The top IT leader at the Department of Transportation is resigning, FedScoop was the first to report last week. Pavan Pidugu, the DOT’s chief digital and information officer, was sworn in February 2025 after serving as the CTO for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for nearly five years. His last day will be Sept. 4. Under Pidugu’s leadership, the agency underwent a restructuring of its technology department. The agency also migrated to Google Workspace, becoming the first cabinet-level agency to fully transition using the General Services Administration’s OneGov deal. A DOT spokesperson told FedScoop in May that the Federal Aviation Administration was gearing up to migrate later this year. In total, more than 50,000 employees across the agency will have access. Pidugu’s resignation comes amid a wave of technology leader departures, including federal CIO Greg Barbaccia, whose last day will be at the end of August. Interior Department CIO Paul “Macca” McInerny left the agency last week.

The Technology Modernization Fund is open for proposals and prioritizing faster permitting technology and artificial intelligence adoption projects, its acting director said Thursday. Jessie Posilkin said the TMF is “being explicit” about its desire for Council on Environmental Quality-supported projects to speed and scale permitting, and to advance USAi adoption in agencies facing capability and infrastructure gaps preventing responsible use. Posilkin said in a LinkedIn post: “TMF was made for moments like this, where agencies can’t afford to wait on budget and procurement cycles. I’m excited we’re still poised to help agencies meet a critical moment of opportunity – and a bipartisan one, at that!” Last month, Posilkin said the fund had $200 million left, pending potential reauthorization for fiscal 2027. But that might not stretch as far as it would have in the past, even with 100% of agencies repaying TMF loans, as the “scale and scope of government technology challenges are only going up” because of AI, Posilkin said at the time. The current version of the fiscal 2027 Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill authorizes $5 million for the fund, but has not yet received a floor vote in either chamber. Agencies can submit a project proposal until July 24, but Posilkin encouraged them to move quickly so the small TMF team can review proposals expeditiously. She said: “This call is moving fast, partly out of necessity. We have a very narrow window between now and September 30, when our authorization to make new investments ends (absent congressional action, of course…). With more time, we could do even more — but we’ll meet as much of the agency need as we can, while we can.”

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Greg Barbaccia is stepping down as federal CIO and leaving government at the end of August, he said in an email to the CIO Council Tuesday. “I’m writing to share that I’ve made the difficult decision to leave government, and my time as Federal CIO is coming to an end,” Barbaccia wrote to CIOs on the council in his email, obtained by FedScoop. Barbaccia, who joined the Trump administration as its top IT official in January 2025, said his last day in the role will be Aug. 31. Barbaccia’s departure comes just months after he brought on former Department of Education CIO Thomas Flagg to be his deputy. Flagg would be the default acting official with Barbaccia’s departure, a government chief information officer told FedScoop on the condition of anonymity to be more candid. As federal CIO, Barbaccia has also served as the federal chief AI officer of the U.S. government, playing a pivotal role in shaping AI policy, oversight and adoption across federal agencies.

The Defense Innovation Unit is undergoing a major reorganization effort that will overhaul and collapse its operational portfolios from seven to three technology priorities “where speed, scale, and lethality intersect,” two sources told DefenseScoop on Monday. One senior defense official and one defense official familiar with this realignment said the Pentagon would likely reveal DIU’s near-term plans and new internal structure publicly this week. The officials requested anonymity to speak freely ahead of the Defense Department’s official, forthcoming announcement. But they suggested that this shake-up and reset is intended to concentrate DIU’s experts and resources on a smaller, more focused set of real-world problem areas so the hub can deliver outcome-driven, reportable combat power to the U.S. military at faster and less expensive rates. DIU’s recently installed director under the second Trump administration, Owen West, initiated the reorg. The three new portfolios and priority topics that the unit will be structured around, according to the two officials, are drones and autonomous warfare, kill webs, and "10x" technologies.

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Longtime IT industry leader Teresa Carlson has joined Anthropic to lead its public sector strategy as the artificial intelligence company navigates relationships with the U.S. and other governments. Carlson — who is known for her past leadership at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services — is now Anthropic’s global head of public sector, the Claude maker shared Tuesday. She is the first person to hold that title at the company. “After more than two decades helping government leaders navigate new technologies, I joined Anthropic because it prioritized working alongside government early and takes this as seriously as anything it does,” Carlson said in a written statement shared with FedScoop. “AI is changing how we work and how we live, and that change has to happen in collaboration with governments.”

