The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

Congress and a federal watchdog are taking a closer look at much-scrutinized plans to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland.

But a top FBI official is warning lawmakers that the agency’s workforce is running into several problems with its current headquarters.

More than 15 years after the federal government originally planned for a new FBI headquarters, the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building is breaking down in ways that hamper the agency’s mission.

Meanwhile, the FBI has moved thousands of its employees out of the Washington, D.C. metro area over the past decade, and built up its presence at other campuses across the country.

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Two key features of the Homeland Security Department’s cybersecurity program known as Einstein are going the way of the VCR, the IPod and the teletype.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is putting two Einstein 3A services out to pasture in the coming weeks.

Specifically, CISA told agencies earlier this fall that it will be turning off two capabilities as of Dec. 22: Email filtering capabilities and domain name service (DNS) sinkholing services.

DNS sinkholing protects against the use of domain name server as a means to establish communication with compromised hosts or to distribute malware. This capability is achieved by redirecting user traffic that matches known cyber threat indicators to a safe host to prevent connection to a malicious host and collect data on the attempted malicious connection.

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Even in today's inflationary times, the word millionaire has a certain cachet. With a little self discipline and the power of compound interest, millionaire status is available to federal employees who make wise use of the Thrift Savings Plan. For some advice on how to get there, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talked with retired federal manager Abe Grungold.

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The war in Ukraine, and to some extent Israel, have drained away U.S. weapons and ammunition stockpiles. Numerous studies have cited a shortage of shells, missiles and launch platforms, as well as whether the industrial supply chain and the military's own organic supply chain have the capacity to sustain the demand. For one informed view, Federal Drive Host talked with Al Abramson, the Vice President of Strategic Engagement with the National Armaments Consortium and a retired U.S. Army brigadier general.

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The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is known for operating around the globe. Now it has a geospatial strategy it hopes will improve the decision-making and, ultimately, the effectiveness of its aid programs. For details, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Carrie, Stokes, USAID's Chief Geographer.

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On this episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin:

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While hackers often target email and other cloud-based work applications, agencies and other organizations now at least have security “baselines” for many of the leading productivity tools on the market.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as part of its Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) project, released a series of nine security configuration baselines for Google Workspace today, including applications like Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Meet. The latest release follows up on CISA’s publication of baselines for Microsoft 365 products last year.

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Along with improvements in satisfaction and engagement scores this year, federal employees’ views of their agencies’ commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) are also on the rise.

Overall, 71% of feds said they had favorable impressions of their agencies DEIA practices, according to the results of the 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS). It’s an increase of 2% from the 69% average score in the 2022 FEVS.

The DEIA component of FEVS is a relatively new addition — the Office of Personnel Management first added the index to the survey just last year. This year, in addition to the overall boost, scores increased within each of the four components that comprise the total DEIA index.

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Education performance in developed countries, and in the United States, is a mixed bag. That is according to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a periodic project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the U.S., math performance by 15-year-olds was worse than in 2018, among the lowest ever. Reading and science held steady. For analysis of what the results mean, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spokw with Ryan Taurianen, the Executive Director of Teach For America's D.C. region.

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The closer NASA gets to returning to the moon, the farther away the moon seems to move. Contractors on the Artemis III project are having trouble with some basic items, like the spacesuits astronauts would need and the lunar lander itself. The Government Accountability Office has found that NASA may be too ambitious in its schedule for the initial launch. For more on the findings, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Bill Russell, GAO's director of contracting and national security.

GAO REPORT

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