The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

Because Congress is so late establishing a appropriations for fiscal 2024, the year is getting lapped by the 2025. The administration releases its budget proposal, more a wish list today. It'll get ceremonial attention. But there's still some deadlines for this year. More now from WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller.

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Among the grand challenges for cybersecurity is how to make the nation's electrical grid safer. It's a big problem in a lot of ways. The grid contains nearly countless numbers of components, each of which has to be protected. And pieces of the grid are owned by thousands of companies, public utilities, and local governments. Now a team from the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has come up with a whole new idea for grid protection. Joining the Federal Drive with the outlines of it, PNNL data scientist Sumit Purohit.

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The Agriculture Department’s is already seeing benefits from a $100 million dollar investment in one of its foundational programs. USDA is using money from the American Rescue Plan Act to modernize systems that run the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC program. For how they plan to expand the reach and appeal of WIC, Federal News Network's Jason Miller talked to the USDA's senior advisor for delivery for the Food and Nutrition Service, Rebecca Piazza.

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It took two years of study – and more than 400 interviews – but the expert panel Congress commissioned to fix DoD aging budget system now has some answers. The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Reform delivered its final report last week, with 28 recommendations in all. If DoD and Congress adopt them, it would be the first significant update to DoD’s budget process since the Pentagon started using it, that was in the early days of the Cold War. Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu has been covering the PPBE reform process, including last week’s rollout, and he’s here now with some highlights. 

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It is an eternal question. How much should government try to do? Now we present a view you may not hear all that often. An old book about a failed New Deal era agriculture project has been re-issued by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. First published in 1951, the book, "Government Project," detailed the Agriculture Department's attempt at establishing a cooperative farm from the ground up in Arizona. The author, Edward Banfield, was a Harvard urban studies professor and one-time federal information officer. He died in 1999. For more, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Kevin Kosar, who wrote the forward to the reprint and is a Senior Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute.

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The Census Bureau counts people in the United States. The Agriculture Department counts farms. In fact, the National Agricultural Statistics Service recently issued its latest count of farms and ranches in the United States. For the details, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke Bryan Combs, the USDA Chief of the Environmental, Economics and Demographics Branch.

USDA Census

AG Census

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

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Agencies have spent years trying to shift away from college degree requirements for federal jobs — now, the White House is now directing agencies to take things up a notch by using more apprenticeships.

An executive order President Joe Biden signed Wednesday gives agencies a score of new requirements to try to make the government a leading example in skills-based hiring. The recruitment practice has employers focus on job candidates’ hands-on skills rather than their education.

Specifically, agencies will have to begin taking better advantage of the Labor Department’s registered apprenticeship program, according to the executive order. The goal is to have agencies then convert apprentices into full-time federal employees — an effort that could also ramp up skills-based hiring and address mission-critical skills gaps.

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A six-year experiment meant to help the federal government quickly sell or dispose of its underutilized real estate is running out of time.

Congress created the Public Buildings Reform Board as a small, independent agency under the 2016 Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA), to help the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, identify federal buildings and properties that agencies no longer need, and to sell or repurpose them.

In fiscal 2022, the 24 largest federal agencies owned nearly a quarter million buildings, covering more than 2.4 billion square feet, according to the latest GSA data. That portfolio of owned buildings accounts for more than $16 billion in annual costs.

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