Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Mitchell, it’s great to see you face to face. We’re recording from your office on the Capitol today.

Mitchell Miller That’s right, we are squeezed into my little booth here on the House side. We’re three stories up, but we look down on the National Mall if you’ve just walked down the hall. So it’s great to have you here.

Terry Gerton Thanks for the invitation. It’s kind of quiet up on the Hill today, but there’s a lot to talk about that happened last week. Let’s start with the House completing all their spending bills. I guess the biggest surprise was that they got the DHS bill through. What did it take to get agreement on that?

Mitchell Miller You know, it was really interesting, I think, because they were so close to the finish line that they decided, even though there are a lot of reservations on the Democratic side, there were these seven Democrats that said, we are going to vote for this regardless. And that was really the key. And there was also a lot discussion, as you know, about Republicans, about whether they would have enough people, because we’ve had absences. The margin is always super tight. But I think they were confident enough that that was actually the first bill of a series of bills that they took up. So it seems like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) finally knew that he was going to have the votes on that, which is not always the case. And then they were made able to move on to the omnibus with the package of defense and transportation, education, etc. So that final omnibus, so that they could get out of town basically before the weather hit.

Terry Gerton And do you think those agreements that they finally got through on the House side will carry over into the Senate?

Mitchell Miller I think for the most part they will. There are a few items in the overall omnibus that could give pause to some members of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats. On the Democratic side, we’re still going to have the issue with DHS and whether or not they’re going to go ahead with ICE. A lot of Democrats have said they will just not support it no matter what. The other interesting issue, which was kind of a surprise last week was the House effectively jammed the Senate by approving this provision that says, basically they cannot allow for the suing of the government in connection with these calls that were monitored during the Jan. 6 investigation. Senators were really upset about it, particularly, obviously Republican senators. And so they had included that provision earlier. The Republicans in the House actually went along with Democrats and reversed it. So. They would have to take that out of the omnibus if they are going to pass it. So I think it’s going to stay in there and there will be some grumbling among Republican senators, but I think that’s going stay in the legislation.

Terry Gerton Well, the president said last week he’s anticipating a shutdown again. Does that seem practical?

Mitchell Miller That was also kind of a surprise to a lot of people because there has been a little bit of a chest beating here in the House, particularly about the fact that they actually got all these 12 appropriations bills done. Now, granted, they were supposed to be done by Oct. 1, so let’s not praise ourselves too much. But nonetheless, the fact that happened, there was a lot confidence moving forward. And so when the president said that he thought that there might be a shutdown, I think a lot of people read that as basically an effort, another effort to ding the Democrats to say, if anything bad happens, it’s going to be the Democrats’ fault. So he’s kind of setting the stage just in case that happens. But I don’t think, barring some really surprising developments, that we are looking at a partial government shutdown.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. Just sort of one other question while we’re on this topic. The Senate was out on recess last week. This giant storm has really snarled travel. Do they have enough days left to get through the remaining bills, get them approved, get them to the president to get signed in time.

Mitchell Miller Well, as much as the senators have a lot of a pull, they can’t really do anything about the weather, right? So they are dealing with all of these issues that every American across the country is dealing with. I think what will happen though, is the Senate, as you know, can essentially create its own rules. So if they go by the book and they go through everything like they would normally do, they would not have the time to do this. But I think they are going to get these agreements during this week. Where they can speed things up and eventually get this done. Even if it weren’t to be done by Jan. 30, I think it’s going to be within a day or two.

Terry Gerton That’s good to hear. I’m speaking with Mitchell Miller. He’s Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, beyond appropriations, there were other things that happened last week. Let’s talk about health insurance executives who testified on the Hill. What does that mean for future agreements around healthcare policy and the ACA subsidies?

Mitchell Miller Well, that was a really interesting hearing last week because you had Republicans and Democrats kind of in reverse roles in this case, Republicans were going after health executives and saying, why are you increasing these rates? Why is everything going so, so expensively? And then on the Democratic side, they were actually defending a lot of the CEOs and these people that are high up in the health industry saying that they are doing the best that they can, they want to move this forward. And I think part of that is because democrats are still trying to keep things somewhat status quo and get this extension of these ACA subsidies. However, I really don’t think that these ACS subsidies, at least the three-year plan that the Democrats want, is going to move forward. It seems like after we had a lot of really positive developments over the last few weeks, it got kind of bogged down again. So we’re, you know, again, debating issues about health savings accounts. Whether or not the middleman can be taken out with pharmaceuticals, that type of thing. So I think that’s going to take longer than people anticipate.

Terry Gerton There was another, maybe some progress last week on crypto that got sidelined for a while and came back. Tell us about what’s going on there.

Mitchell Miller Yeah, there’s a couple of things related to crypto in the agriculture department, which actually has some of the regulatory oversight related to it. They did advance things and they are moving forward and feel pretty good about it. However, on the flip side in the banking committee, which has done a lot of work related to regulatory issues, especially how much sway should the SEC, for example, have in regulating crypto? Things have bogged down a little bit over there. So, it looks like that this week, the Agriculture Committee is actually going to advance some of the legislation that they’ve been working on. However, in the Senate Banking Committee, which is more of a broader regulatory look at things, that one’s going to take longer, and we’re hearing that may not really get taken up until February or March.

Terry Gerton Are the folks behind these bills integrating the provisions to make sure that they make sense when they finally pass together?

Mitchell Miller I think they are. Right now, I think we’re kind of in that, you know, sausage making stage where they have to kind of reconcile everything once they get out. But as you know there’s been a big push to get crypto legislation and we keep hearing every few months that they’re right on the precipice and then something comes up. There was a big crypto company actually recently that had some reservations about it. So I think a lot of lobbyists in connection with crypto are trying to work things into the legislation some more over the next few weeks.

Terry Gerton Well, there’s new talk starting really just last week about another giant reconciliation bill. You can only have one a year, so they’re starting to talk about one for 2026. What might we see if that effort moves forward?

Mitchell Miller Well, as you know, Republicans are really concerned about affordability issues, despite what the president says sometimes about it being a hoax. He’s been out there trying to speak about it and Republicans on Capitol Hill are really nervous about that right now. So they, they want to include things that will lower the costs of living for people, address housing is one that you hear a lot about, they really want to do something with that, but there is a little bit of a division within the GOP. Some people just think that there’s just not enough energy to get things passed again after the Big, Beautiful Bill from this past year. On the other hand, a lot of Republicans are worried that what will happen to them is what happened earlier with the Democrats when the Democrats passed their large piece of legislation. And that is this whole idea that, oh, if we just get out there and we sell the bill and tell people what’s in it and let them know that we extended these tax cuts, all of these things, that they’ll magically start thinking, oh, well, I’m going to vote Republican again, or I’m gonna vote against Democrats. And I think there is some skepticism about whether that will work politically. And that’s why you hear about this big push for another reconciliation bill. And in fact, OMB head Russ Vought was actually speaking with Republicans recently about that, saying they really need to try to do something. So it’s really going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few months whether they can get some momentum for that.

Terry Gerton So two questions to follow on. One, are there enough specific proposals that would actually address affordability to make a bill? And second, timing. That would come out just before the midterm. So how does it all fit together?

Mitchell Miller Right. I think there is a bit of skepticism about whether or not there is enough specifically to get into a big bill. You know, if you’re going to try to sell another huge piece of legislation, but you only have a handful of things that are in it, you know, maybe there are some ones specific to housing that a lot of people could get behind, but beyond some of these other issues, it looks like it’s a little bit vague. And then to your point about the timing, You know, Congress in this coming year is going to be out a lot because it’s a midterm election year. People are going to be on the road. We’ve already had one of the members of the House who has not voted more than two dozen times because he’s campaigning in Texas. So that type of dynamic is going make it very, very hard, I think, even with the Republicans still in power to try to get some kind of reconciliation legislation passed.

The post With House spending bills done, focus turns to the Senate where work is expected to wrap up this week, ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The Office of Personnel Management’s launch of a new data website earlier this month offered plenty more specifics on how the Trump administration reshaped the federal workforce over the last year.

OPM’s website depicts information and graphics on various changes the federal government saw throughout 2025, such as trends in overall staffing size, telework hours and much more.

But beyond that, the information OPM published contains further trends related to the federal workforce. The data, available through November 2025, provides even more insights into what exactly changed for agencies since President Donald Trump took office.

By total numbers, the agencies that saw the most employees leave their workforce — either voluntarily or involuntarily — were large departments like Defense and Agriculture.

With further analysis of OPM’s data, though, the trends show just how deeply federal employee separations impacted agencies. When broken down by how many employees left as a percentage of the total agency workforce, other agencies’ names emerge at the top of the list.

Notably, agencies that the Trump administration targeted throughout 2025, like USAID and the Education Department, saw much steeper levels of employees leaving, compared with some of the larger government departments. Although the federal employee separations were lower in number for these agencies, they represent much larger portions of their total workforce.

OPM’s data on federal employee separations covers those who quit their jobs, who were subject to a reduction in force (RIF), or who retired, as well as employees who transferred out of an agency, or who had a temporary position that expired sometime last year.

Regardless of the separation method, virtually all agencies saw significant federal employee separations throughout 2025, including all 24 CFO Act agencies.

Federal employee separations over the course of the year also varied from month to month. Depending on the time of year that employees officially separated from their jobs, clearer trends begin to emerge.

September was by far the highest month for federal workforce separations. More than 125,000 federal employees left their jobs in that month alone, coinciding with most agencies’ deadline for the deferred resignation program (DRP). Some agencies delayed their official DRP deadline to the end of December, but OPM data for that month is not yet available.

The types of jobs that saw the biggest numbers of employees leaving throughout 2025 also reveal key trends in the federal workforce data. Notably, governmentwide job series such as IT managers and HR managers are within the top 10 positions that saw employees exiting their jobs, according to OPM’s data.

Other job series like contact representatives also faced significant employee separations throughout the year, most notably at the IRS.

The post The federal workforce changed drastically in 2025. Here’s how. first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Beyond the headlines, behind the statistics, real lives are being devastated by cross-border trafficking, with impacts that ripple through families and communities for generations.

Every day at U.S. borders, trafficking networks exploit our most vulnerable – children, women, migrant families and communities already at risk – using increasingly sophisticated tactics to smuggle people, drugs, money, weapons and contraband. For many of these victims, the trauma doesn’t stop at the border – they’re often trafficked for forced labor in the nation’s interior.

The human cost of the fentanyl epidemic, its enterprise propagated illicitly across borders, is likewise unspeakable. Entire communities have been hollowed out as hundreds of lives are lost to fentanyl overdoses every single day in the U.S.

Cross-border traffickers put a literal price on human lives and are quick to discard them if they become an inconvenience. In open desert, treacherous mountains and brutal heat, migrants, including unaccompanied minors, are abandoned in the harshest environments to fend for themselves.

U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) personnel, acting as first responders, give these people hope for another day. Operating in remote terrain in border regions hundreds to thousands of miles between points of entry (BPOE) – at significant risk to themselves – the USBP, with support from the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit (BORSTAR) as well as Air and Marine Operations (AMO), provide crucial rescue operations and humanitarian aid.

The trauma and loss suffered by the victims of these criminal trafficking schemes is unfathomable. For those brave enough to help – the personnel of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and adjacent agencies – tending to this daily tragedy takes a tremendous personal toll.

More than anything, these personnel simply want to return home safely to their loved ones at the end of their shift.

Securing a vast border

CBP recorded approximately 444,000 migrant encounters in 2025 (fiscal year). Of these, roughly 238,000 were migrants crossing BPOE, underscoring the operational challenges shouldered by the USBP and AMO resources along remote border terrain.

In parallel, federal funding has seen a major uptick in budget targeted for border security, with a focus on physical infrastructure like border walls complemented by intelligence technology improvements that extend border protection capabilities far beyond where walls can reach.

The USBP continues to monitor this wide-open border terrain using a suite of technology and infrastructure assets like heat sensors and patrol operations. False alarms are commonplace, triggered by trivial events – heat signatures of roving animals, for example. Traditional camera and radar sensors remain encumbered by line-of-sight obstructions, and lighting and weather sensitivity.

The time, effort and effectiveness lost to these conventional measures is significant.

There’s a major opportunity to upgrade detection and search capabilities such that USBP can close the gaps – the geographical distance gaps and efficiency gaps – to achieve vastly improved investigative precision.

Precise tactical intelligence

Cross-border traffickers move quickly to avoid detection. Transnational criminal organizations adapt their routes overnight. Border security teams need to respond in real-time.

