The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency could lose employees involved in chemical security screenings, one of its leaders is warning, if Congress doesn’t act soon to reauthorize and fund the agency’s expired chemical security program.

The authorization for the Chemical Facility Anti-terrorism Standards (CFATS) program lapsed on July 28 after the Senate failed to pass a reauthorization bill before going on August recess. It’s the first time the program hasn’t been reauthorized since it was created in 2007.

CISA and Department of Homeland Security leaders are now pressing Congress to reauthorize the CFATS program, warning that the absence of facility inspections and other security standards under the program increases the danger of chemical terrorism.

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Alongside staff attrition and lost productivity, the Department of Agriculture’s relocation of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the Economic Research Service (ERS) in 2019 had yet another consequence — prior to the move, USDA violated the Antideficiency Act (ADA) by failing to meet congressional notification requirements.

The Government Accountability Office, in a decision issued earlier this month, found that although USDA met its obligations to notify Congress about a transfer of funds to support NIFA’s relocation, the department did not meet the same requirements for ERS’ relocation.

The GAO review, which Reps. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) requested, came after USDA’s planning and subsequent relocation of both NIFA and ERS facilities from the Washington, D.C. area to Kansas City, Missouri, during the Trump administration.

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The industry is trying to understand the extent of new Davis-Bacon regulations for federal construction coming out of the Labor Department. The final rule hasn't quite taken effect, but already contractors to the government -- or on federally-funded projects -- have a slew of new risk and compliance obligations. For more, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Haynes Boone procurement attorney Dan Ramish.

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Housing and Urban Development (HUD) does not build low-income housing, but it helps finance it. Since 2016, HUD's Housing Trust Fund has made grants to 263 projects for people with extremely low incomes. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that HUD officials need to do a better job of monitoring and overseeing the use of Housing Trust Fund dollars. For details, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with GAO's Director of the Financial Markets and Community Investment Team, Jill Naamane.

Link to this GAO Report

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Self-driving vehicles are nothing new. They've been operating inside warehouses and factories for decades. A few years back, the Postal Service purchased 350 automated-guided vehicles to move pallets in its processing center. But according to the USPS Office of Inspector General, the experiment didn't quite work out. For more, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with audit director Todd Watson.

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

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The next big initiative the Defense Department plans to develop in its technology race with China will focus on relatively disposable, quickly produced unmanned systems. DoD wants the program, called “Replicator,” to move from development to operational capability in 18-20 months.

The program will stay in the spotlight as it will be supervised directly by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We’re going to create a new state of the art — just as America has done before — leveraging attritable autonomous systems in all domains, which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire and can be changed, updated or improved with substantially shorter lead times,” Hicks said to a packed house at an NDIA emerging technologies for defense conference Monday.

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Federal agencies and their watchdogs are still getting to the bottom of the total amount of fraud across more than $5 trillion in COVID-19 emergency spending, but the Labor Department is uncovering a major source of those misspent funds.  

The Labor Department, in a report released this week, estimates improper payments made up nearly 36% of spending on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program between March 2020 and September 2021.

Congress authorized the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program in the CARES Act for self-employed individuals who weren’t eligible for regular unemployment insurance (UI) benefits at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While PUA provided critical support to workers and communities during a historic pandemic, states faced serious challenges in minimizing improper payments and stewarding federal funds in this entirely new program,” the Labor Department wrote in its report.

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

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