The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

Labor-Management Forums in federal agencies come and go, over and over again, depending on which party holds the White House. Now they have returned, but only in the third year of the Biden administration. Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with someone about that: former management processor and union president Bob Tobias.

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A non-profit grantee in a cooperative agreement with the Commerce Department, plans to seed the country with specialized nerds. The International Economic Development Council has recruited 65 of what it calls economic recovery corps fellows. They will fan out to distressed areas and help get local economies going. For details Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Nicole Manapol, Senior Director of the Council's Economic Recovery Corps.

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On today's episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin:

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One year after the Office of Personnel Management released its gender identity and inclusion guidance on Transgender Day of Visibility, transgender federal employees expressed gratitude for the guidance, but also frustration around a lack of communication and training regarding both protections and processes.

They appreciate the protections and the clarity put forth in the guidance; it’s far more than existed before. But they also said agencies could do more to communicate about the guidance at both the managerial and employee levels, and provide training for managers to handle the technical and legal details facing transgender federal employees.

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Agencies are beginning to think a little more creatively about how to hire employees with disabilities, but at the same time, federal hiring managers are getting caught up in some red tape.

Although a majority of agencies say the Schedule A hiring authority leads relatively quickly to high-quality hires, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in a March 20 report that some agencies face difficulties with understanding or using the authority.

In some cases, HR staff find it difficult to figure out what documentation is needed, EEOC found after surveying 55 agencies about their use of the authority. Some agencies don’t have enough HR employees who are familiar with the Schedule A process in the first place.

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No one avoids death and taxes. But you can make sure an element -- that is crucial to a comfortable retirement -- lasts the rest of your life. For what it is and how to preserve it, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talked with certified financial planner Art Stein of Arthur Stein Financial.

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A large non-profit has been obtaining Tesla battery packs and getting them into Ukraine for when Russia knocks out the electricity. Federal Drive Host Tom Temin was curious about how an operation like that works. How does it maneuver around military operations and stay on the good side of the State Department and other agencies that may be operating there? For more, Tom spoke with the President and CEO of Direct Relief, Thomas Tighe.

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New rules have taken effect for procurement from AbilityOne contractors. Those are the companies, mostly non-profits, whose employees have disabilities. The rules were ordered by Congress back in 2017 and they bring more competition to the program. For details, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talked with the Executive Director of the AbilityOne Commission, Kim Zeich.

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On today's episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin:

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At the end of 2023, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office delivered a minimum viable capability for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control via a series of global experiments known as GIDE. In 2024, the office wants to make the data collected during GIDE exercises available to those developing the next round of AI models.

This year’s GIDE 9, which was wrapped up last week, successfully demonstrated a “completely vendor-agnostic” data integration layer for the first time, making data extensible across various operational systems. This data can now be fed into the DoD’s development pipeline.

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