The USBP can gain significant operational and investigative benefits by improving their capabilities in tactical intelligence gathering focused on network communication used in BPOE trafficking.

Location-aware operations enable Ground, Air and Marine teams to intercept smugglers before they reach interior distribution hubs. These teams are likewise better equipped to recover missing or distressed migrants before they succumb to exposure, and they can deploy support and rescue assets more efficiently.

These advanced capabilities are at the forefront of the fight against cross-border trafficking because they yield precise and actionable insights.

These capabilities provide lifesaving intelligence and ultimately will help to relieve the hard and hidden tolls of cross-border trafficking.

In addition, these capabilities reduce operational risks to USBP personnel, to help ensure they get home safely.

These are worthy goals and the technology to achieve them is well within our grasp. For more information about advanced tactical and decision intelligence capabilities for combating cross-border trafficking, visit www.cognyte.com.

The post Turning the tide on the hidden toll of cross-border trafficking first appeared on Federal News Network.

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With an impending winter storm expected to dump as much as 10 inches of snow — and then freezing rain on top of that — in the Washington, D.C. metro area, the Office of Personnel Management decided late Friday night to close federal offices on Monday and institute maximum telework.

OPM said in its weather status update that telework and remote workers are expected to work, but “non-telework employees generally will be granted weather and safety leave for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. However, weather and safety leave will not be granted to employees who are on official travel outside of the duty station or on an Alternative Work Schedule (AWS) day off or other non-workday.”

Additionally, OPM said emergency employees are expected to report to their worksite unless otherwise directed by their agencies.

Scott Kupor, OPM director, posted the decision on X.

Update (and the final one) – We have decided to close federal offices in the region for Monday. We will update the official status on the @USOPM website shortly. We hope that everyone stays safe (and warm) over the weekend. https://t.co/iJugsRw0iz

— Scott Kupor (@skupor) January 23, 2026

WTOP, Federal News Network’s partner station, said snow is expected to start in the DC metro area Saturday night and then get heavier into Sunday morning. Temperatures aren’t expected to climb out of the 20s, making the situation more difficult.

For federal employees outside of the DC metro area affected by the winter storm, each agency will make their operating status decision, according to the governmentwide dismissal and closure policy, which OPM updated in December.

“Federal field office heads generally make workforce status decisions for their agencies’ employees and report those workforce status decisions to their agencies’ headquarters,” the guidance stated. “Agencies located outside the ‘Washington capital beltway’ should consider governmentwide operating status announcements when developing local operating status announcements. Employees should always check their agencies’ operating status. Agency-issued operating status announcements should include procedures concerning telework, arrival and departure times, and leave requests.”

In previous years, the Federal Executive Boards (FEBs) coordinated weather and other emergency related closures. The Trump administration eliminated the FEBs in April.

The number of federal employees able to participate in situational telework or who are full-time teleworkers or remote workers is unclear. The Trump administration mandated federal employees return to the office on a full-time basis in January.

OPM did issue the fiscal 2025 telework report to Congress in December. In that report for 2024, 1.3 million, or 53%, of all employees were eligible to telework, which was a 2.2% decrease from 2023. Of those employees who were eligible to telework, 1 million, or 40%, participated in some form of telework, routine or situational. OPM said this was a decrease of 3.6% over 2023.

The post OPM makes the call early: Fed offices in DC closed on Monday first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to issue what’s likely to become one of the largest service contracts in government history as it restructures its arrangements, aiming for rigorous management of the department’s role as a health care payer and greater competition among health care management firms.

The massive contract vehicle represents only the second time VA has signed large contracts with health plans to coordinate private sector care for veterans. The first was shortly after the MISSION Act was signed in 2018. Those contracts are now expiring, and in their place, VA is preparing one large indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract with a total potential value of $700 billion over the next ten years.

Among the changes the department is aiming for is a much more rigorous approach to program management in its “community care network,” said Richard Topping, VA’s assistant secretary for management and chief financial officer.

“This program has been unmanaged since its inception. None of the tools, none of the controls that we are talking about introducing here have been available,” he told the House Veterans Affairs Committee on Thursday. “VA had no ability to manage this program, to drive quality, to focus on the outcomes for veterans, to focus on cost. We’ve now got the ability to do that in this contract. The way we designed this unmanaged program also made it very difficult for industry to partner with us. It made it very difficult for community providers to serve our veterans, because it didn’t operate like any other payer program.”

The new contract, called Community Care Network Next Generation, is meant to change much of that. VA says the department intends to cast a wide net for vendors — creating an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract that doesn’t only attract large, national health insurers.

“We are very intentionally not limiting it to the large vendors. The intention is to open this up to competition, to non-large vendors, to those who might bring regional capabilities, regional capacity, and that would not be able to operate on a national or semi-national scale,” Topping said. “They will incur a cost to bid and be awarded a spot on the vehicle. But once they do that, the vendors who are on the vehicle with us, large and small, have a seat at the table with VA, with our program management team to design the task orders. There are two initial task orders in the initial award, those look a lot like what we have now. But we are going to immediately partner with the vendors on the vehicle to begin to build the next more regional, more adaptable, more local models in our task orders.”

Value-based payment models and utilization management

VA plans to use the ID/IQ for its purchased health care for up to ten years. The contract includes a three-year base period, followed by three two-year option periods, and a final one-year option period. During that time, the department plans to use on-ramps and off-ramps to bring new vendors onto the contract — and remove ones that aren’t meeting performance standards.

And contract performance will be overseen and measured by VA program officials who plan to start implementing measures that value quality care over numbers of procedures performed, Topping said.

“VA will implement a comprehensive quality program for community care providers based on nationally recognized measures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Contractors will track patient safety events, identify veterans at risk of avoidable visits and readmissions through predictive analytics, and while respecting their choice, guide veterans towards higher performing providers,” he said. “Next Gen will modernize how VA pays its contractors for the care furnished to veterans by implementing value-based payment models. We will begin with episode-based payments for lower extremity joint replacements. As we gain the data and the expertise to manage alternative payments, we will introduce at least three additional models over the performance period of the contract to continually improve care. These models will shift payment away from volume and toward outcomes and total cost of care, which aligns contractor incentives with veterans’ health and system sustainability. We will introduce utilization management. This includes active management of inpatient admissions, emergency department use, concurrent hospital reviews, and high cost drugs administered in clinical settings. This will reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and inappropriate care while protecting veterans’ access to medically necessary services.”

Questions from Congressional overseers

But the department faced bipartisan skepticism during the hearing, partly because VA officials have been slow to detail their plans for the CCN Next Gen effort to members of Congress. VA’s overseers on the House Veterans Affairs Committee say they found out the details of the contract at the same time vendors did — when the request for proposals was released a little over a month ago.

“I understand the VA finds it unprecedented to hold a hearing on an active contract solicitation. I appreciate the sensitivity of the contract, but it is also unprecedented to avoid Congress’s oversight of $1 trillion of spending,” said Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), the committee’s chairman. “My staff and the ranking member’s staff have been told that some topics are off limits because of the sensitive nature of the contract and solicitation. We’ve tried to create a venue in which VA would feel comfortable to speak candidly to our members, but unfortunately, VA failed to assure us of such candor.”

Meanwhile, Democrats on the committee also worry that the new contract will serve as a way to further privatize VA health care — pointing out that more than 40% of veterans’ care is already delivered by private providers through the existing contracts.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.) said he worried that the contract will lead to large, vertically-integrated conglomerates driving veterans into facilities they control, and away from smaller community-based providers.

“I don’t trust big insurance companies to take care of anybody. The sole thing that motivates them is profit. It’s not people, and it’s certainly not our veterans,” he said. “We have the right to be skeptical when we are talking about private insurance companies taking care of people, because right now they don’t.”

But Topping said the department believes it can avoid problems like the ones McGarvey is worried about through strong oversight and program management.

“The vendors, our health plan partners on this, don’t make the clinical referral from the direct care system to community care. VA does that,” he said. “They don’t make the referral to the provider or determine eligibility [for community care], VA determines that. VA drives where and how our veterans receive care, and we want to know what we’re buying. We want to steer our veterans to the highest quality, lowest cost providers. That goal is not unique to VA — it’s new to us, but we’re bringing this into this program.”

Vendors hoping for a spot on the contract have until March 16 to submit their proposals.

The post VA readies massive contract for veterans’ private sector health care first appeared on Federal News Network.

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When the Defense Department received a $23 billion down payment for the Golden Dome initiative through a reconciliation bill, lawmakers demanded a detailed plan for how the Pentagon plans to spend that money.

Six months later, lawmakers are still waiting for the Pentagon to provide “complete budgetary details and justification of the $23,000,000,000 in mandatory funding.” That includes a comprehensive deployment schedule, cost, schedule and performance metrics and a finalized system architecture. 

As a result, Congressional appropriators were unable to conduct oversight of Golden Dome programs for fiscal 2026.

The department’s $175 billion Golden Dome initiative President Donald Trump first ordered last January aims to build a network of satellites — possibly numbering in the hundreds or even thousands — that would detect, track and intercept incoming missiles. Pentagon officials have described the program as a “top priority for the nation.”

The effort has been shrouded in secrecy, and lawmakers’ demand for more detail on how the Pentagon plans to spend the initial tranche of funding is another sign of Congress’s limited visibility into the program’s early spending plans.

“Due to insufficient budgetary information, the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees were unable to effectively assess resources available to specific program elements and to conduct oversight of planned programs and projects for fiscal year 2026 Golden Dome efforts in consideration of the final agreement,” appropriators wrote.

Elaine McCusker, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said it is not unusual or surprising for lawmakers to seek complete budget information for a complex program like the Golden Dome that pulls in multiple complex ongoing efforts and includes classified components.

“Congress often requests new budget exhibits and supplementary information for evolving, complicated programs with potentially high price tags so they can better understand what is existing and ongoing funding and what is really new or accelerated in the budget request,” McCusker told Federal News Network.

But Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, said Congress’ request for complete budgetary information highlights a broader challenge with how the administration has rolled out major initiatives without providing sufficient detail.

“Golden Dome is an extraordinarily complex and ambitious program, for which we should expect extraordinarily comprehensive information. Instead, the American people and Congress have the opposite. The fiscal 2026 Defense Appropriations Act and its explaining document appear to appropriately reflect that disparity,” Williams told Federal News Network.

The House passed the final 2026 minibus funding package Thursday, which includes money for the Defense Department. If the spending bill becomes law, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Golden Dome director, will have two months to provide a comprehensive spend plan for the initiative. Lawmakers want to see planned obligations and expenditures by program, descriptions, justification and the corresponding system architecture mission areas for fiscal 2025 through 2027. 

The Pentagon comptroller would also have to submit a separate budget justification volume annually beginning in fiscal 2028.

McCusker said Congress bears some responsibility for the delay — budget uncertainty has complicated the department’s efforts to develop the program.

“The Pentagon is pursuing new ideas in how it partners with industry to rapidly develop, build and deploy the myriad systems that make up Golden Dome while also navigating annual delays and uncertainty in getting its budget,” she said. “Congress has an understandable thirst for information on high profile defense programmatic priorities and may perceive a delay in getting the level of detail it seeks, but failing to pass annual appropriations on time has become so common it is a perpetual factor to mitigate. Congress has to accept responsibility for this and be willing to take some risk in providing funds in advance of all the information it needs.”

President Donald Trump said in May that the Golden Dome’s architecture had been “officially selected,” but details about the initiative remain scarce and the Pentagon has restricted officials from publicly discussing the initiative.

McCusker said that Congress’ request for detailed planning, performance and budget information doesn’t say much about the program itself other than “its level of complexity and maturity and the need to develop and convey the overall strategy and projected timeframe for its execution.”

There is no single “Golden Dome” line item in the 2026 spending bill, though it includes billions for related programs that will most likely support the broader system.

The Pentagon leadership received its first official briefing on the Golden Dome architecture in September, and an implementation plan was expected to be delivered in November.

Williams said producing a detailed plan of this complexity in a short period of time is understandably difficult, but added that crafting a plan that credibly explains how its goals will be achieved is “likely impossible according to many experts.”

“Golden Dome is a program of unprecedented, arguably reckless, complexity and ambition.” Williams said. 

“The lack of information is also a result of Congress’s choice to use reconciliation to increase defense spending: The reconciliation process does not provide for the formal submission of budget request materials from the executive branch and so risks exactly this kind of lack of information. Congress should return to the statutory process for clean Defense authorization and appropriations acts to ensure adequate information,” he added.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.

