The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

The Department of Veterans Affairs saw record hiring last year. Now it’s looking to manage the size of its largest-ever health care workforce, while continuing to hire more staff to process benefits claims.

VA officials say the department this year is focused on increasing veteran access to VA care using mostly the health care workforce it already has, “rather than on nationwide growth in total employees.”

The Veteran Health Administration exceeded many of its hiring goals in fiscal 2023, and now has its largest-ever headcount. VA’s major hiring last year allowed it to set an all-time record for providing health care and benefits to veterans.

The VA has been staffing up to handle increased demand under the PACT Act. The 2022 law expands VA health care and benefits eligibility for veterans exposed to toxic substances during their military service.

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You might not think of the CIA is concerned with art or what it calls "the beauty in intelligence." But the agency, in fact, has an extensive art collection dating back to the late 1960s to go along with some artist who work there. Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with one of those artists, Deborah Dismuke.

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For many years, the Interior Department has used a simple procedure to do assessments of environmental damage. It concerns hazardous materials released to the Great Lakes and a few other coastal locations. Now Interior proposes to greatly expand the size of the cases covered by the simple procedure, and to apply it everywhere. For more, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Attorney Brian Ferrasci- O'Malley of the Nossaman law firm.

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It's the oldest challenge in government and business: How to make things easier for customers. In the digital age, customer service has evolved into something more ambitious: customer experience (CX). CX asks, among other things, how you get the idea of better service or experience down to the individual employee. To get some ideas, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Office of Personnel Management digital services expert Beth Martin.

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On this episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin:

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Shortly after Army Gen. Paul Nakasone took over as head of U.S. Cyber Command in May 2018, the command’s Cyber Mission Force reached what’s called “full operational capability,” meaning all 133 teams had achieved training and qualification standards after an arduous five-year build up.

Now, as he prepares to retire as head of CYBERCOM and director of the National Security Agency on Feb. 1, Nakasone has had his sights set on what changes are necessary to build “CYBERCOM 2.0.” In a briefing with a small group of reporters at Ft. Meade, Md., on Tuesday, Nakasone described how much things have changed since CYBERCOM first began building out its force structure in 2013.

“It was very counter-terrorism, violent extremist organizations-focused,” Nakasone said. “It was very focused on this concept of the Iranians being able to hit our financial network and defending the nation and the financial network. Completely different world in which we live in today.”

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Sometimes paperwork is just paper. A contractor submitted three bids for a contract to remove medical waste at facilities operated by the Health and Human Services. Only the middle of the three bids included an attachment. When it won the contract on the third bid, the company figured, the terms in the attachment applied. The government disagreed. For more on what happened, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Haynes Boone procurement attorney Dan Ramish.

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A cloud computing security program established in 2011, continues to present difficulties to government and industry: FedRAMP, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, is a way of establishing that cloud computing service companies are secure. But more than 12 years in, the program still has cost uncertainty. And agencies don't always use FedRAMP approved vendors, according to the Government Accountability Office. For more, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talked with Dave Hinchman, GAO's Director of Information Technology and Cybersecurity Issues.

GAO Report

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Illegal fishing harms the legal fishing industry and endangers the marine ecosystem. That is why the Coast Guard and other agencies spend so much time trying to detect and stop it. Now the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is launching a prize challenge for data-based ways to get on top of illegal fishing. For details, Federal Drive Tom Temin spoke with research and development scientist Mike Brady.

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

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