Terry Gerton You have had such a remarkable career. You led workforce and transformation efforts across nine agencies, if I counted that right. What first drew you into public service?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter Yes, I’ve really enjoyed my career and the ability to move around in different agencies. I think what drew me first was my first job, which was at the FBI. And being part of, probably because of the law enforcement-public safety angle, I really appreciated and learned how hard people work, but particularly the men and women who put their lives on the line every day for the American people. They’re unsung heroes; you don’t see that, you don’t understand that unless you are in the organization. And that, I think, was really what bit me into the whole public service and really thinking about, as an organizational psychologist, thinking about what motivates people and really trying to understand how to bring out their best every day. When you work with extraordinary people who are giving everything they have to the American people through the agency, that really struck me as incredibly interesting, but also important. So I really started at the FBI 32 years ago, and I never looked back.
Terry Gerton Well, across three decades, I can imagine you’ve seen a lot of change in how the federal government manages, recruits, retains its people. Your last job, though, I think is fascinating. You were the first and the only chief people officer in CISA. How did that mark sort of a culmination of all the transition that you’d seen in workforce management space?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter We traditionally think of human resources or human capital as the life cycle of hire to retire. And I have been in that my entire career, in that field. But this new model, the thinking was that if you separate and have a chief people officer who could dedicate the time and effort and initiatives to the engagement, the recruitment, retention and what keeps people here, what skills we need to develop, our leadership which is so important to culture. And instead of fighting the HR operations because, you know, if someone’s not getting paid or somebody, you’re trying to hire that person, that’s always going to take priority over what we say is more strategic, more culture, longer-term engagement efforts. So being able to separate that and have both a chief people officer and a CHCO allowed us to really focus on the entire human experience at work. Really for cybersecurity, having to recruit and retain and motivate and develop that workforce was a priority for national security. So, very exciting.
Terry Gerton Well, following up on the government shutdown, organizational culture’s really taken a hit. I think it would be fair to say that. What advice would you have for folks who will be coming back into the HR space and trying to bring people back to work, trying to rebuild that culture? What lessons have you learned that you’d want to share with them?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter I certainly cannot underscore enough the importance of culture and engagement. You have got to keep people motivated in order to achieve these just enormous and daunting missions. And so I hope that the pedal will go back down on the initiatives and the importance on engagement and starting with leadership. But really my advice to all leaders and especially those who are in human resources is just keep focusing on the people. Let them know and appreciate them for their work, their effort, their skills, their dedication. I think that you just have to remind people why they’re here. I would say, look at the people that are working without getting paid. I mean, who else would do that but public servants who are so committed to why they work and what they do for this country? Remind people that’s why we’re here. Our goal and our mission is more important than ourselves. So being part of that is so important. I do believe that the public is even more recognizing that now, probably because the shutdown has gone on so long that the appreciation is there and the importance is there. It’s never gone away. And don’t get caught up in the rhetoric, because what the American people need is really dedicated, smart, innovative public servants. And they have them, they’re there, and they’re going to continue to do the best that they possibly can.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Elizabeth Kolmstetter. She’s the retired Chief People Officer for CISA and a newly elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. So Elizabeth, let’s pick up there. You’ve received lots of awards in your professional government career, but being elected a fellow of the National Academy is kind of a big deal. What does it mean to you personally?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter It is a very big deal, and I am incredibly humbled by this honor. I never thought that I would be named a fellow of NAPA. I have known NAPA, I’ve worked with NAPA, I have used NAPA to do studies at many of the agencies where I worked because they are so respected for their credibility, their research, their evidence base. It’s something I’ve always believed in because, of course I’m a psychologist, so I think science and data is really important. But being named a fellow, I think, is probably going to be one of the biggest hallmarks of my professional career, because it recognizes not just my background, but my contributions to public service. And my desire to keep giving now that I’m retired gives me a really important way to keep giving and keep seeking to improve public service, public institutions.
Terry Gerton The Academy really is a cross-sector community and your career has been sort of multisector. How do you plan to work with the Academy to advance good public administration?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter I am really going to be focused, I think, on the workforce part of things. Some of the grand challenges that NAPA has posted are about, obviously, reinvigorating public service but continuing to recruit and retain and motivate people into public service. Getting the story out — what is it like? What does it mean? Why is it important? And I also really believe in permeability. I don’t think you have to come and stay in one area anymore. There’s so much more mobility and opportunity. Come and be a public servant for a while, learn, understand, be part of that fabric, and then go do academia or private sector or nonprofit. But I think coming and going and crossing the different sectors is actually going to create more integration, more partnership across the sectors, which we need to advance our society, really. It’s not so much a great divide anymore like it used to be; it’s really an integrated partnership. So I would like to be part of that aspect and of course improving the public sector talent management program since that’s what I do. I think that we could modernize more and NAPA has had a long history of doing studies on modernizing talent programs again to bring out the best in the people that work in public sectors.
Terry Gerton Well, both of those recommendations, certainly the permeability and talent management, are aligned with exactly what the new OPM director says he wants to do. If you were advising him, where would you suggest that he watch out for landmines and maybe take advantage of opportunities?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter Well, I was very pleased to be able to hear the new director, Scott Kupor, speak at the NAPA conference last week and hear directly some of his ideas. I would say that he does need to keep listening, first of all learning where those landmines are, but also I love his bold move to do some more things that perhaps people say are more private sector, but they’re really cutting edge talent programs. Especially recognizing and rewarding top talent, which he is talking about, looking at how we compensate and reward excellence. I think he’s right on. We need to do that. I also think that we should look at more hybrid with employment at will. I don’t think that just coming in and staying and rewarding mediocrity is what the government needs anymore. Certainly I believe in job security — if you’re doing a great job and you’re continuing to develop your skills, we should recognize that. But I have seen over my career a number of people who kind of coast. I don’t think that’s a service to the American people. I do think we need to, again, reward and recognize continued growth and skills, especially in technology and AI and these new forms of getting work done, and I do not see that as much in the federal recognition program. So I’m on board with him trying to find a way forward that actually modernizes some of these traditional methods that we’ve used in the federal government.
Terry Gerton Elizabeth, what advice would you have for someone, a young person who’s thinking about joining public service, but maybe is disturbed at what they’ve seen in some of the later trends — what would you tell them?
Elizabeth Kolmstetter First of all, always keep an open mind when it comes to your career and opportunity, because you never know where that amazing opportunity is going to open. And I, myself, said I would never work for the federal government because I believed it was bureaucratic and slow. So I always tell people when I give career talks, I am an example of what not to do. First of all, never say never. But you asked if somebody was already open to it, and I would say, walk through that door, get some experience in the public sector. Because until you experience it, it’s hard to appreciate what it is and how it actually works. So I think rotations in the public sector — think AmeriCorps, which is the domestic Peace Corps — there are so many ways to do service to the society, whether it’s local, state or federal, and get that experience. Because being part of a team that is working for a mission that is bigger than profit or any of the different sectors: It’s a different feeling to be with men and women and people of all genders. What is that spark that makes us so dedicated every day to come and make a difference? And that is what you become, a fabric, part of the DNA. You become part of that. That becomes your value set, that we have to do better. We have to keep driving our society forward. And this is a great country with great people who deserve the best. So being part of that I think is very worthy, but don’t think of it as you have to go in and stay for your whole career — back to that permeability. Come in and have that experience and then go to the private sector, or go into nonprofit. But come and have experience, because then you know what it takes and you will always have those partnerships and network as you go forward.
Terry Gerton I want to start with a topic that some of our listeners are writing in about. September 30 was the end of the DRP and the day before the shutdown. Folks who retired effective that day maybe are in a bit of a limbo about what the status is on their retirement packages. What are you hearing from OPM around the processing backlog?
John Hatton So OPM seems to be trying to tackle this issue. And we’ve seen some reporting on statistics from OPM, but that may not show the full picture. They have recently started reporting at least interim pay status. So once a claim gets to them, they have to initiate an interim pay, which is going to be some lower percentage than your full annuity typically. And they’re reporting it’s six days until interim pay. That doesn’t necessarily show how long it’s taking to get from when you submit in your retirement date application and when that claim gets over to OPM. We’re concerned that there is maybe some delays on the agency side, particularly impacted by the shutdown. I don’t think we have good data yet on that to say exactly where it is, but here are some numbers. Kapoor in September said there was about 60,000 retirements in the online retirement system. So not yet at OPM, but they had visibility into them. And about 35,000 in September. In October, OPM received 20,000 claims. So if there’s 35,00 in the system and only 20,00 got to OPM, that tells me there may be delay of at least 15,000 getting over to OBM. Now that also started the shutdown. I can only imagine that caused some delays getting over through the process at the agency level. OPM itself was not impacted by the shutdown in terms of retirement services. They are exempt. They are funded through trust fund dollars, so it wasn’t like they were shut down in terms of processing. But at the agency level, many people may not have been there. The other thing is they’re reporting retirement claims processing, and we don’t have the November figures in yet from OPM, so that’ll tell us a little bit more about how they’re doing. Their current stat on time to process the full claim is 66 days. That’s down from 79, so that sounds like a good thing. But again, we don’t have necessarily all the numbers visible. I think they’re doing a little bit better showing some of those different stats on interim pay and even survivor benefit processing, but there’s still a lot we don’t really know.
Terry Gerton So folks who are in this limbo status, who may not know where their file is right now, what’s your advice for them?
John Hatton Well, one, if you’ve done it through the online retirement application, you may be able to see if there’s an issue where it’s stuck at payroll, stuck at agency level and not over at OPM. And so maybe there’s somebody you can talk to at agencies. Now we’ve heard from some members that there’s nobody to talk to at their own agency. And maybe that’s because there’s been these large-scale reductions in force. It could have been a shutdown-related issue as well. So that’s not great advice. You can always try to call OPM, we always try to help our members, try to elevate claims when it’s taken a longer time. I think for a September retirement date with the amount of retirement claims coming in and with some potential delays at the agency level, we may not expect this to be kind of a super long time at this point. Now it gets into January, February, you don’t have a full retirement processing claim and I think that’s a much longer delay. There’s also often cases that just take a lot longer. So there’s simple cases where you’ve worked for one agency your whole life, and it’s pretty easy for OPM to do. But there’s other cases where you bounce around different agencies, maybe you left service, you came back; maybe you’ve worked under the normal retirement system, but separately under a special category where you have a higher multiplier; maybe some of your files are over at the National Archives, you have to get them there — so those types of things really delay the process and how long you get through the system. You see a degree of variability between different types of cases in terms of getting through OPM.
Terry Gerton That’s great advice. I’m speaking with John Hatton, the Staff Vice President for Policy and Programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. All right, John, let’s move into some other things that may be affecting federal civilians or the retired population. One of the things in the continuing resolution back in November included language blocking reductions in force. What are you seeing there in terms of compliance, notifications, people being brought back?
John Hatton Well, in terms of compliance, with those who were the shutdown RIFs, those for whom the administration took the opportunity to say, we are not required to do this function by Congress right now because we’re in a shutdown, there’s no appropriations law. They started the process of reductions in force for some people because of the shutdown. Those have been reversed; those people have been reinstated. Then there are other reductions in force that started before the shutdown. But the language in the continuing resolution was very clear. There’s no funds to be used to implement, initiate or even follow through on these RIFs. So the administration tried to go through with continuing to fire a group of State Department and Foreign Service employees. That was blocked by a court issuing a temporary restraining order against that, based on that continuing resolution language. So the good news is that language passed as part of the CR that was negotiated in by Sen. Kaine has been effective at stopping these reductions in force. Not just ones that were started in the shutdown, some of them were started before, and preventing any new ones from going on until at least January 30.
Terry Gerton With all of these changes in the delayed retirements and the high-rank freezes, what are you sensing is the mood among federal employees right now as we get to the end of this year and the start of a new one?
John Hatton Well, I don’t know that it’s good. I don’t think we’re at a point where it’s recovered from what has been a very tumultuous year, particularly coming off a shutdown where you had to work for a record amount of what I think was 43 days without pay. And other people were not working and coming back to large backlogs of work. Do you think, you know, there are some signs of hope for a return to a little bit more normalcy? And I think this blocking the administration’s reduction-in-force language, if we get full year appropriations bills done, I think that puts a little bit of a bit of a check on some of these executive actions. I think probably too late for many, but it may give a little bit more security for those currently in the federal workforce that have made it this far that maybe it won’t go further. So I think we’ll see. The Congress is still working through the appropriations process. They’ve only passed three full-year bills; I don’t expect they’ll pass all the bills, full-year, but in the Senate they’re trying to five bills passed, which would be the bulk of spending for the federal government.
Terry Gerton What are you tracking there in terms of federal pay raises for 2026?
John Hatton Well, the president in August issued an alternative pay plan that would provide a 1% across-the-board pay increase. I don’t expect that to change through the appropriations process. It doesn’t look like anything’s going to be passed this month. I mean, the Senate is trying to pass a five-bill package, but it looks like they’re having problems getting it through. So as long as Congress doesn’t say anything, I would expect that alternative pay plan to be implemented via an executive order. So at least a 1% pay increase next year for federal employees.
Terry Gerton That doesn’t seem like it’s keeping up with the cost of living adjustments.
John Hatton No, it is not. Certainly, the cost of living for everybody in America has continued to go up, as reflected by the consumer price index. Inflation is still at elevated levels, and this is coming on the heels of several years of very high inflation. So it’s not just the current increases in prices, but it’s catching up to the past increases. So that continues to be an issue, I think, for federal employees is that these pay raises, while it’s good to have something, it’s really not keeping up with these costs. I mean, just look at health premiums, which is not the entire basket of goods that you’re looking at, but health premiums went up 12.3% on average this year for enrollees. Clearly, 1% pay increase is not going to keep up with that. So more of your income is being pulled away into health care increases and all the other goods are going up at a higher rate as well. It makes federal jobs less competitive. And that comes on top of a year where the jobs just became a whole lot less secure than they used to be, when certainly the work that people have been putting in through their public service has been devalued, whether it be shutdowns or just rhetoric or the way people have been treated. So certainly been a tough year. I don’t think that 1% does nearly enough, but it is something. I think that’s likely what’s going to happen, even if it’s too little.
The future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency remains up for debate after the Trump administration recently delayed a long-anticipated report from the FEMA Review Council.
Former leaders at FEMA say they expected the council’s report to bring much-needed clarity to the administration’s plan for an agency that has already undergone dramatic changes over the last 11 months.
“I was really eager to see what they were going to put forward, because I think that they were really trying to make a difference,” Deanne Criswell, who served as FEMA administrator during the Biden administration, said during a Monday webinar hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I think where it leaves us now, at the end of the year, is still just wondering what is going to be next. What is going to be the future of FEMA as we go forward?” Criswell said. “It just leaves so much uncertainty, as states and locals are trying to plan for their next year, as well as the federal government trying to plan for their budget.”
Pete Gaynor, who served as FEMA administrator during the first Trump administration, said he expected the council’s report to serve as a “north star” for the agency.
“It was going to offer clarity,” Gaynor said. “It was going to offer predictability to FEMA and to the entire emergency management enterprise that we were going to go somewhere transformative. And it hasn’t happened, at least not yet. And I guess the biggest takeaway is, without the report, what happens next?”
The council was set to unveil the report and vote on it at a meeting Friday afternoon. But the meeting was abruptly cancelled late that morning, reportedly over White House concerns about a leaked draft of the report.
The document was first obtained by CNN. The news outlet reported that the draft recommendations include sweeping reforms to FEMA, including cutting the agency’s workforce by 50% and shifting some non-disaster management responsibilities to other entities.
FEMA changes spark pushback
The last-minute delay comes after a year of change for FEMA.
President Donald Trump established the council earlier this year to recommend FEMA reforms. He has repeatedly alluded to eliminating the agency outright. As recently as June, he said the administration wanted to “wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it back to the state level.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who serves as co-chairwoman of the council, has echoed Trump’s calls about eliminating FEMA. But in more recent appearances and council meetings, Noem has turned to calling for the agency to be “eliminated as it exists today.”