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Federal employees received high marks for their work. At the same time, the public also wants more from them, and federal agencies more broadly, especially around technology.

These are among the top findings of a survey of a thousand likely voters from last August by the Center for Accountability, Modernization and Innovation (CAMI).

Stan Soloway, the chairman of the board for CAMI, said the findings demonstrate at least two significant issues for federal executives to consider.

“It very clear to us from the survey was that public actually has faith, to a certain extent, in public employees. The public also fully recognizes that the system itself is not serving them well,” Soloway said on Ask the CIO. “We found well over half of the folks that were surveyed said that they didn’t believe that government services are efficient. We found just under half of respondents had a favorable impression of government workers. And I think this is very much I respect my local civil servant because I know what they do, but I have a lot of skepticism about government writ large.”

CAMI, a non-partisan think tank, found that when it comes to government workers:

• 47% favorable vs 38% unfavorable toward government workers (+9% net)
• Self-identified very conservative voters showed strong support (+30% net)
• African Americans showed the highest favorability (+31% net)
• Self-identified independents are the exception, showing negative views (-14% net)

At the same time, when it comes to government services, CAMI found 54% of the respondents believe agencies aren’t as efficient or as timely as they should be.

John Faso, a former Republican congressman from New York and a senior advisor for CAMI, said the call for more efficiencies and timeliness from citizens echoes a long-time goal of bringing federal agencies closer to the private sector.

“People, and we see this in the survey, look at what government provides and how they provide it, and then to what they’re maybe accustomed to in private sector economy,” Faso said. “Amazon is a prime example. You can sit home and order something, a food product, an item of clothing or something else you want for your house or your family, and oftentimes it’s there within a day or two. People are accustomed to getting that kind of service. People have an expectation that the government can do that. I think government is lagging, obviously, but it’s catching up, and it needs to catch up fast.”

Faso said it’s clear that a solid percentage of the reason for why the government is inefficient comes back to Congress. But at the same time, the CAMI survey demonstrated that there are things federal executives could do to address many of these long-standing challenges.

CAMI says respondents supported several changes to improve timely and efficient delivery of benefits:

• 40% preferred hiring more government workers
• 34% preferred partnering with outside organizations
• Those self-identified as very liberal voters strongly favored more workers (+32% net)
• Those identified as somewhat conservative voters prefer outside partnerships (-20% net)
• Older voters (55+) preferred outside partnerships

“Whether it’s the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicaid and Medicare, the feds set all the rules for the administration and governance of the programs. So the first question you have to ask is, what is the federal role?” Soloway said. “Even though we have now shifted administrative responsibility for many programs to the states and to some cases, the counties, and reduced by 50% the financial support for administration of these programs, while the states have a lot to figure out and are somewhat panicked about it, because it’s a huge lift. The feds can’t just walk away. This is where we have issues of policy changes that are needed at the federal level, which we can talk about some of the ones that are desperately needed to give the states kind of the flexibility to innovate.”

Soloway added this also means agencies have to break down long-established siloes both around data and processes.

The Trump administration, for example, has prioritized data sharing across the government, especially to combat concerns around fraud. The Office of Management and Budget said in July it was supercharging the Do Not Pay list by removing the barriers to governmentwide data sharing.

Soloway said this is a prime example of where the private sector has figured out how to get different parts of their organization to talk to each other and where the government is lagging.

“What is the federal role in helping to break down the silos and integrate applications, and to the certain extent help with the administration of programs with like beneficiaries? The data is pretty clear that there’s a lot of commonality across multiple programs, and when you think about the number of different departments and the bureaucracy that actually control those programs, there’s got to be leadership at the federal level, both on technology and to expand process transformation, otherwise you’re not going to solve the problem,” he said. “The second thing is when we talk about issues like program integrity, there are ways you can combat fraud and also protect the beneficiaries. But too often, the conversations are either/or any effort to combat fraud is seen as an effort to take eligible people off the rolls. Every effort to protect eligible people on the rolls is seen as just feeding into that so that’s where the federal leadership, and some of that is in technology, some of it’s in policy. Some of it’s going to be in resources, because it requires investments in technology across the board, state and federal.”

Respondents say technology can play a bigger role in improving the delivery of federal services.

CAMI says respondents offered strong support for using AI to improve government service delivery:

• 48% support vs 29% oppose using AI tools (net +19%)
• Self-identified republicans show stronger support than democrats (+36% vs +7% net)
• Men are significantly more supportive than women (+35% vs +3% net)
• Support is strongest among middle-aged voters (30-44: +40% net)

Soloway said CAMI is sharing its survey findings with both Congress and the executive branch.

“We’re trying to get the conversations going and get the information to the right people. When we do that, we find, by and large, on both sides, there’s a lot of support to do stuff. The question is going to really be, where’s the leadership going to come from that will have the enough credibility on both sides to push this ball forward?” Soloway said.

Faso added state governments also must play a big role in improving program delivery.

“You have cost sharing between the federal and state governments, and you have cost sharing in terms of the administrative burden to implement these programs. I think a lot of governors, frankly, are now really looking at themselves and saying, ‘How am I going to implement this?’” he said. “How do I collaborate with the federal government to make sure that we’re all enrolling in the same direction in terms of implementing these requirements.”

The post AI can improve federal service delivery, citizen survey says first appeared on Federal News Network.

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A private-sector tech leader tapped by the Trump administration to improve the federal government’s online presence is setting an ambitious goal — overhauling about 27,000 dot-gov websites.

Joe Gebbia, chief design officer of the United States and co-founder of Airbnb, said in a podcast interview Tuesday that the White House set out this goal when President Donald Trump signed an executive order last summer creating the National Design Studio.

“We’re fixing all of them,” Gebbia said Tuesday on the American Optimist show. Many of the federal government’s websites, he added, “look like they’re from the mid-90s.”

Gebbia began working with the Department of Government Efficiency in the early days of the Trump administration. At the Office of Personnel Management, he oversaw a long-anticipated modernization of the federal employee retirement system.

The National Design Studio so far has launched several new websites that serve as landing pages for some of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, law enforcement and prescription drug prices.

As for next steps, Gebbia said his office will deliver “major updates,” including a refresh of existing federal websites, by July 4.

“It’s working, because we are really pulling in veterans of Silicon Valley from a talent perspective, I think it’s working because this president really deeply cares about how things look, because he knows that esthetics matter,” he said.

The White House estimates that only 6% of federal websites are rated “good” for use on mobile devices. About 45% of federal websites are not mobile-friendly.

As part of the President’s Management Agenda, the Trump administration is looking to leverage technology to “deliver faster, more secure services” and “reduce the number of confusing government websites. “

The administration has already taken steps to eliminate websites that it deems unnecessary. Federal News Network first reported that the 24 largest federal agencies are preparing to eliminate more than 330 websites — about 5% of an inventory of 7,200 websites reviewed.

The National Design Studio is still recruiting new hires. Gebbia estimated that his office will eventually have a team of about 15 engineers and 15 designers.

“We’re still ramping up the team,” he said, adding that the National Design Studio has been able to “recruit some of the best and brightest minds of our era.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment where we have a shot on goal to actually upgrade the U.S. government the way we present ourselves to the nation and to the world,” Gebbia said.

The idea for the National Design Studio began when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked Gebbia to improve Recreation.gov, a website for booking campsites, scheduling tours and obtaining hunting and fishing permits on federal lands. The site serves as an outdoor recreation system for 14 federal agencies.

“There’s a lot to be desired for when you have this incredible feature of the American experience, our national parks. They were being undersold in a way that they were showcased,” Gebbia said.

After working on Recreation.gov, Gebbia said he was getting similar requests from other Cabinet secretaries.

“I started to see there’s demand here for better design. There’s demand here for modernizing the digital surfaces of the government,” he said.

At that point, Gebbia said he made his pitch for the National Design Studio to Trump during a meeting at the Oval Office.

“What would it look like to have a national initiative to actually go in and up level and upgrade, not just one agency, not just one website, all the websites, all the agencies, all of the digital touch points between us, government and the American people?” he recalled.

According to the America by Design website, the White House is drawing inspiration from the Nixon administration’s beautification project in the 1970s. That project led to the creation of NASA’s iconic logo, branding for national parks and signage for the national highway system.

“My vision is that, at some point, somebody’s working at a startup and they go look at a dot-gov website to see how they did it. And we can actually create references for good design in the government, rather than be the butt of a joke,” Gebbia said.

So far, the National Design Studio has launched SafeDC.gov, a website meant to facilitate the Trump administration’s surge of federal law enforcement agents to Washington, D.C. It’s also launched TrumpCard.gov, a program meant to fast-track the green-card process for noncitizens seeking permanent residency in the United States — and who are able to pay a $15,000 processing fee and a $1 million or $5 million “gift” to the Commerce Department.

Its most recent website, https://trumprx.gov/, is still in the works. The website supports an administration goal of connecting consumers with lower-priced prescription drugs.

Gebbia said private-sector tech experts are interested in working with National Design Studio and overcoming institutional barriers to change.

“Of course, you bump into things and all the processes and people saying, ‘Well, it’s always been done this way. Why would we change it?’ I think, though, there’s an incredible amount of momentum behind this — the excitement around America by Design, the excitement around the National Design Studio, and the excitement on the demand side of secretaries and people and agencies — ‘Yes, please fix this for us. We’re so happy you’re here to make us make this look good,'” he said.

The post National Design Studio looks to overhaul 27,000 federal websites — and is hiring a team to do it first appeared on Federal News Network.

© AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The Supreme Court appears poised to deliver a contradictory message to the American people: Some independent agencies deserve protection from presidential whim, while others do not. The logic is troubling, the implications profound and the damage to our civil service system could be irreparable.

In December, during oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, the court’s conservative majority signaled it would likely overturn or severely weaken Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the 90-year-old precedent protecting independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission from at-will presidential removal. Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed Humphrey’s Executor as “just a dried husk,” suggesting the FTC’s powers justify unlimited presidential control. Yet just weeks later, during arguments in Trump v. Cook, those same justices expressed grave concerns about protecting the “independence” of the Federal Reserve, calling it “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” deserving special constitutional consideration.

The message is clear: Wall Street’s interests warrant protection, but the rights of federal workers do not.

The MSPB: Guardian of civil service protections

This double standard becomes even more glaring when we consider Harris v. Bessent, where the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December 2025 that President Donald Trump could lawfully remove Merit Systems Protection Board Chairwoman Cathy Harris without cause. The MSPB is not some obscure bureaucratic backwater — it is the cornerstone of our merit-based civil service system, the institution that stands between federal workers and a return to the spoils system that once plagued American government with cronyism, inefficiency and partisan pay-to-play services.

The MSPB hears appeals from federal employees facing adverse actions including terminations, demotions and suspensions. It adjudicates claims of whistleblower retaliation, prohibited personnel practices and discrimination. In my and Harris’ tenure alone, the MSPB resolved thousands of cases protecting federal workers from arbitrary and unlawful treatment. In fact, we eliminated the nearly 4,000 backlogged appeals from the prior Trump administration due to a five-year lack of quorum. These are not abstract policy debates — these are cases about whether career professionals can be fired for refusing to break the law, for reporting waste and fraud or simply for holding the “wrong” political views.

The MSPB’s quasi-judicial function is precisely what Humphrey’s Executor was designed to protect. This is what Congress intended to follow in 1978 when it created the MSPB in order to strengthen the civil service workforce from the government weaponization under the Nixon administration. The 1935 Supreme Court recognized that certain agencies must be insulated from political pressure to function properly — agencies that adjudicate disputes, that apply law to fact, that require expertise and impartiality rather than ideological alignment with whoever currently occupies the White House. Why would today’s Supreme Court throw out that noble and constitutionally oriented mandate?

A specious distinction

The Supreme Court’s apparent willingness to treat the Federal Reserve as “special” while abandoning agencies like the MSPB rests on a distinction without a meaningful constitutional difference. Yes, the Federal Reserve sets monetary policy with profound economic consequences. But the MSPB’s work is no less vital to the functioning of our democracy.

Consider what happens when the MSPB loses its independence. Federal employees adjudicating veterans’ benefits claims, processing Social Security applications, inspecting food safety or enforcing environmental protections suddenly serve at the pleasure of the president. Career experts can be replaced by political loyalists. Decisions that should be based on law and evidence become subject to political calculation. The entire civil service — the apparatus that delivers services to millions of Americans — becomes a partisan weapon to be wielded by whichever party controls the White House.