Multiple U.S. Army internet subdomains were defaced in a 404 hijacking campaign, CyberScoop has confirmed. As of Monday morning, error pages on two U.S. Army websites – oil.army.mil and ai2c.army.mil – displayed defacement messages visible to users. The messages denigrated President Donald Trump and United States Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack, called to “FREE KURDISTAN,” And included another line reading “Kurdish sr was here.” One of the websites, oil.army.mil, belongs to the Army’s Open Innovation Lab, a test bed for software and cyber capabilities established in 2020. The other belongs to the Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, established in 2019 to integrate AI technologies into the Army and train personnel on emerging technologies. The defacements were initially discovered by independent cybersecurity researcher Ronald Lovelace, who notified U.S. Army officials and CyberScoop.

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Anthropic announced earlier this week its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models will once again be available to the public as it has reached an agreement with the Commerce Department to deploy the AI models with new guardrails and classifiers meant to address jailbreaks. In a blog posted Tuesday, Anthropic said that export controls that prevented their sale to foreign companies and individuals have been lifted after weeks of negotiation with the White House and Commerce Department. The company has also restored access to the model for U.S. users. The export controls were put in place after the Trump administration became alarmed by a threat intelligence report from Amazon claiming to have jailbroken Fable’s cybersecurity capabilities. On X, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick appeared to confirm that the restrictions would be lifted. “Over the past two weeks, we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America’s leadership in AI,” Lutnick wrote.

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ under secretary for health is resigning effective next week, according to an internal email sent Tuesday and confirmed by the VA on Wednesday. John Bartrum has led the massive rollout of electronic health record modernization since his December 2025 confirmation, but did not explain why he is leaving only months into his tenure. “We successfully relaunched the Electronic Health Record Modernization program, putting it back on a credible path after years of uncertainty,” Bartrum said in the email. “In the spirit of President George Washington upon his retirement from public life, I am persuaded that, with these initiatives now firmly on track, you will not disapprove my determination to retire from public service.” The formerly assailed EHRM effort has been ramping up in recent months, with plans to have 19 sites updated by the end of this year. It’s the beginning of an “aggressive timeline” to complete deployment at all sites as early as 2031.

The White House isn’t planning to review the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s performance as the Elon Musk-launched project that eviscerated large swaths of federal agencies winds down, its top budget official said Tuesday. During a House Appropriations hearing, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee Chairman Dave Joyce noted that DOGE has been “pretty much eliminated” in the proposed fiscal 2027 budget. The Ohio Republican then asked Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought if he planned to present any documentation on “what exactly DOGE accomplished” in terms of “reductions in dollars spent” and “people at agencies.” Vought answered that the administration has “no plans to do … a closing DOGE report,” though it is “happy to give you our assessment of that work” saying he thinks “it made some really important strides.” An executive branch funding proposal for fiscal 2027 released in January called for $8 million to the OMB-housed Information Technology Oversight and Reform bucket to fund DOGE. The 2027 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act (H.R.8495), introduced in April, also appropriated $8 million for ITOR, though DOGE wasn’t mentioned by name in the bill. The White House’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal, also released in April, requested $35 million for DOGE.

The CIA has reorganized several of its key acquisition and tech directorates to better embrace emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing as they reshape “the reality of conflict and asymmetric warfare,” Director John Ratcliffe said Tuesday. During rare public remarks at the AWS DC Summit, Ratcliffe pointed to recent CIA-supported operations in Venezuela and the Middle East, including the rescue of a downed F-15E Strike Eagle pilot in Iran, as examples of the outsized impact of technology on the agency’s intelligence operations. Recognizing there’s no shortage of conflict or crisis around the globe, Ratcliffe said the CIA does not have the luxury of relying on what’s worked in the past. Instead, the agency must position itself as a leader in adopting cutting-edge technologies. With that in mind, the CIA has undertaken a “fundamental reshaping” of its “entire approach to technology,” Ratcliffe said. That includes overhauling its digital innovation office, reconstructing its commercial tech procurement strategy, streamlining communication channels with industry and elevating its offensive cyber capabilities as a core mission function.