FEMA has also had three separate acting leaders over the last 11 months. Thousands of FEMA staff have departed the agency since the spring, driven by changes under Noem that have drawn criticism from some remaining employees.
Gaynor said FEMA also needs “a professional, well-respected, well-experienced emergency manager” leading the agency.
“The FEMA administrator job is incredibly hard, incredibly satisfying, but if you don’t have the right person in there, I’m not sure how you actually achieve reform, and I’m not really sure how you get your employees to follow you in that reform,” he said. “Because you’re going to need every single person that’s works for that agency, and every single person that is connected to the emergency management enterprise, to follow along.”
An independent FEMA?
Meanwhile, some House lawmakers are advancing the bipartisan Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act. The bill would make FEMA an independent agency, moving it out from under the Department of Homeland Security. It also aims to streamline and overhaul FEMA’s disaster management programs and processes to more quickly deliver aid to communities and individuals.
The draft FEMA Review Council report obtained by CNN, meanwhile, would keep the agency under the umbrella of DHS.
Criswell endorsed the idea of making FEMA an independent agency.
“If the FEMA administrator was elevated to a cabinet level, pulled out of DHS, they would have greater ability to coordinate those other secretaries, those other cabinet-level entities to accomplish their mission and long-term recovery,” she said.
Gaynor opposes it, calling such a move a “gigantic distraction.”
“There’s many more things that are important to reforming FEMA, and where FEMA sits exactly, I’m not sure that really counts as true reform,” Gaynor said.
Danielle Aymond, a disaster recovery and FEMA funding specialist at the law firm Baker Donelson, pointed out that the Trump administration likely has a desire to “move fast” with FEMA reform. She said it will be crucial for the White House and Congress work together to iron out any differences with their proposals.
“The most critical point is, in the next few weeks, aligning this FEMA Review Council draft with the current pending legislation in Congress, and I think we can hit the accelerator and before [next] hurricane season, have a totally reformed system through that vehicle,” Aymond said.
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Sept. 1, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Terry Gerton I thought we would just take advantage of the end of December, the end 2025 and ask you to take a look. There’s certainly been no shortage of acquisition news and reforms, but as you think about the whole of the last 12 months, what really sticks out for you is the most significant changes that the Trump administration has made in acquisition?
Emily Murphy So I think there’s three things, or three groups of things I’ll say, that I think are very significant. The first one is just how involved the administration’s been in acquisition. They came in and the leadership on day one got very involved in government contracting. To this day we’re seeing reviews at the secretary level, administrator level, of procurement. But from day one you saw the leadership coming in at GSA and at other agencies making procurement and acquisition really a focus. They did those “defend the spend” reviews. So it’s been a much more intense focus on government contracting than we’ve seen in a long time. And then that was followed up with the three executive orders that I think of as going together that came out. Where the president looked at first — wanting the government to buy commercial when possible, saying that we are going to consolidate how procurement operated, we’re going to buy as one government, and that we were really empowering GSA on that level. And then announcing that we were going to rewrite the FAR. Then the third one has to be the actual FAR rewrite, which was an amazing amount of work that the OFPP, GSA, NASA, Department of War did in a matter of months. And we’ve got several agencies having adopted that deviation. So I think those would be the three things I’d point to as the biggest. There was so much that happened in 2025.
Terry Gerton When you think about those three together, what would you say the biggest impact has been, especially on the contracting community?
Emily Murphy The contracting community is still trying to figure out what the new normal is. Reviews, repricing OneGov initiative, the change in the workforce with the deferred resignation program and that fork in the road, there just aren’t as many people engaged in contracting anymore. And so everyone’s trying to figure out still how to execute. How do we get stuff done? And that’s probably the biggest thing I’ve seen affecting both industry and government alike on the government contracting side.
Terry Gerton Well, you mentioned the fewer number of contracting officials in the government. There’s been so many disruptions, the DRP, the shutdown, the continuing resolution. What is life like for the contracting workforce these days?
Emily Murphy Hectic. Again, contracting officers are very mission-oriented and rule-oriented people. So, they’ve got a conflict right now in that the rules are changing, which makes it hard for them to be as strict in adherence. And they’re trying to deliver on a mission that’s also really rapidly evolving with a lot less resources, but a lot of new tools also, like AI-empowered tools — GSA AI comes to mind. A very new approach to acquisition, in that they’re being told, “go out and look for commercial.” We’re going to get rid of a lot of the clauses that they’ve been trained to use from day one. Speed is important, but at the same time, knowing that there is a lot of oversight waiting for them. And when I say oversight, I don’t just mean the traditional oversight community, but you’ve also got a situation where the heads of agencies are reviewing individual procurements themselves, which is a very unusual situation to find ourselves in. So their bosses are looking very closely at the work they’re doing.
Terry Gerton Are you seeing any evidence of training or common guidance that’s going to help them pull all of those diverse stimuli together?
Emily Murphy I’ve got the say, the work when they did the FAR rewrite, the practitioner album, the companion guide, there are great resources there. It’s on-demand training, so you can go and look at it again and again and it’s short, to the point, you can get there. But there’s not the time for the traditional training that we’re used to, where someone would be going to DAU or FAI and taking a class. Very much it’s people need to be trained right instantly and be able to go in and put those in place, and a rewrite of the entire FAR is a pretty extensive thing to be training someone on. So, got to give credit to the folks who put that together. They put together as many resources as they could. But it’s going to take some time for that all to sink in and for us to see how it works. And remembering that most of it’s still being done via deviation and very few agencies have the same deviations right now. So the uniformity that we’ve come to expect with government contracting isn’t there right now. It’ll come back, but it’s not there right now.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Emily Murphy. She’s a senior fellow at the George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting and former administrator of General Services Administration. All right, Emily, let’s turn to our crystal ball to looking ahead to 2026. With all of those changes that you just really quickly summarized for us, what trends do you expect to dominate acquisition in 2026?
Emily Murphy I think we’re going to have another year of reviews. I think that we’re going to continue to have scrutiny. I think there’s going to be a push to get the FAR rulemaking process done. I think that there’s going to be an increased push towards using CSOs, OTAs. Hopefully we’ll get SBIR reauthorized soon, because I think the nontraditional contracting is going to continue to be a key area of focus. And I think when you look at the PMA, we’re getting a very clear signal that there’s going to be more consolidation happening as well.
Terry Gerton Well, speaking of the PMA, there’s some things in it that you might expect to see, but some things that you might expect to see that aren’t in it. For example, customer experience and shared services that have been tent poles for several administrations.
Emily Murphy That’s true. I was surprised that shared services in particular isn’t called out explicitly. I think you can read it into a fair number of places, but it’s not called out as its own goal or as its own objective. When you think of the buying as one entity, smarter faster and cheaper, that seems to be pushing towards the idea of procurement as a shared service. The customer experience isn’t itself called out directly, but we do talk about leveraging technology to deliver faster and more secure services. We’re looking at trying to optimize the real estate portfolio so that people can have cost-effective locations for agency buildings. I don’t think that the customer’s written out, but they’re not called out explicitly in the same way they have been in the past.
Terry Gerton The language on “demand partners who deliver” seems to be sending a message to contractors and grantees.
Emily Murphy It is. They’re saying they want to contract with the best businesses. And that’s not surprising given that there’s been a lot of conversation about trying to redo past performance. And we’ve heard it both from Congress and from the administration that we need to be putting more focus on making sure we really are getting results out of our contracts. Holding contractors and grant recipients accountable is very much in keeping with the rhetoric we’ve heard over the last year, and those “defend the spend” conversations that have taken place between GSA and contractors and other agencies and their contractors since they’ve done those reviews. The OneGov deals very much are about demanding better pricing, demanding results. I was surprised to see that they were saying put political appointees in control of the grant process. GSA is not a grant agency; it wasn’t an area we spent a lot of time on. But I always thought that political appointees did best when we set the objectives, and then we let the career employees go in and implement them and hold them accountable for meeting those objectives, rather than actually running the process itself. But it will be interesting to see how that is implemented and what results are being prioritized.
Terry Gerton Exactly. And there’s one other piece here. The deliver results, but particularly by American. Do you feel like that’s getting more emphasis than it has in the past in this PMA?
Emily Murphy Absolutely. I think it’s, rebuild American industry through prioritizing and enhancing made-in-America execution. I’ll be curious to see what we actually mean by “made in America” versus — you’ve got buy America, you’ve gotten buy American, you’ve been made in America — and how they play out in the contracting process. There has been a lot more emphasis. When I was GSA Administrator, we launched the “Made in America bot” so that we could go through the schedules and quickly figure out where we had problems with incorrect labeling of Made in America. I want to make clear, it’s something that GSA and other agencies have always focused on in complying with the law, but to call that directly in the PMA suggests that there’s going to be an even greater focus on this.
FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2011 file photo, manager Nick Reynoza holds a 100-watt incandescent light bulb at Royal Lighting in Los Angeles. A federal judge on Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2019, allowed California's updated light bulb efficiency standards to take effect with the new year Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020. U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller of Sacramento rejected a petition from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the American Lighting Association to temporarily block new minimum efficiency standards for light bulbs that were adopted by the California Energy Commission in November. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is exploring workarounds to a new Department of Health and Human Services policy, which sets stricter rules on telework as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.
The HHS policy states all requests for telework, remote work, or reassignment must be reviewed and approved by an assistant secretary or a higher-level official — a decision that is likely to slow the approval process.
The new policy, as Federal News Network reported last week, generally restricts employees from using telework as an “interim accommodation,” while the agency processes their reasonable accommodation request. But faced with a backlog of more than 3,000 reasonable accommodation cases, the CDC is taking an ad-hoc approach to granting temporary medical telework.
According to four CDC employees, supervisors have instructed staff to email their medical documentation directly to Lynda Chapman, the agency’s chief operating officer, to “bypass” the traditional reasonable accommodation system, and receive up to 30 days of telework as an interim accommodation.
“The instructions are for you to email her a letter from your doctor, and she will be the judge of if you can telework for up to 30 days,” a CDC employee told Federal News Network.
A second CDC employee shared a photo with Federal News Network showing that Chapman was recently added as an authorized official to review the employee’s reasonable accommodation materials.
“I think this is very problematic, because she really should not be evaluating people’s health needs,” the employee said. “It should be an RA specialist.”
Two CDC employees told Federal News Network that Chapman is only approving interim telework in a few circumstances — including recovery from surgery, pregnancy or chemotherapy.
This week, the CDC hosted a series of “office hours” sessions with supervisors. During these question-and-answer sessions, the agency’s Office of Human Resources gave supervisors more information about the new reasonable accommodation process.
“I was requested to share my medical information via personal email to Lynda Chapman,” a CDC employee wrote in a screengrab of one of these Q&A sessions. “When I questioned her role prior to sending my file, she denied my request.”
Linnet Griffiths, a former senior advisor to CDC’s chief operating officer who left the agency in April, told Federal News Network that the agency had a “robust system” for processing reasonable accommodations, but said many employees who carried out this work were targeted by reductions in force.
“They have gotten rid of all the RA staff and EEO offices, which is extremely disturbing, because the department already had a lot of RA cases, a backlog that was unbelievable. They were understaffed,” Griffiths said.
Griffiths said human resources employees who left CDC and HHS received specialized training to ensure the agency was following “due diligence” when processing reasonable accommodations. That included making sure the agency complied with requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
“We had in-house doctors that were specifically trained to review that information and approve whether someone should be eligible for full-time telework,” Griffiths said. “The [CDC] chief operating officer or someone that does not have medical expertise reviewing that information was something we would never do.”
Griffiths said that reasonable accommodation requests often took months to get approved during her tenure at CDC, but said the agency granted full-time telework as an interim accommodation, when deemed necessary by an employee’s doctor.
In a readout from one of these “office hours” meetings, obtained by Federal News Network, agency leadership told supervisors that, under the new HHS policy, they cannot approve interim telework requests, even in cases where telework has already been identified “as the only effective accommodation.”
According to the readout, supervisors were told that expiring telework agreements, granted as an interim accommodation, will not be renewed, and that employees will have to either return to the office or use leave. Supervisors were told that these outcomes were “not denials.” Instead, supervisors were instructed to tell employees that telework could not be granted.
“Several supervisors noted this functions like a denial in practice,” the readout states. “Leadership acknowledged legal risks associated with forcing or effectively compelling leave.”
During one of the sessions, multiple supervisors raised concerns that agency guidance conflicts with federal disability law.
“Leadership directed supervisors to stop discussing legal issues during the session, stating it was not the forum for legal discussion, and advised that such concerns should be raised offline through supervisory channels,” the readout states.
According to the readout, when supervisors raised concern about personal legal exposure, leadership advised supervisors to “consider obtaining professional liability insurance.”
“Overall, the call left many supervisors concerned about how to lawfully provide interim accommodations, the lack of written guidance, and how to avoid harm to employees while complying with the direction given,” the readout states.
A CDC spokesperson said in a statement that interim accommodations, including telework, “may be provided while cases move through the reasonable-accommodation process toward a final determination.”
“This has always been the case,” the CDC spokesperson said.
‘Outsized harm’
Several Senate Democrats, in a letter led by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), said the new HHS policy “will inflict outsized harm on workers with disabilities,” including employees with chronic diseases and compromised immune systems.
“The federal government is a major employer of people with disabilities. It is bound by law not to discriminate against those workers and to take steps to increase employment of workers with disabilities,” the senators wrote.
The senators said department employees “have been harmed” by its new reasonable accommodation policy.
The senators wrote that an HHS employee’s telework accommodation because of a high-risk pregnancy was rescinded. On the day she was supposed to report back to the office, she was rushed to the emergency room by ambulance.
Kaine and Warnock said a disabled veteran’s post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was exacerbated by a shooting at the CDC’s headquarters this summer, but their telework accommodation was denied, approved, then denied again, “leaving them without direction or guidance.”
HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement that the department “will respond directly to the senators.”
“Interim accommodations, like telework, may be provided while cases move through the reasonable-accommodation process toward a final determination. The Department remains committed to processing these requests as quickly as possible,” Hilliard said.
Lawmakers dropped several incentive pay and quality-of-life reforms for service members and their families from compromise defense policy legislation, including a proposal to expand eligibility for the basic needs allowance by removing basic allowance for housing from income calculations.
Congress first authorized the basic needs allowance in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Bill to address food insecurity among military families. But almost immediately, advocates and lawmakers flagged the program’s major flaw – many lower-income service members didn’t qualify for the stipend due to the inclusion of the basic allowance for housing in income calculations, pushing many families above the program’s eligibility threshold.
The program had a low participation rate from the start — DoD estimated that there would be about 2,500 people eligible to receive the stipend at a cost of roughly $10 million. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s own 2023 survey estimated that about one in four service members — or approximately 286,000 troops — struggled with food insecurity.
The fiscal 2025 defense policy bill proposed expanding eligibility for the basic needs allowance by raising the eligibility threshold from 150% of the poverty line to 200% and excluding basic housing allowance from the calculation of gross household income. While Congress adopted the higher poverty threshold provision, lawmakers dropped the basic housing allowance proposal from the final bill.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the two proposals combined would have expanded BNA eligibility to 61,000 service members and cost the department $260 million in 2025 and $1.4 billion over the 2025-2029 period.
The Biden administration said at the time that excluding basic housing allowance would “result in a much less targeted expansion of payments and come at a cost of $2.8 billion in FY 2025 that is not provided.”
The House tried to reform the basic needs allowance once again in the 2026 defense policy bill, but the proposal was ultimately stripped from the measure.
In the joint explanatory statement, lawmakers said that “quality of life measures, including increases in allowances, are addressed elsewhere in this Act.”
Lawmakers also rejected a Senate-backed pilot program proposal to provide coupons to junior enlisted service members to purchase food at commissaries. Members of Congress said the Defense Department already maintains “multiple, comprehensive food-security initiatives across the enterprise,” including a department-wide working group and congressionally mandated data collection and reporting requirements.