This is not hypothetical. We have seen this movie before. The spoils system of the 19th century produced rampant corruption, incompetence and the wholesale replacement of experienced government workers after each election. The Pendleton Act of 1883 and subsequent civil service reforms were not partisan projects — they were recognition that effective governance requires a professional, merit-based workforce insulated from political pressure.

The real stakes

The Supreme Court’s willingness to carve out special protection for the Federal Reserve while abandoning the MSPB reveals a troubling hierarchy of values. Financial markets deserve stability and independence, but should the American public tolerate receiving partisan-based government services and protections?

Protecting the civil service is not some narrow special interest. It affects every American who depends on government services. It determines whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors can enforce workplace safety rules without fear of being fired for citing politically connected companies. Whether Environmental Protection Agency scientists can publish findings inconvenient to the administration. Whether veterans’ benefits claims are decided on merit rather than political favor. Whether independent and oversight federal organizations can investigate law enforcement shootings in Minnesota without political interference.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during the Cook arguments, warned that allowing presidents to easily fire Federal Reserve governors based on “trivial or inconsequential or old allegations difficult to disprove” would “weaken if not shatter” the Fed’s independence. He’s right. But that logic applies with equal force to the MSPB. If presidents can fire MSPB members at will, they can install loyalists who will rubber-stamp politically motivated personnel actions, creating a chilling effect throughout the civil service.

What’s next

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to apply its principles consistently. If the Federal Reserve deserves independence to insulate monetary policy from short-term political pressure, then the MSPB deserves independence to insulate personnel decisions from political retaliation. If “for cause” removal protections serve an important constitutional function for financial regulators, they serve an equally important function for the guardians of civil service protections.

The court should reject the false distinction between agencies that protect Wall Street and agencies that protect workers. Both serve vital public functions. Both require independence to function properly. Both should be subject to the same constitutional analysis.

More fundamentally, the court must recognize that its removal cases are not merely abstract exercises in constitutional theory. They determine whether we will have a professional civil service or return to a patronage system. Whether government will be staffed by experts or political operatives. Whether the rule of law or the whim of the president will govern federal employment decisions.

A strong civil service is just as important to American democracy as an independent Federal Reserve. Both protect against the concentration of power. Both ensure that critical governmental functions are performed with expertise and integrity rather than political calculation. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence should reflect that basic truth, not create an arbitrary hierarchy that privileges financial interests over the rights of workers and the integrity of government.

The court will issue its decisions over the next several months and when it does, it should remember that protecting democratic institutions is not a selective enterprise. The rule of law requires principles, not preferences. Because in the end, a government run on political loyalty instead of merit is far more dangerous than a fluctuating interest rate.

Raymond Limon retired after more than 30 years of federal service in 2025. He served in leadership roles at the Office of Personnel Management and the State Department and was the vice chairman of the Merit Systems Protections Board. He is now founder of Merit Services Advocates.

The post The Supreme Court’s dangerous double standard on independent agencies first appeared on Federal News Network.

© AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about one of everybody’s favorite topics, FedRAMP. It’s been around for years, but agencies are still struggling to get modern tools. So from your perspective, why is the process so hard for software and service companies to get through?

Irina Denisenko  It’s a great question. Why is it so hard to get through FedRAMP? It is so hard to get through FedRAMP because at the end of the day, what is FedRAMP really here to do? It’s here to secure cloud software, to secure government data sitting in cloud software. You have to remember this all came together almost 15 years ago, which if you remember 15 years ago, 20 years ago, was kind of early days of all of us interacting with the internet. And we were still even, in some cases, scared to enter our credit card details onto an online website. Fast forward to today, we pay with our face when we get on our phone. We’ve come a long way. But the reality is cloud security hasn’t always been the, of course, it’s secure. In fact, it has been the opposite. Of course, its unsecure and it’s the internet and that’s where you go to lose all your data and all your information. And so long story short, you have to understand that’s were the government is coming from. We need to lock everything down in order to make sure that whether it’s VA patient data, IRS data on our taxpayers, obviously anything in the DoW, any sort of information data there, all of that stays secure. And so that’s why there are hundreds of controls that are applied to cloud environments in order make sure and double sure and triple sure that that data is secure.

Terry Gerton You lived the challenge first-hand with your own company. What most surprised you about the certification process when you tackled it yourself? What most surprise me?

Irina Denisenko  When we tackled FedRAMP ourselves for the first time was that even if you have the resources and specifically if you $3 million to spend, you know, $3 million burning a hole in your pocket doesn’t happen often, but even if have that and you have staff on the U.S. Soil and you have the willingness to invest all of that for a three-year process to get certified, that is still not enough. What you need on top of that is an agency to say yes to sponsoring you. And when they say yes, to sponsoring you what they are saying yes to you is to take on your cyber risk. And specifically what they’re saying yes to is to spend half a million dollars of taxpayer money of agency budget, typically using contractors, to do an initial security review of your application. And then to basically get married to you and do something called continuous monitoring, which is a monthly meeting that they’re going to have with you forever. They, that agency is going to be your accountability partner and ultimately the risk bearer of you, the software provider, to make sure you are burning down all of the vulnerabilities, all of these CVEs, every finding in your cloud environment on the timeline that you’re supposed to do that. And that ends up costing an agency about $250,000 a year, again, in the form of contractors, tooling, etc. That was the most surprising to me, that again, even as a cloud service provider, who’s already doing business with JP Morgan and Chase, you know, healthcare systems, you name it, even that’s not enough, you need an agency sponsor, because at the end of the day, it’s the agency’s data and they have to protect it. And so they have do that triple assurance of, yes, you said you’re doing the security stuff, but let us confirm that you’re doing the the security stuff. That was the most surprising to me. And why, really, ultimately, we started Knox Systems, because what we do at Knox is we enable the inheritance model. So we are doing all of that with our sponsoring agencies, of which we have 15. Knox runs the largest FedRAMP managed cloud. And what that means is we host the production environment of our customers inside of our FedRAMP environment across AWS, Azure, and GCP. And our customers inherit our sponsors. So they inherit the authorization from the treasury, from the VA, from the Marines, etc., Which means that the Marines, the Treasury, the VA, didn’t have to spend an extra half a million upfront and $250k ongoing with every new application that was authorized. They are able to get huge bang for their buck by just investing that authorization, that sponsorship into the Knox boundary. And then Knox does the work and the hard work to ensure the security and ongoing authorization and compliance of all of the applications that we bring into our environment.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Irina Denisenko. She’s the CEO of Knox Systems. So it sounds like you found a way through the maze that was shorter, simpler, less expensive. Is FedRAMP 20X helping to normalize that kind of approach? How do you see it playing out?

Irina Denisenko  Great question. FedRAMP 20X is a phenomenal initiative coming out of OMB-GSA. And really the crux of that is all about machine-readable and continuous authorization. Today, when I talked about continuous monitoring, that’s a monthly meeting that happens. And I kid you not, we, as a cloud service provider, again, we secure Adobe’s environment and many others, we come with a spreadsheet, an actual spreadsheet that has all of the vulnerabilities listed from all the scans we’ve done over the last month, and anything that is still open from anything prior months. And we review that spreadsheet, that actual Excel document, and then after the meet with our agencies and then, after that meeting, we upload that spreadsheet into a system called USDA on the FedCiv side, eMass, DOW side, DISA side. And then they, on their side, download that spreadsheet and they put it into other systems. And I mean, that’s the process. I think no one is confused, or no one would argue that surely there’s a better way. And a better would be a machine readable way, whether that’s over an API, using a standard language like OSCAL. There’s lots of ways to standardize, but it doesn’t have to be basically the equivalent of a clipboard and a pencil. And that’s what FedRAMP 20X is doing. It’s automating that information flow so that not only is it bringing down the amount of just human labor that needs to be done to do all this tracking, but more importantly, this is cloud security. Just because you’re secure one second doesn’t mean you’re secure five seconds from now, right? You need to be actively monitoring this, actively reporting this. And if it’s taking you 30 days to let an agency know that you have a critical vulnerability, that’s crazy. You, you got to tell them in, you know, five minutes after you find out or, you know to put a respectable buffer, a responsible buffer to allow you to mitigate remediate before you notify more parties, maybe it’s a four day buffer but it’s certainly not 30 days. That’s what FedRAMP20X is doing. We’re super excited about it. We are very supportive of it and have been actively involved in phase I and all subsequent phases.

Terry Gerton Right, so phase II is scheduled to start shortly in 2026. What are you expecting to see as a result?

Irina Denisenko  Well, phase I was all about FedRAMP low, phase II is all about FedRAMP moderate. And we expect that, you know, it’s going to really — FedRAMP moderate is realistically where most cloud service offerings sit, FedRAMP moderate and high. And so that’s really the one that the FedRAMP needs to get right. What we expect to see and hope to see is to have agencies actually authorized off of these new frameworks. The key is really going to be what shape does FedRAMP 20x take in terms of machine readable reporting on the security posture of any cloud environment? And then of course, the industry will standardize around that. So we’re excited to see what that looks like. And also how much AI does the agency, the GSA, OMB and ultimately FedRAMP leverage because there is a tremendous amount of productivity, but also security that AI can provide. It can also introduce a lot of risks. And so we’re all collaborating with that agency, as well as we’re excited to see what, you know, where they draw the bright red lines and where they embrace AI.

Terry Gerton So phase II is only gonna incorporate 10 companies, right? So for the rest of the world who’s waiting on these results, what advice do you have for them in the meantime? How can companies prepare better or how can companies who want to get FedRAMP certified now best proceed?

Irina Denisenko  I think the end of the day the inheritance model that Knox provides — and, you know, we’re not the only ones, actually there’s two key players.; it’s ourselves and Palantir. There’s a reason hat large companies like Celonis like OutSystems like BigID like Armis who was just bought by ServiceNow for almost $8 billion. There’s reason that all those guys choose Knox and there’s a reason Anthropic chose Palantir and Grafana chose Palantir, because regardless, FedRAMP 20X, Rev 5, doesn’t matter, there is a massive, massive premium put on getting innovative technology in the hands of our government faster. We have a window right now with the current administration prioritizing innovative technology and commercial off-the-shelf. You know, take the best out of Silicon Valley and use it in the government or out of Europe, out of Israel, you name it, rather than build it yourself, customize it until you’re blue in the face and still get an inferior product. Just use the best and breed, right? But you need it to be secure. And we have this window as a country. We have a window as country for the next few years here to get these technologies in. It takes a while to adopt new technologies. It takes awhile to do a quantum leap, but I’ll give you a perfect example. Celonis, since becoming FedRAMPed on August 19th with Knox — they had been trying to get FedRAMPed for five years — since getting FedRAMPed on august 19th, has implemented three agencies. And what do they do? They do process mining and intelligence. They’re an $800 million company that’s 20 years old that competes, by the way, head on with Palantir’s core product, Foundry and Gotham and so on. They’ve implemented three agencies already to drive efficiency, to drive visibility, to drive process mining, to driving intelligence, to drive AI-powered decision-making. And that’s during the holidays, during a government shutdown, it’s speed that we’ve never seen before. If you want outcomes, you need to get these technologies into the hands of our agencies today. And so that’s why, you know, we’re such big proponents of this model, and also why, our agencies, our federal advisory board, which includes the DHS CISO, the DOW CIO, the VA CIO are also supportive of this because ultimately it’s about serving the mission and doing it now. Rather than waiting for some time in the future.

The post FedRAMP is getting faster, new automation and pilots promise approvals in months, not years first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about this case, Siemens Government Technologies. But before we dive into the case and the court’s decision, walk us through the basic premise here, which is about energy savings performance contracts. How do they work?

Zach Prince Sure, so the government, you know, it has a lot of facilities around the country and around the world. Many of those facilities are a little dated, let’s put it nicely, where they waste huge amounts of energy just because the infrastructure is built decades and decades and decades ago. So as part of a way to try to modernize and save energy, they’ve developed two different mechanisms that are the real workhorses of modernizing in this regard. There are what we’re dealing with here, which are energy savings performance contracts, and then their utility energy savings contracts, or UESCs. This is more of the former, not the latter, but those are really the two mechanisms. So the way that these work is there’s an IDIQ that will be held by a number of energy savings companies. Here Siemens is one of them. The interested agency will go out and ask for quotes to put together a preliminary audit, or a preliminary assessment rather, which is really a high level review of the federal facility and suggestion of ways that the government can save money and the cost of doing it. This always has to be not just cost neutral, but has to have an actual savings to the government. And that savings is passed on then to the contractor. The preliminary assessment is itself an expensive process, but it’s not nearly as expensive as the next part of this, which is if the government is interested in the preliminary assessment, they’ll ask for an investment grade audit or IGA, which is part of the task order award for the work itself. That can be millions of dollars. I mean, it takes tons of engineering time and real work from the contractor. And work that sometimes doesn’t always get compensated if there’s no ultimate award.

