The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

The board overseeing the federal Thrift Savings Plan has been working for six months to fix bugs in its brand new website launched last June. Many functions have been improved, but customers say there's still work to be done. For an update, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with the board's external affairs director, Kim Weaver.

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An enduring challenge for military IT people: getting just the right information securely to people who need it, especially in contested environments. Now researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate think they have a solution. It's called robust information provisioning layer, or RIPL. To find out more about it, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with program manager Brian Holmes.

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Cybersecurity is the gift that keeps on giving, and 2023 promises to be as busy as ever for agencies and contractors across a range of cyber policy developments.The White House Office of the National Cyber Director is expected to issue a new national cyber strategy within the next couple of months. Mark Montgomery, the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the strategy will likely map out a shift already underway toward more cybersecurity regulation.

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A comprehensive spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2023 outlines a plan for federal buildings, including a way forward for the headquarters of two federal law enforcement agencies. The fiscal 2023 omnibus spending bill Congress released this week to fund federal operations and avert a government shutdown on Friday directs the General Services Administration to further consolidate office space for the federal workforce.

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No one is looking back fondly on last year when it comes to the Thrift Savings Plan. The markets had a terrible year across the board. And the TSP board is still catching up from a difficult deployment of a new system for plan members to manage their accounts. To find out what to expect in 2023, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Abe Grungold, financial coach and retired federal executive.

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So-called black swan events seem to be happening in flocks. The pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, earthquakes and floods. For government, it all adds up to the need for resilience and preparation. And, according to new research by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, a technological approach is also needed. For more on this, Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked with Syracuse University professor and Government Accountability Office managing director, Chris Mihm.

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For long-serving federal executives, retirement from government is merely a gateway to a next phase. A case in point is Letitia Long, who retired back in 2014 as director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. She sits on several corporate boards and chairs one of the big trade associations. For some insight into her post-government life and a few other matters, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Letitia Long.

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Contractors start the new calendar year with customers funded for the fiscal year. But some new rules and procedures will take some attention. To get an outlook for 2023, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with federal sales and marketing consultant Larry Allen.

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You might think chief financial officers count beans and leaf through spreadsheets. But their profession needs training, skills development, and innovation as much as anyone else. A project at the Office of Personnel Management sought to ensure financial people stay up to date. For more on the award-winning program, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with OPM's strategic foresight program analyst, Eric Popiel and the Commerce Department's deputy chief financial officer, Steve Kunze.

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In doing economic analyses leading to changes in federal benefits, agencies are obligated to do them a certain way. During the pandemic, the Agriculture Department redid an index resulting in a big boost in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Government Accountability Office finds, USDA didn't quite proceed properly. To get more on this, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Kathryn Larin, GAO's Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security.

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