“These efforts collectively provide a robust framework for assessing and addressing food insecurity among servicemembers and their families, as well as existing annual reporting to Congress,” the lawmakers said.
Also omitted is a House proposal to permanently expand the Pentagon’s authority to temporarily adjust housing allowance rates in high-cost areas. While Congress has given the department temporary authority to raise basic allowance for housing in places where costs jump by more than 20% in a single year, the authority is too limited to allow DoD to respond to rapid and frequent housing cost increases in many military communities.
The bill would have lowered the threshold for mid-year temporary BHA increases from 20% to 15% of the overall increase in cost of living from the previous year.
Incentive pay provisions dropped
The House version of the defense policy bill sought to establish a five-year pilot program to assess whether offering incentive pay to enlisted service members with college degrees related to their military specialties would improve retention. Under the program, the department would have paid monthly incentives to enlisted service members with less than four years of service who hold a degree in their military specialty and are committed to reenlisting.
While the Senate version of the bill contained a similar provision, both proposals were dropped from the final measure.
“We note that the military departments possess broad authorities…to provide special and incentive pays to meet service-specific personnel needs. These authorities enable the military departments to recognize critical skills or qualifications, including academic expertise where appropriate,” the lawmakers said in the joint explanatory statement.
The House also tried to overhaul cyber assignment incentive pay by requiring a standardized, department-wide framework. The proposal would have defined uniform eligibility criteria, established a tiered pay structure based on proficiency levels, ensured pay parity across services and protected incentive pay during permanent change of station moves. The provision was ultimately dropped from the bill.
Reimbursement for specialty care travel expenses
A House-backed proposal sought to increase access to specialty care by lowering the threshold for travel reimbursement for medical appointments from 100 miles to 50 miles. The final version of the bill, however, adopted a 75-mile threshold.
The Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle on Monday, moving the must-pass bill closer to final passage.
Agencies will soon see a more streamlined process for potentially offering higher-value bonuses to federal employees who are being hired or relocated.
A new final rule from the Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday seeks to reduce “administrative burden” and “increase efficiency” in the process for approving recruitment and relocation incentives. The changes come after OPM first proposed regulations in November 2023.
In practice, OPM’s changes will shift the transactional work of approving waivers for larger bonuses off of OPM’s plate, and instead make it the responsibility of individual agencies. The goal is make the process for offering pay incentives easier, and in theory free up time for OPM to focus on other priorities, according to the final rule.
“This will allow agencies to move more quickly in hiring new employees and relocating those who are moving into positions that are likely to be difficult to fill,” OPM said. “Such efficiency could be especially helpful in emergency or other critical situations in which recruiting new employees or relocating current employees rapidly is necessary.”
Despite the process change, it’s still up to agencies to determine when providing pay incentives is appropriate. OPM said it “does not know” how agencies may change — or not change — their policies as a result of the new final rule. The agency emphasized that the amount employees can receive as a bonus will not change, and that the incentives still need to abide by other regulations, such as being reserved for hard-to-fill federal positions.
“It is possible that agencies will approve more recruitment and relocation incentive waivers now that they are not required to go through the process of submitting a waiver request to OPM,” the agency said. “However, the criteria for approval has not changed, so agencies will still need to determine that the situation meets the critical need and other requirements for approving a waiver.”
The new final rule also removes a requirement that federal employees must be in their jobs for six months before qualifying for a pay incentive. OPM said the change could help fill short-term positions, and support early-career recruitment.
“For example, this allows an agency to determine that a summer internship position is likely to be difficult to fill and authorize a recruitment incentive for an intern with a three-month service agreement,” OPM said.
But the use of pay incentives may also be limited by agency budgets, OPM said. The agency suggested some alternatives for trying to incentivize federal employees to stay in their jobs, such as training opportunities and flexible work schedules.
“Pay often is not the most important reason cited by employees for being satisfied with their jobs or wanting to continue to work for a particular organization,” OPM said. “[But] we recognize there are times when those strategies are insufficient. At those times, pay flexibilities such as recruitment and relocation incentives may be especially helpful.”
Federal regulations cap relocation and recruitment incentives for federal employees at 25% of their base pay rate. But with a waiver, agencies can approve larger annual bonuses of up to 50% of an employee’s base salary. In either case, the value of the incentive cannot exceed 100% of an employee’s base salary.
Now with the final rule in place, agencies will be able to more quickly approve waivers for larger employee bonuses. Prior to the change, agencies would have to first get sign-off from OPM on the waivers, a step that often slowed down the finalization of larger incentives.
But earlier this year, agencies including the IRS and the Federal Bureau of Prisons canceled many of their pay-based incentives, a change that some employees have said will worsen staffing issues.
The Trump administration’s OPM made relatively few changes to the 2023 proposed regulations, except for removing gender neutral language that it said was “inconsistent with the administration’s policy regarding gender ideology.”
Additionally, the final rule applies only to recruitment and relocation incentives. Due to legal constraints, OPM said it cannot currently make regulatory changes to retention incentives.
The process changes came in response to a suggestion from the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) in 2021. Among many recommendations, NAPA said that OPM should adopt a “decentralized approach” to transactional and oversight responsibilities, by delegating more of those authorities to agencies.
If you build parts for the Defense Department or the aerospace sector, you already know the files that drive your machines, such as G-code, CAD build instructions or even basic QA logs, are gold. Those digital instructions often contain controlled unclassified information or classified data. If that information leaks, the fallout could include lost contracts, compliance penalties or even national security risks that can ripple throughout the supply chain.
But here’s the kicker: It’s not just the files themselves. Every job you run generates “downstream” data like build logs, tolerances, sensor feedback and quality checks. All of that can be just as sensitive. Too often, those outputs end up sitting unprotected on a machine’s hard drive or in a shared spreadsheet, which is a tempting target for anyone looking to steal designs or disrupt operations, or compromise a defense supply chain partner.
The old ways don’t cut it anymore
Traditional cybersecurity in manufacturing has centered on access permissions, firewalls or antivirus software. Those are fine for keeping casual threats at bay, but they weren’t built for the fine-grained control Defense work now demands. Static permissions can’t tell if the right operator is using the right machine at the right time. And they certainly can’t guarantee the file disappears from the machine when the job ends.
That gap leaves manufacturers vulnerable to insider threats, accidental leaks or hackers who slip past perimeter defenses. The DoD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification and similar frameworks are raising the bar by making manufacturers responsible not just for how they store sensitive files, but for how they deliver, use and retire them on the shop floor, especially when those files connect to broader supply chain operations.
A new way to think about trust
Forward-thinking manufacturers are moving toward what’s sometimes called a “machine trust” or “vault” model. The concept is simple to explain, even if the technology under the hood is seemingly sophisticated:
Start with a secure vault: Sensitive files never sit on desktops or thumb drives. They’re stored in a protected environment that only releases them when specific rules are met.
Verify the operator and machine: Before a job starts, the system checks the operator’s clearance, training and shift assignment — then matches the job to the correct machine.
Deliver files directly: The file travels straight to the machine without ever exposing its contents to the operator. The human presses “go,” but can’t copy or alter the instructions.
Capture the results: Once the job is complete, any data the process produced, including logs, measurements and feedback, is pulled back into the vault.
Wipe and log: The machine is cleared of leftovers, and a tamper-proof log is in place every step of the way.
This approach keeps sensitive information from lingering where it shouldn’t. It also creates a clean audit trail. And that’s something regulators and prime contractors increasingly expect across interconnected supply chain networks.
Why it matters beyond defense
Although the pressure is high in defense and aerospace, the benefits apply far more broadly. Medical device makers face strict FDA rules and can’t risk leaks of proprietary designs. Energy companies worry about sabotage or espionage that could have serious safety or environmental consequences. Even commercial aerospace suppliers and advanced automotive firms are adopting these practices to protect intellectual property and maintain customer trust.
Building confidence on the shop floor
For manufacturers, this shift isn’t about adding red tape. It’s about ensuring your shop can keep serving high-value, high-risk customers without interruption. By tying together the operator’s identity, the machine’s authorization, and the lifecycle of every sensitive file, you reduce your attack surface dramatically.
The manufacturing world is becoming more digital by the day, and that means the old idea of locking sensitive information in a filing cabinet is obsolete. Security now has to live where the work happens. And that’s right at the machine level. Treat your machine files and their output as critical assets, enforce zero-trust principles on the shop floor, and adopt workflows that make security automatic rather than optional.
Rob Sims is chief technology officer and co-founder of Alchemi Data Management.
The Pentagon inspector general found the Army and Navy miscalculated the number of low-scoring recruits entering the military through their preparatory programs. The watchdog found the services used recruits’ improved test scores instead of the scores they had when they first signed up. As a result, both services exceeded the legal limits of recruits with low test scores entering the program. The courses are designed to help recruits meet academic and physical standards before starting basic training. The services also failed to notify the Secretary of Defense and Congress that they had exceeded that limit, as required by law.
The Department of Homeland Security has named a leader to oversee projects under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Jaclyn Rubino is now serving as executive director of the newly created OB3 Principal Executive Office. Rubino was previously executive director of DHS’s Strategic Programs Division. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act provides DHS with approximately $190 billion through 2029. Most of the spending is concentrated on immigration enforcement and border security.
Senate Democrats say they’re concerned about a stricter reasonable accommodation policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. The HHS reasonable accommodation policy requires an assistant secretary at the department to approve all telework, remote work or reassignment requests. The new policy said telework should not be granted as an interim accommodation. Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) are leading colleagues in a letter against these changes. They say they’ve heard from federal employees who have been harmed by these decisions.
The number of protests filed with GAO are down for a second straight year. Vendors filed 1,617 bid protests with the Government Accountability Office in fiscal 2025. That is a 7% decrease over the amount filed in 2024 and 17% fewer than in 2023. GAO's annual bid protest report to Congress released yesterday shows only 380 cases resulted in a decision, of which 53 were sustained. The most common reason for a sustained protest was unreasonable technical evaluation, followed by unreasonable cost or price evaluation, and then unreasonable rejection of proposals. The effectiveness rate, which shows the percentage of cases where the protestor received some sort of relief, remained at its traditional level of 52%. GAO also said it reviewed and closed 359 cases under its task and delivery order jurisdiction.
Veterans Affairs is launching a long-awaited reorganization of its health care operations. VA said the changes aren’t expected to result in a significant change in overall staffing levels. Internal documents earlier this year showed the VA is looking to put limits on how many currently vacant positions it will fill. VA said it’s briefed lawmakers on the reorganization. Implementation will take place over the next two years.
A bipartisan bill in the Senate would have the Commerce Department play a lead role in securing satellites from cyber threats. The Satellite Cybersecurity Act introduced last week would require Commerce to develop voluntary cybersecurity recommendations tailored to commercial satellites. It would also require the agency to create an online clearinghouse of cybersecurity best practices and other information that helps companies secure their systems. The bill was introduced by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Appeals court judges scrutinize Trump’s national security basis for collective bargaining rollback. The US. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is weighing what limits, if any, exist for President Donald Trump to classify which agencies are essential to national security, while rolling back collective bargaining rights in the process. Trump signed an executive order exempting many agencies from collective bargaining on the grounds that their mission is primarily based in national security. A Justice Department attorney representing the Trump administration said the president is the “expert” on which agencies meet this classification. But some members of a three-judge panel suggested the president’s designation is overly broad.
For the second straight year, the House passed a bill to bring more rigor to how agencies oversee software licenses. And for the second straight year, it's unclear if the Senate will do the same. Under the Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets Act, agencies would have to create a software inventory and undergo an independent assessment of software license management practices and contracts. Lawmakers unanimously approved the bipartisan legislation yesterday. OMB would have to publish a governmentwide strategy for software modernization based on those audits.
The Defense Logistics Agency has launched a new major subordinate command aimed at improving how the military gets spare and repair parts. The command, known as DLA Weapons Support, merges the missions of DLA Aviation and DLA Land and Maritime into a single, unified organization. Agency leaders say the move is designed to standardize processes, reduce duplication and deliver faster, more cost-effective support to warfighters across the joint force. The new command will operate out of existing sites in Ohio and Virginia and the transition will continue over the next year.
FILE - New recruits participate in the Army's future soldier prep course that gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards, at Fort Jackson, a U.S. Army Training Center, in Columbia, S.C., Sept. 25, 2024. (, File)
A group of lawmakers found the Pentagon has diverted at least $2 billion intended for barracks repairs, school upgrades for children of service members and training programs to support the southern border mission.
In a report released last week, Democratic members of Congress say the Pentagon redirected funding from a range of military construction and infrastructure projects to support immigration operations, including elementary schools at Fort Knox, a medical and dental facility at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington, Marine Corps barracks in Japan and a jet-training facility in Mississippi.
Funds originally allocated for the now-cancelled jet-training facility at Columbus Air Force Base and overseas barracks were reprogrammed to construct roughly 20 miles of border wall. In total, about $1 billion was shifted from barracks repairs to support border operations.
The report, based on the Pentagon’s reprogramming requests to Congress and open source information, is the first comprehensive account to date of the known costs associated with using the military for immigration operations.
In addition to the cost breakdown associated with providing military support to immigration enforcement, the lawmakers warned that military readiness “will suffer as a direct result of diverting” DoD resources for immigration enforcement, arguing that the role is “not consistent with DoD’s mission and that service members have neither signed up nor been trained for.”
For instance, the 10th Mountain Division had recently been trained and certified to conduct large-scale combat operations in a multi-domain operational environment, but hundreds of its soldiers were deployed to the southern border in early 2025, where the division assumed control of the mission. The Army later rotated in the 101st Airborne Division — the service’s only air assault division — to replace the 10th Mountain Division at the border.
“Instead of standing ready for true national security missions, deployment-ready units are being sent to Texas and other states to control the U.S. southern border in support of [U.S. Customs and Border Protection],” the lawmakers said.
Some of those costs are also intangible, the lawmakers argue. During peak fire season, for example, the California National Guard’s firefighting unit was understaffed due to nearly half its members being deployed to Los Angeles to “protect [ICE] in the execution of their duties,” according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The lawmakers say it is unclear whether the Pentagon has assessed the impacts of shifting these funds and resources on the department’s readiness. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on whether such an analysis has ever been conducted.
The cost of military involvement in immigration enforcement
President Donald Trump has pushed to expand the military’s role in immigration enforcement since taking office, including by deploying National Guard and active-duty troops to the southern border and U.S. cities; transferring federal land along the border to DoD control; conducting military deportation flights; permitting the detention of noncitizens on military installations within the U.S. and overseas; and allowing military lawyers to serve as immigration judges.
The lawmakers found that approximately $1.3 billion — the largest share of the diverted funds — was used to pay for the deployment of troops to the southern border.
“Many of these troops at the border may be doing little more than ‘standing around.’ Yet their presence has not been cheap: earlier this year, DoD’s own data showed it was spending an estimated $5.3 million per day on its border operations,” the lawmakers said.
More than $420 million was redirected to support immigration detention operations on U.S. military installations and at overseas bases, including Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
The Trump administration began detaining noncitizens at Fort Bliss, an Army post in Texas, in August. By September, the department had spent more than $363 million to support the Fort Bliss Montana Avenue facility in El Paso and a related Customs and Border Protection processing center. The facility initially opened with about 1,000 beds, with plans to expand its capacity to 5,000 by 2027 at an estimated cost of up to $1.2 billion. ICE’s detention oversight unit found the unfinished facility was already in violation of at least 60 federal immigrant detention standards, according to the report.
The lawmakers also found that the department diverted at least $40.3 million to pay for military flights used to deport noncitizens, which are a lot more costly to operate than civilian aircraft. While it costs $28,500 an hour to fly a C-17, which was used to conduct deportation flights, a flight contracted by the Department of Homeland Security costs $8,500 an hour.
By the end of September, the Trump administration had conducted at least 88 deportation stops along 63 flight routes using military aircraft.
