The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

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

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If the U.S. Treasury runs out of money to pay all the government’s bills because of the debt limit impasse, no one’s exactly sure what it would mean for federal agencies and employees — after all, it’s never happened before. But key federal stakeholders want answers before things get to that point, and at least one is taking the government to court over it.

A federal judge in Massachusetts will hear oral arguments next Wednesday in a lawsuit that argues both that federal employees must be paid even if Congress doesn’t increase the debt ceiling, and that the ceiling itself is unconstitutional.

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In a major step towards freeing itself from paper records keeping, the Defense Department unveiled its first ever records management strategy on Monday. The plan names goals the department wants to achieve over the next five years in an effort to create user-friendly discoverable digital archives.

The strategy lists four goals. They include creating a comprehensive library of records to aid the department in decision-making, automating records creation, retrieving and managing records, and planning a lifecycle for them.

Defense officials said an overarching goal is to turn DoD’s vast storehouses of records into “actionable information.”

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Waste, fraud and abuse in the federal student aid loan program is bad. But it would be a lot worse, if not for someone at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) For more than 20 years, she has dispensed tough and crucial oversight to federal financial aid for students, which has rooted out fraudsters and saved untold sums of money. Now she is a finalist for a Service to America Medals, administered by the Partnership for Public Service. Federal Drive host talks with Melissa Emrey-Arras, the GAO's Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues.

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This interview is part of the Federal Drive series: The Worst Place to Work in the Federal Government, focusing on the Bureau of Prisons, part of the Justice Department. Federal Drive host Tom Temin has already spoken to several people affiliated with the federal prison system. Now Tom Temin turns his attention toward a working senior officer specialist, who didn't have official permission to speak publicly, so we'll call him Officer X. His voice has been disguised to protect his anonymity and allow for a very candid discussion.

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The Federal Drive continues its week-long series: The Worst Place to Work in the Federal Government, which happens to be the Bureau of Prisons, part of the Justice Department. Yesterday we heard from a former warden, Bob Hood. In today's installment, Federal Drive host Tom Temin talks with Aaron McGlothin, President of AFGE Council 33, a local chapter, representing officers at the Federal Correctional Institution at Mendota, California.

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

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology hopes to engage a broader community of stakeholders to drive its Open Security Controls Assessment Language program forward.

The open source “OSCAL” program could be a crucial component in helping agencies speed up the adoption of digital technologies, Department of Commerce Chief Information Officer André Mendes said at NIST’s fourth annual OSCAL workshop on Tuesday.

“We cannot just keep adding cybersecurity experts,” Mendes said. “It doesn’t work. It doesn’t scale. And so cyber defenses and processes must evolve.”

OSCAL is a set of structured data formats that provide “machine-readable representations of control catalogs, control baselines, system security plans, and assessment plans and results,” according to NIST. The current formats are expressed in XML, JSON, and YAML

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The Federal Acquisition Regulation Council is out with a new proposed rule regarding small businesses. Specifically, it would align the FAR with the Small Business Administration, when it comes to Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer, together known as SBIR and STTR. For the details, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Hanes Boone procurement attorney Zach Prince.

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Federal Drive host Tom Temin talks in this podcast with Gretta Goodwin. As the Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office, Goodwin is like a stern but compassionate teacher, as she examines and evaluates the Bureau of Prisons. She treats the subject with tough love, offering specific ideas on how the Bureau could rise from "worst place to work in the federal government."

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