented that its software and systems adhered to cybersecurity standards, including standards of the International Organization for Standardization and National Institute of Standards and Technology; (2) knowingly failed to incorporate product cybersecurity in its software design, development, installation and on-market monitoring; (3) failed to properly support and resource personnel, systems and processes tasked with product security; and (4) failed to adequately correct design features that introduced cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

That same day, the DOJ announced its third settlement, which was with Aero Turbine Inc., and Gallant Capital Partners, LLC (collectively, “Aero”), and resulted in a $1.75 million settlement. This settlement resolved the DOJ’s allegations that Aero violated the FCA by knowingly failing to comply with the cybersecurity requirements of its contract with the Department of the Air Force. Pursuant to the contract, Aero was required to implement the security requirements outlined by NIST Special Publication 800-171, “Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Information Systems and Organizations,” but failed to fully do so. This included failing to control the flow of and limit unauthorized access to sensitive defense information when it provided an unauthorized Egypt-based software company and its personnel with files containing sensitive Defense information.

The fourth and latest DOJ settlement was announced in Sept. 2025, and resolved the DOJ’s FCA lawsuit against the Georgia Tech Research Corporation. As part of the settlement, GRTC agreed to pay $875,000 to resolve allegations resulting from a whistleblower complaint that it failed to meet the cybersecurity requirements in its DoD contracts. Specifically, the DOJ alleged that until December 2021, the contractor failed to install, update or run anti-virus or anti-malware tools on desktops, laptops, servers and networks while conducting sensitive cyber-defense research for the DoD. The DOJ further alleged that the contractor did not have a system security plan setting out cybersecurity controls, as required by the government contract. Lastly, the DOJ alleged that the contractor submitted a false summary level cybersecurity assessment score of 98 to the DoD, with the score being premised on a “fictitious” environment, and did not apply to any system being used to process, store or transmit sensitive Defense information.

Takeaways for federal contractors

These recent enforcement actions provide valuable guidance for federal contractors.

• DOJ has explicitly stated that cyber fraud can exist regardless of whether a federal contractor experienced a cyber breach.
• DOJ is focused on several practices to support allegations of cyber fraud, including a federal contractor’s cybersecurity practices during product development and deployment, as well as contractors’ statements regarding assessment scores and underlying representations.
• DOJ takes whistleblower complaints seriously, with several of these actions stemming from complaints by federal contractors’ former employees.
• To mitigate these risks, federal contractors should ensure that they understand and operationalize their contractual obligations, particularly with respect to the new DFARS obligations.
• Federal contractors would be well advised to:
  • (1) review and understand their cybersecurity contractional obligations;
  • (2) develop processes to work with the appropriate internal teams (information security, information technology, etc.) to ensure that contractual obligations have been appropriately implemented; and
  • (3) develop processes to monitor compliance with the contractual obligations on an ongoing basis.

Joshua Mullen, Luke Cass, Christopher Lockwood and Tyler Bridegan are partners at Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP.

The post Cybersecurity in focus: DOJ aggressively investigating contractors’ cybersecurity practices first appeared on Federal News Network.

A federal judge in San Francisco is temporarily blocking the State Department from finalizing hundreds of employee layoffs.

Judge Susan Illston approved a temporary restraining order on Thursday, preventing the department from officially terminating more than 200 employees, most of them Foreign Service officers.

Separately, federal employee unions are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association filed the emergency request for a temporary restraining order to bar the “imminent and unlawful execution” of reduction in force notices the State Department sent this summer.

“The severe threats to the public presented by the imminent State Department actions necessitate a temporary pause to protect the status quo for plaintiffs and the employees they represent who are adversely impacted by these imminent separations,” the emergency request states.

The emergency request is part of an ongoing lawsuit that unions filed on the eve of the government shutdown, which blocked the Trump administration from conducting widespread layoffs during a lapse in congressional funds.

The amended lawsuit states that several agencies, including the State Department, aren’t fully adhering to a provision in the shutdown-ending spending bill that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs.

The nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is also part of the lawsuit, said the amended lawsuit seeks to reverse “other unlawful RIF actions” at the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, as well as the departments of Education and Defense.

“Those RIFs would violate the federal legislation that ended the federal government shutdown, which prohibits implementation of any RIFs through January 30,” the amended complaint states.

The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

It also states that between Nov. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.”

Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12. The amended lawsuit states that interpretation of the continuing resolution “is significantly under-inclusive.”

Agencies recently told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.

The State Department sent RIF notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July. Most of those employees were officially separated from the agency in September.

But this Friday, Dec. 5, the department plans to officially remove nearly 250 Foreign Service employees and several civil service employees whose separation dates were postponed, because they recently gave birth or faced medical issues.

The State Department claims that the continuing resolution’s layoff protections only apply to RIF notices that went out after Oct. 1.

“Defendants are wrong,” the amended complaint states. “The plain language of the continuing resolution prohibits any actions implementing any RIFs of any employees at any agency between November 12, 2025 and January 30, 2026, and requires recission of any previously issued RIF notices (regardless of when they were issued) if the RIFs were implemented during the shutdown.”

The amended lawsuit also takes issue with how the State Department modified the official separation date for impacted employees.

Foreign Service employees were originally told they would be separated from the agency on Nov. 10,  when the agency was still affected by the government shutdown. But on that date, employees received a notice from the department’s human resources offices that said they would remain on administrative leave so the agency could correct “administrative errors.”

On Monday evening, employees received a notice that said they will be officially separated from the State Department this Friday.

“The RIF notices were not reissued, and employees received nothing further from the State Department regarding the now-expired RIF notices until December 1, 2025,” the amended lawsuit states.

The State Department’s notice to employees cites “formal written guidance” from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding RIFs that had been issued prior to the shutdown, but further implemented during or after the shutdown. The unions leading the lawsuit say that formal written guidance hasn’t been made publicly available.

“During the shutdown, the State Department continued to implement the stages of these RIFs in preparation for final separation of the employees, including by processing personnel paperwork in advance of the planned separations,” the amended complaint states.

The unions claim that without a temporary restraining order, State Department employees and their families will suffer “irreparable harm,” including a loss of income and health insurance benefits.

“For many of these employees, the imminent loss of employment means a sustained loss of income and benefits in a job market already flooded with unemployed former State Department and USAID employees,” the amended complaint states.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that “Congress clearly stated that no federal employees should lose their jobs due to a reduction-in-force for the duration of the continuing resolution.”

“This means that no RIF should be issued or acted upon, and any RIF terminations that occurred during the shutdown must be reversed,” Kelley said.

AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a statement that these “unlawful separations reveal a callous indifference to the rule of law and the people who carry out America’s diplomatic mission every day.”

The post Federal judge blocks imminent State Dept layoffs, as unions seek to reverse RIFs at other agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.