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Donald Bauer, former chief technology officer, Global Talent Management, State Department
Stan Kowalski, director of organizational excellence and strategic delivery, International Trade Administration
James McCament, chief digital transformation officer, Customs and Border Protection
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Jonathan Alboum, federal chief technology officer, ServiceNow
Steven Boberski, public sector chief technology officer, Genesys
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Congressional appropriators are seeking less aggressive budget cuts for the IRS than what the Trump administration has proposed.
Members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, in the latest package of spending bills for fiscal 2026, are also renewing efforts to shrink federal office space.
Funding for the State Department remains relatively unchanged, despite a massive reorganization carried out last year.
Meanwhile, lawmakers want agencies to use artificial intelligence tools to speed up the delivery of public-facing benefits and services.
Here are a few highlights from the FY 2026 spending bills on Financial Services and General Government, as well as National Security and the State Department.
Less dramatic cuts for the IRS
The spending package still includes budget cuts for the IRS, but less severe cuts than what the Trump administration and House Republicans proposed.
The minibus would give the IRS an $11.2 billion budget for the rest of fiscal 2026 — a $1.1 billion, or nearly 9% cut from current spending levels. This would be the fourth consecutive year the IRS has seen spending cuts or a flat budget.
Republican appropriators said the spending package “restrains the IRS,” while investing more funds in public-facing taxpayer services.
IRS would spend $3 billion on taxpayer services — about $256 million above current spending levels. But its enforcement budget would shrink to $5 billion — about a $439 million cut compared to current levels.
The Trump administration proposed a $9.8 billion annual budget for the agency — more than a 20% spending cut from current spending levels.
In recent years, the IRS has tapped into a multi-billion-dollar modernization fund from the Inflation Reduction Act to address shrinking annual appropriations. Moving around these funds, however, leaves the IRS with less funding to address long-standing problems with its outdated IT systems.
Democrats on the appropriations committee said the spending deal rejects “poison pill” provisions from earlier proposals. That includes a provision that would block the IRS from creating its own free tax filing software.
The IRS officially shut down Direct File, the agency’s free online tax filing platform that ran for two years, and is exploring alternatives operated by tax preparation companies. The spending bill grants the IRS authority to make new hires more quickly to help address backlogged tax returns.
Under this spending deal, the Small Business Administration would also receive a $1.25 billion budget under this spending deal, rejecting the Trump administration’s plan to cut its funding by over 40%.
GSA funding to offload underutilized office space
Lawmakers are calling on the General Services Administration to accelerate its plans to offload underutilized federal office space. The spending deal, however, falls short of what GSA officials have said is necessary to address a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.
The spending bill allows GSA to spend $9.7 billion from the Federal Buildings Fund. That fund includes rent payments GSA collects from agencies working out of GSA-owned facilities. Included in those funds, GSA receives $166 million in funding for new federal construction projects, and $934 million for federal building repairs.
In a joint explanatory statement, appropriators wrote that they are concerned that deferred maintenance costs for federal real estate are “rising at an unsustainable rate.”
The spending deal would require GSA to conduct a study examining the “administrative and regulatory burdens” GSA faces in the real estate disposal process, and to brief the appropriations committees on its findings.
GSA currently has about $24 billion in deferred maintenance projects. Ed Forst, GSA’s newly confirmed administrator, recently told a Senate panel that about $6 billion is “urgently needed” within the next year or two to address the deferred maintenance backlog. The maintenance backlog, he added, is “likely underestimated,” and will only grow if left unaddressed.
The Public Buildings Reform Board, which advises GSA on underutilized federal properties it should sell or offload, recently told a House subcommittee that GSA will need about $50 billion to address a backlog of deferred maintenance and repairs in federal buildings.
GSA currently receives about $600 million annually to address those needs. Given those spending levels, the board estimates GSA’s portfolio would have to shrink by about 80% to keep up with its maintenance backlog.
The spending deal would give $3.6 million to the Public Buildings Reform Board. The board is set to disband by the end of this year. Members of the board, however, say their work is far from finished, and have asked Congress to consider reauthorizing the board.
The spending bill also supports President Donald Trump’s executive order designating classical architectural styles as the preferred style for new construction projects.
AI tools to deliver public-facing services
The spending bill also focused on GSA’s government IT portfolio, and directs GSA to help deliver benefits and services to the public more quickly through AI tools.
The spending bill awards $1.4 million to GSA’s Office of Technology Policy to make federal websites more accessible for people with disabilities, as required by Section 508 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.
“As the nation’s population ages, there will be more people with disabilities who rely on accessibility tools to access government resources. This underscores the importance of making Federal websites, apps, kiosks, and other technology accessible in the coming decades,” the joint explanatory statement states.
More than half of all federal websites have at least one accessibility issue, according to data collected in 2024 by GSA and the Office of Management and Budget.