Terry Gerton So it sounds like there are a lot of ways that these projects could get derailed. What specifically went wrong in the Siemens case?

Zach Prince Well, it’s hard to tell reading just from the court’s decision, but it appeared that DLA, which was administering this large project at the Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, changed some requirements after that they had already received the first round of the investment grade audit from Siemens. They seemingly changed a ton of the assumptions that were used by Siemens to calculate the actual cost savings. And, as Siemens put it, required a full scale investment grade audit to be conducted again with a number of iterations that ended up costing somewhere north of $2 million.

Terry Gerton That change in assumptions is interesting, because as I read the case, it was almost two years from the initial request to Siemens’ submission of their audit. And so many things could have changed. Does that make these kinds of projects a risky proposition?

Zach Prince They make them complicated. And the agency really needs to be focused on getting these projects done, getting the investment grade audit to be based on facts, not things that could rapidly change, which is I think what happened here, so that they understand what they’re getting or what they might be getting and can execute the project.

Terry Gerton So Siemens brought the case in the Court of Federal Claims. What was their argument?

Zach Prince So as sort of the background to this, the IGA often is not compensated when there’s not a task order and companies know that this is a risk that they’re taking. The preliminary assessment is almost never compensated unless there’s a task order. So they know it’s a risk, but this is an unusual case because of how many iterations they went through with DLA just to then have the project totally canceled with nothing. So, they brought some pretty interesting challenges here. They frame this as a bid protest, primarily, as well as a breach of contract. So there was a contract, this IDIQ, with a task order for the preliminary assessment. That’s where they brought a contract claim under. They said the government breached its obligations to administer a task order for the work itself under that IDIQ, so that’s a contract dispute. They also said this was an improper administration of a task order award process where the government breached implied obligations to proceed in good faith and breached a variety of other statutes that really weren’t discussed in the case. But they framed it as both contract disputes and a bid protest.

Terry Gerton Speaking with Zach Prince, he’s a partner at Haynes Boone. How did the government respond to those allegations?

Zach Prince Well, the government just asked for the whole thing to be dismissed, which it often does. The bid protest issues are the ones that they really focused on and I thought were of particular interest for this case because it was really a novel approach to try to get compensation by Siemens. The government argued that there can’t be a bid protest here under the court’s bid protest jurisdiction because of what’s known as the FASA task order bar. It is, there is some limit to the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims to hear disputes, bid protest disputes involving task orders. They either have no jurisdiction anywhere to have such bid protests or they have to go to GAO. But that limit has been hotly disputed and the subject of several Federal Circuit decisions and the government lost that claim here.

Terry Gerton And what else did the court have to say about Siemen’s creativity?

Zach Prince The court was more focused on the government’s attempt to trap Siemens by saying that either, if there’s a contract, an express contract, then they can’t bring an implied in fact contract, which is one of their arguments they had brought as a bid protest, essentially. But also the government said there is no express contract that gives rise to relief. So as the court put it, it’s heads, I win, tails you lose-type argument the government’s trying to make and it wasn’t going to pass muster here at least. The government might ultimately prevail, but this is a very preliminary stage and the court was not willing to dismiss here.

Terry Gerton So as you look at this case, what lessons do you draw for agencies and contractors around these kinds of projects?

Zach Prince Yeah, it’s really tricky and I’ve dealt with several of these contracts before. The contracting agencies often just don’t have money to fund the preliminary assessment and maybe don’t money to fund the investment grade audit either, hoping, everybody’s hoping together, that it will ultimately turn into a task order for the work. And these task orders might be massive, $50, $100+ million. We’re talking about multi-year projects for modernizing large, large facilities. But you can’t just proceed on hope. It always makes me as outside counsel nervous, but you as a government contractor or as a government agency, you have to have a good relationship with your contracted counterparts. And those relationships can really carry the day to get folks compensated when they otherwise might not have. You find money at the end of a fiscal year and you come up with some mods and make the contractor whole because you know you have to do business with them again. And you appreciate the fairness of it. On the contractor side, you have to recognize that there is risk here. And if you’re not gonna get an actual written commitment from the government, and not just the government of course, the authorized person from the government, to fund one of these projects, you might be left holding the bag. So they can be lucrative projects for sure, but there is risks. And, as always, the government has to proceed in good faith, which is Siemens’ primary argument here is, the government just kept shifting around requirements, ignoring the fact that it was going to cost millions to do that, and then tried to leave Siemens with nothing. But you have to proceed with these projects with eyes wide open.

Terry Gerton You mentioned risk there, especially for the bidders, but it seems like there’s risk for all the parties and it’s not always clear that the potential revenue down the line will offset some of that risk. Is there a better way to structure these kinds of projects that would help everybody in the long run?

Zach Prince That’s a great question. And I’m not just stalling because it’s really complicated and I don’t know the right answer. This is a really interesting mechanism to fund these types of projects. And the government likes it because they’re not really left paying for anything. If they save money and those savings pay the contractor ultimately, and even in the utility version of these types contracts where it’s structured a bit differently, it’s still not coming out of present appropriations generally. It is a savings that the government’s getting ultimately on its energy bills, and that’s being passed on to pay for the project. That’s a great way to do business. If the government doesn’t have to actually pay for anything, they’re not subject to ongoing appropriation problems, and they still can get what they need, that’s fantastic. The problem is just at the outset of these projects, there are all sorts of complications that really need to be considered carefully by all parties.

The post An interesting case at the Court of Federal Claims could shape future energy savings performance contracts first appeared on Federal News Network.

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• Former Justice Department employees have an alumni network to turn to for help with looking for work. An employee organization called Justice Connection said it recently expanded its DOJ alumni network, aiming to help employees navigate transitions out of the agency. The organization is offering to connect current and recent DOJ employees with more than 100 agency alumni. They’ll be able to get informational interviews, advice and insights for how to continue on a specific career path, including attorneys, legal support staff and many others.
  (Expanding network to help DOJ employees find work - Justice Connection)
• The House on Thursday passed the final group of spending bills needed before the Jan. 30 funding deadline. In a vote of 341 to 88, lawmakers approved fiscal 2026 funding for the departments of Defense, Labor, Education, Transportation and Health and Human Services. But due to Democratic opposition over ICE funding, the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security passed with a much narrower margin, in a party line vote of 220 to 207. The appropriations package now heads to the Senate for consideration.
  (House passes final bills to complete fiscal 2026 appropriations - House Appropriations Committee)
• The Postal Service is now accepting bids from shippers for use of its nationwide last-mile delivery network. USPS already has agreements with shipping giants like Amazon and UPS to get packages to their final destination. But it’s looking to give other delivery companies an opportunity to strike similar deals. Last-mile delivery is the most expensive leg of deliveries, and USPS goes to more addresses than its private-sector competitors. USPS said winning bidders will be notified during the second quarter of this calendar year.
  (U.S. Postal Service opens bid solicitation platform for entry to last-mile delivery network - U.S. Postal Service)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs has officially lifted its hiring freeze, but staffing caps are still in place for a smaller workforce. The VA saw its first-ever workforce net decrease last year and is unlikely to hire its way to a higher headcount than what it currently has. VA’s Under Secretary for Health said the hiring freeze is over, but VA facilities generally can’t exceed staffing caps set for their regions. A report from Senate VA Committee Democrats said the VA lost more than 40,000 employees last year. About 10,000 of those employees worked in frontline positions that the department has struggled to fill.
  (VA officially lifts hiring freeze, but staffing caps still in place for shrinking workforce - Federal News Network)
• Value-added resellers finally get a chance to weigh in on the concerns about their business model and the changes the General Services Administration has been considering. GSA issued a request for information yesterday seeking feedback from VARs and others to gain a clearer understanding of the value added by resellers, and the resulting impact of these services on pricing and the ability to meet the government’s requirements. The initial focus of the feedback is for companies in a specific special item number for IT hardware, 33411. Responses to the RFI are due by Feb. 9.
  (GSA seeks feedback from VARs - General Services Administration)
• The Small Business Administration suspended nearly a quarter of all participants in the 8(a) program. The SBA has suspended more than 1,000 companies in the program. SBA made the decision after it deemed those small businesses non-compliant with its financial data request from December. An SBA spokesperson said these suspended firms have 45 days to file an appeal. At the same time, SBA issued new guidance yesterday clarifying how it will run the small business development program going forward. Among the changes is that SBA will administer the 8(a) program based on race-neutral requirements. It also will no longer approve the use of “socially disadvantage narratives” as a way to get into the program.
  (SBA ends use of ‘socially disadvantage narratives’ for 8(a) program - Federal News Network)
• The Marine Corps has tapped GenAI.mil as its official enterprise generative artificial intelligence platform that will consolidate all duplicative, general-purpose GenAI usage into one system. Marines, civilians and contractors can start using GenAI.mil immediately. The platform is approved only for processing Controlled Unclassified Information, but the service plans to expand GenAI.mil to higher classification networks. The service also plans to integrate Marine Corps data sources and agentic AI development solutions in the future.
  (Marine Corps designates GenAI.mil its enterprise AI platform - MARADMIN)
• Congress wants the Space Force to organize its programs and people by mission area. One of the root causes of the Defense Department's failed acquisition system is the military rotation system, which often replaces program managers every two to three years. That turnover, lawmakers argue, prevents personnel from staying in place long enough to develop the technical expertise needed to manage increasingly complex systems. Now, Congress is directing the Pentagon to propose a Space Force pilot program that would keep personnel assigned to specific mission areas for substantially longer tours. The pilot program should also examine eliminating traditional occupational specialty categories, such as acquisition or operations, in favor of mission-focused specializations, such as missile warning or satellite communications.
  (Congress wants Space Force to organize programs and people by mission area - House.gov)

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The post Billington CyberSecurity Cyber and AI Outlook Series Episode 5: ROI for AI: Setting Goals and Tracking Outcomes first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton Let’s do first things first. Tell us about the Air and Space Forces Aid Society. What do you do?

Ed Thomas The bottom line, Terry, is we take care of airmen, guardians, and their families. We’ve been doing it since 1942, as World War II started to ramp up, all of the services have an organization like this. It is the official relief society of that service. Army emergency relief takes care of soldiers. Navy Marine Corps relief takes of marines and sailors. Coast Guard Mutual Assistance takes care of coasties. We take care in the Air and Space Forces, now the Air and Space Force’s Aid Society, we take care of airmen, guardians, and their families when they need us most.

Terry Gerton And what sort of format does that aid take?

Ed Thomas We do several things. At the most basic level we provide two basic forms of assistance. The first is grants, lots. We did $4.5 million in scholarships last year, we did almost $5 million dollars in disaster relief when hurricanes Helene and Milton and other natural disasters hit parts of the United States where we had our service member stationed. So we do grants we also do zero interest loans. Now we’re not a bank but the reason we do zero interest loans is in some cases, it prevents our young, particularly our most junior enlisted folks from going to a payday loan organization that’s going to charge them 30%, 39% interest. And we want to avoid that.

Terry Gerton Well, the big news for us in this conversation is that you’ve added Space Force to the organization’s name and logo. Tell us about why and what message you wanna send with that.

Ed Thomas Yeah, well, I would say, Terry, it is overdue that finally we have rebranded, renamed ourselves the Air and Space Forces Aid Society. You know, I was on the Air staff with Gen. Goldfein, Gen. Raymond, Secretary Wilson in 2019 on December 20th, when we stood up the Space Force and it wasn’t like a five-year planning ramp to create this new service. On day one, when President Trump signed the NDAA out of Andrews Air Force Base, we had a space force. It was a Space Force of one, Gen. Raymond, but now it’s ramped up to about 10,000 people. They’re going to be ramping up to almost three times that size in the out years, and we need to recognize as the official aid organization of the Department of the Air Force, who we serve. And we’ve been serving guardians since day one, but we just wanna make sure that we’re connecting with those people that we’re charged to help take care of and that airmen, guardians, and their families know that we were here for them.

Terry Gerton As you’ve built a support mechanism for guardians, are you finding that that force has needs that are different in scale or scope from airmen in general?

