• A top House Republican is calling on Department of Homeland Security officials to testify in front of Congress. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) formally requested testimony from the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Garbarino said he wants to make sure those agencies are effectively using their resources. His letter comes in the aftermath of another deadly shooting by a federal agent in Minnesota as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
  (Garbarino requests ICE, CBP, USCIS testimony for upcoming oversight hearing - House Homeland Security Committee )
• A government watchdog has found that telework is not a main contributor to declines in agency customer service. Across three agencies used as case studies, a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that each had declines in customer service due to factors like staffing shortages or funding issues, not telework. Each agency that GAO researched also faced at least some level of recruitment challenges, where employees either left or considered leaving for a job with more telework flexibility. The report comes about a year after President Donald Trump ordered all federal employees to work in the office full-time.
  (Report on federal telework - Government Accountability Office)
• The Defense Department’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a sharp departure from the first Trump administration’s strategy that focused on deterring China as the country’s top priority. The new strategy, unusually political for a military document, shifts its focus toward defending the U.S. homeland and prioritizing dominance in the Western Hemisphere. It calls for securing U.S. borders, maritime approaches and airspace, including through the Golden Dome for America initiative and a renewed focus on countering unmanned aerial threats. U.S. allies and partners, the document said, will “have an essential role to play but not as the dependencies of the last generation.”
  (DoD’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy focuses on homeland - Defense Department)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is helping agencies get ready for a post-quantum world. CISA has released a list of product categories that use post-quantum cryptography standards. The list shows that some hardware and software products, like cloud services and collaboration software, have adopted partially post-quantum encryption standards. Many other technology products are just starting the transition. CISA’s release of the list is an important step as agencies plan out their migration to the new cryptographic standards. Cybersecurity officials are concerned that a quantum computer in the not too distant future will be able to break traditional encryption methods.
  (CISA releases product categories list to propel post-quantum cryptography adoption - Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
• The federal agencies that saw the most employees leave in 2025, either voluntarily or involuntarily, were large departments like Defense and Agriculture. But according to data from the Office of Personnel Management, when looking at employee separations as a percentage of their total workforce size, USAID, the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service top the list.
  (The federal workforce changed drastically in 2025. Here’s how. - Federal News Network)
• The Army signed another enterprisewide software agreement directly with a software provider. The Army added Appian to its growing list of enterprisewide software contracts with original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. The service agreed to a 10-year deal with the low-code, no-code platform provider that has a $500 million ceiling. The contract consolidates six existing contracts for Appian tools. The new deal includes any new software licenses, maintenance, support services and cloud services task orders. This contract comes four months after the Army signed a similar enterprisewide 10-year deal with Palantir that has a $10 billion ceiling.
  (Army consolidates contracts, signs deal with low-code, no-code provider - SAM.gov)
• Congress is once again raising concerns about rising costs, staffing levels and an expanding mission at the Pentagon’s cost assessment and program evaluation office. CAPE has faced scrutiny over the years for taking on an advocacy rather than advisory role. The House Armed Services Committee even proposed eliminating the office altogether. While Congress stopped short of shutting down the office, the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill required the Defense Department to overhaul how it operates. Now, lawmakers want Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a detailed plan on how the department plans to streamline and optimize CAPE while reducing the number of contracted personnel within the office. Lawmakers said any effort to shrink the office cannot come at the expense of its core cost assessment functions.
  (Congress presses DoD to rein in growing costs, contractor reliance at CAPE - House.gov)
• NASA SEWP is implementing key sections of the Federal Acquisition Regulation rewrite to let users set up blanket purchase agreements or BPAs on top of the governmentwide acquisition contract. The program office said under the new FAR Part 8, agency customers can create the BPAs for recurring purchases from one or more suppliers for pre-defined products and services. NASA said the benefits of establishing a BPA include streamlined ordering and cost savings through quantity discounts and reduced administrative requirements.
  (NASA now allows BPAs on SEWP V - NASA SEWP)

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