“Before this administration, military aircraft appear to have never been used for deportations,” the lawmakers said.
In addition, the report found that domestic deployments of National Guard and active-duty troops to Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Memphis, Tennessee; and Chicago cost at least $258 million.
“As the number of mobilizations grows, so will the financial costs of paying, transporting, housing, feeding, and equipping troops — as well as the mounting personal costs to the individuals who serve in their state National Guards, and to their families. These servicemembers are being pulled from their homes, families, and civilian jobs for indefinite periods of time to support legally questionable political stunts,” the lawmakers said.
Hegseth also approved a plan to detail up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department as temporary immigration judges earlier this year — an effort aimed at easing a backlog of roughly 3.5 million cases that has grown in recent years.
While the Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion advising the Justice Department to reimburse the Defense Department for military lawyers serving as temporary immigration judges, it is unclear whether DoJ has begun the process.
The lawmakers said the information obtained for this report “confirms that the vast majority of these DoD funds have not been reimbursed to date — even though DHS recently received an unprecedented influx of $170 billion, giving ICE a budget bigger than any other law enforcement agency in the United States and bigger than many countries’ militaries.”
“Allowing DHS to continue to pick DoD’s pockets puts our military readiness at risk,” the lawmakers said.
While the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill fully funds deployments of National Guard and active-duty troops to support the southwest border mission, the Defense Department is forced to divert funding from other military accounts in the meantime. The defense policy bill also fully funds the establishment and enforcement of National Defense Areas along the southwest border and authorizes the department to provide additional support to CBP through the use of private contractors.
In this April 5, 2019, file photo, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle sits near the wall as President Donald Trump visits a new section of the border wall with Mexico in Calexico. Under pressure to show they have solutions, Democrats are honing proposals to address the surge of families entering the U.S. at the southern border, a problem they say Trump’s restrictive immigration policies are enflaming. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
In the few months since the General Services Administration set up contracts to make it easy and cheap to access artificial intelligence tools from major commercial providers, 43 agencies have signed up.
“We can get an enterprise license for $1 or less for the frontier models of the large language models (LLMs), which is incredible, and that gives agencies this amazing opportunity to test out a new technology, either through doing the acquisition themselves, or using USAi and having a chance to try out something that previously might have been cost prohibitive, or if they had tested it out, they were going to be facing only a really very limited pool of users,” said Laura Stanton, the deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at GSA, recently at ACT-IAC’s Executive Leadership Conference. “This gives a chance for exploration and testing in a way that we’ve never seen before.”
As more agencies jump on board the AI train, they will have to add new clauses and acquisition requirements to their contracts starting March 11.
Under a new memo from the Office of Management and Budget, agencies have 90 days to update acquisition polices to ensure the LLMs they purchase are truth seeking and ideologically neutral.
“LLMs shall be truthful in responding to user prompts seeking factual information or analysis. LLMs shall prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory,” OMB Director Russ Vought wrote in the Dec. 11 memo. “LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas. Developers shall not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM’s outputs unless those judgments are prompted by or otherwise readily accessible to the end user.”
The memo details requirements for new contracts for AI as well existing ones. Additionally, agencies should apply these principles to commercial and internally developed LLMs.
OMB says as part of the contracting effort for LLMs, agencies must obtain information from the vendor to determine that the technology meets these unbiased AI principles.
“The amount and type of information available will vary depending on the vendor’s role within the software supply chain and its relationship with the LLM developer itself, with more information generally being available from sources closer to the original LLM developer,” OMB wrote. “When an agency transacts with such a third-party LLM provider, the availability of product information and potential for direct product interventions will depend on the willingness of the actual AI developer to collaborate through the third-party distributor. Agencies should consider these nuances of LLM procurement in determining how to apply the requirements of this memorandum to ensure that an LLM offered for procurement complies with the unbiased AI principles.”
Memo builds on AI guidance
At the same time, OMB emphasized that agencies shouldn’t require vendors to disclose sensitive technical data, such as model weights.
“Documentation requests should seek enough information for an agency to assess a vendor’s risk management actions at the model, system, and/or application level, as appropriate, to establish compliance…” OMB wrote.
OMB has issued previous memos to agencies for how to ensure they are buying AI tools that meet their needs. In April, the administration laid out several deadlines for agencies, including updating processes and contractual terms to address the use of government data and clearly delineate the respective ownership and IP rights of the government and the contractor.
In October 2024, OMB tried to address current and emerging questions to ensure agencies are applying the right rigor to the AI tools.
Jose Arrieta, founder and CEO of Imagineeer and a former federal acquisition and technology executive, said the memo is focused on making AI operational, and that is really important at this point and time.
“I read this as guidance that enables AI. It is not about banning models at all. It’s about requiring truth, provenance, and accountability at the contract level,” said Arrieta, who served as chief information officer at the Department of Health and Human Services and as director of the GSA IT Schedule during his more than 15 years in government. “I think it enables agencies to treat AI like critical infrastructure very quickly. It creates a structure that rewards disciplined AI platforms, particularly because it is grounded in enforceable governance. As with anything, the devil is in the details of implementation, and there are certainly ways this could be implemented that introduces risk. But overall, I found it refreshing. In many ways, it feels like an early Christmas gift for procurement and technology professionals who are trying to responsibly deploy AI in federal agencies, as well as for AI firms that are actually building with guardrails.”
He said the memo lays out for the acquisition community the rules of the road for how to evaluate, govern and award contracts that are based on metrics.
For example, OMB says for the minimum threshold for transparency, agencies must request four different data sets, including the acceptable use policy and information about the model, system and/or data as it relates to the LLM.
Workforce training still to come
Arrieta added that the guardrails outlined in the memo also give acquisition and technology professionals much needed top cover to ask vendors harder questions about transparency and model provenance.
“OMB didn’t issue a rule with this memo. They used acquisition policy, and historically acquisition authority has been used to drive a wide range of policy initiatives across government,” he said. “What’s different here is that this isn’t just a policy statement. It’s a very operational set of feedback for agencies. The open question is how agencies will react to it. Will they behave differently even though it’s not a rule? Does this guidance intersect with existing regulations in unexpected ways? Does it give agencies enough certainty to execute, or will it prompt more questions back to OMB?”
Some of those unanswered questions, Arrieta said, center on how best to equip the acquisition workforce to use the memo as practical guidance when buying AI tools.
“This is going to require new acquisition templates,” he said. “Someone is going to have to develop a vendor due diligence playbook. How do vendors respond to bias? In the age of AI, what triggers a termination for convenience versus a termination for cause? The answers may seem obvious at first, but they get much more complex when you work through real AI scenarios. If there’s no explicit audit policy, for example, how do you audit AI models and provide meaningful feedback? These are hard questions agencies are going to have to confront. The memo leaves space for that thinking, which is good, but someone needs to lead by creating playbooks and taking a center-of-excellence approach. Agencies are going to need that kind of support.”
The Office of Personnel Management is seeking to bring a surge of technical expertise into the government’s ranks, as part of a new federal hiring initiative called the “U.S. Tech Force.”
The effort from OPM looks to hire 1,000 new federal employees for the initial class of the Tech Force. OPM plans to run recruitment as a “pooled hiring” effort, where agencies will be able to bring in employees for two-year stints to work on various modernization projects.
Agencies involved in OPM’s new program include the departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Labor, as well as the IRS, OPM and the General Services Administration, among many others.
“With almost no exception, we have basically every agency willing to participate in this program, and we’ve got grand ambition,” OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters Monday. “Our hope is that as this works, we can grow that cohort, and also that we can use this as a model for how we can do more centralized, efficient hiring across government.”
Kupor said the Tech Force aims to help fill two workforce gaps simultaneously: technology expertise and early-career talent. The program will focus in particular on federal hiring for those with skills in AI, software engineering and data science.
Individuals who are recruited into government through the Tech Force will mostly be brought in as GS-13 or GS-14 level employees, according to Kupor, with salaries ranging from about $130,000 to $195,000. OPM has opened applications for the program and will assess candidates on a rolling basis. The agency is targeting 1,000 Tech Force hires by the end of March.
The new initiative comes after the loss of over 300,000 employees from government this year, due to the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the federal workforce. Tech Force hiring may also coincide with annual staffing plans, Kupor said, which all agencies are required to submit to OPM and the Office of Management and Budget this month.
It’s not the first time the government has sought to recruit technologists and early-career talent through a tailored federal hiring initiative. The Obama administration, for instance, launched the U.S. Digital Service, now called the “U.S. DOGE Service.” The effort similarly sought to bring in tech talent temporarily to work on specific agency modernization projects.
In 2021, the Biden administration also created the U.S. Digital Corps, an effort designed to recruit entry-level talent with software engineering, data science, design, cybersecurity and other critical IT skills into public service careers.
Programs including the Presidential Innovation Fellowship and 18F have additionally looked to recruit federal workforce expertise in specific sectors, and integrate digital services into agencies’ workflows. In March, however, GSA shuttered the 18F program.
Kupor said OPM’s new Tech Force effort is different than prior initiatives, since employees will be hired directly into agencies, and because it’s happening on a larger scale.
“A lot of what USDS does today is they get brought in on a project-by-project basis,” Kupor said. “But these will be full-time employees assigned to agencies, working on what the leadership believes are the most important priorities.”
Ushering more early-career employees into government has also been a common goal across several administrations. Currently, about 7% of the federal workforce is under age 30.
In an attempt to target early-career talent, recruitment for the Tech Force will include partnerships with universities, non-profits, professional associations and private sector companies.
“We’re less worried about where they’re coming from. We’re more concerned about, do they have the appropriate merit to be able to do the job, and are they excited about the prospect of working on these programs for the next two years?” Kupor said.
OPM is partnering with more than 20 private-sector tech companies to help recruit and manage Tech Force. The initial cohort will include hires from outside government, as well as early-career managers at private sector companies who will be pulled into public service temporarily for the program.
Kupor also expressed a desire to add flexibility for employees who may be interested in switching between the private sector and the federal sector over the course of their careers.
“I think both organizations benefit tremendously from that,” he said. “What we really want to do is get the benefit of really smart people working on some of the world’s most complex and difficult problems, and then also demonstrate to them that, if they so choose, they can take those skills and work in the private sector.”
OPM will lead federal hiring for the Tech Force as a pooled recruitment effort, by assessing applicants and creating a roster of qualified candidates. From there, agencies across government will be able to select and hire from a shared list of candidates that OPM has vetted. OPM’s goal is to repeat the pooled hiring effort once per year, for each new cohort of early-career technologists.
The strategies of pooling hiring and sharing certificates have been growing across agencies for the last several years. Many of the Biden administration’s federal hiring efforts under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, for instance, used pooled hiring.
“We’ve got to crawl before we run on this stuff, but I think is going to be, hopefully, a model for us to … increase the efficiency of hiring, both for the applicants and for the agency,” Kupor said. “You’ll see us do a bunch of stuff here at OPM, over the course of next several years, on figuring out, how do we attract people who are early career, to think about government?”
AI or Artificial intelligence concept. Businessman using computer use ai to help business and used in daily life, Digital Transformation, Internet of Things, Artificial intelligence brain, A.I.,
Federal teams spent the last year testing AI applications, measuring return on investment, and separating hype from reality. They identified where AI delivers results and where it falls short, gaining the experience and resources needed to drive real transformation.
In the year ahead, we will see this shift from piloting applications to implementing AI solutions that fundamentally reshape how the government serves its citizens. Federal agencies will enter 2026 knowing what works and ready to act, positioning AI to deliver its most significant impact yet on government priorities.
Three transformations will define this transition by breaking through decades-old modernization barriers, moving from reactive to proactive cybersecurity, and democratizing software development beyond traditional IT departments. Each build on the others to create compounding returns across government operations.
AI-driven federal modernization at scale
Modernization has long been a challenging government priority. With AI, agencies can finally achieve it at scale.
Outdated IT systems and code cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars annually to maintain and operate. Still, the processes required to retire them, including code refactoring, are time-consuming and traditionally have been unable to scale. This is where AI can make long-held modernization goals attainable.
AI-powered refactoring tools translate between programming generations, automatically converting decades-old COBOL and Fortran systems into modern, maintainable code while preserving critical business logic. These tools also identify security vulnerabilities, ensure compliance, and generate documentation throughout the modernization process.
Legacy system updates will transform from multi-year projects to months-long sprints. Agencies that adopt AI-driven modernization will complete system updates 10 times faster than traditional approaches, freeing up resources for innovation rather than maintenance.
Shifting from reactive to proactive security
While we can’t predict the next major cybersecurity incident, we do have the tools to change our approach to security. In the coming year, AI-powered defense systems will become one of the most effective ways to stay ahead of breaches.
Continuous threat monitoring and automated remediation using AI will predict and prevent attacks before they occur, rather than responding after the damage is done.
Sophisticated adversaries now have access to AI tools that can exploit vulnerabilities faster than human security teams can patch them. Without AI-powered proactive measures, agencies will struggle to keep pace with well-resourced bad actors.
Agencies that successfully implement proactive AI security models will achieve measurably lower breach rates and faster threat response times, establishing a new benchmark for government cybersecurity excellence.
Making everyone a developer
AI is democratizing software development across government, finally realizing the decade-old prediction that ‘everyone can be a developer.’
This transformation extends software creation across all government roles. Mission specialists, policy experts and administrators can now build applications and automate workflows without traditional programming skills. This exponentially increases government development capacity as subject matter experts translate their domain knowledge into functional software solutions.
Human ingenuity drives creative problem-solving while AI handles technical implementation. This shift is accelerating rapidly, with 89% of executives expecting agentic AI to become the industry standard for software development within three years.
AI-powered development platforms automatically maintain security and compliance standards, enabling agencies to build development capacity across all departments rather than just within IT.
The compounding impact of AI transformation
Agencies that prioritize human-AI collaboration across modernization, cybersecurity and development will build high-performing teams that combine technical excellence with mission expertise. The combination creates capabilities that neither humans nor AI could achieve independently.
Success requires viewing these three transformations as interconnected investments that advance together. Each capability strengthens and accelerates the others to deliver secure software faster while maintaining the highest standards of governance.
The agencies that move first on all three fronts will set the standard for the rest of the government. More importantly, they’ll prove that transformation timelines can be measured in months, not years.
Bob Stevens is vice president of Americas and public sector at GitLab.
Terry Gerton Hottest topic I think is the NDAA on the Hill. It passed the House. What’s going on next?
Mitchell Miller Well, it’s going to the Senate and there are a few little tripwires in the overall, more than 3,000-page bill, but I think it is on its way to getting passed. This is something, as you well know, that is always passed every year for more than six decades, which is pretty rare in this sharply divided Congress. So there’s, you know, a lot of support for it broadly. I think obviously the 3.8 percent pay increase for military personnel. A lot of talk among the leadership related to acquisition and the reforms that are taking place related to that, that a lot of these weapon systems, basically there’s a concern among lawmakers that the Pentagon can’t obviously, you know — the metaphor is you can’t turn around an aircraft carrier very quickly. And similarly with acquisition, you can’t just adjust something super fast, but they have put in a lot of reforms that the lawmakers at least believe will allow the Pentagon to quickly react and create new weapon systems on a faster glide path than they currently are now.
Terry Gerton As people have been making their way through the 3,000 pages in the conference bill, there’s been some surprise about provisions that folks thought were home runs and got dropped as the bill went through conference.
Mitchell Miller Right, and one of them is the right to repair provision, which of course would allow people to basically, within units of the defense department, to fix their own equipment, which sounds pretty basic, but it would provide a lot of additional resources to do that. And everybody thought that was going to go through pretty easily, but for whatever reason it was pulled, and I think that has sent some shock waves through the contracting world as to why that is going to happen. I think that as we move into the next year we will probably see that looked at again. Certainly some things have been pulled or changed over the course of this whole NDAA process. And one of the side notes that came up this past week was the fact that they would basically allow for the Army to continue its helicopter flights near Reagan National Airport as they used to. They of course have been limited since that accident, terrible accident in January that killed 67 people in a midair collision involving an Army helicopter and a commercial jet liner. And there was a lot of furor last week among lawmakers related to — including this language that essentially says that the Army gets a buy on putting in the new communications systems that would allow for helicopters to be quickly identified, more quickly identified than on radar and that they could essentially potentially go back to the status quo. So I talked to Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) and he says he’s going to reach out to the Pentagon to try to see if they can get that changed. But I don’t think these issues will jeopardize the overall NDAA. I think we can see that it will be passed this week.