The spending package also directs GSA to help agencies improve their public-facing benefits and services through AI tools. The spending deal, however, doesn’t put any funding behind this goal.
“Congress recognizes the importance of improving customer satisfaction for constituents seeking information about benefits and government resources,” appropriators wrote in their joint explanatory statement. “The agreement encourages the GSA to work with federal agencies to develop improved customer experiences when interfacing with their government on its progress toward issuing this guidance.”
State Department funding intact, spares independent agencies from elimination
Lawmakers are proposing modest budget cuts for the State Department, despite going through its largest reorganization in decades.
The minibus gives the State Department a $9.7 billion operating budget, an essentially flat budget compared to the department’s current $9.8 billion operations budget.
The minibus requires the State Department to give Congress quarterly updates on staffing levels, hiring and attrition for its civil service and Foreign Service ranks. The State Department laid off nearly 1,350 employees last summer. It also eliminated or consolidated hundreds of offices and programs.
The bill also rejects the Trump administration’s deep cuts planned for some independent agencies — including the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which includes Voice of America. But it doesn’t address the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development last year. All USAID programs spared from elimination have been folded into the State Department.
Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the spending package reflects “tough negotiations under extremely challenging circumstances,” but is a “significantly better outcome than another yearlong continuing resolution.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the “appropriations process continues to move forward and advance priorities of the American people.”
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said the minibus rejects “extreme cuts to humanitarian aid programs.”
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said that with this spending package, lawmakers “are advancing President Trump’s vision of a golden age defined by security, responsibility, and growth.”
Congress is seeking more in-depth information on staffing numbers, federal contracts, remote work agreements and other federal workforce details, according to several provisions of the two spending bills Senate and House appropriators released over the weekend.
The latest two-bill “minibus,” which has bipartisan, bicameral support, includes appropriations for Financial Services and General Government, as well as National Security and the State Department. The package tees up fiscal 2026 spending levels for the State Department, Treasury Department, Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration and Small Business Administration, along with many other agencies.
For OPM, lawmakers are now eyeing $167.5 million in appropriations for 2026. That’s about $51.5 million short of OPM’s enacted $219 million appropriation for fiscal 2025. But along with the topline numbers, appropriators also appear to be looking for more details on federal workforce numbers and programs, according to a joint explanatory statement released Sunday alongside the legislation.
For one, the spending minibus includes a provision seeking further data on changes to the federal workforce size over the last year. No later than 60 days after the bill is enacted, OPM would have to publish specific data points on the number of civilian federal employees. That includes the numbers prior to the start of President Donald Trump’s term, as well as the numbers as of Sept. 30, 2025 — the final date of the deferred resignation program (DRP) — and finally, the current federal workforce levels.
The legislation additionally calls for a report from OPM of how many employees opted into the DRP, as well as the agencies, occupations, locations and pay rates for those now-former federal employees.
OPM already recently released some further information on federal workforce numbers. The updated “Federal Workforce Data” website details employee data by geographic location, agency, age, education level, bargaining unit status — and much more. The new platform also reaffirms the significant reshaping the federal workforce experienced over the last year, showing that the current federal workforce size is the lowest it’s been in at least a decade.
In addition to details on federal workforce size, congressional appropriators are also seeking more information about agencies’ use of remote work agreements for federal employees. Within 90 days of enactment, OPM would have to detail how and when employees are deemed eligible for remote work, how often those agreements are reviewed, and how remote work agreements influence locality pay adjustments, according to the legislation.
The policy provision comes shortly after OPM released updated telework and remote work guidance, which now aligns with the Trump administration’s significant curtailing of telework and remote work across the federal workforce. While emphasizing as much on-site presence as possible, OPM’s revised guidance also defined limited exceptions to return-to-office requirements for certain federal employees.
A separate provision of the spending bill would require OPM to report to Congress at least two days before signing any potential sole-source contracts, as well as any contracts worth $2 million or more.
The new provision comes as OPM is working out the details of a federal contract and action plan to modernize and centralize the more than 100 current federal HR systems used across government. During May 2025, OPM initially announced a sole-source contract award to that end, but then quickly canceled the award. OPM later issued a request for proposals (RFP), and agency officials have said they expect to soon award a contract that will eventually result in one cohesive, governmentwide HR system.
Separately, congressional appropriators are also planning to direct OPM to provide quarterly updates on the Postal Service Health Benefits program, “including any gaps in OPM’s capacity to successfully implement the program.”
The provision comes a few years after OPM first established the PSHB program for Postal Service employees. In July 2025, OPM’s inspector general office then reported that the agency’s enrollment platform for PSHB was at risk of an “operational failure” due to staffing reductions within OPM.
