The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

On this episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temin:

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The executive saw her office’s dismal employee viewpoint scores and said, “We have to change our culture. Our workforce is too important.”

Too often what comes next is a short-lived, ineffective effort because either the executive leaves, gets distracted, loses interest or the workforce doesn’t buy-in and the entire initiative to change the culture falls like a house of cards.

But what if this wasn’t the “change the culture” version of the movie Groundhog Day? What if Bill Murray, or in this case the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Chief Financial Officer, actually didn’t rinse and repeat the day over and over again with the same dismal results?

Luckily for HHS, Sheila Conley, the deputy CFO at HHS, looks nothing like Bill Murray, and broke the Groundhog Day cycle of failures.

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The Service to America Medals program known as the Sammies, administered by the Partnership for Public Service, each year recognizes the most accomplished career civil servants. Here on the Federal Drive we've been featuring interviews with Sammies finalists each week since the spring. Tonight the Partnership will announce the winners at the Kennedy Center. To talk about all of that, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talked with Max Stier, the President and CEO of the Partnership.

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As the world turns, most of it is probably scratching its collective head at the United States Congress. As the latest crisis, Israel's war against terrorists, enters its second week, President Biden pledged support. So what can we expect this week on the Hill? For more on the matter, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin talks with Zach Cohen, Bloomberg Government congressional reporter.

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The 8(a) program. It is a piece of federal jargon that has come to symbolize how the government helps small businesses get their fair share of contracting dollars. Now the underlying assumptions of the 8(a) program are under challenge in court. Could this be the end? For analysis, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin turned to Managing Partner of Centre Law and Consulting, Barbara Kinosky.

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The National Armaments Consortium is a coalition of industry groups, whose members work on the next generation of ordnance and the energetics that power them. At last week's Association of the U.S. Army conference, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin got an update on a weapons summit coming up soon in Huntsville that will combine three parts of the consortium: Naval Energetics Systems and Technologies(NEST), the Aviation and Missile Technology Consortium, and the Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium. All three are eligible for the Defense Department's use of other transaction authorities. For more on this matter, Temin spoke with the Vice President for Customer Engagement at the Consortium, Army Brig. Gen. Al Abramson (ret.).

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

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Federal contractors will need to closely monitor a government acquisition website for directives that ban products and services due to security concerns, similar to the Huawei ban, under a new rule published this month and set to go into effect in early December.

The Defense Department, the General Services Administration and NASA published an interim rule last week laying out how contractors will need to comply with orders from the Federal Acquisition Security Council.

The council was created as part of the SECURE Technology Act of 2018. It has the authority to issue recommendations for removing or excluding products and services from federal supply chains.

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Both open and closed seasons are coming up. November 17 will mark the end of the continuing resolution, so the government could close when the money runs out. Just a few days earlier, open season arrives. That is when federal employees choose a health insurance carrier for 2024. For the rundown on all of this, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with John Hatton, of the National Active and Retired Federal Employee Association (NARFE).

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