The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

A House bill would change the way the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) would deal with tribal police departments. It would give them easier access to duty weapons by eliminating ATF regulations that don't apply to other police departments. For details, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with the bill's sponsor, South Dakota Republican Congressman Dusty Johnson.

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Among the troubling programs on the Government Accountability Office's High-Risk List, is the ability of the Health and Human Services Department to manage the national response to health emergencies. In the most recent pandemic, the response of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was at best disjointed. That left many other agencies to make their own decisions. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talks about this with Sanjay Patnaik, who says CDC reform should include a way to make CDC expertise available to help other agencies' responses. Sanjay Patnaik is the Director of the Center on Regulation and Markets at the Brookings Institution.

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

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The IRS is facing substantial cuts to funds meant to rebuild its workforce and modernize its legacy IT systems over the next decade, as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a first-ever government default.

The White House and congressional Republicans reached a final agreement Sunday night to limit federal spending over the next two fiscal years, in exchange for raising the debt limit through January 2025.

Congress still needs to pass the spending plan by June 5 to avoid a federal default. That’s about how long the Treasury Department estimates it still has enough revenue on hand to make scheduled payments, without having to borrow additional funds

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The Defense Department thinks it’s gotten about all the mileage it can out of its special pay and personnel system for cyber and IT professionals. Now it’s time to expand it, potentially delivering more competitive salaries to tens of thousands of additional IT workers across the department.

Congress first gave DoD permission to create the Cyber Excepted Service more than seven years ago, and although the department was initially slow to implement it, officials now think they’ve used the authority for as many positions as they legally can: about 15,000. So the Pentagon is sending Congress a legislative proposal that would expand the system to as many as 75,000 employees.

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In theory there is a debt-ceiling deal between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. But it is not law yet. With days until the theoretical deadline, Congress has a lot of work to do. For the outlook, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan.

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Low-risk investments generally have low returns. By law, the Postal Service must invest retiree assets in U.S. Treasury securities. The Office of Inspector General took a look at how much USPS would have had now, with a stock-and-bond mix. Wow. For more, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Research Specialist Joy Sanzone.

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Deep in the weeds of agency management, you find something called the FITARA scorecard. FITARA stands for Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. It became law in 2015. Twice each year, agencies receive a scorecard from Congress on how they did managing their IT activities. Now a team, under the IT trade group ACT-IAC, has come up with a list of recommendations for revising the FITARA scorecard. To fet the the whys and wherefores, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke in-studio with former federal CIO Alan Balutis along with the the Executive Director of the Policy Center at the MITRE Corporation, Dave Powner.

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

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Following two decades of gradual hiring reforms, chief human capital officers have more plans underway to try to improve recruitment and retention for the federal workforce.

Recent efforts from the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council, composed of federal human capital leaders, have included establishing an executive steering committee, and increasing agencies’ ability to hire multiple candidates off a single job announcement. Celebrating 20 years of work from the council, agency leaders reviewed successes and areas for growth at an anniversary ceremony on May 18.

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