Bipartisan, bicameral appropriators agreed to the latest appropriations minibus on Sunday, looking to generally lower spending levels in comparison with enacted appropriations for fiscal 2025. Subcommittee leaders said the agencies that fall under those two bills would see a cumulative total of $9 billion less in spending than last fiscal year.
The proposed budget cuts are more modest than many of the steeper spending reductions the Trump administration requested for fiscal 2026, which now appear to be off the table. The new legislation marks further progress toward Congress reaching a government spending agreement, just weeks away from the Jan. 30 funding deadline.
The latest minibus comes after congressional appropriators teed up a three-bill minibus early last week. The House later passed those three bills, which are now under consideration in the Senate. In total, three of the 12 appropriations bills for 2026 have completely cleared Congress.
Terry Gerton The State Department’s Global Air Monitoring Program gave diplomats and citizens abroad real-time data on air pollution and drove transparency worldwide. Its shutdown leaves a gap with serious health and economic consequences. Tahra, thank you so much for joining me. You’ve written recently about probably a little-known program at the U.S. Department of State, the Global Air Monitoring Program. Tell us about that and why it’s so important.
Tahra Vose The Global Air Monitoring Program actually started as a single monitor in Beijing, China, in the early 2000s. As you can imagine — or maybe you can’t, if you haven’t actually been there — some days the air pollution, in Beijing in particular but in multiple megacities of China, was so bad you could not see across the street. It was like living in a cartoon. You thought that you could take a knife and cut a circle out through that pollution. Unfortunately, at that time we only had the Chinese government data to go by for how polluted it really was. And what we were seeing was that the air was rated as a “blue-sky day.” That was the Chinese standard for a good air quality day. And we thought, how can this be possible? I can’t see across the street, but yet you’re telling me it’s only maybe mildly polluted or it is a blue-sky day. It was one of those situations where the facts on the ground just did not match what was being told. So we thought well, let’s see if this is right. One of my colleagues started analyzing the data that was being produced by the Chinese government and found that air monitors were being selectively turned off at times when their readings were getting too high. That’s how they were maintaining this “blue-sky day” average, which was not correct. So knowing that this data was incorrect, we had to take steps to find out what the air quality really was. We ordered a small, actually handheld monitor to begin with — that was the very first one. It was set up outside somebody’s window at the embassy. And its readings showed what we knew to be true, that the air was in fact hazardous or very unhealthy by U.S. EPA standards.
Terry Gerton How did the program evolve then, from that single incident to a worldwide program?
Tahra Vose We continued with that. We bought a larger single monitor, a Met One BAM, and placed that on the roof of the embassy and started to take official readings. We realized we cannot keep this information to ourselves. According to U.S. law, we have a no-double-standard policy, which means if the U.S. government knows of information that could be harmful to U.S. citizens, we need to share that information. So therefore we started putting that information out on a Twitter feed with the basic information of what the air quality was. Then the Chinese authorities started complaining, obviously, because it did not match their data. We called in the EPA to make sure that we were doing everything correctly. Turns out we were. And we honed our data to match exactly with EPA standards, and I don’t mean by manipulating the data, but by reporting it according to EPA standards. Then everybody just gobbled up this information — the Chinese public, everybody else. From there, other posts started calling us, other embassies saying, gosh — the folks in New Delhi called and they’re like, “we have terrible air pollution here too. How do we do this?” And we said, “OK, well, here’s what you need to do. You need to make sure you’re working with the EPA. Make sure that you have this and this and this criteria all set up.” And it just mushroomed from there. Everywhere that we ended up putting that monitor, everybody was happy with it.
Terry Gerton So the program originally had a focus on protecting the health of U.S. citizens in foreign cities and took on a more global aspect. Tell us about really the impact of having U.S.-presented pollution numbers in these foreign cities.
Tahra Vose Well, it was fascinating, at least in China to start with, because when we started presenting the data, the Chinese authorities claimed that we were breaking international covenants and releasing insider data, essentially. And we realized this is not true. And we pushed back within the government itself. It turned out — now this is an interesting little bit of a Chinese insider play here — that the Chinese environmental authorities were actually on our side. They wanted us to present that data because they wanted stronger laws and they also, frankly, wanted more money so they could enforce their existing laws. But there was a break between where the federal environmental agency had authority and where the local provinces did. And local provinces, unfortunately, and their governors tended to have a little too much leeway and ability to manipulate data as needed. But by siding with the federal authority, we were actually able to make them more powerful and to result in more accurate, transparent information throughout China. So that is exactly the type of effect that this had throughout multiple countries. Now, sometimes we’re dealing with former communist, USSR-type countries like Kazakhstan. Other times we’re with monarchies like Thailand. But it didn’t matter. They knew that our data was legitimate, that it could be trusted and they wanted to learn how to do it. So by us expanding this, not only were they interested in U.S. technologies and U.S. sciences on how to do it, but also, how do we build public trust within our own institutions? So it was pretty much warmly welcome.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Tahra Vose. She’s a retired foreign service officer. Tahra, it sounds like a no-brainer and a pretty low-cost program, but it was terminated earlier this year. Can you tell us about the logic behind that?