Ed Thomas No, I would say for the most part, the needs are very, very similar. You know, most of our support is focused on our most junior enlisted, E1s to E4s. And the kinds of difficulties that our young service members are experiencing, whether they’re Air Force, Space Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, they look very similar, It’s simple things like not having any savings in their account when a financial crisis hits. Their Hyundai Santa Fe, they lose their engine on their 8-year-old car. Very expensive to fix. Maybe one car for a family and they just don’t have the financial reserves. That’s where we come in, help them get them back on their feet. Hopefully they’ll never need us again, but we want to be there for these families, Space Force, Air Force, when they need us.

Terry Gerton Is there something about this group of service members that you think most Americans don’t understand? You’ve just mentioned some real significant financial challenges.

Ed Thomas Yeah, Terry, thanks. I think there are several things, but you know, I used to work for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey, Gen. Dempsey, one of my favorite people in the world. And he would very often say, our people are called to lead uncommon lives. And they are uncommon lives. I mean, you take an 18, a 20, a 22-year-old, they move away from their family, sometimes to the other side of the world. They leave their community, they leave their support, sources of support. Often they end up with all the change happening at once that adds a lot of financial stress, often adds a lot of mental or emotional stress, and all things people learn to deal with. I spent 33 years on active duty in the military, plus four years as a cadet, and I grew up in an army family. I was kind of used to this. But we have a lot of people that are plucked out of their families and their homes across America thrown into this military life across the country, across the world. And there’s a lot unique challenges and stressors that they just might not be prepared for.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, who leads the Air and Space Forces Aid Society. Are there particular needs in the Air Force and the Guardians that you’re meeting right now?

Ed Thomas Absolutely. Some of the biggest needs that we meet on a day-to-day basis, and we’re often doing them very quietly, is just basic living expenses. It’s those airmen or guardians or their families that meet an unexpected financial crisis, and they just don’t have the reserves to deal with it. Sometimes it’s rent, sometimes it’s mortgage, particularly in high cost living areas like New York or L.A. Where we’re asking people to go relocate to. Sometimes it is auto repair. So there’s a lot of those things that we’re doing. And then one of the other things that we do that people don’t often realize is just helping young airmen and guardians get back for emergencies. Let’s say they’re stationed in Kunsan, Korea, you know, an hour, hour and a from soul. And they lose a family member, they have a family that’s terminally ill. Our U.S. Government policies, while they’re great and they help take care of our people, they don’t pay for all of those things. So for a young airman to be able to … take off and travel from one of the side of the world to the other to get there for a family emergency, they often need help and they often need support. We’ll do that, we’ll work with them, we work with the Red Cross. We’ll pay for their flights, we’ll get them home and make sure they’re there when they need to be there. Or, in unfortunate cases, at least be there to say goodbye.

Terry Gerton As you look forward to 2026, what are the priorities? Beyond the name change, are there new programs or outreach initiatives or partnerships you’re really excited about?

Ed Thomas No, thanks. Yes to all of those things. We have probably made the biggest changes in the last, say, six or seven months that we’ve probably made in decades to the way we deliver our programs. And I’ll tie that to our number one strategic priority, and that’s just awareness. That’s just making sure that we create and enhance the awareness across the force, so when airmen, especially people who are relatively new to the force, hit a snag, they know who to turn to. So some of the things that we’ve done is we’ve dramatically increased our childcare support, money that goes to these young families to be able to help take care of children when they’re deployed, when they are doing a permanent change of station from one assignment to another. Car seats is another one. We buy car seats for every E1 to E5 when they have a new child. It’s $250 that gets Zelled straight into their account so that they can go get that car seat. We also just finished a program called Home for the Holidays, where we just spent more than a quarter million dollars getting young, single airmen from their location back to home to spend it with family and loved ones over the holidays. So that travel program is one of the things that we’re really proud of, and we wanna make sure that we can reunite our service members with their families, particularly at times like this.

Terry Gerton As we wrap up here, I wanna give you the opportunity to make a call to action. What can the public or industry do to help you move the needle?

Ed Thomas Well, the first thing I’d say, Terry, is the awareness piece. We, while we need funds and we need to fundraise, we want to make sure that all of our service members know that we’re here to help them. That’s where my passion is. And that’s where I want to make sure people know how to come to us in times of need. It’s not only good for those service members and their families, but it’s good for the readiness of the nation. Now, also, I’ll never turn down an opportunity for help. AFAS.org, If people go there, they can either click a button that says ‘hey I need help’ or click a button that ‘I want to support.’ There are certainly a lot of young junior airmen and guardians of their families that we can use with your help. So thank you Terry.

The post An organization’s new name signals a broader mission to support both Airmen and Guardians first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is officially lifting a hiring freeze on its health care workforce, after shedding tens of thousands of positions last year.

But the VA, which saw the first-ever workforce net decrease, is unlikely to hire its way to a higher headcount than what it currently has.

A report from Democrats on the Senate VA Committee released Thursday finds VA facilities are still operating “within strict staffing caps.”

“Facility leadership in the field are still reporting denials and severe delays in hiring approvals for all positions from clinical staff to custodians to claims processors,” lawmakers wrote.

The report claims the VA lost more than 40,000 employees last year, and that 88% of them worked in health care. About 10,000 of those employees worked in frontline positions that the department has struggled to fill.

VA workforce data shows the department saw a net decrease of 3,000 registered nurses last year, a net decrease of 1,000 physicians and a net decrease of 1,550 appointment schedulers.

In a typical year, the VA’s workforce sees a net gain of about 10,000 employees. But under the Trump administration, the VA sought to eliminate 30,000 positions through attrition by the end of fiscal 2025. The department previously envisioned cutting 83,000 jobs in part through layoffs.

VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz disputed several of the report’s findings. He said the VA achieved its headcount reduction goal of 30,000 employees, but didn’t lose 40,000 employees, as Senate Democrats claim. The VA also disputes the report’s claims that veterans, in some cases, are seeing longer wait times for VA mental health care appointments. 

Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters in a call that the report shows a “diminished” VA that is unable to keep up with the needs of veterans.

“The loss of talent is so deeply regrettable, and the results are basically longer wait times,” Blumenthal said.

Kasperowicz said in a statement that, “while Blumenthal stages political theater, VA is making major improvements for veterans under President Trump.”

The VA fired about 2,400 probationary employees last year, but largely reduced its workforce through voluntary separation incentives.

VA workforce data shows the department made about 21,000 hires last year, offsetting the total impact of these workforce cuts.  The latest data from the Office of Personnel Management shows the VA saw a net reduction of more than 27,000 positions in 2025.

But Blumenthal said these new hires have done little to improve the VA’s capacity.

“They are not the same skilled people as have been either fired or lost because of the toxic environment that’s been created in many areas of the VA,” he said.

 

In a memo last week, VA Under Secretary for Health John Bartrum told department leaders that “all hiring freeze restrictions” still in place at the Veterans Health Administration have been lifted.

Bartrum wrote in the memo that each Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) “has been allocated a baseline number of positions calculated on their budgeted FTE plus anticipated needs for growth,” and that requests to exceed that headcount must be approved by the VA Strategic Hiring Committee.

“Leaders and managers must manage operational needs within their cumulative full-time equivalent (FTE) budget and position thresholds,” Bartrum wrote.

The report claims veterans are seeing longer wait times for mental health care appointments. In early January, new-patient wait times for individual mental health care appointments in 14 states exceeded 40 days — twice the wait time threshold that allows veterans to seek treatment outside the VA’s health care network. Those states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Maine, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia. According to the report, the national mean for new patients to sign up for individual mental health care appointments is 35 days.

However, Kasperowicz said VA data shows wait times for mental health care were under six days for established patients, and 19 days for new patients. 

The VA eased requirements for veterans to seek care from non-VA “community care” last year, and has increased spending on community care. The department is embarking on a $1 trillion next-generation community care contract, one of the largest government contracts in U.S. history.

House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said in a hearing Thursday that the contract, “if done properly,” would give the VA “unprecedented flexibility” to award contract and task orders that would lead to better health care outcomes for veterans.

In their report, Senate VA Committee Democrats found the VA last year cancelled about 2,000 contracts and let another 14,000 expire without plans to renew or replace those services.

VA Secretary Doug Collins has repeatedly defended his plans for a smaller workforce. He told lawmakers last May that increased staffing hasn’t always led to better outcomes for veterans.

Last year, the department decreased its backlog of benefits claims by nearly 60% despite a net decrease of about 2,000 VA claims processors.

Kayla Williams, a former VA assistant secretary and a senior advisor for the Vet Voice Foundation, said the department reduced the initial claims backlog, but has grown the volume of claims requiring higher-level review.

“These actions were never about efficiency or cost savings,” Williams said.

The VA anticipated a spike in the backlog after Congress passed the PACT Act, making more veterans eligible for VA health care and benefits, because they were exposed to toxic substances during their military service.

Lindsay Church, the executive director of Minority Veterans of America, said 1.2 million veterans have lost their VA providers under the Trump administration.

“Clinics can’t keep care teams staffed. Appointments are being canceled or delayed, and veterans who rely on consistent, trauma-informed care are being forced into instability and pressured into community care. Mental health access, which has always been a crisis for our community for decades, has deteriorated rapidly,” Church said.

Mary Jean Burke, the first executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees National VA Council, said that by the end of 2026, most VA facilities are on track to lose about 2-5% of their psychologists — and that locations, including Seattle and Buffalo, are on track to see “double-digit” attrition.

Burke said VA health care employees have left because the VA has slashed jobs, stripped away remote work and telework, and brought staff back into “overcrowded” spaces.

“These punishing policies haven’t just lowered morale, they end up compromising the quality of care we provide,” Burke said.

Collins is scheduled to testify before the Senate VA Committee next Wednesday, in a hearing about the department’s ongoing reorganization efforts.

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The Small Business Administration suspended more than 1,000 companies in the 8(a) program. SBA made the decision after it deemed those small businesses non-compliant with its financial data request from December.

“Suspended firms have 45 days to appeal the suspension,” said Maggie Clemmons, an SBA spokesperson in an email to Federal News Network. “SBA will release further information on the suspensions in the coming days.”

The suspension comes after SBA sent a letter to more than 4,300 8(a) firms in December seeking 13 different data, ranging from a list of the company’s employees to bank statements for the last three fiscal years to a copy of all 8(a) contracts, as part of its ongoing audit of the program.

Data compiled by GovContractPros, an advisory services firm specializing in federal procurement, found that SBA admitted 753 companies into the 8(a) program in fiscal 2024. Of those 753 firms, the company says SBA suspended 156 of them.

In fiscal 2025, SBA says it admitted only 65 companies into the 8(a) firm. GovContractPros says SBA suspended 10 of those firms, including nine which joined the program after the Trump administration began leading SBA.

Lawyers that represent small businesses say SBA issued the suspensions on Wednesday based on the fact that the 8(a) firms either failed to submit their responses on or before the Jan. 19 deadline or submitted incomplete responses.

“At least some firms that submitted complete data call responses only one day late — on Jan. 20, and before any suspension notices were issued — often due to errors in the government-operated MySBA Certifications portal, nonetheless received suspension notices, indicating that SBA is taking a strict approach to alleged non-compliance with the filing deadline,” wrote Meghan Leemon and Matt Feinberg, partners with the law firm Piliero Mazza, on a blog post. “Firms subject to 8(a) suspension are not permitted to receive new competitive or sole-source 8(a) awards. However, firms are required to complete existing 8(a) contracts, and federal agencies may exercise options on those contracts, even while a firm is suspended, unless otherwise prohibited by statute or regulation.”

SBA’s new clarifying guidance

The suspensions are part of a broad Trump administration effort to audit the 8(a) program and address allegations of fraud and abuse. SBA’s data call was one of several ongoing audits to now include the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration and, as of last week, now the Department of Defense.

“The Biden administration expanded and then abused the 8(a) program to hand out billions in taxpayer-funded government contracts to favored minorities at the direct expense of honest small businesses, which is why we ended the practice on day one,” said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in a press release. “Since then, the Trump SBA has been working to reverse the damage – and today, we’re reiterating one simple fact: the Biden-era practice of discriminating against white Americans is over, and reforms to enshrine that fact are well underway. The SBA is ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in federal contracting – and our programs will remain open to all eligible job creators in compliance with federal law.”