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The Secret Service has serious gaps in its mobile device management and security practices, leading to heightened risks for the nation’s leaders, other protectees and its employees, according to an inspector general report published Thursday. Those security and management gaps included a culture of using personal devices even in protective operations, a lack of security software on government-issued devices and the approval of apps containing vulnerabilities, among others. Much of the blame, per the report, lies with the Department of Homeland Security unit’s Office of the CIO, which is responsible for establishing security standards and ensuring compliance with policies. Employees pointed to issues with their government-issued devices as the reason for the lapse in protocol, citing technical limitations and diminished reliability. Government-issued devices, for example, would “frequently” disconnect from the virtual private network and couldn’t download “essential” apps to conduct investigations and communicate with local law enforcement. Records revealed employees were claiming reimbursement for use of personal devices after traveling internationally, illustrating the practice was “routine” and “expected,” per the watchdog.

President Donald Trump’s new supplemental spending request includes $67.1 billion to support the Defense Department, featuring funds to advance new capabilities and offset the cost of operations in the Middle East. The Office of Management and Budget sent the spending package to Congress on Wednesday, requesting a total of $87.6 billion. While the lion’s share of the funds would cover the mounting costs of Operation Epic Fury, the White House is also seeking money for other issues — such as aid to American farmers and responses to the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa. In a letter sent to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., OMB Director Russell Vought urged lawmakers to approve the additional funding as a way to reimburse the Pentagon for the war in Iran. The biggest ticket item in the supplemental is a $21 billion request for munitions, which would likely support the Pentagon in replenishing weapons that have been spent during Operation Epic Fury.

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The Education Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer lost more than half of its staff in early 2025 during the Trump administration’s reduction-in-force campaign, leaving some suboffices completely empty, the agency’s Office of the Inspector General found in a report issued Monday. The OIG used Microsoft Office and Teams to track down who was subject to the RIF during the first nearly ten weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term, finding it gutted 40% or 1,579 of the agency’s workers in total. The OIG said it was presented with a scope limitation for the review due to the department not providing all requested information or giving unfettered access to Department staff, which limited its ability to fully address the review objective. Specifically in the CIO’s office, the OIG counted 44 remaining employees of the 92 employed in January 2025 — a 52% reduction. About 8% of all separated employees in the agency were in IT management, it found, and about $6 million in OCIO contracts were terminated as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive agency reorganization campaign in early 2025. Suboffices within the OCIO that are statutorily required to oversee all departmental operational enterprise IT infrastructures and software, develop IT investment performance measures and conduct security reviews mandated by the Federal Information Security Modernization Act have no remaining employees, the report said.

NASA issued a long-awaited list of awardees for the latest iteration of a multibillion-dollar cross-government IT acquisition vehicle, moving the large-scale contract forward. In a brief notice on Monday, the agency said it would start processing the awards for the sixth generation of its Solutions for Enterprise‑wide Procurement contract, known as SEWP VI. It also disclosed more than 2,100 awardees across three categories: IT solutions, enterprise-wide IT services, and mission-based IT services. Among the hundreds of awardees, the list includes IBM, Leidos, KPMG, Carahsoft Technology Corp., Peraton, REI Systems, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), CACI, Cherokee Nation Government Solutions, Amivero and Guidehouse. All of the awards are indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, with a 10-year ordering period and a maximum ordering value of $20 billion. The contract period begins Nov. 1 and will run through October 2036.

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The Department of Energy is kickstarting a quantum computing effort tied to the Genesis Mission following a pair of quantum-focused executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on Monday. The newly launched Quantum Genesis initiative aims to develop and deploy a more resilient quantum computing capability by 2028. Darío Gil, under secretary for science and Genesis Mission lead, told FedScoop that the new initiative serves as a foundation for the charges Trump issued in his directives for “challenging America’s quantum information science community and industry to build the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computing capability that will transform scientific discovery, strengthen national security, and power the next era of American innovation.” To reach that goal, DOE has three main priorities: set up a competition to accelerate quantum system development, conduct targeted research to advance high-impact, scientific quantum use cases, and build a supercomputing facility for engineers to access the new capabilities. The facility, along with DOE’s existing high-performance computing systems and the Genesis Mission’s in-progress American Science and Security Platform, will form a unified high-performance computing, AI and quantum computing ecosystem.

