The Daily Scoop Podcast

Sheena Burrell, the chief information officer of the National Archives and Records Administration, has taken a new job as chief innovation officer at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Burrell will join FDIC to lead its Office of Innovation — known also as the FDIC Tech Lab or FDiTech — on Dec. 2, an agency spokesperson confirmed to FedScoop. Her last day at NARA will be Nov. 30, a National Archives spokesperson said. In her absence, Gulam Shakir will serve as acting CIO “while we continue to plan for NARA’s digital transformation and future,” the NARA spokesperson said.

Twelve senators on Wednesday signed a letter addressed to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, urging investigation into the Transportation Security Administration’s facial recognition technology “regime” as it looks to expand to more airports. Leading the bipartisan group was Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. Their call for investigation follows TSA plans to introduce credential authentication technologies, or CAT units equipped with facial recognition and deployed at airport security checkpoints, at more than 430 airports.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs’ top IT official told House lawmakers on Wednesday that a larger budget and the ability to pay certain government workers more would improve the agency’s cybersecurity posture. Kurt DelBene, the VA’s assistant for information and technology and chief information officer, called during a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing for the entire federal government to “take steps to increase the salaries” of tech workers who are classified as GS-2210 under the Office of Personnel Management. The CIO said existing salaries are “too low to be competitive,” even with incentives and benefits, and that the VA continues to face challenges in recruiting and retaining professionals with cyber expertise.

The State Department on Wednesday announced a new, government-wide task force focused on content authentication. The group, which includes more than 20 federal agencies, is supposed to streamline the government’s international outreach on content authentication, which could help combat technology like deepfakes. The task force is charged with working with foreign governments and partners on developing the technical standards and capacities to detect this category of content, according to a statement shared with FedScoop ahead of the announcement.

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The leader of the Defense Department organization charged with investigating reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” laid out findings related to two high-profile incidents and another that he said hasn’t received as much attention from the public. The presentation by Jon Kosloski, director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), came during a congressional hearing Tuesday with members of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. Lawmakers have been urging the Pentagon to be more transparent about its work on UAP issues and have raised national security concerns about these types of incidents. UAP, an acronym that refers to unidentified anomalous phenomena, is a modern term for UFOs and mysterious transmedium objects. During the hearing Kosloski walked the subommittee through the findings the AARO delivered on a trio of UAP cases referred to as the Go Fast, Puerto Rico and Mt. Etna incidents, the latter of which he said hasn’t received as much attention from the public.

Congressional efforts to extend the Chief Data Officer Council past the end of the year got a boost Monday when a bipartisan House bill was introduced as the companion to earlier Senate legislation. The Modernizing Data Practices to Improve Government Act (H.R. 10151), introduced by Reps. Summer Lee, D-Pa., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., calls for an extension to the council’s lifespan until 2031, while also requiring the CDO Council to report to Congress about data governance challenges that prevent the adoption of emerging tech across the federal landscape. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Todd Young, R-Ind., introduced the Senate version of this bill in September.

After serving as the head of the Technology Transformation Services at GSA for the past two years, Ann Lewis announced recently she is stepping down from the role. Lewis led the TTS organization during a time of major AI adoption across government, workforce transformation and a greater focus on spreading use of the agency’s Login.gov single sign on platform. In a final interview with FedScoop, Lewis discusses those priorities for TTS going forward, as well as her journey into government, now that she’s stepping away.

The new director of the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is scheduled to meet with lawmakers in closed-door and open sessions Tuesday to discuss his organization’s activities investigating “unidentified anomalous phenomena” that have raised national security concerns. The hearing with the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities comes on the heels of the release of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 consolidated annual report on UAP — the modern term for UFOs and mysterious

Restrictive software licensing practices are impacting multiple federal agencies in the form of cost increases and limited choices of cloud service providers (CSP) or cloud architecture, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Department of Justice, NASA, Department of Transportation and Department of Veterans all told the GAO that as result of restrictive practices in software licensing, the agencies either experienced or expected cost increases in acquisition, infrastructure and licensing.

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As the White House gets ready to “pass the baton” to the incoming Trump administration, Federal CIO Clare Martorana said she is focused on cybersecurity issues and making sure her team does everything it can for their replacements to be set up for success. Over the remaining two months of the Biden administration, Martorana said in an interview with FedScoop on the sidelines of the ACT-IAC CX Summit on Friday that cyber is her top area of focus because “you need security, engineering, [and] competencies when you are contemplating the problem set in the solution you’re trying to design.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin departed early Friday morning on his twelfth and final trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where he will engage in a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings with some of his closest colleagues across Australia, the Philippines, Laos and Fiji. “During this trip, we will deliver results to advance cooperation, strengthen our relationships, and build an enduring network of allies and partners. I am proud of the historic progress we’ve made over the last four years and the depth of continuing U.S. commitment to the region,” Austin said in a statement ahead of takeoff.