In addition to suspending nearly a quarter of the 8(a) program participants, SBA issued new guidance today clarifying that the small business development program “is open to job creators of every race – consistent with court orders, notices from the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ), and President [Donald] Trump’s broader effort to eliminate DEI across the federal government – and that any race-based presumptions of social disadvantage have been inoperative since 2023.”

The guidance outlines new ways the SBA will manage the program.

It says it will administer the 8(a) program based on race neutral requirements and there will be no presumptive preference given to anyone.

SBA also will no longer approve the use of “socially disadvantage narratives” as a way to get into the program. It removed from its website the Biden-era “Guide for Demonstrating Social Disadvantage.”

Finally, SBA will consider several factors when determining eligibility for the 8(a) program, including whether the individual has been a “victim of illegal or radical DEI policies or illegal affirmative action policies or has otherwise been the victim of discriminatory practices such as race-based quotas, set asides or hiring targets, in each case by government and non-government actors.”

SBA says these steps are in reaction to the “dramatic expansion” under the Biden administration of companies in the 8(a) program.

Since January 2025, SBA accepted just 65 new 8(a) firms into the program, compared to over 2,100 who were accepted during the four years of the Biden administration.

Undermining the 8(a) program?

Jackie Robinson-Burnette, a former SBA associate administrator in the Office of Government Contracting and Business Development during the Biden administration, wrote on LinkedIn that this change isn’t a small tweak, but it’s re‑anchoring of the program’s foundation.

“It’s important to reform the 8(a) program without crushing the firms the program was designed to help,” wrote Robinson-Burnette, who now is the CEO of Senior Executive Strategic Solutions. “Are we dismantling and putting a sledgehammer to the program to curtail spending $20 million-plus on 8(a) sole source contracts or is it about something else?”

John Shoraka, a former associate administrator of government contracting and business development at SBA and now the co-founder and managing director of GovContractPros, said the SBA and now DoD’s audits are part of a concerted effort to undermine the confidence in the 8(a) program.

“It seems to be one initiative after another initiative, sort of in a very sequenced flow of events to undermine the program and sort of put the brakes on the program,” he said. “I think there’s a perception, and, it’s the wrong perception, that the 8(a) program is, at its core, a DEI program. I honestly don’t think that the administration believes there is significantly more fraud in the 8(a) program than any other contracting program. In fact, the data shows, if you look at inspector general cases or if you look at Department of Justice cases, the instances of fraud in the set-aside programs and particularly the 8(a) program, are actually significantly lower as opposed to across the entire federal government. So when we focus on fraud, waste and abuse in the 8(a) program, I think it’s just raising the flag. They can’t really say we want to kill this program because it’s DEI, they need to identify some sort of red flag to point to and say, ‘Ah-a, we told you this program was fraudulent, and therefore we need to terminate or put the brakes on this program.’”

Leemon and Feinberg, from the law firm Piliero Mazza, said companies caught up in the suspension should consider sending an informal appeals to SBA to lift the suspension.

“If informal channels are unsuccessful, a suspended 8(a) company may — and should — appeal SBA’s decision within 45 days of the date of the Notice of Suspension to SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. This process can be time consuming, and appeals decisions can be delayed for months or even years,” the lawyers wrote.

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House lawmakers are discussing a reauthorization of the National Quantum Initiative, with lawmakers eyeing agency prize challenges, workforce issues and supply chain concerns among other key updates.

During a hearing hosted by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Thursday, lawmakers sought input from agencies leading quantum information science efforts. Chairman Brian Babin (R-Texas) said he is working with Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on a reauthorization of the NQI.

“This effort seeks to reinforce U.S. leadership in quantum science, technology and engineering, address workforce challenges, and accelerate commercialization,” Babin said.

The National Quantum Initiative Act of 2018 created a national plan for quantum technologies spearheaded by agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department.

As the House committee works on its bill, Senate lawmakers earlier this month introduced a bipartisan National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act. The bill would extend the initiative for an additional five years through 2034 and reauthorize key agency programs.

The Senate bill would also expand the NQI to include National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) research initiatives, including quantum satellite communications and quantum sensing.

Meanwhile, in September, the White House named quantum information sciences as one of six priority areas in governmentwide research and development budget guidance. “Agencies should deepen focused efforts, such as centers and core programs, to advance basic quantum information science, while also prioritizing R&D that expands the understanding of end user applications and supports the maturation of enabling technologies,” the guidance states.

During the House hearing on Thursday, lawmakers sought feedback on several proposals to include in the reauthorization bill. Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.) said the Energy Department had sent lawmakers technical assistance in December, including a proposal to provide quantum prize challenge authority to agencies that sit on the quantum information science subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council.

Tanner Crowder, quantum information science lead at Energy’s Office of Science, said the prize challenges would help the government use “programmatic mechanisms” to drive the field forward.

“We’ve talked a little bit about our notices of funding opportunities, and the prize challenge would just be another, another mechanism to drive the field forward, both in potential algorithmic designs, hardware designs, and it just gives us more flexibility to push the forefront of the field,” Crowder said.

Crowder was also asked about how the reauthorization bill should direct resources for sensor development and quantum network infrastructure.

“We want to be able to connect systems together, and we need quantum networks to do that,” Crowder responded. “It is impractical to send quantum information over classical networks, and so we need to continue to push that forefront and look to interconnect heterogeneous systems at the data scale level, so that we can actually extract this information and compute upon it.”

Lawmakers also probed the witnesses on supply chain concerns related to quantum information sciences. James Kushmerick, director of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was asked about U.S. reliance on Europe and China for components like lasers and cooling equipment.

“One of the things we are looking for within the reauthorization is to kind of refocus and kind of onshore or develop new supply chains, not even just kind of duplicate what’s there, but move past that,” Kushmerick said. “Through the Quantum Accelerator Program, we’re looking to focus on chip-scale lasers and modular, small cryo-systems that can be deployed in different ways, as a change agent to kind of move forward.”

Several lawmakers also expressed concerns about the workforce related to quantum information sciences, with several pointing out that cuts to the NSF and changes to U.S. immigration policy under the Trump administration could hamper research and development.

Kushmerick said the NIST-supported Quantum Economic Development Consortium polled members in the quantum industry to better understand workforce challenges.

“It’s not just in quantum physicists leading the efforts,” Kushmerick said. “It’s really all the way through to engineers and technicians and people at all levels. So I really think we need a whole government effort to increase the pipeline through certificates to degrees and other activities.”

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Interview transcript

Terry Gerton The IRS Criminal Investigations Division just published your 2025 annual report, and there’s some really interesting statistics in here, including $10.6 billion in identified financial crimes. And that’s a big leap up from the 2024 numbers. What do you think is going on? What factors contributed to that increase?

Justin Campbell Well, IRS criminal investigation has approximately 3,000 employees. We hover around that number annually. The key difference this year that we’ve noticed is we brought in a large number of new special agents. So we brought, we graduated 14 different classes this year through our academy. That means those are agents that are hitting the field and opening up new cases and detecting fraud. That has a large impact on our measurables, such as fraud identified. I think that’s a big piece of it. The other piece of is there’s a lot of fraud out there and we are the best in the world at identifying it. And the folks we’re hiring are coming to us from all kinds of backgrounds, well suited for this kind of work in the finance field and legal field. And so when our agents do hit the ground from training, they are well equipped from their prior background as well as their training we give them at the academy to quickly identify that fraud.

Terry Gerton You mentioned a lot of fraud. One of the other numbers that jumps out at me is the seizure of 2.3 petabytes of digital data. So not only is fraud happening, but it sounds like a lot it is happening digitally. In addition to the extra agents, are there new tools that you’ve used or new methods that you have of detecting that fraud and indicting it?

Justin Campbell Well, what we’re learning is all law enforcement agencies are dealing with is, more and more, our society is becoming paperless. And so even on what we would consider more traditional fraud cases, more data is being pulled digitally as opposed to from filing cabinets. When I was an agent, we would plan to seize filing cabinets full of records. And nowadays, professionals, business professionals, third-party money launderers in some cases, others that are committing criminal violations, are really good at scanning evidence, right? And a lot of us do that, a lot of legitimate people do that. I do that in my own personal life. I try to keep as much digital records as possible. What the challenge that presents for us though is, as you saw, we have petabytes of data we seize now. And so when we do these enforcement operations, we do search warrants or search subpoenas for records. A lot of times they are digital in nature. One thing we’re doing is trying to lean into artificial intelligence, large language models to help us more quickly identify fraud and to be more efficient with it. One example of that is we modeled a program this year called our case viability model. And essentially what it does is it looks across the data from our case management system for the past decade plus and says, hey, what is the likelihood success on this case. And it uses large language model technology to give the decision makers some view into the likelihood of success on a given case based on the inputs. So yeah, we are using data or technology, I should say to our advantage. And we are also grappling with the increased use of digitized data by taxpayers on our investigations.

Terry Gerton In addition to your annual report, you’ve also just released your top 10 cases list. It’s the season for top 10 lists. But I was struck in relation to what you just described by a statement that says financial trails are the criminal’s downfall relating to your data comment there. When you think of the top 10 lists, are there one or two that really caught your attention?

Justin Campbell Yeah, there’s two of them in particular that really highlight our skill set. I’ll start with one that’s in the news right now, the Feeding Our Future Investigation based out of Minneapolis. That’s over $250 million in fraud. Our agents have been at the table since day one, along with the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service identifying that fraud. We are very proud of the work that our agents have done on that case. It’s been going on for a number of years now, and it really highlights where our agents can impact program fraud in particular. Another case that I think really speaks to something that only CI can do effectively is large investigations involving financial institutions. This past year, TD Bank was subject to a $670 million investigation related to failure to maintain the anti-money laundering program, and they pleaded guilty, or agreed, I should say, to pay a record-breaking $1.8 billion in penalties associated with that case. That’s a very large, complex case that I think speaks to the work that CI can do. And then the last point I’ll make, a case that really gets my attention in the role I’m in now, and it should catch the attention of taxpayers because these types of cases compound and this is an unscrupulous return preparer. We had an individual by the name of Rafael Alvarez in the Bronx, New York, submitted false tax returns on behalf of his clients to the tune of $145 million in fraud. And that particular case was sentenced this year. Mr. Alvarez was sentenced to prison and he helped his company generate approximately $12 million in fraudulent proceeds over the duration of the fraud. So, you know, those kinds of cases really do have a big impact on taxpayers because that comes out of the treasury, it comes out of the taxes that they paid in, and it really gets our attention.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Justin Campbell. He’s the acting deputy chief of IRS Criminal Investigations. Well, speaking of tax fraud, I mean, this administration has made the uncovering of waste, fraud, and abuse one of its key tentpoles in policy and programs. Your report says you identified $4.5 billion in tax fraud in 2025. Are there trends that are driving that increase?

Justin Campbell I wouldn’t say a trend that we have detected that, we would say has caused an uptick in fraud. Look, fraud’s there. It’s always going to be there. As much as many of us are frustrated by that, we are very accustomed to it at the IRS. As I stated earlier, I think the uptick in-part is related to the number of agents that hit the ground running in fiscal year ’25. That enables us to identify fraud quicker. And I think there’s also the fact that the agents that we are hiring are really sophisticated. I’ve been really impressed with their backgrounds when they start. So we aren’t training someone with no background in finance, for example, or law. These are very sophisticated individuals that come on board with us. So I would attribute the uptick primarily to the agents onboarding in fiscal year ’25. I couldn’t necessarily point to a specific trend. Now, we all know that we’re seeing a lot of program fraud reference in the news. There’s been a number of program of fraud cases brought related to COVID, different COVID programs. That could be driving some of that up, but we haven’t necessarily detected what we would point to as a specific trend on a specific type of fraud.

Terry Gerton That helps clarify the background here. I want to shift gears just a little bit because your annual report also talks about some new partnerships initiatives that IRS Criminal Investigations is undertaking, both with global partners and with financial institutions. Can you tell us a little about how those partnerships work and how they impact the findings that your agents make.

Justin Campbell Yeah, one of the partnerships that we’re really proud of is, we call it CI First, and it’s a program with banks where we work closely with them to provide them feedback on their regulatory responsibility to report certain types of transactions. And we have found over the years and working with our partners at the financial institutions that they are seeking feedback. They want to comply with the law, but they also want to know how well they’re doing in certain areas. And so we have a specific effort called CI First that provides feedback to them to ensure that they’re getting the feedback they need, and it ensures we get a high quality product from the banks as a result of their contributions.

Terry Gerton And how does that help amplify your reach, your enforcement reach?