The Pentagon’s workforce shrank by roughly 10.7% during the height of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency implementation efforts, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. That decrease represents 82,940 employees — from a baseline 778,188 civilian employees at the Defense Department in December 2024 near the end of the Biden administration, down to 695,248 in January 2026. Outlining governmentwide workforce contractions across 2025 that were sparked by multiple presidential directives, GAO’s report offers a fresh, data-driven look at DOGE’s downsizing impacts inside the Pentagon. It indicates that, while DOD remains America’s largest employer of federal civilian personnel, the department’s workforce is now substantially smaller in volume than it was in prior years. Dawn Locke, director with GAO’s Strategic Issues team and lead on the review, told DefenseScoop: “A key takeaway for DOD is the role the Deferred Resignation Program played in the agency’s efforts to reduce the size of its civilian workforce.”

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President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Monday to accelerate the federal government’s transition to post-quantum encryption and reprioritize government financing to support the domestic quantum computing industry. The orders, which CyberScoop first reported on last year, direct the government to throw its weight behind the quantum computing industry. They are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to put its stamp on the development of another key emerging technology. Ahead of the signing, sources previewed details of those orders to CyberScoop. Per one of those sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss pending administration actions, a “whole of government approach is used to empower research and development into quantum computing, as well as quantum sensing [and other resources].” They described the Trump administration’s attitude for propping up industry as “don’t let us miss out on prioritizing the feeders for the research or the development of quantum.” The second order requires federal civilian networks to adopt quantum-resistant encryption faster than the current 2035 deadline. The new encryption algorithms, vetted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will protect against future quantum computer attacks. Agencies that miss the new deadline must report to the Office of Management and Budget explaining why.

Four proposed rules to begin formally overhauling 20 sections of the Federal Acquisition Regulation were published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. While the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council has been rewriting and deviating from the FAR for over a year now as part of what it’s calling “the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul”, the unpublished proposed rules are a step toward codification of these changes. Over a combined total of more than 1,000 pages of proposed rules, the overhaul would establish regular regulatory reviews and sunsets, as well as move the bid protest system to the agencies involved in disputes instead of the Government Accountability Office. The FAR update comes in response to an April 2025 executive order mandating the procurement policy be pared down to the essentials and presented in plain language, void of any “undue barriers” and “unnecessary regulations.” The FAR has not been significantly updated in 40 years.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs hosted an IT industry day last week with a specific takeaway from the agency’s deputy CIO: incumbency itself is not enough. Zack Schwartz, principal deputy assistant secretary in the VA’s Office of Information and Technology, said he’s made it clear that tech contractors need to bring their “A-game when it comes to supporting the veteran,” and the VA is open for business with whoever can do it best. “Incumbency is not a guarantee, incumbency is not an advantage,” Schwartz said in an interview with FedScoop. “We will not settle just because you’ve supported the VA in the past.” Schwartz said last Wednesday’s private IT Advanced Planning Brief to Industry was a breakthrough between the agency and industry, as he made it clear that the “massive organization” is “moving extremely fast” to modernize and integrate AI with governance.

LOGZONE, an Alabama-based logistics services provider, has agreed to pay more than $507,000 to resolve allegations that it misrepresented its compliance with Pentagon cybersecurity requirements while doing work with the Navy. According to a settlement agreement published last Thursday, the Justice Department alleged that LOGZONE failed to fully implement required security controls under NIST Special Publication 800-171 despite its contract mandating compliance. While not an explicit violation of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, the suit highlights the Defense Department’s increasing scrutiny of the defense industry not implementing required cybersecurity measures for sensitive information. The settlement stems from two contracts awarded by the Navy between 2021 and 2022 for logistics, inventory management and facility support services for the Naval Oceanographic Command located at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. According to the settlement agreement, LOGZONE received more than $682,000 under the contracts through March 2025.

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