Tahra Vose Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the logic behind turning off this program. I remember receiving the notice that this program was going to be turned off in the spring of this year, and it was devastating to me. What was said was that the program was too expensive to operate. However, anywhere that the program was already operating, you had the sunk costs of the monitor already installed. You had minimal maintenance fees for the monitor. Publishing the data on the internet is pennies, so I am not quite sure what or where the decision came from for this.
Terry Gerton What would it take to restart the program? Maybe it doesn’t matter in cities where they’ve taken on this responsibility, but there are lots of embassies and lots of places that may not have started their own monitoring problem. What would take to restart it?
Tahra Vose It all depends, I suppose, on exactly how you want to approach it. It’s true that there are places that have graduated off of our monitoring system. We could argue that China, they have adjusted their laws and they are accurately producing that information. But there are so many embassies out there, so many countries that do not have the resources for this, but yet still have bad air pollution. Some ideas that I can come up with off the top of my head are those monitors that are no longer being used at certain embassies could be shipped to others, so then you have no additional costs other than shipping. Turning on the system again to cooperate with EPA and feed in, that’s almost like flipping a switch. I don’t want to upset all of my IT friends on that, but it’s really quite simple.
Terry Gerton We do still have a responsibility to our own citizens in those cities to provide health-related pollution information, I would assume.
Tahra Vose We do, and it’s also an excellent heads-up type of information for us here in the U.S. As we know, air pollution has no borders. We’ve seen the smoke come over from wildfires in Canada. We need monitors within our own country and other countries to know what’s coming. And it’s not just air pollution as well; I mean, the Met One BAM is only for PM2.5 monitoring, but it’s so easy to monitor any other pollutant as needed, including mercury or other contaminants. About 30% of the mercury that is in U.S. waters comes from Asia. We really need to keep an eye on these things. It affects the homeland.
In this Dec. 30, 2016 photo, a man wearing a mask looks out from a bus in Beijing as the capital of China is blanked by smog. China has long had some of the worst air in the world, blamed on its reliance on coal and a surplus of older, less efficient cars. It has set pollution reduction goals, but also has plans to increase coal mining capacity and eased caps on production when faced with rising energy prices. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
According to several reports from Reuters and the Washington Post, Apple has told several U.S. Embassy and State Department officials that their iPhone may have been targeted by an unknown attacker using state-sponsored spyware created by the controversial Israeli company NSO Group – Pegasus Spyware.
At least 11 U.S. Embassy officials stationed in Uganda or dealing with issues about the country have reportedly opted to use iPhones registered to their phone numbers overseas, although the identity of the threat behind the intrusions or the nature of the information requested remains unknown.
The attacks in recent months are the first time sophisticated surveillance software has been used against US government officials.
NSO Group is the creator of Pegasus, military-grade spyware that allows government clients to stealthily loot files and photos, eavesdrop on conversations, and track the whereabouts of their victims.
Pegasus Spyware uses contactless exploits sent through messaging apps to infect iPhones and Android devices without forcing targets to click links or take any other action, but by default, it is banned from accessing US phone numbers.
Responding to reports, NSO Group said it was investigating the case and, if necessary, suing clients for illegal use of its tools, adding that it had suspended “affected accounts” citing “the seriousness of the charges”.
It should be noted that the company has long argued that it sells its products to government law enforcement and intelligence agencies only to help track security threats and control terrorists and criminals. But evidence gathered over the years has highlighted the systematic abuse of this technology to spy on human rights defenders, journalists and politicians in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Mexico and other countries.
The NSO Group’s actions have taken their toll on it, putting it on the radar of the US Department of Commerce, which placed the company on an economic lockdown last month, which may have been caused by targeting the aforementioned foreign American diplomats.
In addition, tech giants Apple and Meta have since launched a legal attack on the company for illegally hacking into its users, exploiting previously unknown security holes in iOS and WhatsApp’s continuous message encryption service. Apple also said it has begun sending out threat notifications to alert users it says have been targeted by government-sponsored attackers on Nov.23.
To that end, affected users will be sent email and iMessage notifications to addresses and phone numbers associated with users’ Apple IDs, and a prominent Threat Alert banner will be displayed at the top of the page when affected users subscribe. to their accounts at appleid.apple [.] com.
“Government-funded players like the NSO Group are spending millions of dollars on sophisticated surveillance technologies without effective accountability,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software development. “This has to change.”
The disclosure also coincides with a Wall Street Journal report detailing the US government’s plan to work with more than 100 countries to restrict the export of surveillance software to authoritarian governments that use the technology to suppress human rights. China and Russia should not be involved in the new initiative.
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