Terry Gerton Well that will be progress at least to have one of those bills through, even with some of these outstanding issues. The other funding issue that’s certainly top of mind is whether or not we’re going to get a repeal on the ACA extensions. It failed in the Senate. Where does it go next?
Mitchell Miller Well, this is really interesting because, you know, during the whole debate over the government shutdown, they said, oh, we have plenty of time. We can deal with this later. It doesn’t happen until the end of the year, the subsidies going away from the ACA. Well, here we are. And we have not really gotten through any kind of progress. The Senate, as you mentioned, voted down two proposals, dueling proposals. One, the Democrats wanted to extend the ACA subsidies for three years. The Republicans came up with an alternative plan related to health savings accounts, which they say would provide more control for Americans over their own health care costs. And variations of those two themes are now being sorted out in the House. A lot of House moderates on the Republican side, frankly, are concerned that it’s going to look bad politically heading into the midterms if they don’t do anything related to this issue. So you have a really unique situation where this is such a big issue that you have people trying to essentially do an end run with discharge petitions in the House for the Republican leadership. Various proposals extending the ACA possibly two years with caps on how much people can make, various requirements related to cutting out fraud. So it’s going to be fascinating to see how all this unravels this week in the House. My personal thinking is that they are not going to get anything actually passed this week. And then we are going to, of course, head into the new year where you’re going to have more than 20 million people under those ACA provisions who will be seeing those soaring costs related to their health care premiums. So it’s pretty fascinating that Congress just was not able to do this, at least to this point.
Terry Gerton Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, around that ACA issue, there was so much bad blood and mistrust throughout the shutdown. How is that impacting what’s got to happen next, which is appropriations bills?
Mitchell Miller You know, it’s really left a bad feeling on both sides, I think. And unfortunately that has impacted this whole appropriations process. You know, all year long we heard nothing but talk about, we want to get back to regular order. We’re going to pass all of these 12 bills. Well, here we are in December, and we only have three bills that have been passed in terms of those overall appropriations. So the thinking is, among several lawmakers including Senator Tim Kane (D-Va.), who I spoke to recently, is that maybe they can chip away, maybe they can find some more and put them in an omnibus. They were talking about possibly doing an omnibus before they take their break, but that is simply not going to happen. So now they’re looking at maybe January to potentially get another minibus, if you will, maybe get four or five of these major legislative packages through that way. But then we’re staring down the barrels once again of Jan. 30, the shutdown showdown. And I’ve talked to some lawmakers about that, and they said, yep, it’s going to be here before we know it. So they’re hoping at least to get some goodwill back in the appropriations process as they chip away, as I said, related to these other measures. On the other side, I will say that the House speaker, Mike Johnson (R-La.), was very happy to make the point recently that they will not have the overall huge omnibus that, as you know, they often have right before Christmas or right during the holidays where they have to get everything done. This has been something that the Republicans have been really pushing back on. They don’t want one of those big deals and they’re not going to get it because everything got pushed into 2026.
Terry Gerton Well, it sounds like some lawmakers might be getting coal in their Christmas stockings.
Mitchell Miller I think there will be a lot of coal in Christmas stockings this year.
Terry Gerton Mitchell, one of the other topics that comes to mind when you mention regular order is congressional oversight hearings. And there was a move towards oversight, especially regarding the boat strikes over the last week or so. What are you seeing there?
Mitchell Miller Well, I think it’s an interesting tale of two cities, if you will, or tale of two chambers. On the House side, you’ve got a lot of review that has been taking place within the House Armed Services Committee, but the chairman, Mike Rogers, essentially said he is satisfied with what he has seen related to the video of that so called ‘two tap’ strike. And then on the other side, on the Senate side, Roger Wicker (R-MS), the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee says, Well, I wanna see a little bit more. I wanna get all the lawmakers on the committee to actually see the whole video. So it’s interesting to see that little mini divide within the Republican Party. And then of course you have Democrats who are really calling for a lot more oversight, saying they have to look into this more, and of course that was exacerbated even more by the seizure of the tanker related to Venezuela. So there is a move, I think, among lawmakers to reassert some of the powers of the legislative branch, but we’ll have to see how much that moves forward.
Terry Gerton Well the judicial branch got involved last week as well. There was a Supreme Court hearing on Monday about whether or not Trump’s firing of an FTC commissioner was constitutional. And that has a lot of impact potentially for independent agencies. Any response there?
Mitchell Miller Yeah, there’s a lot of concern about it because it seems like, at least, particularly on the Democratic side, they feel that all of these independent panels are just slowly being taken away by various executive orders, and in this case in the Supreme Court order — decision. And there is a feeling that if this is allowed to continue, there really won’t be any more independent panels, that it will go back essentially to the spoil system that used to take place many years ago and they tried to wipe away all of this so that the politics didn’t get involved with all these panels and commissions and committees. And that’s why there is so much at stake to jump to the midterm elections, because right now there really isn’t going to be much oversight related to this on the Republican side. They feel like the president has the power, he is going to do what he wants. But if the House flips and goes to the Democrats, then I think you’re going to see a lot more oversight on issues just like this one, on issues like the one you spoke of related to the boat strikes. So that could really have a profound impact on what happens with Congress moving forward.
Terry Gerton Well, it doesn’t sound like we’ll get much of a break over the holiday season. There’s much to watch here as we go forward.
Mitchell Miller Lots of busy things happening here.
Federal appeals court judges are weighing what limits, if any, exist for President Donald Trump to classify which agencies are essential to national security, while rolling back collective bargaining rights in the process.
Trump signed an executive order in March ending collective bargaining rights with federal labor unions at a wide swath of agencies, on the grounds that those agencies primarily serve a national security mission. He followed that initial executive order with a second order in August, exempting more agencies from collective bargaining.
Under the 1978 Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, national security agencies are exempt from collective bargaining.
District courts temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing its collective bargaining rollback. But the appeals court in May allowed agencies to proceed with enforcement.
A majority of the appeals court determined unions didn’t have the legal right to sue because the Trump administration said it wouldn’t end any collective bargaining agreements while the case is being litigated.
In the latest case, the Department of Homeland Security announced last Friday that it would impose a new “labor framework” in January 2026 that would rescind a collective bargaining agreement between the Transportation Security Administration and the American Federation of Government Employees.
Josh Koppel, a Justice Department attorney representing the Trump administration, said the district court “clearly erred,” when it determined President Donald Trump exceeded his authority in rolling back federal workforce collective bargaining rights.
During oral arguments on Monday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Koppel said national security exemptions under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute are “a determination for the president to make.”
“Whether an executive agency performs national security work is really a question that the president is best situated to determine — with the president’s understanding of the national security threats, with the president’s understanding of how agencies work together, how they work independently to address those threats, and it’s not something that the courts have particular expertise in,” Koppel said.
“The president is the expert. The executive branch is the expert. Congress also, to some extent, in deciding what is necessary,” he added.
Lawmakers, however, are looking to undo the president’s collective bargaining rollback. The House last week passed the Protect America’s Workforce Act, which would restore collective bargaining rights for a majority of federal employees. The entire Democratic Caucus, along with 20 Republicans, voted in favor of the legislation.
Attorneys representing the plaintiff unions argued that the Trump administration has been overly broad with national security exemptions.
Richard Hirn, an attorney representing the American Foreign Service Association, said the rollback of collective bargaining rights for the State Department’s diplomatic workforce contradicts legislation passed by Congress.
“Congress would never have enacted the Foreign Service Labor-Management Relations Statute … if it had any doubts, as a general rule, it would be consistent with national collective bargaining by the Foreign Service officers, would be consistent with national security,” Hirn said.
“Congress knew what the Foreign Service officers were doing,” he added.
Jason Walta, an attorney representing the Federal Education Association, raised concerns that the Trump administration is selectively enforcing its rollback of collective bargaining rights. The executive orders, he added, carve out an exemption for unions that represent federal police officers and firefighters.
“Even those seem to have a fairly crucial national security function — certainly more crucial than the K-12 teachers that I represent,” Walta said.
Among its members, FEA represents teachers at schools run by the Defense Department.
Walta said the administration has been overly broad in applying a national security mission to an entire department, when that designation only applies to a small portion of its programs.
The entire Energy Department falls under executive order, because of its mission to safeguard the nation’s nuclear stockpile. But the subagency within DOE that performs that function is already excluded under a 2008 executive order from President George W. Bush.
“As I understand the government’s argument, the president could exempt the entire federal government, root and branch, and that would be both unreviewable and a proper exercise of the president’s discretion under this provision,” Walta said.
Paras Shah, an attorney representing the National Treasury Employees Union, told the three-judge panel that the executive order “nullifies most of Congress’s comprehensive federal labor relations scheme.”
“He can do it, and the courts can’t do anything about it so long as he invokes the statute’s narrow national security exemption,” he said.
Shah said the executive order rolled back the collective bargaining rights of three-quarters of the federal employees who had them.
“We can’t collectively bargain for them. Their rights are gone,” he said.
Koppel said those statistics “are a little misleading.” Four agencies that fall under the executive order — the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Homeland Security — make up about 60-70% of the federal workforce.
“When plaintiffs bandy about these numbers, what they’re really talking about in the main is these really core national security agencies,” Koppel said.
The appeals court judges raised several questions about the scope and limits of the president’s discretion to set these national security exemptions to collective bargaining.
“It is a presidential determination, but the statute provides certain criteria for that determination,” Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, said during oral arguments.
Judge Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, said the court “ought not to second-guess” Trump’s determination of which agencies fall under the national security category, but added the “concern would be if the record reveals or suggests that the president didn’t make those determinations.”
“We can try to find out what definition the president applied, and if it is an utterly unreasonable definition, we can, in fact, have to step in and set aside this order,” Garcia said.
The executive order excludes the entire Treasury Department from collective bargaining because it affects the economic strength of the United States.
Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan administration appointee, questioned whether the Trump administration was taking an overly broad approach to its national security classifications of entire departments.
“Doesn’t the president then have some obligation to specify what really, where really is the primary function, since the consequence is overwhelmingly felt by people who don’t have that?” Ginsburg asked.
Koppel told the judges that because the Treasury secretary serves on the national security council, the department should be considered a national security agency.
“The president could say this agency — Department of Defense, Department of Energy — has as a primary function national security work, and even if there are subdivisions that do not, that is still the primary function of the agency, and the president doesn’t need to go to a lower level,” Koppel said.
However, Koppel also argued that Trump exempted some agency subdivisions from the executive order, demonstrating that the scope of the executive order was not all-encompassing.
“The president clearly was not just looking at one subdivision, saying, ‘They have a primary function of national security. Therefore, I’m going to exclude the entire agency.’ The president did do tailoring,” he said.
Garcia, however, raised some concerns about the scope of that tailoring.
“One reading of that is that the president applied a reading, under which any employee that does anything that promotes the general welfare of the United States is doing national security work,” Garcia said.
“This is my fundamental question: Your arguments about non-reviewability suggest that the president ought to almost always win in a case like this, but the fact that there are statutory terms — national security, primary — that can be judicially reviewed in edge cases means that your threshold argument that courts never review any determination under the statute is at least on a shaky ground,” he added.
Before getting into the merits of the case, Koppel argued that these cases challenging the breadth of the executive orders should be first heard by the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
“FLRA has jurisdiction to consider whether these agencies are properly excluded from the provisions of the FSMLRS,” Koppel said.
The FLRA often adjudicates whether individual employees perform national security work to determine whether or not an employee can be part of a collective bargaining unit.
Shah said the FLRA is not well-suited to judge whether the executive orders exceed the president’s authority.
Last year, in its ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court struck down a precedent that required courts to defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous laws.
“It’s never decided whether an executive order like this is valid or not, so it cannot apply its distinctive knowledge to that question — especially in this day and age, post-Loper Bright, where anything it says will not get deference in any event,” Shah said.
Sitting next to founder and CEO of Dell, Michael Dell, left, President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion with business leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Terry Gerton You are involved with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. We have heard a lot of talk about underemployment in the trades, the skilled trades, but NEMA makes the point that this kind of security, electrical security is like national security. Walk us through that argument and then we’ll talk about your specific programs.
Peter Ferrell NEMA — well, first let me introduce what NEMA is to your members. The Electrical Manufacturers Association represents about 300 or so companies, both large and small, that produce the equipment and components that go into many of other sectors throughout the economy, which include the energy sector, the defense industrial base, the water sector and others. Sectors that are really kind of, you know, on their own are important, but holistically really kind of make not just the economy function, but also our nation function holistically. And so our members from the grid side and the energy side make the components and the equipment that not only house — or excuse me — that power communities, that power warehouses, that power manufacturing facilities, but they also power defense applications from military bases and also provide the equipment for industrial military sector as well. So, you know, without those components, really there comes a gap for defense purposes and for energy purposes. And those two things of course are very interrelated. And so NEMA helps … Fill that gap with our manufacturers and the components and products they provide.
Terry Gerton What are the specific workforce challenges that you’re facing in the electrical manufacturing field?
Peter Ferrell So NEMA conducted a grid reliability study that was published at the start of this year. And it concluded that there were three main buckets of areas that were really driving energy demand. And this ties into your question, but for some context, with the growth of energy needs for remanufacturing purposes, for electrification purposes, for EV purposes, but also for AI and data center purposes, you know, there is this new demand for all of these products all of a sudden. And so, you know, to make those components, to make all of those things possible requires a very diverse and pretty skill-heavy workforce … And from a manufacturing perspective too, I want to just kind of emphasize it’s not just skills that involve, you know, folks’ hands in a factory — kind of that traditional old school way of looking at a manufacturing. A lot of manufacturing is automated, a lot of it’s connected systems … that require new age skills in terms of, you know, how do we scale manufacturing? And so the workforce needs in this area are very wide and very deep. And so we need folks that know how to wind coil, that can stack cores made out of electrical steel to make distribution transformers, a very kind of classic and traditional hands-on work, but we need folks that understand how to manage and operate industrial control systems, operational technologies, IT specialists, welders and other kind of more skilled, you would say, new age jobs. All of those things come together to form really what the modern manufacturing environment looks like. And so all of those jobs are very specialized and very unique, but really it’s kind of an all-of-the-above when it comes to the skill sets.
Terry Gerton And NEMA’s making the case that transitioning service members and veterans are an optimal target pool for you. Tell us about why you think that and what you’re doing to recruit them.
Peter Ferrell So right now NEMA is looking toward kind of implementing a program called, or pursuing a piece of legislation called, the Veterans Energy Transition Act or the Vets Act. And what it is is that it’s a piece of legislation, a bipartisan piece of legislation, that was introduced earlier this year by Representatives Jen Kiggins (R-Va.) And Chrissy Hoolihan (D-Pa.), both who are veterans themselves. And what it seeks to do is to really kind of bring the supply chain components of the energy supply chain to meet the workforce that veterans provide or that can provide. And so veterans have a lot of skills that they learn throughout their careers, especially lengthy careers, if they’ve been in for many decades. And so it’s a way of trying to, you know, seamlessly as possible, take the skill sets, whatever they may be, whether it’s in management, whether it’s in operations, whether it’s in logistics, just to name a few, and to bring those skills over to the energy sector to help meet the moment and fill the voids in those jobs and those many areas that I mentioned just a second ago. And so … We feel that veterans, of course, kind of play an important role and kind of have a really special element that they bring. They’re mission-driven, they’re team-driven. They look at things holistically ,but also, you know, in how they apply their skill sets. All of these things matter. And so for us, those kind of intangibles that kind of the military provides and, you know, develops and really instills — and not just workforce and values and things of that nature, but also in terms of how military service folks just view work, and kind of the meaning of work and why it’s important. We feel that that’s a very valuable intangible that, you know, when applied to the energy sector and to manufacturing, can really produce tremendous benefits, not just for the companies that hire them, but also for the communities that they’ll end up serving through the course of their work.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Peter Ferrell. He’s senior director of government relations at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. We’ll come back to the legislation in a minute, but there are already a number of programs out there that have been put in place over the last couple of decades to support transitioning service members. There’s apprenticeships with unions in the industry you’re speaking of, right? Electrical apprenticeships and some of those. There’s Skillbridge, there’s transition programs from the veteran serving organizations and fellowships. Is NEMA engaged with those? And if you are, are they not working for you? Is that why you need legislation that proposes a new solution?
