• The Coast Guard has a new leader. Admiral Kevin Lunday officially assumed command of the service on Thursday during a ceremony at Coast Guard headquarters. The Senate confirmed Lunday last month after his nomination was temporarily delayed due to a controversy over the service’s policy regarding hate symbols. He had been serving as acting commandant since January, following the dismissal of Admiral Linda Fagan by President Donald Trump. Lunday previously led Coast Guard Cyber Command. He also held a senior leadership role at U.S. Cyber Command.
  (Coast Guard finally gets its permanent leader - U.S. Coast Guard)
• Early-career employment in the federal workforce is trending downward. Currently, about 8% of federal employees are under age 30. That’s a 1% decrease since this time last year, likely due to the Trump administration’s workforce reductions. The federal workforce has struggled for years with its ability to recruit and retain younger employees. The average age of a federal worker is 47, and about 13% of the federal workforce is currently eligible for retirement.
  (Federal workforce age data - Office of Personnel Management)
• Lawmakers are halfway done with a comprehensive spending deal for the rest of the fiscal year. The Senate passed a “minibus” of spending bills covering the departments of Justice, Interior, Commerce and Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and NASA. The House passed the same three-bill package last week. Congress still has other spending bills it needs to pass. The continuing resolution keeping many agencies funded at last year’s spending levels is set to run out on Jan. 30.
  (Senate Cloakroom update - Social media platform X)
• A watchdog at the Department of Veterans Affairs said generative AI tools used to help treat patients pose a potential safety risk. VA’s inspector general office said the department’s IT shop, National AI Institute and National Center for Patient Safety, lack a formal mechanism to identify, track or resolve risks associated with generative AI. The VA has approved AI chat tools to support medical decision-making when VA clinicians treat patients and to copy information into the department’s electronic health record system. The IG’s office said its review of these tools remains ongoing.
  (Review of VHA’s Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence - VA Office of Inspector General )
• Thrift Savings Plan participants will soon have the option of making Roth in-plan conversions in their TSP accounts. The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has finalized regulations that will allow participants to convert money from their traditional or pre-tax TSP balances into their Roth or after-tax TSP balances. The in-plan conversion option will be available to all participants starting Jan. 28.
  (Final rule on Roth in-plan conversions - Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board)
• The Army is updating its software policy once again. Two years after issuing its call to move to an agile approach to software development, the Army is ready to move into the second phase of this modernization effort. In the coming weeks, the service will update its policy to emphasize the use of "colorless" money for software development. Army CIO Leo Garciga said program offices and commands have met the initial goals of creating iterative development platforms outlined in the March 2024 policy. He said the new policy will now focus on improving how the Army estimates the cost of software projects and will fine tune the use of low-code/no-code platforms.
  (Army to update 2-year-old software policy - AFCEA Nova)
• The cloud security program known as FedRAMP is seeking feedback from agency and industry experts on six different framework documents. These include everything from expanding the marketplace to using external frameworks to creating machine-readable packages. Pete Waterman, the FedRAMP director, wrote in a blog post that the RFCs are the culmination of nearly a year of planning, testing and community input, marking a significant milestone in realigning FedRAMP with the FedRAMP Authorization Act and OMB implementation memo. Comments are due anytime from mid-February to early March. The PMO also will host a series of community sessions to discuss each of the documents.
  (FedRAMP in final throes of updating underlying framework documents - FedRAMP)
• The Army is chipping away at its legacy system. The service once operated more than 800 independent business systems, many of which didn’t communicate with the broader enterprise and were built with limited technology at the time. Army officials said the number of those systems has now been reduced to fewer than 300. The service however, continues to operate 58 separate human resources management systems and 42 independent training and readiness systems. Under Secretary of the Army Mike Obadal said while they are “not even close to where they need to be,” change is coming. The undersecretary said the advantage in modern conflict “does not come from having more platforms but from infusing our hardware with right technologies.”
  (Army consolidates hundreds of antiquated systems - Army IT Day)

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