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As they continue to investigate and resolve a growing caseload of hundreds of reports from current and former government officials about encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), personnel in the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) are also launching new projects and resources to declassify materials, promote transparency and enhance collection capabilities. The office’s new director Jon Kosloski detailed those and other updates during an off-camera press briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday, marking his first open engagement with reporters in this capacity since he assumed the role in August. Kosloski told reporters the office has has taken meaningful steps to improve data collection and retention, bolster sensor development, effectively triage UAP reports and reduce the stigma of reporting a UAP event.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that he hopes the Trump administration would maintain the agency’s AI Safety and Security Board, which was formed in April and includes corporate and civil society leaders focused on artificial intelligence. The board’s roster currently includes OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario , leading AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, among many others. DHS and the board on Thursday released what the department is calling a groundbreaking new framework focused on technology and critical infrastructure.

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OpenAI is releasing an artificial intelligence infrastructure blueprint meant to highlight its vision for American AI, which the company argues will boost productivity and jumpstart advanced technology development. The release of the blueprint, which was viewed by FedScoop and was set to be presented in Washington on Wednesday, comes as the Biden administration continues to push for government support for data centers, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors. At the same time, the government’s approach to AI is still taking shape — and companies like OpenAI are using the opportunity to advocate for policies that would make way for infrastructure and energy projects that would benefit them.

On the same day outgoing President Joe Biden met with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss the transition between them, a top White House cyber official made some recommendations for early cyber priorities for the incoming administration. In its first 100 days, the Trump administration should build a framework for minimum cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure companies, establish cybersecurity grants for those in need and deepen international partnerships, said Anne Neuberger, Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. Neuberger offered those suggestions at an event Wednesday hosted by the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in what she called the bipartisan tradition of cybersecurity, having received “the baton” from the prior administrations and passing it on in a world of threats heavily dominated by China, ransomware and artificial intelligence.

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Ann Lewis, the director of Technology Transformation Services and deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, is leaving the General Services Administration after almost two years. Lewis will leave the agency on Nov. 22, according to a Tuesday press release. Mukunda Penugonde, who currently serves as deputy director of TTS, will step in as acting director and deputy commissioner. Lewis was tapped by the Biden administration in December 2022 to serve at GSA after a lengthy career in the private sector.

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security may bode poorly for the agency’s cybersecurity grants to state and local governments, given her opposition to the program while serving as chief executive of her state. Trump will nominate the South Dakota governor to serve as secretary of DHS, numerous news outlets reported Tuesday. Her administration in 2022 called the combined $1 billion grant program “wasteful spending” by the federal government when her state was one of only two in the nation not to seek any funding from it. In 2023, South Dakota was the lone holdout.

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Soon after Robin Carnahan was appointed and confirmed as administrator of the General Services Administration, she made it one of her top priorities to “make the damn websites work.” By that, she meant it was GSA’s role as the federal government’s digital center of excellence to ensure that agencies were following through on the imperative to deliver moden digital services and experiences to the American public. Carnahan’s time as GSA administrator will soon come to an end with the shiting to another Trump administration come January. And with that, it begs the question: Are the damn websites any better? The Daily Scoop recently caught up with Administrator Carnahan at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania to ask her that, how GSA plans to sustain progress ahead of an administration change, what the biggest obstacles are impeding digital transformation, and much more.

As Washington prepares for a new administration — and a potentially dramatic reduction of the federal workforce — a new survey shows that the public is more satisfied now with U.S. government services than it’s been in years. The American Customer Satisfaction Index study found that citizen satisfaction with federal government services ticked up 2.2% in 2024 to a score of 69.

Over the last year, the Defense Department has reduced its civilian cyber vacancy rate to 16 percent, a decrease of 4.8 percent from last year, according to an official.Those efforts are part of the execution of the DOD’s cyber workforce strategy and implementation plan. In a global fight to attract and keep cyber professionals, the Pentagon was facing a shortfall of 24 percent, and it’s been looking to take bold action to change the tide. Officials have said the efforts undertaken since the strategy was unveiled in March 2023 and the implementation plan was released in August 2023, have been working, but more effort is needed.

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If President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to reinstate an executive order that eases the president’s ability to fire federal workers, the government’s ability to recruit top talent for tech, IT, cyber and artificial intelligence positions will be harmed, according to a senior Biden administration official. The 2020 executive order concerning the creation of Schedule F in the excepted service was issued just 13 days before the 2020 election and was overturned by an executive order from President Joe Biden to enshrine protections for the federal workforce in 2021. The Office of Personnel Management announced a final rule this April that aimed to reinforce protections and merit system principles for career civil servants. The Biden administration official told FedScoop that if current or prospective federal employees QUOTE “believe they’ll be constrained from offering their honest, informed professional input, and that they or their colleagues could be removed following a presidential transition based on their personal beliefs and not on their performance, this will reduce their desire to work for the government.” They added that “Attracting top talent, including the best tech talent, to serve the American people means respecting and protecting their expertise and service, not undermining it.”President-elect Trump has maintained that he will immediately reissue that 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove what he calls rogue bureaucrats, adding that it would be the first point of his plan to “dismantle the deep state.”

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