Peter Ferrell One of the organizations that NEMA is involved with is the Veterans Internship Providing Employment Readiness Program or the VIPER program. And … that program is focused mainly on trying to reduce suicides of folks that leave the military and then find themselves without the ability to kind of have any meaning in their life. And so really that program is meant to help marry up companies and folks who can employ veterans with those folks with those skill sets. So it’s a very complimentary kind of program to what the legislation is trying to do. But the legislation is proposed based on the folks at the Niskanen Center, which is a think tank here in Washington, D.C., identified not only that there was a workforce shortage to provide jobs in the energy sector, but that veterans provided really kind of this complimentary tool for it. But as you point out in your question, that there are many existing programs to help veterans prepare for the workforce. There’s the other side of that coin, which is how is it that we’re preparing companies to meet that workforce as they depart the service or, to help veterans who have already departed, or actually involve spouses in a way? So what this does is it’s an attempt to kind of incentivize and help companies meet veterans or transitioning folks where they are. Because it’s one thing to say, you know, a program has helped someone who’s transitioning out, learn how to build their resume, learn how to dress, learn how to conduct an interview, and then go to a job fair. But the question is, well, are the right jobs at that job fair? Where, you know, have there been incentives? Are they able to participate in those opportunities to meet those veterans? And so this bill would help kind of give the resources to especially small and medium-sized manufacturers that just make the right components and make the right pieces of equipment, but they just don’t have the budgets or the resources to really reach out to those members. This is really kind of, in a sense, helping, like I said, the other side of that coin — to help companies meet veterans where they are. And so, in a sense, [this] complements kind of the existing veterans transition programs like Skillbridge, like TAP, like Solid Start that are already on the books.
Terry Gerton In the interim then, while you’re working on the legislation with members of Congress, what do you want employers in this sector to know and what do you want transitioning service members and veterans to know? How can we bring them together while we’re waiting on the legislation?
Peter Ferrell Well again, there’s programs like the VIPER program, and to really kind of bang the drum around these issues and, you know, through great avenues through your program, for example, to let folks know that these things exist. I think … in some ways … there’s a lot of information out there and for a lot of folks it’s confusing. What do you listen to? You know, who are the best resources to rely on. And so really kind of emphasizing to not just employers, not just to manufacturers, but also to folks in this that do distribution and folks that are in the contracting world that, you know, there are a lot of companies that need this, that need this employment, that they’re good jobs, that they are, you know, in many ways, it’s the most American of things. It’s an American job that you’re getting, and they provide very well. And but there’s a need, and sometimes it’s a lack of just not knowing that these needs are out there. And so in the interim, getting the word out around the fact that the industry as a whole, from when a component is made, to how it gets delivered, to how it gets installed, all of those sectors need workers. But also that, you know, there’s 200,000 or so veterans that are leaving the service, retire for one reason or another about every single year. But, you know, according to statistics from VIPER, only about a quarter of those folks have jobs immediately after they leave the service. And so it’s, how do we ensure that folks are aware that there are willing participants that want to utilize the skills that have been developed over many years of service and to build upon those skills to, you know, help veterans or folks know that there is a place for a lot of those folks but making sure that they marry up and that one knows about the other and it’s making sure that that communication is out there.
FILE - Central Maine Power transmission lines are seen on Oct. 6, 2021, in Pownal, Maine. More than $2.2 billion will be awarded to projects in 18 states to strengthen the electrical grid against increasing extreme weather, add renewable power and meet a growing demand for electricity for manufacturing and data centers, the Department of Energy announced Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
For Jay B., the decision to opt into the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program (DRP) earlier this year was not an easy one.
Like many federal employees, Jay, who requested using an initialism of his name for fear of retaliation, spent decades in public service. But after working remotely for over 10 years, the administration’s return-to-office requirements meant he’d have to commute over 100 miles a day — a change that became a major factor in his decision to take the DRP in April and end his Forest Service career.
Governmentwide, the DRP let eligible employees sign a contract earlier this year, agreeing to quit their jobs in exchange for months of paid leave, until Sept. 30 for most. Over 154,000 employees took the offer, accounting for about half of this year’s federal workforce reductions.
But with 30 years of service, Jay, along with thousands of other DRP-takers, also qualified for the government’s Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA). So in April, he applied for retirement.
“Thirty years of my life has been in the federal government,” he said. “So relying on VERA, along with the deferred resignation program, has been a little bit scary.”
Jay’s decision, however, would lead to months of uncertainty: After submitting his retirement application, HR lost some of his paperwork, causing him to be incorrectly marked as “ineligible” for VERA and delaying his application.
Jay emailed his agency’s HR office over 30 times in search of assistance. But because he lost access to his government computer after taking the DRP, emails from his personal account were marked as spam.
“It just felt like I was out on an island,” he said.
At the Forest Service, HR has processed 2,253 retirements, and 508 applications remain pending, according to an agency spokesperson.
HR staff are “committed to providing prompt, accurate and courteous service,” the spokesperson told Federal News Network.
Jay eventually managed to reach an HR specialist and have the error corrected, but only after weeks of stress and exhaustion. As his application began processing in the months that followed, he said he had limited communication with his assigned HR specialist. But knowing that the specialist was juggling more retirement applications than usual due to the DRP, he maintained that she “did a great job,” given a difficult situation.
“I believe that if I had not been in the DRP, that issue would have been resolved well before my retirement date,” he said. “Things are looking a little better now, but the process has just been really, really difficult.”
As one of tens of thousands of federal employees leaving their jobs, Jay’s experience is all too common. Though the government’s retirement process has been a pain point for years, 2025 is a particularly difficult time to retire, according to many benefits experts and former employees.
Federal News Network interviewed more than a dozen retiring employees at various points in the process, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The individuals come from agencies including the IRS, Social Security Administration (SSA) and departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Defense, Commerce and Justice.
Amid the application influx, the Office of Personnel Management has also rolled out a major effort this year to modernize the legacy federal retirement system, which has long been paper-based. Many experts see the launch of OPM’s online retirement application (ORA) as a long-awaited improvement, but some remain wary of the timing, as agencies face application volumes not seen in at least a decade.
Thiago Glieger, a federal retirement planning expert at RMG Advisors, described the converging changes as “uncharted waters” for OPM.
“OPM has not really handled this new [ORA] system before, and this many federal employees retiring all at the same time,” he told Federal News Network.
But Kimya Lee, OPM’s deputy associate director for Retirement Services, said having the ORA platform available this year has been crucial for managing both current and upcoming waves of retirement applications.
“A surge like this would be extremely difficult for our legacy processing to work — it just wasn’t built for something like this,” Lee said during a Dec. 9 Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council meeting. “Despite record high retirement volumes this year, ORA is performing well. This gives us confidence as we prepare for retirement activities in 2025 and into 2026.”
At the Forest Service, a spokesperson said ORA “streamlines submissions, reduces errors and shortens processing times,” and added that the agency’s HR specialists work directly with OPM to resolve processing issues.
Still, the surge of applications meant that Jay, like many others, waited months after his salary payments ended, before he received a payout of his lump-sum annual leave. The financial boost is usually delivered within a few pay periods, and often tides over retiring employees while they wait for their annuities.
“I’m still worried about how all this will go,” he said.
At the time of publication, Jay’s retirement application had still not made it to OPM.
Retirement processing times on the rise
OPM itself is already well above its typical retirement workload due to the DRP, and seeing slower processing times as a result. Later this month, the agency is anticipating a second wave of retirement applications, which will further flood the system.
In November, OPM took in nearly 23,400 retirement applications from agencies to begin processing them. And in October, OPM had a similarly high intake of over 20,300 applications. That’s more than triple OPM’s volumes from October and November 2024, when just about 13,700 applications entered the system.
All told, OPM’s inventory of retirement applications is now over 48,300, nearing four times the 13,000 applications the agency aims to have on hand at once, as it both manages incoming applications and processes existing ones.
In April, OPM estimated the entire process — from the day an employee submits an application, to the day the employee’s annuity is finalized — took between three to five months. OPM’s part of the process alone, at that time, took about a month and a half.
But the rising application volume has slowed the pace of processing. The average time it takes OPM to review an application, calculate benefits and finalize an annuity has continually increased for most of 2025. After peaking in October at an average of 79 days, nearly three months, OPM’s average processing time decreased to 73 days in November.
Processing times for digital retirement applications, however, are notably faster. OPM has been completing those applications in about 38 days, or just over a month. In November, OPM reported that about one-third of incoming applications were digital, and two-thirds were paper-based.
“Digital cases are moving more than twice as fast as paper cases, but we are expecting these numbers to decrease,” Lee said. “We have a surge of applications going on right now, but as the surge decreases, we also expect our digital case [processing times] to decrease substantially.”
At many agencies, the retirement process is relatively similar. Once an employee applies for retirement, the employee’s home agency first prepares the application and sends it to a payroll provider for processing.
Image source: Office of Personnel Management.
After initial agency and payroll processing is complete, the retiring employee receives a lump-sum payout of their unused annual leave.
From there, the application goes to OPM for review and the calculation of a temporary “interim” annuity payment, usually between 60% and 80% of a retiree’s final annuity.
Lastly, retirees begin receiving their final annuity once OPM fully adjudicates their applications — a process that, under usual circumstances, takes several months.
Some outlier cases can take much longer. OPM has said court orders, special annuities, part-time or intermittent federal service, or even working at multiple different agencies, can all slow the process.
One federal employee who spoke to Federal News Network retired in June 2024 and is still waiting for her application to be fully adjudicated, despite receiving interim payments in the meantime.
But with this year’s massive wave of retirements, the retiree feared further delays in the finalization of her application.
“I just don’t want it to get lost in the system,” she said. “I feel like I have no control.”
OPM has received nearly 139,000 retirement applications so far this calendar year, and processed about 103,000. But the workload is expected to grow in the next few months. OPM is anticipating thousands more applications to enter its systems by the end of December.
With applications on track to surpass 140,000 this calendar year, OPM is facing the highest retirement volume in at least the last quarter-century — and possibly ever.
The flood of DRP retirees has added substantially to the government’s retirement application volume. Of the 35,000 total applications in ORA with a September retirement date, DRP employees represent about half — more than 17,500 applications.
In other words, September’s digital retirement volume is likely double what it would have been without the DRP.
Of all DRP applications currently pending, close to three-quarters, or about 12,650, have reached OPM, according to numbers OPM provided to Federal News Network.
Other retirement applications, however, are still with either agency HR offices or payroll providers, awaiting initial processing before they can be delivered to OPM.
A glance at the status of federal retirement applications stemming from DRP.
Applications not yet with OPM may face longer wait times. The National Finance Center, for instance, estimates a current processing time between 60 and 90 days once receiving an application, according to emails viewed by Federal News Network.
Rob Shriver, a former acting director of OPM during the Biden administration, summed up the current experience as one of “incredible frustration” from DRP employees and others trying to separate from government service.
“HR was already understaffed — now lots have left, and they have an ever-increasing workload. It’s all going to create backlogs,” Shriver, currently managing director of the Civil Service Strong initiative at Democracy Forward, told Federal News Network.
As those thousands of retirees wait, the typical end-of-year retirement flood OPM is expecting will add to the workload, and as a result, likely delay the timeline for finalizing annuities.
“There’s no question — we have a very busy time now, and we’ll get another big surge in December,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said in an interview with Federal News Network. “We’re certainly cognizant and doing everything we can to anticipate and deal with the larger volume.”
Along with OPM, agency HR offices are also seeing slowdowns in retirement processing work, as they review employees’ applications before forwarding them to OPM. Challenges in HR have led to many retiring employees saying they are confused or frustrated, as they face delays, limited information and, for some, application errors.
Some fear the issues will only get worse as more retiring employees enter the process.
One former employee from HHS, for instance, described having to submit her retirement paperwork three separate times earlier this year. The employee opted to retire after being told she was one of 10,000 that HHS laid off in April as part of a reduction in force (RIF).
Despite being subject to the RIF, the HHS employee said her personnel file was incorrectly marked as a “voluntary retirement.” As she attempted to work with the agency to correct the error, she said she received conflicting and limited information from different parts of HHS, as well as OPM.
“I’ve been yanked around — the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing,” she said.
By now, the HHS employee has managed to receive her interim annuity payment, nearly five months after her official separation date, but is still waiting for her final annuity from OPM.
“I’m pretty happy that worked out, but getting there really required several months of working with my HR specialist,” the employee said. “I think there were some points that she was ready to pull her hair out.”
An HHS spokesperson declined to comment and referred all questions on retirement processing to OPM.
One employee retiring from a career at SSA also experienced delays in the retirement process. On multiple occasions, when he reached out to HR to request updates, he received auto-replies saying SSA’s HR department was “experiencing an unprecedented volume of requests,” according to emails viewed by Federal News Network.
Still, the SSA employee expressed a level of understanding for the delays he experienced.
“All the people in my agency did the best they could,” the employee said. “I’ve been in the dark a good bit, but that’s through no fault of anybody’s.”
In response to questions from Federal News Network on retirement processing, an SSA spokesperson said the agency “has the right level of benefit specialists dedicated to processing employee retirement applications in a timely manner.”
“Processing times vary based on when an employee submits their application, the completeness of the application, and the review process,” the spokesperson added.
For some, the retirement challenges go back to the beginning of the year, prior to the DRP flood. One IRS retiree who retired in January described limited information from HR throughout the process. Though his application eventually made it to OPM and was finalized, he questioned how IRS would handle much higher volumes later in the year from the DRP.
“If you’re months behind from 1,400 people, what are you going to do when 22,000 people go at once?” the retiree said.
The situation at IRS has changed considerably since January. Some currently retiring IRS employees described the agency’s HR office being far behind schedule. Several told Federal News Network they have not received their lump-sum annual leave payouts, nor their interim annuities.
“It’s crazy, and we all feel very, very unsettled,” one said.
“We are in administrative limbo,” another said. “We’re just all at a standstill.”
Over the last few months, retiring IRS employees have received multiple mass emails from the agency’s HR office, asking for patience as the office worked to process an “unusually high” workload. The office has asked employees not to call with questions, as that could lengthen the delays, according to emails viewed by Federal News Network.
“Even with this increased volume, our team remains fully committed to ensuring each retiree receives the support they deserve during this important transition,” one email reads.
An IRS spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Federal News Network.
Governmentwide, the processing delays were also exacerbated by the 43-day government shutdown. OPM’s Retirement Services (RS) division continued to operate throughout the shutdown, since it is funded through a trust fund rather than appropriations. But slowdowns still occurred, as some agencies opted to furlough their HR staff during the funding lapse.
“When HR offices close down, finance offices close down, there’s nobody there to process cases and send them to OPM,” Kenneth Zawodny, a former associate director for RS at OPM, explained. “There’s still work coming in, but that big surge continues to be delayed and delayed and delayed.”
For HR, it’s “the biggest test they’ve ever faced”
As retirement applications flooded into agencies this year, many HR offices quickly became swamped. Some HR employees themselves took the opportunity to exit their jobs, leaving larger workloads for those who were left.