Justin Campbell When we get strong relationships with financial institutions, we get great results. I’ll give you an example. So as an agent, I had personal relationships with certain bankers after years of conducting financial investigations. And they knew I was an IRS special agent. And so when someone walks into their bank and one of their lobbies and says, hey, I have a six-figure treasury check, I want to cash, their spide-y senses went up, right? And they called me directly and said, hey, this doesn’t seem right. Can you look into this? We’re filing an SAR on this. This doesn’t seem right, so anyway, that’s the kind of example I think that I would point to, strong relationships result in better cooperation from the banks.

Terry Gerton You’ve described a pretty busy environment with your agents and the level of fraud. As you look towards 2026, are there any particular trends or areas that are on your radar for enforcement?

Justin Campbell Well, we want to focus heavily on tax gap efforts. What I mean by tax gap is at the IRS, we know that there’s a certain amount of taxes owed as opposed to what is actually paid. And so that difference is what we call the tax gap. And some percentage of that is criminal in nature. We of course would never investigate someone for an unintentional failure to report income, but when there’s intentional failure to report income and intentional filing of a fraudulent return, that’s when an IRS criminal investigation is absolutely going to get involved. And so one of our big efforts this year is to look at where we can impact the tax gap more effectively. We are looking at high income non-filing, particularly. We would really want to focus in on that, as well as a few other case program areas, I should say that we have noted in the past, require constant policing. Employment tax fraud is another great example of an area that is subject to fraud based on our experience and we’ll continue our efforts this year in policing employment tax fraud.

The post IRS CI posts a record year: $10.6 B in financial crimes uncovered and cyber seizures soaring first appeared on Federal News Network.

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For Gen Z military families, navigating life in their early-to-mid 20s means wading their way through unique challenges that can get overwhelming pretty quickly. Between frequent relocations, long deployments, unpredictable life schedules and limited early-career earnings, financial planning is more than a good idea — it’s essential for long-term stability.

According to the Congressional Research Service, 40% of active-duty military personnel are age 25 or younger, right within the Gen Z age group. Yet these same service members face the brunt of frequent moves, deployments and today’s rising cost of living.

This guide is designed specifically for Gen Z service members and their spouses, helping them understand their financial situations, insurance options, avoid common financial pitfalls and build stable careers, all while dealing with the real-world pressures of military life.

Financial pressures Gen Z military families face

While budgeting, insurance and retirement planning are critical, it’s also important to get a real sense of the actual financial stressors younger military families are grappling with:

• Living paycheck to paycheck. Even with basic allowance for housing and basic allowance for subsistence, many junior enlisted families still find it hard to keep up with rising living costs. This becomes even more of a precarious situation when you add in dependents.
• Delayed reimbursements during permanent change of station (PCS) moves, creating short-term cash crunches.
• Limited emergency savings. The Military Family Advisory Network’s (MFAN) 2023 survey found 22.2% of military families had less than $500 in savings.
• Predatory lending, with high-interest auto or payday lenders near bases disproportionately targeting young servicemembers.
• Military spouse underemployment, leaving household income vulnerable when frequent moves disrupt career continuity.

MFAN also found that nearly 80% of respondents spend more on housing than they can comfortably afford, and 57% experienced a financial emergency in the past two years. These aren’t abstract concerns that most young servicemembers and their families can just ignore, hoping that they’ll never be impacted; these are everyday realities for Gen Z military families.

Insurance best practices

Adult life is just getting started in your 20s, and navigating insurance options can feel overwhelming. But taking the time to learn your choices will set your family up for a secure financial future.

• Life insurance: Most servicemembers are automatically enrolled in Service Members’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI), with Family Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (FSGLI) extending coverage to spouses and children. Review coverage annually. Also, compare options across SGLI, FSGLI and trusted military nonprofits to find what fits your family best.
• Disability insurance: Often overlooked, this protects your family if an injury prevents you from working, even off-duty. Supplemental private coverage can be wise if your lifestyle expenses exceed your military pay.
• Renters insurance: Essential for families who move often; it protects your belongings through relocations.
• Healthcare: TRICARE provides strong coverage, but learn the details on copays and referrals, especially when stationed overseas.

Common financial missteps and how to fix them

Mistake #1: Overbudgeting and lack of budgeting

BAH and BAS are designed to offset housing and food costs, not fund lifestyle inflation. Stick to a budget that keeps fixed expenses well below your income. Free tools from Military OneSource can help track spending.

Mistake #2: Not saving for retirement

Retirement may feel far away, but starting early has an outsized impact. Contribute at least 5% to your Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) — a military contribution retirement program similar to that of a 401k — to secure the full Defense Department match. Even small contributions now can grow into hundreds of thousands later.

Mistake #3: Misusing credit or loans

Predatory lenders near bases often target young servicemembers. Try to avoid any predatory or misleading lenders. Instead, consider a secured credit card or an on-base credit union to build credit responsibly. Always be sure to pay your balance in full.

Mistake #4: Skipping an emergency fund

PCS moves, car repairs or medical costs can’t always be predicted. Start small: Even $10 to $20 per week automatically transferred to savings helps to build a safety net. According to MFAN’s 2023 survey, enlisted families with children that have undergone recent PCS moves are most likely to face financial hardship, making an emergency cushion critical.

In addition to avoiding pitfalls, here are realistic strategies to strengthen your finances:

• Tap military relief organizations like Army Emergency Relief (AER) or Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (NMCRS) for interest-free loans or grants during emergencies.
• Plan for post-military life: Keep in mind that SGLI and other benefits change once you leave active duty. Compare nonprofit alternatives early to avoid gaps.
• Leverage nonprofits you can trust: Some offer competitive life insurance, savings products or financial counseling designed for servicemembers’ long-term interests.
• Budget with inflation in mind: Rising costs are hitting Gen Z hard. Nearly 48% say they don’t feel financially secure, and over 40% say they’re struggling to make ends meet. Prioritize life’s essentials and be realistic about what you can afford outside of them.

Maintaining a career as a military spouse

Frequent relocations are undoubtedly disruptive, but they don’t have to end career growth. Military spouses may want to focus on careers that can easily move around with them, like healthcare, education, IT or freelancing.

Take advantage of programs like MyCAA, which offers $4,000 in tuition assistance for career training; Military OneSource, which offers resume assistance, free career coaching and financial counseling; and Hiring Our Heroes, which offers networking opportunities and job placement assistance for military spouses. These programs can help reduce underemployment and strengthen household stability, especially during tempestuous times like during and after a PCS move.

Putting it all together

Starting adulthood, a military career and a family all at once is an incredibly challenging undertaking. The financial pressures are real, but with the right knowledge and proactive steps, Gen Z military families can turn instability and uncertainty into long-term security.

By understanding insurance options, making smart money moves, tapping into military-specific resources and planning ahead for life after service, families can not only weather the unpredictability of military life, but also build strong financial foundations for the future.

Alejandra Cortes-Camargo is a brand marketing coordinator at Armed Forces Mutual.

The post Navigating insurance, maintaining careers and making smart money moves as a Gen Z military family first appeared on Federal News Network.

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• Lawmakers are still waiting for the Defense Department to provide details on how it plans to spend $23 billion already approved for the Golden Dome effort. Congressional appropriators say the Pentagon has not provided key budget information such as deployment schedule, cost, schedule and performance metrics, as well as a finalized system architecture. The White House has estimated the project could cost as much as $175 billion over the next three years. As a result, House and Senate appropriators were unable to conduct oversight of Golden Dome programs for fiscal 2026. Lawmakers want Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a detailed spending plan within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.
  (DoD failed to provide budget details to Congress for $23 billion Golden Dome effort - House.gov)
• GSA is giving agencies access to a software to develop AI capabilities. The General Services Administration signed an enterprise agreement with Broadcom, becoming the 24th deal under its OneGov strategy. GSA says agencies can receive up to a 64% discount off Broadcom's schedule prices for access to several platforms, cybersecurity and development tools. Agencies can purchase software packages from Broadcom ranging from VMWare's data intelligence platform to its vDefend cybersecurity tools to its Tanzu starter kit to speed up AI prototyping and deployment. The OneGov deal will be in place through May 2027. GSA's agreement with Broadcom is the third OneGov deal since January and sixth since December.
  (GSA signs 24th OneGov deal - General Services Administration)
• Senate Democrats want to bar political appointees from moving into leadership positions at agency watchdogs. A new bill called the Inspectors General Independence Act would prevent presidents from nominating their own political appointees as Inspectors General. The legislation comes after recent reporting showing that many of Trump’s confirmed IGs were previously political appointees in his administration. Senator Tammy Duckworth, who introduced the bill, says it would help restore public trust and keep IG offices free from conflicts of interest.
  (Inspectors General Independence Act - Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.))
• The acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency faces questions about steep staffing cuts at his agency. Acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala told lawmakers that there are no reorganizations in the works at CISA. But he offered few specifics on how the cyber agency would continue to meet its mission after losing roughly one-third of its staff last year. During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing yesterday, Gottummukkala said CISA was getting back on mission and that he would communicate with lawmakers about any future reorganizations.
  (Lawmakers press acting CISA director on workforce reductions - Federal News Network)
• The IRS is abandoning a customer service metric it’s been using for the past 20 years. An independent watchdog within the IRS told Congress last year that this old metric is “misleading” and that it doesn’t “accurately reflect the experience of most taxpayers who call” the IRS. Agency leadership says it will use a new measurement that better reflects its interactions with the public. The IRS is pursuing these changes as part of a broader shakeup of its senior ranks less than a week out from the start of the tax filing season.
  (Ahead of filing season, IRS scraps customer service metric it’s used for 20 years - Federal News Network)
• Agencies have more guidance on how to implement the “rule of many.” But actually adopting the new federal hiring practice may still be put on the backburner. Without enough funding or staffing, agencies are not likely to overhaul their current and already well-established hiring practices in the short term. That’s according to Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service. “The rule of many is a good tool, but until those ingredients are all put together, I don’t know that you’ll see it rolled out immediately,” Mattingley said. The “rule of many,” a change that’s been several years in the making, aims to create broader pools of qualified candidates for federal jobs, while adding flexibility for agency hiring managers.
  (OPM details expectations for the ‘rule of many’ in federal hiring - Federal News Network)
• President Donald Trump has turned to the Marine Corps to find the next leader of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Trump this week nominated Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Adams to serve as director of DIA. Adams is currently deputy commandant for programs and resources at Marine Corps headquarters, where he helped lead the Marines to achieving two clean financial audits. DIA has been without a permanent leader since Trump ousted its former director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, last August.
  (General officer announcements - Defense Department)
• A third-party arbitrator ruled the Trump administration’s return-to-office memo doesn’t override telework protections in a union contract. The arbitrator is ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind its return-to-office directive and restore telework and remote work agreements for thousands of employees represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. The arbitrator says HHS committed an unfair labor practice by unilaterally terminating these agreements without regard to its five-year collective bargaining agreement with NTEU. HHS officials argued a return-to-office memorandum signed by President Trump on his first day in office supersedes its collective bargaining agreement with the union.
  (Trump’s return-to-office memo doesn’t override telework protections in union contract, arbitrator tells HHS - Federal News Network)
• While the full impact of operating under continuing resolutions is difficult to quantify for the Defense Department, the Government Accountability Office says the funding lapses have led to delays, increased costs, administrative burdens and operational challenges. GAO found that at Joint Base San Antonio, the cost of a facilities sustainment contract more than doubled after CR-related delays in fiscal 2024. Officials told GAO the contract, which was originally estimated at around $580,000, increased to $1.45 million after a final appropriation was passed. U.S. IndoPacific Command said a funding lapse in 2024 disrupted training and exercises. F-35 program officials told GAO that roughly 20% of their financial management staff’s time is spent adjusting budgets to manage through CR constraints.
  (Continuing resolutions cause delays, increased costs across Pentagon programs - Government Accountability Office)
• The Defense Department is putting some details behind Secretary Pete Hegseth's decision to audit the 8(a) small business contracting program. In a new memo released yesterday, DoD is giving combatant commanders, military services and defense agencies until Jan. 31 to identify three types of contracts: 8(a) sole source, 8(a) set-aside and any small business set-aside contract worth more than $20 million. Once identified, Hegseth says these contracts will undergo further reviews by DoD's DOGE team to ensure they are not pass-throughs to larger firms or to ensure they are critical to DoD warfighting capabilities. That review is scheduled to be completed by Feb. 28.
  (Hegseth lays out plans for 8(a) audit reviews - Department of Defense)

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