Glieger, the retirement planning advisor, described many HR departments as “simply overwhelmed.”
“We have bottlenecking of a lot people that are leaving on DRP, and so [HR] just can’t provide the kind of support that they used to before,” Glieger said.
The challenges for HR have left some retiring employees in the dark. One described his experience in the retirement process as “not normal.”
“Because of their caseload, I was just one in a huge stack of people,” the employee said.
The governmentwide HR workforce had been steadily growing over the last few years. Overall, HR staffing increased by about 8,000 employees between fiscal 2020 to 2025, according to OPM data.
But due to the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce, HR staffing has decreased by about 5% so far in 2025, with agencies losing a cumulative total of about 2,600 employees. The numbers are only accurate through September, however, and do not include HR employees who left their jobs through the DRP.
A former agency chief human capital officer (CHCO), who requested anonymity to be able to speak candidly about the situation, said federal HR has long been “chronically understaffed.”
“My heart is with the HR offices,” the former CHCO said. “They are overworked, underappreciated and this is really the biggest test they’ve ever faced.”
In 2022, OPM named HR as one of the government’s three ongoing mission-critical skills gaps. And during a 2023 CHCO Council forum, one participant noted difficulties in retaining HR specialists, due to a broader skills shortage in the HR profession.
“The agency is effectively competing with the private sector and the whole of the federal government,” the participant said.
The former agency CHCO also expressed concerns about the future of the HR profession in government, especially considering the higher workloads HR employees have faced this year.
“They didn’t create this mess,” the former CHCO said. “They’re the ones that were trying to implement what was never done before, with very little direction, very little support, and a lot of people yelling at them to move faster, without any understanding of what the consequences would be.”
As DRP applications inundate the government’s retirement process, agencies are also bracing for a second retirement wave at the end of this month.
Many federal employees choose to retire each December, since it can maximize their lump-sum annual leave payouts. That leads to a yearly, and expected, surge in retirement applications entering OPM’s system.
The DRP wave and the December wave make up a significant part of this year’s retirements: Employees with retirement dates in September and December, combined, account for 72% of all 2025 retirements, according to OPM.
In anticipation of the annual application surge each year, OPM temporarily adds more staffing to its Retirement Services division. That can mean anywhere between 30 and 50 additional full-time equivalents (FTEs) to assist with processing new applications. The agency also addresses the annual surge by increasing overtime hours for RS employees.
Kupor said those usual accommodations will be “a little bit higher this year because of the DRP-related retirements.”
But at the same time, OPM lost a significant chunk of its own workforce this year. The agency’s staffing has declined by more than one-third — about 1,000 employees — due to the DRP, as well as some RIFs and probationary firings.
In OPM’s RS division, the staffing losses have been relatively smaller. Since January, more than 100 RS employees have left their jobs either due to the DRP or regular retirement — a reduction of about 16% of that division’s workforce, according to OPM.
Currently, the RS division has about 300 employees who process incoming applications. Another 200 or so employees work in the call center to answer retirees’ questions, and several hundred more handle other types of cases, like survivor benefits and post-retirement adjustments.
In November, OPM’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) warned that “operating with a reduced workforce” will be a top management challenge for OPM in the coming year.
“The effective loss of this large number of employees represents a challenge facing OPM in building and sustaining an optimal workforce to support the agency’s mission,” a Nov. 24 OIG report states. “This reduction occurred rapidly and has created immediate gaps in operational capacity.”
Kupor, however, pushed back against some of the concerns from the OIG report.
“More headcount is not the answer to the currently long application processing and call center wait times,” Kupor wrote in Dec. 8 comments addressed to the OIG. “We have a comprehensive approach to address this … Nonetheless, given we are dealing with both paper-based and electronic-based applications and the sheer volume of applications we are receiving, we recognize that processing times are likely to increase in the short term.”
OPM looks to interim annuities. But some are waiting on that too.
In the short term, Kupor said OPM is trying to be “as transparent as possible,” while also asking RS staff to focus on delivering interim annuities to retirees as quickly as possible.
“We recognize that this is a very, very significant number of applications we’re seeing,” Kupor said. “We’re trying to get ahead of that and make sure that we can be responsive.”
The standard approach to retirement processing, in the past, has been for HR to work on a retirement application, and then send it to OPM, usually within 30 to 45 days, according to a former agency CHCO. An employee will also typically see a lump-sum payout of their annual leave within about two pay periods.
“A lot of people would live off that lump sum while their retirement annuity is being calculated by OPM to get an interim payment,” the former CHCO said. “But now they’re at a point where they’re not even able to do that.”
Lee, from OPM’s RS division, said having to wait months to receive an interim annuity payment is “the first thing retirees worry about” once separating from government.
Historically, about 40% to 50% of all retirement applications have been able to receive an interim payment almost immediately.
But more recently, OPM said it has made “system changes” that now allow for about 70% to automatically get an “instant” interim payment.
“This is a major improvement in financial security for retirees,” Lee said.
Some retiring DRP-takers, however, still expressed frustrations as they remain waiting on their interim annuities, as well as their lump-sum annual leave payouts, with little communication and few answers.
“This whole process has been a nightmare — employees are still showing up on rolls as active employees, and a large amount of employees have still not heard from HR,” one employee wrote in an email to Federal News Network. “We are literally stuck in limbo — no payments, no more checks. This is causing financial hardship for so many people.”
In another email viewed by Federal News Network, one HR representative told a retiring federal employee: “The events of this year and the large amount of employees leaving the federal government has put a strain on the normal processes.”
“Things are moving forward,” the email reads. “Just at a slower pace than normal.”
The challenges in federal retirement this year come as OPM attempts to make longer-term improvements to the process overall.
After several years in the making, OPM fast-tracked its modernization initiative, the ORA platform. Over the summer, the agency launched ORA and began asking all incoming applications to be entered through the new platform.
For decades prior, OPM’s Lee said the retirement process was highly fragmented, with many agencies and payroll providers operating under different systems. She lauded the ORA as a “unified retirement ecosystem” that removes some manual processing steps that had been creating delays and bottlenecks. She said new automation features have reduced application errors.
“Now by the time the package reaches HR, it is far more accurate — it’s more complete than anything we have ever seen in a paper environment,” Lee said.
Lee added that OPM has continued to ask for feedback from HR specialists using the new platform, which she said has been critical in shaping ORA.
“That collaboration is one of the big reasons ORA is working as well as it is today,” Lee said. “They test new features before they were released. They told us immediately when there were glitches.”
Since its launch over the summer, more than 91,000 retirement applications have been initiated through ORA. Kupor said that generally, the rollout so far is “going very well.”
“It really enhances the front-end of the process,” Kupor said. “Instead of people literally printing out paper documents and sending those documents to our team in Pennsylvania to handle manually, [employees and HR offices] now can just go onto the [ORA] system and they can begin their application electronically.”
John Hatton, staff vice president of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) said that generally, adding more visibility through ORA and being able to see where a claim is in the process, is a significant improvement.
“We’re not out of the woods with the whole system being improved,” Hatton said. “But I think it’s a step in the right direction.”
While many experts see OPM’s retirement modernization project as a positive development in the long run, some have expressed reservations about the timing of the rollout — coming at the same time as a major surge in applications.
“Retirement is already a pretty stressful process for people, so then on top of that, not having a clear process or information about a new system only adds to the anxiety,” said Glieger, the federal retirement advisor. “[OPM is] very hopeful that over time this is going to be a good system, but right now there are a lot of moving parts that have to come together for all of that efficiency to really start showing up.”
OPM has rolled out three versions of ORA since the platform first launched in June. OPM’s Lee said a “big re-platforming” in August went “extremely well,” something that she credited to the feedback of HR specialists who pointed out development issues early on.
The initial rollout of ORA over the summer, however, also hit some bumps in the road. The update caused many retiring employees to resubmit their paperwork at the request of their agency HR offices, according to multiple retirees.
The new ORA platform, notably, also contains an auto-population feature, which fills in employees’ service history, annuity estimates, high-3 calculations and more.
Some employees who have used ORA described seeing errors appear on their applications, after being auto-populated. One DOJ employee who resubmitted her application on ORA said an auto-populated error led to further delays. Her experience was “confusing,” she said, adding that some parts of the ORA platform were “too limited.”
A DOJ spokesperson told Federal News Network that the agency “continues to look for ways to improve the offboarding process to ensure employees are processed out in an efficient and timely manner.”
In November, the IRS’s HR office also acknowledged that ORA had been auto-populating incorrect data for retiring employees. The errors were apparent in calculations for service history, “high-3s” and sick leave, according to emails viewed by Federal News Network.
“Please rest assured that your HR specialist will include accurate documentation with your retirement package,” the message said. “These documents will ensure that [OPM] receives the correct information needed to process your retirement accurately.”
Lee said the auto-population feature of ORA is intended to give retiring employees an opportunity to identify and correct errors earlier on, and to “reduce preventable issues” before they further slow the process down the road.
“Instead of relying on guesswork or waiting weeks for an answer, ORA shows employees exactly what’s finished and what needs attention,” she said. “It took a complicated, technical process, but it made it straightforward and manageable for an employee.”
But some employees said they are continuing to experience technical difficulties with OPM’s platform. In one example, when a retiree struggled to get a temporary password from OPM to access ORA, her inquiries to OPM’s customer service went unanswered. She instead received automatic email replies, saying it would take two weeks to generate the password.
“I have still not received any money — interim annuity or even annual leave payment,” the employee told Federal News Network. “It has been a mess!”
Kupor said OPM will continue rolling out new versions of ORA as more features or adjustments are needed. At the same time, though, he acknowledged the frustrations from retiring employees who are experiencing long wait times, and who had to resubmit their applications.
“We’ll never just kind of clap our hands, declare ourselves done,” Kupor said. “This is a major modernization project, and it’s going as well as we could have expected. We obviously appreciate that this is an incredibly important thing for us to get right and to get timely. And we totally respect the fact that after a long career in federal service, people expect that they should be able to retire with dignity, and in an efficient way.”
OPM’s long-time efforts to modernize federal retirement
The ORA platform was an initiative that began under the Biden administration as part of a multi-year strategy to modernize the government’s entire retirement process. The Trump administration has since taken up the mantle and continued the initiative this year.
“I really do believe it’s an improvement. It’s something I’ve been waiting for — for a long time,” said Tammy Flanagan, a federal retirement expert and advisor with Retire Federal. “I can’t understand why it took this long, and I was concerned that OPM implemented it this year, but maybe it’s a good thing because of the volume. Maybe it will help ease that burden.”
By now, OPM has onboarded major payroll providers, including the Interior Business Center (IBC), National Finance Center (NFC) and Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), to the new ORA platform. OPM said it is still working with some smaller providers to bring them into ORA.
Shriver, the former OPM acting director under the previous administration, said he was “glad to see” the modernization efforts continuing.
“But an online retirement application is only step one,” Shriver said. “If you have a bunch of digital applications coming in, but you still have a paper process on the back end, you need people to take those applications [and] turn them into actual annuity payments.”
For decades, OPM has been trying to update its retirement systems, with some efforts dating back to the 1980s. But time and again, the agency’s attempts at modernization have fallen short of expectations.
In 2006, for instance, the agency awarded a contract aimed at digitizing the retirement process, but the effort ultimately failed to deliver.
Then in 2010, OPM tried taking smaller steps toward updating the retirement process, an initiative that made some progress, until the agency changed course again a year later.
In a report from 2011, the Government Accountability Office wrote: “For over two decades, OPM has been attempting to modernize its federal employee retirement process by automating paper-based processes and replacing antiquated information systems. However, these efforts have been unsuccessful, and OPM canceled its most recent retirement modernization effort in February 2011.”
After a major data breach hit OPM in 2015, the agency had to scrap many of its IT modernization plans, including the ongoing efforts to modernize the retirement system.
Then during the Biden administration, the retirement modernization effort took on yet another new shape. In 2023, OPM’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) issued a multi-year IT strategy, which became the basis for many of the retirement updates OPM is still continuing now.
What a past surge indicates for those retiring now
The current surge in retirements across government is uncommon, but not entirely unprecedented. In 2013, OPM faced another massive retirement wave.
During fiscal 2013, OPM processed 138,039 total retirement claims from federal employees. It’s the highest volume OPM has had in at least the last 25 years — until now, with OPM on track to surpass 140,000.
In 2013, OPM attributed the delays in part to sequestration, which at the time forced the agency to curtail call-center hours and to suspend overtime hours for Retirement Services employees. The large volume also went hand in hand with longer processing times.
For Zawodny, the former OPM associate director of RS, the problems boiled down to a lack of funding and resources at OPM.
“Without the adequate staffing, without the adequate automation, there’s nothing you can do,” Zawodny said. “There’s only so much that’s going to be able to come through that funnel at a time. No matter how much you pour on top of it, it can’t all come out evenly.”
Zawodny said over the course of 2013, the backlog continued to increase. The office attempted to address the paperwork surge, similar to the current situation, by having staff work overtime.
Later, after getting approved to make more hires in RS, Zawodny said it still took OPM months to get the new recruits through a lengthy hiring process.
“And then you have to train the individuals,” he added. “It took upwards of nine months to a year to get an individual ready to start processing, doing calculations, providing benefits and advice.”
Congress eventually got involved, raising concerns about OPM’s absence of a long-term plan to overhaul the mostly paper-based process, combined with across-the-board budget cuts and a lack of consistent leadership within OPM.
More than a decade later, OPM’s new modernization efforts have taken a significant step forward. But in the big picture, the ORA platform represents about one-third of the total work for overhauling retirement processing. ORA modernizes the user-facing part of the process, OPM officials have explained, but more work is ahead before the government’s retirement process can be considered fully digital.
OPM is still looking to upgrade its digital file system (DFS), which contains personnel data on all retiring employees, as well as “Janus” — OPM’s program for calculating retirement annuities for applicants.
“We are revamping an entirely manual process — we’re realistic enough to understand that takes time. It takes iterations of software development, it takes process changes,” Kupor said. “Our team is doing everything we can to be proactive and get ahead of it. I’m certain there will be lessons that we’ll learn and things that we can do differently as we go forward, but we are absolutely committed to the cause here.”
“Digital retirement is changing what federal employees can expect from all of us — from every agency, from our payroll providers, and from OPM as well,” Lee added. “We’re seeing real results today with faster service, fewer errors, greater transparency. We’re committed to continuously improving.”
Despite OPM’s long-term efforts, though, the Trump administration’s workforce disruptions across the entire year have ultimately heightened employees’ uncertainty, according to NARFE’s Hatton.
“Whether it’s a shutdown, whether it’s reductions in force, hollowing out agencies, hollowing out HR staff through the deferred resignation program,” Hatton said. “That all can create disruptions in getting these files processed. We’re especially concerned that the agency side of the process is going to be difficult.”
In the immediate term, Flanagan, the retirement advisor, recommended that retiring employees currently in the process keep an eye out for any communications from OPM or their agencies, while also simply being prepared for things to take much longer than usual.
“But I don’t know what else employees can do,” she said. “I really don’t.”
This year’s deferred resignation program (DRP) has had a major impact on federal retirement processing. DRP retirees are reporting delays and frustrations as they await their annuities. Agencies and the Office of Personnel Management are working through a flood of applications. HR employees are facing high workloads, while bracing for a second looming wave of retirements. Meanwhile, OPM is overhauling the government’s legacy retirement process — an effort that, while long-awaited, is leading to further questions. (Lucy Pope/Federal News Network)
More than 60% of the government’s security clearance data last year was either inaccurate or incomplete. That’s according to a recent review conducted by the Government Accountability Office. In a new report, GAO said delays and issues with IT systems continue to make the security clearance process a top management challenge in the federal government. The issue has remained on GAO’s High Risk List since 2018.
Amid the Trump administration’s workforce reductions, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor touts that 92% of departing feds left voluntarily. But in response to Kupor’s comments, James Walkinshaw (D-Va) said calling the departures “voluntary” is misleading. Walkinshaw argues that many federal employees were coerced into leaving, rather than choosing to go on their own. Nothing about that, the congressman said, was voluntary.
The Department of the Navy is pouring nearly half a billion dollars into artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies to modernize shipbuilding operations. The Shipbuilding Operating System, or Ship OS, will leverage Palantir’s software to aggregate data from enterprise resource planning systems, legacy databases and operational sources to identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows and support proactive risk mitigation. Early pilot deployments of these AI capabilities have already shown some results, including reducing submarine schedule planning at General Dynamics Electric Boat from 160 manual hours to under 10 minutes. At Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, material review times dropped from weeks to less than an hour. The initial rollout will focus on the Submarine Industrial Base, with plans to expand to surface ship programs as the Navy validates and scales the approach.
Agencies have new acquisition considerations when buying artificial intelligence capabilities. Agencies have three months to update their acquisition clauses and policies to ensure contracts for large language models comply with two overarching principles. In a new memo, OMB said by March 11, agencies must ensure new contracts for AI tools include the requirements that demonstrate the LLMs are truth seeking and ideologically neutral. OMB detailed how agencies can ensure both commercial and internally developed LLMs meet these two principles. Agencies should ask vendors for documentation that includes enough information to assess a vendor’s risk management actions at the model, system and/or application level to establish compliance with these principles. As for existing contracts for LLMs, agencies must add these new clauses prior to exercising an option period.
Agencies are taking more advantage of financial management shared services than ever before. The Government Accountability Office found in a new report that agencies spent $183 million through the financial management marketplace in fiscal 2024. That is a $180 million increase over 2023. The reason for this increase, auditors found, is that the number of providers and products in the financial management marketplace has grown over the past several years. There are now 25 providers that are offering 139 different services. GAO said this is the first in a series of reports addressing shared services as required by the 2023 spending bill.
The Department of Homeland Security is moving to strip airport security screeners of union rights for the second time this year. The Transportation Security Administration said it will officially rescind a collective bargaining agreement for transportation security officers in early January. That decision comes after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed a new determination that TSA staff should not be allowed to participate in collective bargaining. In June, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that blocked DHS’s previous attempt to dissolve TSA’s collective bargaining agreement. The American Federation of Government Employees has vowed to fight Noem’s latest action in court as well.
Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would codify a part of President Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan and allow the Defense Department to establish a National Security and Defense AI Institute to advance defense innovation, workforce development and AI readiness. Lawmakers say the institute would “host testbeds for defense-related AI data management, reliable AI, and AI readiness.” It would also play an important role in developing a skilled workforce capable of implementing these emerging technologies. A companion bill led by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) has already passed the House as part of the annual defense policy bill.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is out with new cyber performance goals for tens of thousands of organizations across the country. CISA’s Cybersecurity Performance Goals 2.0 document is geared toward critical infrastructure sectors. The agency updated the voluntary goals last week to be more in line with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s latest Cybersecurity Framework. CISA’s updated goals include new guidance on governance, emerging threats and third-party risks. Other agencies have used CISA’s performance goals to set cybersecurity standards and requirements for specific sectors.
Terry Gerton You know, it turns out that not everything was shut down during the shutdown. The Department of Education issued a final regulation on Halloween that picked up on a March 7 executive order related to the public service loan forgiveness program. Tell us about what this new regulation does.
Randall Thomas That’s right, Terry. The regulations finalized proposed regulations that were issued in August and that implement that executive order. And that executive order directed Education to propose revisions to the PSLF regulations to ensure the definition of public service excludes organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose. That executive order stated that it was the policy of the administration that individuals employed by organizations whose activities have a substantial legal purpose shall not be eligible for the PSLF program. Education amended the regulations to provide that a qualifying employer for purposes of the program does not include organizations that engage in these specific enumerated activities in the regulation such that they have a substantial illegal purpose. Qualifying employers, for people who are familiar with the program or those who aren’t, generally include federal, state, local government agencies, Section 501(C)(3) organizations, and certain other entities. And these regulations were issued after … the PSLF statute was enacted in 2007 and first became effective in 2009. And those regulations have been amended seven times since they were first promulgated. The new regulations establish that to be considered a qualifying employer, an organization must not engage in an illegal activity such that it has substantial illegal purpose. And with that language and that standard, Education is effectively adopting the IRS’s illegality doctrine in these regulations. Education states that the IRS’ use of the doctrine is a basis for Education to issue the regulations. Education also listed several activities deemed to reflect a substantial illegal purpose, which we’ll probably cover in a few minutes, and the proposed regulations received nearly 14,000 comments [and] were generally finalized without substantive changes.
Terry Gerton I think most people would agree that agencies that are engaging in illegal behavior ought not to be subject to loan forgiveness. What is new about this regulation, especially when it comes to defining the illegal activities?
Randall Thomas Yeah, so historically, like we mentioned just a minute ago, Terry, this was a status test and not a conduct test by the Department of Education. You could look to a Section 501(C)(3) organization and see that the IRS had made a determination with respect to that exempt status. And the IRS separately employs an illegality doctrine, but now the Department of Education has said that it will also apply the illegality doctrine based on a preponderance of the evidence to determine whether an organization is operating for a substantial illegal purpose. And here they define certain illegal activities as indicative of having a substantial illegal purpose. Those activities were also all noted in the executive order from March of this year, and they include aiding or abetting violations of federal immigration laws, supporting terrorism, the use of puberty blockers or sex hormones for minors in violation of federal or state law, engaging in the trafficking of children to another state for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents in a violation of federal or state law, engaging in a pattern of aiding and abetting illegal discrimination, and engaging in a pattern of violating state laws, which is defined as a final non-default judgment by a state court of trespassing, disorderly conduct, public nuisance, vandalism, or obstruction of highways.
Terry Gerton Well those are pretty specific. How will the Department of Education actually determine if an agency or an organization engages in those activities? What will they look at?
Randall Thomas So the employer disqualification process here requires Education to find that an employer has a substantial illegal purpose by a preponderance of the evidence after weighing the employer’s illegal conduct and narrowly focusing on only the illegal conduct enumerated in the regulation. The preamble to the regulation notes that a determination by Education regarding illegality only represents Education’s conclusion that the organization is not a qualifying employer and does not represent a determination by the IRS regarding tax exempt status. Education will determine that a qualifying employer violated the applicable standard when it receives an application in which the employer fails to certify that it did not participate in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose, or when it otherwise determines that a qualifying employer engaged in these activities unless Education approves a corrective plan signed by the employer. There’s an employer reconsideration process that gives employers the right to submit additional information and seek review and determinations. That process is aimed at providing due process to ensure that Education considers all relevant information prior to taking action to remove eligibility and to ensure that employers will be given an opportunity to respond, except in cases where there’s conclusive evidence that the employer engages in activities such that it has an illegal purpose, substantial legal purpose, rather. And Education presumes that the following evidence is conclusive. That includes a final judgment by a state or federal court whereby the employer is found to have engaged in illegal activities such that it has a substantial illegal purpose, a plea of guilty or no contest, whereby the employer admits to having engaged in illegal activities that have a substantial illegal purpose, or pleads no contest to allegations that it engaged in illegal activities with a substantial illegal purpose, or a settlement that includes admission by the employer that engaged in illegal activities that have a substantial illegal purpose. It provides that nothing in the determination process shall be construed to authorize Education to determine an employer has a substantial illegal purpose based upon the employer or its employees exercising their First Amendment rights or any other rights protected under the Constitution. And Education notes that even without such explicit references, the regulation could not be enforced in a manner that contravenes the First Amendment and that lawful activity will not disqualify an organization, no matter how controversial or unpopular it may be.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Randall Thomas. He’s a partner at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius. All right, that’s a lot of legal speak about the requirements. What if any new responsibilities or risks does this create for the public service organizations who might have borrowers participating in the program?
Randall Thomas Yeah, so two impacts here, the qualifying employers and also the borrowers, of course. The employers now bear the responsibility of affirmatively certifying that they are not engaged in activities with a substantial illegal purpose. They face disqualification now based on this new preponderance of the evidence standard, and certain things like judgments, no contest pleas, and settlements are treated as conclusive evidence that the employer engages in activities such that it has a substantial illegal purpose. Employers will want to engage counsel to think about how the PSLF regulations may apply and whether the employer’s activities expose it to any PSLF disqualification risk under the new regulations. And, you know, you probably want to do that with an eye toward these activities that the regulations say are indicative of a substantial legal purpose. There’s also the borrower impact, and thankfully these regulations don’t have an effective date until July 1, 2026. So you do have some headway — runway to figure out how they’re going to apply to your employer. For borrowers, the regulations will remove PSLF eligibility for individual borrowers during periods of employment by organizations that have been disqualified. Where an employer is deemed to have engaged in activities that breach federal or state law, affected borrowers won’t receive credit toward loan forgiveness for months worked after the determination date of ineligibility, but borrowers will receive full credit for work performed until the effective date of Education’s determination that the employer no longer qualifies. And under the regulations, Education is required to notify borrowers of a qualifying employer’s status. If the qualifying employer is at risk of becoming or becomes ineligible to participate in a PSLF program, the borrower cannot request reconsideration of a determination by Education that resulted in the employer losing status because the employer has a substantial illegal purpose.
Terry Gerton Are any of these new regulations being tested in legal cases?
Randall Thomas There are several cases that have been filed so far challenging the regulation.
Terry Gerton And what is the status of any of those? Can you derive any sense of where this might go in the future?
Randall Thomas I can’t opine right now. I don’t think that any — well, I think that it’s too premature. These regulations were just finalized a little bit over three weeks ago. And I don’t know that there’s been any action on these cases.
Terry Gerton What do you think this signals for the future then of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program? Do you think the authorities will continue to be tightened and the eligibility requirements strengthened?
Randall Thomas Yeah, Terry, I have no expectation about whether they will or won’t be tightened any further, but the new rule is clearly designed to tighten PSLF standards, and the administration through the executive order and Education in the preamble to the regulations, they say as much. The preamble to the regulation discusses at length the aim of the regulation in ensuring that taxpayer dollars are not misused and strengthening accountability and enhancing program integrity. The preamble states that the regulations will protect hardworking taxpayers from shouldering the cost of improper subsidies granted employees of organizations that undermine national security — and I’m quoting the regulation here — and American values through criminal activity. I can’t speak to the policy or the balance between accountability and access to forgiveness. I will note that Education notes in the preamble to the regulation that it disagrees with [the] assertion that the rule will have a significant macroeconomic effect on labor markets in education, health care, social services. They stated that they found no basis to conclude widespread effects would be likely and that they expected most organizations to voluntarily comply with the rule, such that Education anticipates that it will take action to remove eligibility for less than 10 organizations per year.
FILE - University of Texas Rio Grande Valley graduates sit socially distanced during their commencement ceremony at the school's parking lot in Edinburg, Texas, May 7, 2021. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, involving President Joe Biden's debt relief plan that would wipe away up to $20,000 in outstanding student loans. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP, File)
The systems architecture for using commercial clouds has served federal agencies well for nearly 20 years.
The cloud movement sparked innovation in the design and deployment of applications, but the exploding use of artificial intelligence calls for a new cloud architecture, suggests Anish Patel, the head of federal civilian at cloud services company Cloudflare.
“If we think about the next generation of services that are going to rely on AI, there’s really a need for a new architecture in that,” Patel said during Federal News Network’s Industry Exchange Cloud 2025. “And so, how does that public cloud architecture, evolve?”
AI compute demands necessitate cloud evolution
He said the principal reason for this need derives from the compute demands of AI.
“AI is really the first thing since the development of the computer that’s been revolutionary on that compute scale,” Patel said.
Developers are folding AI into applications, along with technologies such as post-quantum cryptography and blockchain. Until now, those elements weren’t typically part of digital services.
“But when you combine all those things now,” Patel said, “thinking about the speed of interaction and how reliant you are on a network that’s trusted and reliable becomes really critical.”
Therefore, the resulting architecture must distribute compute power closer to clusters of end users, rather than executing solely in a given commercial cloud.
“If you can bring both that compute and that internet power as close to the end user as possible, that’s game-changing for where the internet is and where AI applications are going,” Patel said. Otherwise, the sheer processor cycle demands of AI will cause performance problems evident to users.
Architecting a reliable cloud architecture for all users
In thinking about the next architecture, IT staffs must consider both their organizations’ own users and external constituents, customers and business partners. Patel noted that many agencies have workforces scattered throughout the country. The need for reliability and low latency equals that of external users.
With reduced workforces, agencies will need to increase that reliability because the paper-based, office visit and telephone options may cease to exist.
“What’s coming next isn’t just that digital services are generally available, and when it’s not, you can pick up the phone or go into an office,” Patel said. “It’s just to be expected that all services are digital, and that service has an uptime and reliability level greater than TikTok or Twitter.”
He added, “There is a new generation of architectural thinking that has to come along with a distributed architecture.”
Patel made the analogy of search. Early Internet search functions, characterized by services like Ask Jeeves, were slow. Google, he said, revolutionized that with instantaneous results.
Today, when using public-facing generative AI sites, users “see it thinking, and there’s a couple of seconds there of it processing, and then it spits out an answer.”
That’s OK for now, he said, but the next generation of AI-enabled digital services will need the same step-function increase in performance that occurred with search.
The distributed architecture also includes distributed data, Patel noted. He said this requires special attention to data sovereignty, privacy and transparency — and secure handling.
“I may be a U.S. citizen traveling overseas, needing access to certain information in a particular country,” he said. “Especially if I’m an agency who’s globally distributed or has people that are traveling all over the world, I want to be able to process my information in a way that adheres to U.S. laws and follows the FedRAMP standard.”
Planning for distributed cloud architecture? Start with your users
Instituting a distributed architecture starts at the application development stage, Patel said.
“You have to start building for where the users are, wherever they are, and adjust to the users’ expectations,” he said. Also important? Building “for the next generation of services that aren’t fully built yet.”
Use of a containerized microservices approach helps because it lets an organization modify or upgrade parts and pieces of an application much more easily than traditional development techniques.
Still, Patel said, until recently “if it was distributed, it was on the agency and the IT folks to come figure out a way to distribute that application, have a disaster recovery strategy, et cetera. If you’re doing that manually, it’s still a highly complicated process, and you still have this scenario where it becomes overwhelming for the IT organization.”
That’s where companies like Cloudflare come in, Patel said. Cloudflare has built a hyper-distributed network together with the services for organizations to use. The company pioneered the idea of easy-to-adopt security for the Hypertext Transport Protocol, so organizations could readily obtain HTTPS status.
“You can now build your applications once and distribute everywhere at the same time, all over the place, and you don’t have to think about it,” he said. “You’re essentially offloading the capabilities of that application, infrastructure and services to vendors who are designed to essentially distribute this across the globe.”
Ensuring FedRAMP compliance in hyper-distributed cloud environments
That raises the question of FedRAMP compliance, the need for which would appear to severely limit the physical facilities on which federal applications can execute. That in turn means federal customers can’t always access the range of cloud services available to commercial customers.
Patel said that, in supporting a mission to “build a better internet,” Cloudflare wants “to ensure that everybody gets the same internet.” Its solution is to build the FedRAMP standards into the architecture itself, so that distributed instances of an application inherit compliance that was built into the original version.
“That means,” he said, “if there’s new services that are offered — new capabilities — and you need to extend the services to be tightly controlled in a particular way to a particular geography, you have the full control to be able to do that.”
The control ensures an agency can maintain public trust in an application and adjust how distributed instances operate.
“You may have certain areas where certain applications that you just want distributed everywhere,” Patel said, “and you need it to just be available for the user as fast as possible.”
On the other hand, he added, “You may have some cases where it makes more sense to for the application to be highly centralized in particular way and be able to route it to the right location.”
For example, at a local clinic somewhere offering medical services to veterans, “you want to make sure, regardless of the Wi-Fi they may have or the device they may have, that experience is still secure but performant, so the veteran can get through the process.”
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